too long to stop now

The letter came with the weekly circulars. She almost missed it as she absently fed sheet after sheet of pizza fliers and oil change coupons into the wastebasket. The texture stopped her; the envelope was soft instead of slick like the advertisements, and she shuffled it to the top of the pile and her heart almost stopped.

Eleanor had never grown accustomed to this place. The horizons of wheat, the slate-blue skies, the thunderheads as big as mountains. The way the rain churned the earth until it could swallow a house. The small streets and buildings in gentle disrepair. The sidelong looks of people who, even after a year of spying her in town, carrying groceries back to the Bronco, considered her a newcomer. She thought that probably nobody ever moved to a town like Wallings. It felt less like a town, anyway, and more like another world. She felt stranded, a spaceman left behind.

The letter was like a signal flare from her home planet, and might as well have come that far. It bore the marks of a long journey. The corners of the envelope had worn through; its smooth white surface had gone ruddy. The stamp was nearly a year old; she remembered buying stamps from the post office last year, just after moving here for Harold, and being presented a choice between the traditional flag seals or the newly-issued Otis Redding watercolor stamps. She had gone with the Redding, of course. She was unsurprised that Jack had done the same.

Wherever he was. The postmark had smudged, and he left no return address. It was the first letter in almost two years. Her name was carefully printed on the envelope, noticeably different from Jack's usual scrawl. It was his hand all the same; he had put time into it.

She turned the envelope over, suddenly anxious, and then stopped. She could hear the whine of tires up the road, a thin hum growing louder. Eleanor looked up at the clock beside the refrigerator. The day had come and gone and she hadn't even noticed.

Harold's footsteps on the porch were heavy and flat. She put the letter from Jack on top of the refrigerator and went into the living room. A corner of the envelope peeked over the edge of the big avocado-colored appliance. She didn't notice.

Harold's face was wearier than she remembered that morning, and she took him to bed without asking what the matter was. She fitted her body to his and held him as best she could; she was a small woman, girl-sized, really, and Harold was anything but. She could just touch her fingers when she circled his shoulders with her arms. Her right arm already throbbed, and was going numb, but she held him all the same. He didn't say a word. An hour passed. Her breathing slowed.

She woke in darkness. Harold wasn't beside her any more. The window over the bed was open, and a warm wind pushed at the curtains. It smelled of bread. She turned over and looked at the old clock on Harold's bedside table. Three-twenty.

She found him on the swing on the porch. When she wondered what she was doing here, that was where she found herself: wrapped in a white afghan, drinking one of Harold's beers, watching the clouds swim over the amber waves. It calmed her. Harold rocked slowly back and forth, and looked up when she came through the screen door. He planted his feet to stop the swing, and pushed off again when she settled in beside him. "It's bad?" she said quietly when he had found his rhythm again. A long time seemed to pass before he answered. "It's bad. It's getting worse."

He didn't say much after that, and neither did Eleanor. Before dawn she went back to bed, but he remained on the porch, his normally easygoing eyes more drawn than she'd ever seen. She remembered the letter when she woke in the morning, but it and Harold's car were gone.