Dear Giant Cape Cod House,
I wrote to you recently and you were on my mind – who am I kidding you are always somewhere in the back of my mind – and then I was walking home from the park with the kids and decided to FaceTime my mom and as we were walking there was a small library and we stopped to peek inside and the Shellseekers was there (remember all the Rosamunde Pilcher? I mentioned it in my last letter) and I showed my mom and we both said “Oh, look at that!” and I said those pastel covers always remind me of you and my mom said her too and then she said “You remember that house burned down.”
Burned down.
And then she retold me the story and I remembered she had already told me this. And I had forgotten it. She had gone to look for you once when she was on the Cape, thought she’d just like to drive by you and see you one more time, and she couldn’t find you and later she heard that there had been a fire and you were gone.
She may even have told me this more than once. I wonder how many times she’ll have to tell me before it stays remembered? But I’ve rebuilt you in my mind at least once, maybe twice, and then my memory has to be burned all over again.
And I guess I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry you went down in a fire. Also, that seems absolutely effing appropriate. Like something out of a Pilcher novel. But in that novel you would have been rebuilt. By a rogueish handyman with a complicated past.
Anyway! I also wanted to ask, since you are mostly made of dream vapor and maintained by ghosts anyway, every time I have to reburn you in my memory, does it hurt? If so, I’m sorry.
I wish I could say I’ll remember this time but I can’t promise anything. That sh*t is complicated.
See you. Or, I guess, not.
-e.