September
Massachusetts
I never expected Captain Mathis to respond to my note. I pulled his email address off a card he gave Baba. I don't even know if it made it to him and wouldn't blame him if he deleted it on sight. Imagine my surprise when I receive a letter from him a few weeks after sending the email that my therapist told me was a pretty bad idea.
The envelope is thick, and I open it in the privacy of my room with some apprehension, not wanting to guess what he has to say. His handwriting is neat and small, covering both sides of four pages of plain, lined paper.
My hands are trembling already. I bared my soul to him in my letter, whether or not I should've sent it. I felt like I owed it to him to say what's inside me to his face. Or at least as directly as possible, given our locations.
Sinking onto my couch, I start to read.
Katya,
I read your letter all the way through a few times. It took a lot of courage for you to write what you did, which I respect. It means I need to respond.
"That doesn't sound good." My stomach is churning already.
I don't know exactly where I should start, so I'll start at the beginning.
I devour the first two pages, not expecting him to tell me his life story. From being born to a druggie mother who died when he was two and never knowing his father, to leaving a foster family to live on the streets when he was twelve, to meeting the Marine who helped him leave a gang when he was sixteen and finish high school and college. Sawyer explains his life in a way that reminds me of how my father communicates. Both have a knack for understating the importance of the information they're conveying. It leaves me stressed out, because I tend to do the opposite: put my emotions first then the story second. If I have to fill in the emotional blanks, I usually overreact.
He writes much like he speaks - with brevity and a general lack of emotion. I'm uncannily fascinated by his history, because I've always been curious about the side of him he hides, what made him the way he is, even if I don't want anything to do with him.
Mikael and Petr respect and admire him. I want to see him the way they do, the way I've never been able to, because of Mikael's death.
Page three makes me stop reading. At camp, he tried to tell me what happened the night Mikael died, and I wasn't able to hear it.