Page 101 of Lost Love on 6th Street

One more box. One more box.

I keep saying that to myself. Just one more box.

And finally, one more box pays off.

This box is mostly packing material. Old newspaper, old grocery store ads. But there is something in here. All the way at the bottom.

A gray metal lockbox.

I stare at it. Innocuous enough to be nothing. However, the only thing hidden in a box of packing material at the back of the attic has to be something.

I cough into my arm and curse to myself. The cough is starting to cut up my lungs. I need to figure out how to open this thing as fast as possible because there’s no way Mom is going to let me walk out of here holding an unopened box without an explanation.

I grab an old pocketknife from one of the other boxes I just opened and use it to pop the lock without any regard to maintaining the box.

And there it is. A whole world in a single box.

Photos and letters.

Diane and my dad.

My stomach turns as the first photo comes into focus. The two of them in a darkened booth with my dad’s arm slung around Diane’s shoulder. She’s smiling at him the way a woman smiles at a man she adores.

The date is close to the one on Eleanor’s photo.

What the hell was going on? How did this happen?

I can’t bring myself to read the letters. I don’t know if I want to know the story. About a love gone wrong, or a love that could never be, or . . .

I find a cocktail napkin emblazoned with the logo of a bar that no longer exists.

There are words written in blue pen.

I might not get you tomorrow

But at least I have you today.

And when you see me tomorrow

That’s exactly what I’ll say.

There’s a kiss mark on the other side.

“Hyacinth” is about my dad. He’s the love that could never be.

This is awful. Worse than I could have imagined.

I remember what Eleanor said last night. The idea that a history you thought you knew could be rewritten—how painful that is.

I made her feel the way I feel right now.

I fucking suck.

I already knew that, though. From small glances here and there, I grip a timeline. Whatever it was, lasted a couple of months in 1991.

Except for a final envelope. One postmarked almost two years ago.

It was never opened.

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