The Last Letter from Nowhere

M Mehran

The letter arrived on a Thursday — the kind of day that sits quietly between the noise of the week. No sender name. No return address. Just her name: “Lena Morris.”

At first, she thought it was junk mail. The paper felt rough, almost handmade, and the ink had bled slightly, as if the writer’s hands had trembled. When she opened it, a faint scent of pine and old paper drifted out. The words inside were written in neat cursive, something rare in her world of typed emails and text messages.

> “Dear Lena,
I know you don’t remember me, but I never forgot you. I promised I’d find you when the time was right.
If you’re reading this, then I kept that promise.
– Sam.”



Lena froze. The name pulled something from deep inside her — a flicker of a memory, too faint to grasp. Sam. It sounded familiar, like a word she had whispered once in a dream.

She searched her mind for a Sam: a classmate, an ex, a friend — nothing. Still, the letter stirred something old, like dust rising from a forgotten book.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. The letter sat on her desk, the paper almost glowing in the soft lamplight. She kept reading it, again and again, until the words began to feel alive. On the back, she noticed a small symbol — a pine tree drawn in black ink.

The next morning, she drove to the only place she knew with pines thick enough to make the world smell like that letter — Silver Hollow, the town she’d left sixteen years ago.


---

Silver Hollow hadn’t changed much. The same faded diner sign still blinked “Open 24 Hours”, though it probably wasn’t. The streets were quiet, the air crisp. She parked outside the diner and went in.

The waitress, an older woman with kind eyes, looked up. “Coffee?” she asked.

Lena nodded, then pulled the letter from her bag. “Do you know anyone named Sam who used to live around here?”

The waitress paused, her hand mid-air. “Sam who?”

“There’s no last name,” Lena said. “Just Sam.”

The woman hesitated. “You might want to ask at the post office,” she finally said. “Old George might remember.”


---

At the post office, the smell of paper and dust felt oddly comforting. George was there — white hair, glasses low on his nose.

When she showed him the letter, he frowned. “This looks like Sam Rivers’ handwriting,” he said slowly. “But that can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

He looked at her carefully. “Because Sam died… about fifteen years ago.”

Lena’s heart skipped. “You’re sure?”

He nodded. “He used to write letters. Beautiful ones. Always said he wanted people to remember him by his words. Poor boy had a wild imagination. Disappeared in the woods one winter. They found his coat, but not him.”

She stared at the letter in her hands, suddenly cold.

“Do you know where he lived?” she asked.

George pointed north. “Old cabin by the lake. No one’s been there since.”


---

By late afternoon, she stood at the edge of the lake. The air smelled of pine and damp earth. The cabin was small, its wood darkened by years of rain. She pushed open the door — it creaked but held. Dust hung in the sunlight like smoke.

Inside, she found piles of letters tied with ribbon, hundreds of them. On the wall, drawings of trees, stars, and faces — one of them looked eerily like hers.

Heart pounding, she untied one bundle and opened the top letter.

> “December 3rd, 2008.
Lena and I made snow angels today. She laughed when I fell. She said the sky looked close enough to touch.”



She blinked. Her name — again. But she didn’t remember any of it.

The next letter:

> “January 5th, 2009.
Lena’s family is moving away. She doesn’t want to leave. I told her I’d write to her every year until she came back.”



Tears blurred her vision. She had lived here once, as a child. A memory surfaced — a boy with dark hair, holding a jar of fireflies. “Promise me you’ll never forget me,” he had said.

She whispered, “Sam.”

Outside, the wind rose, rattling the cabin walls. Something fluttered by her feet — another letter, fallen loose.

> “If you ever find this, Lena, it means I kept my word. I never stopped writing. Not even after I was gone. Maybe you won’t remember, but I’ll remember for both of us.”



The pages slipped from her hands as she began to cry — not out of fear, but recognition. She had forgotten the boy, but he had never forgotten her.


---

As the sun set, the lake turned to molten gold. She stood by the water’s edge, the letter clutched to her chest.

“I remember now,” she said softly. “You kept your promise.”

A breeze stirred, gentle and warm. For a moment, she thought she saw him — a boy in a red scarf, standing just beyond the trees, smiling.

When she blinked, he was gone. But the pine trees whispered, and somewhere deep inside her, something mended — the missing piece of her childhood found its way home.

Lena tucked the last letter into her pocket and walked back toward the car. Behind her, the cabin stood silent, but not lonely anymore.

That night, she started writing — not an email, not a message, but a real letter. The first line read:

> “Dear Sam,
I remember now. And I’ll keep writing too.”