The Folded Letter

Lexile: 1090 | Grade: 10

Passage

The letter had been sitting in the drawer for six years. It was folded once, carefully, as if whoever wrote it believed in permanence. Leena never touched it—just kept it buried beneath worn notebooks, theater ticket stubs, and dried-out pens. It wasn’t that she forgot it existed; it was that she remembered it too clearly.

It was her father’s last letter—the one he wrote before he left. He had slipped it under her bedroom door the night he walked out, and for weeks afterward, she kept expecting him to return and say it had all been a test. That the silence was temporary. That people don’t vanish just because they feel unseen.

But he hadn’t returned. And the letter remained unread.

Now, standing at the edge of the same room, older but unsure if wiser, she stared at the drawer. Outside, the evening dimmed into that soft color between violet and ash. The kind of light that asked questions.

She opened the drawer. Slowly, without ceremony, she lifted the letter. It was lighter than she expected—as if memory weighed more than paper.

She didn’t read it all at once. Her eyes flicked over familiar handwriting, catching fragments: *“I wasn’t strong enough…” “You reminded me of myself…” “Forgive me, if you can.”*

She folded it again. Once. Like before. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and whispered, 'Maybe not yet.'

It wasn’t forgiveness. But it was something.