Between the Folded Pages

Letter 9: November 27, 1983 – From Elise to William

William,

Your letter arrived yesterday. It sat on my desk for hours before I could bring myself to open it. There is something about knowing that words, once read, cannot be unread—knowing that they will change you, no matter how much you might resist.

And, William, your words have changed me.

You say you are coming to Paris. That you will stand on that bridge, waiting for me, asking me to decide the course of what remains of us. Do you understand what you are asking of me? To carry the weight of this choice, to be the one who decides whether we are a story that ends or one that begins again?

You write of the letter you threw into the river all those years ago. The words you never gave me, the words you chose to let the water swallow. I love you. I love you. I love you.

I wish I could say that hearing this now brings me comfort. I wish I could say that it eases the ache inside me. But all I can think of is how much that letter could have changed, how much it could have saved.

I imagine that letter floating on the surface of the water, the ink bleeding into the currents, disappearing before it ever reached me. And, William, that is what you have done time and time again. You have let your love bleed into the spaces between us, never quite bringing it to where I can hold it in my hands.

And now, here you are, asking me to meet you. Asking me to take one more step toward you when I am already so tired of walking this uneven ground.

You say you fear a life where you do not try to make this right. But what about me, William? Have you thought about what I fear? Have you thought about what it has cost me to love a man who has always stood just out of reach?

I fear that meeting you on that bridge will change nothing. That you will speak your beautiful words, your promises of love, and then retreat into the safety of London once more. I fear that I will open myself to you again, only to find myself standing alone, clutching the memory of you like a ghost.

I fear that I will love you all over again, and that it will break me.

But more than that, I fear something else—something I do not know how to say without trembling.

I fear that I will not go to that bridge. I fear that I will let you stand there, waiting, hoping, while I sit here in this flat, watching the hours slip by like the shadows on the walls. I fear that I will choose to let you go, not because I do not love you, but because I do. Because loving you has cost me so much, William, and I am afraid of what it might cost me still.

Do you remember the night we sat by the Seine, the city alight with the golden glow of streetlamps? You were reciting Rilke, your voice low, your hands warm against mine. I remember looking at you and thinking, This is it. This is the man I will love for the rest of my life.

I still believe that. But sometimes, love is not enough. Sometimes, love asks too much of us.

You say you will leave if I do not come. That you will carry the weight of my absence for the rest of your life. And yet, William, that is what I have been doing all along. Carrying the weight of you. Carrying the moments we could have had, the choices you didn’t make, the letters you didn’t send.

I am so tired of carrying this.

And yet—oh, how foolish I am—I still long for you. I long for the sound of your voice, for the way your fingers curl into mine as if they were always meant to. I long for the quiet mornings we never had, the arguments we never resolved, the life we never lived.

So here is my answer, William: I will come to the bridge.

But not for you.

I will come for me.

I will come to see if this love—this thing that has shaped so much of who I am—is worth saving. I will come to see if we are something real, or if we are only the dream of something that could have been.

And if I find that you are still standing there, waiting for me, then perhaps that will be enough.

But if you are not—if you falter, if you hesitate even for a moment—then I will turn and walk away. I will leave you on that bridge, William, and I will not look back.

This is not a promise. It is a warning.

Yours, for now,

Elise