If She Had Arrived Sooner | Lost Letters – Juliet Ellison

from the private journal of Jonathan Langston

The lamplight’s soft tonight. It reaches across the table and lands on the chair opposite mine — empty, but I can’t help seeing her there.

If she had arrived sooner, maybe I’d have had the chance to make her laugh. Maybe we’d have walked the fence line in the cool of evening, her skirts brushing against the grass while I tried to find the right words. Maybe I’d have offered to fix something small — a hinge, a latch — just to have a reason to linger.

I imagine her voice sometimes, light and sure, asking about the day. I can almost hear the sound of her pouring coffee, the gentle scrape of a chair being drawn close. The kind of everyday moments that turn strangers into something steadier.

I won’t send another letter now. By the time this ink dries, she’ll be well on her way west. But still, I hope she finds the welcome I meant to give. I hope she feels it when she steps across the threshold — the warmth, the waiting, the quiet that’s been saving a place for her.

If she had arrived sooner … maybe things would have been different.

And yet, perhaps there’s still time for something good to come of it all.

Maybe soon.

Author’s Note

This final entry closes Jonathan’s letters not with goodbye, but with invitation. His hope lingers in the quiet of that house — a warmth waiting to be found. Soon, Clara will arrive and sense it, not as loss, but as something gentle still alive beneath the dust. What he longed for becomes what she dares, at last, to believe again.