Page 52 of Hate Mail

With shaky hands, I dial the phone number listed for Penelope Hayes. It rings a few times, and then goes to voicemail, but it’s clear this is an outdated number because the voice recording is of a man who calls himself Bruce. I hang up and stare at my phone for a second before I turn to look at Anne.

“We need to fly out to Dallas.”

“Are you crazy? And what then? Just show up on his doorstep? I thought you were afraid of getting pepper sprayed.”

“I just… I don’t know. I have a gut feeling that we’re not done yet.”

“Just because it was easy doesn’t mean it has to be wrong,” Anne says. “Take this as a win. Write to him.”

I shake my head. “I can’t. I need to know. I’m not sending another letter just to have it returned.”

ChapterSixteen

COME HIDE AWAY

Luca

It was probably pretty pathetic that I couldn’t get Naomi Light out of my head. During my time in the Marine Corps, I only dated a handful of girls. None of them were serious relationships. I never gave them the chance to be. I was too hung up on some girl I had never met. I didn’t even know her, yet I held her up on a pedestal, and none of the other girls I dated came close to beating her.

When Penny came along, I didn’t think our relationship would amount to much more than any of the others did. I guess I didn’t realize just how much she liked me. She knew that I was emotionally unavailable, but she didn’t know why. The sex was good, but I guess eventually it wasn’t enough. She broke up with me a few times, always crying and asking why I couldn’t just act like I cared. Then a few months later, she would be back, apologizing and telling me that she was fine with just having a physical relationship. The cycle repeated itself several times, even when we were both out of the military.

She followed me back to San Diego. That was when our on-again-off-again relationship became more on than off. We went to the same college and eventually we ended up living together. I met her family and they took me in as one of their own. I had been on my own for so long that it felt good to have people who cared about me. Her parents treated me like their son. Her sisters treated me like a brother. It felt like I was part of a family again.

Everything was fine for a while. I wasn’t the best boyfriend to her, but she stuck around. She didn’t know about my letters to Naomi. I was pretty good at keeping secrets, at least for a little while. Sometimes she would complain and nag me, but for the most part we learned to get along.

And then one day, out of the blue, she started planning our wedding. I hadn’t even proposed to her, but suddenly she was wearing a big diamond ring and showing it off to all of her friends. I had no idea where that damn ring came from until I saw my credit card bill.

I thought about confronting her. I considered making her return the ring and telling her to move out. It honestly scared the hell out of me that she was doing this. It also scared me to put an end to it. I wondered if this was the best I was going to get. I had a beautiful woman who wanted to be my wife. The sex was still good, and for the most part we got along. Sometimes I wondered if the only reason our relationship was flawed was because I was afraid to commit to her. Maybe this was the push I needed.

Things were going nowhere with Naomi. I had held onto that fantasy for long enough. She had made it clear several times that she didn’t want to meet me. She liked writing mean letters, but she didn’t want me, and I was wasting my time believing that one day she would. I had never told her much about my relationships before, but I decided to tell her about Penny.

Dear Naomi,

I think I might be engaged. My girlfriend bought herself a ring with my credit card and now she’s planning our wedding. I’m not really sure how this happened since I never proposed to her. What do you think I should do? Can I come hide away with you, or should I man up and marry her?

Love,

Luca

I guess I hoped that Naomi would know the answer. She’d either tell me to leave Penny or she’d tell me that I was being stupid and to just marry her because I deserved a life of misery. I never expected that she just wouldn’t write back. I waited for weeks, then months, without hearing from her. The longer I waited, the closer we got to the wedding date Penny had planned for us. Six months went by, and it was too late to argue that we weren’t really engaged. She had already booked our wedding venue, hired a minister, and found her dream wedding dress.

She also found a house for us to live in together in Texas. She wanted to be close to her family, and since I didn’t know anyone in San Diego except Ben, it made sense that we move to Texas. Her father paid the down payment on the house for us, and then we were packing boxes and furniture into a moving truck.

By the time we made it to Dallas, it had been six months since I had sent that letter to Naomi. I didn’t expect her to write back at this point, but I didn’t want to lose contact with her. I sent a new letter to tell her that I was going through with the wedding so that she would have my new address.

I knew that she had never promised me anything, and never gave me anything other than rude, disturbing, or funny letters, but it hurt that I hadn’t heard back from her yet.

We were in the new house for a month when all hell broke loose. Penny had been exploring all the closets in the house. When I asked what she was doing, she told me that she was looking for a place to hide her wedding dress. That’s how she found my box of letters. I was sitting in the living room when she came storming in with my box. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a pile of hundreds of letters.

“What the hell is this?” she screamed.

“What does it look like? They’re letters.”

“From Naomi,” she said, pronouncing the name like it was poison. “Why do you have these?”

“She was my pen pal in elementary school,” I said. “Relax.”

Apparently, ‘relax’ was the wrong word to say, because it made her scream until I felt like my ear drums were going to burst.

---