Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (best short novels of all time txt) 📗

what she was up to. Probably interviewing starving prisoners in Poland or something.

Thinking of Rhea brought me back to the hot summer days six years ago when Max and I had talked about what was wrong with the world and our city, and then the riot that had changed our lives.

After the fight, Dad had fallen terribly ill. In the first week of his bedrest, Mrs. Dreyfus had brought food to our house, along with well wishes for him, but despite our need, Mum wouldn’t accept the food. She said awful things to her, including barbs about Max “taking advantage” of me.

I’d tried to explain to my parents what had actually happened that night. They’d refused to listen when I said Phil Burke had attacked me, then Max had saved me. Since Phil had already run off by the time Dad had come upon us, he only knew what he’d seen: the unimaginable crime of his daughter kissing a Jew.

The final straw had been my mother accusing Mr. Dreyfus of throwing the fateful brick that had struck Dad. Max’s mother had left our house without a word, and I’d cried as I watched through the window, seeing the grief on her face. Since that day, neither she nor Mr. Dreyfus acknowledged any of us, even if we saw them across the street. A wall had come down between our families.

I hadn’t imagined it might extend to me as well, though. I’d gone to Hannah’s house a few days later, since I hadn’t seen her or Max since the riot, and I needed to talk to them both.

“Mum’s just upset. It’ll pass,” I said when Hannah answered the door. Her face was tight with anger. “I’m sorry for what she said.”

She folded her arms. “This has nothing to do with our mothers. This has to do with you. And Max.”

He’d told her about the kiss, I realized. “Hannah, it just happened.”

“It shouldn’t have. You both know better. Look what happened. This is all your fault.”

It was like she’d slapped me. I looked down at my scuffed shoes, the Oxfords she had loaned me then never asked me to return. Ever since the kiss, I’d felt sick with guilt over what had come out of it, but that hadn’t stopped me from thinking about it. I needed to talk to Max. I needed to know what he was thinking.

“Can I talk to him?”

She laughed, but it was a hard, bitter sound. “I see why you’re really here.”

“No, Hannah, it’s not like—”

“He’s not here. He’s gone to school, but not in Toronto. Somewhere else.”

My jaw dropped. “What? Why? Where is he?”

Her face softened slightly. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Molly, but it’s better if you don’t know. You two need time apart.”

Oh, I wanted to be angry. I wanted to shout at her, to tell her she had no right to decide what was best for Max and me, but I couldn’t. She was right. I’d been wrong.

“I understand,” I said, blinking hard. “And I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m sorry about everything. Please don’t hate me.”

Her eyes glistened as well. “I could never hate you. But I think maybe you and I need some time apart, too.”

That short walk home was the loneliest of my life. I hid in my room and sobbed myself to sleep. When I left for work the next morning, I ached to see her. But I buried myself in a numbing routine of home, work, night school, and home again, and I got used to being alone. Over time I realized that Hannah and I had been growing apart for a while, and the pain faded.

Not long after, Hannah married David Bohmer, and I was happy for her. I still remembered that day by the beach when he’d tried so hard to gain her attention. Now she had all the shoes she’d ever want, as well as two beautiful children, but my heart hurt with the knowledge that I’d only met her little girl and boy on a handful of occasions. Time had changed everything.

I tried to put Max out of my mind, but he stuck stubbornly to my thoughts. I wrote him letters but never mailed them. I imagined him at school and wondered if he ever thought of me. If he did, did he miss me? Did he regret what we’d done? He’d told me we shouldn’t cross that line, but I’d foolishly leapt across. And I didn’t think I would ever forget the way that moment had felt. How we’d been suspended above everything else, sharing a perfect kiss.

But then it was over, and my world fell apart.

The one good thing that had come out of the riot was that, after I had calmed down enough, I’d written an article about what had happened. I talked about the ugliness of the mob, about how bullies had infected others through intimidation, sweeping innocent people into a frenzy of over ten thousand brawlers, pounding on each other for four terrible hours. When the fighting was over, I asked, how many of those men were proud of themselves and of what they’d done? How many went home that night, feeling confident that they had been in the right, and that the stranger they’d slugged with a brick had deserved it? I tried to remind readers that none of us was perfect. Without mentioning Dad, I brought up the concept of “us versus them,” and made it clear that I didn’t believe that to be true. Instead, I wrote, the goodness within us was only as good as how we treated our fellow humans.

I made it into a letter to the editor, and with a trembling hand, I delivered it to the Star the next morning. My heart sang to see it printed the day after that. My first piece of writing in print. When I applied for a job at the Star six years later, I presented my best stories and put that letter on the top of