I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time with that letter in my lap.
I read it three more times. I traced his signature with my finger. Your sailor.
Then I got up and knelt down on the carpet in front of the enormous white box.
I untied the navy blue satin ribbon. My hands were shaking so badly it took me three tries.
I lifted the lid.
Inside, folded in layers and layers of white tissue paper, was a dress.
I lifted it out slowly. It unfolded in my hands like water.
It was blue. A soft, deep, sea-glass blue. Floor-length. Silk chiffon, so light it barely weighed anything. Simple neckline. Long, flowing sleeves. A skirt that swirled and rippled when I moved it, like waves.
I knew that dress.
Not this exact one. But I knew it.
It was the blue dress I wore the night we met. The night at the Pier Pavilion in 1975. The borrowed one, a size too big, that I’d given back to Dottie’s sister the next morning and never seen again.
Martin had found a picture. The only photo from that night. A grainy black-and-white snapshot Dottie took of the two of us dancing, me in that dress, him still damp from the ocean. And he’d taken it to a dressmaker in New York and had them make it again.
In my size. Exactly my size.
He’d snuck into my closet and measured my clothes. He must have.
There was a little card pinned to the shoulder. In his shaky handwriting.
You wore blue the night I fell in love with you. I figured you should wear it the night we finally dance on my ship.
I held that dress against my chest and completely broke down sobbing.
But that wasn’t everything in the box.
Underneath the dress, in more tissue paper, was a pair of shoes. Silver dancing shoes with low heels and soft soles. Comfortable shoes, for a seventy-one-year-old woman with bad knees. He’d thought of that too.
And underneath the shoes, filling up the whole rest of the enormous box, were postcards.
Hundreds of them.
Not the ones from the shoeboxes in the hall closet. These were different. I picked one up. It was from Santorini. White buildings and blue domes perched on a cliff above an impossibly blue sea.
On the back, in Martin’s handwriting:
Evie — Tomorrow you’ll be here. You’ll see this with your own eyes. Look for the little church with the blue roof, just to the left of the cable car. That’s where I want to kiss you. Love, M.
I picked up another one. Athens.
Evie — The Parthenon at sunset. I’m going to hold your hand and tell you all about it, and you’re going to pretend to be interested. Love, M.
Another one. Barcelona. Marseille. Monaco. Florence. Rome. Every single port on this cruise. And then more. Places this cruise didn’t go. Alaska. Norway. Bali. Sydney. Lisbon. Cape Town. Tahiti.
Every one said something like:
Someday, Evie.
Here, Evie. Someday.
I’ll show you this, Evie.
I dug deeper into the box. There were so many. They kept coming. Layers and layers of them.
At the very bottom, there was a small card. A note to me.
Evie — For fifty years, I sent you postcards that said “wish you were here.” I never sent these ones. These are the postcards I wrote for the trips we were going to take together. After I retired. I started writing them in January, when you said yes. One for every place in the world I wanted to show you.
There are 312 of them.
I know I can’t take you anymore. But maybe you’ll go to some of them on your own. Or with David and the girls. Or with a friend.
And when you get there, read the postcard. And I’ll be there with you. I promise.
Don’t be afraid of the water anymore, mermaid. I’ll be in it.
I sat on the floor of that cabin surrounded by three hundred and twelve postcards, holding a blue silk dress, and I cried until I thought there were no tears left in my body.
And then I cried some more.
I don’t know how long I sat there. Half an hour. Maybe more. The light outside the closed curtains turned from gold to orange.
Finally, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Mrs. Hale?” Thomas’s voice. “Are you all right?”
I wiped my face. I stood up slowly. I opened the door.
Thomas looked at me. At my red eyes and my wet face and the blue dress still clutched against my chest. His own eyes filled up.
“He made me promise not to tell you anything,” he said quietly. “Not a word. Before tonight. It was the hardest promise I’ve ever kept.”
“You knew about all of this?”
“I helped him with most of it. I picked up the box from your garage in May. I kept it in my cabin for five weeks.” He swallowed. “He called me almost every day after that. Making sure everything was ready. The last time he called was two days before he died. He could barely talk. But he asked if I’d gotten the shoes. He was worried they’d hurt your feet.”
I laughed. A broken, wet laugh.
“That sounds like him.”
“Ma’am,” Thomas said. “The dance in the Grand Ballroom starts at eight o’clock. Martin asked me to escort you. If you’re willing.” He paused. “And he asked me to tell you that you’d better wear the dress. Or he’d haunt me.”
I looked down at the blue silk in my arms.
I looked at the curtains I’d kept closed for six days.
Then I looked back at Thomas.
“Give me forty-five minutes,” I said.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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