Dear Ruby,

Thank you so very much for my birthday card. I have hung it up on my refrigerator along with the cards from my other great-grandchildren. Your unicorn makes the loveliest edition to my art collection. It was so wonderful to get to have you and your grandparents at my party. I'm ninety-one years older than you, little girl, and I'm not sure how many more parties I'm going to get to have, so I enjoy every single one. You have made my birthdays so special.

For the last six years, I have watched you grow up, from three to six to nine. You are beautiful and bright and brave and I could not adore you more if you were my own.

Ruby, you are nearly ten, almost a decade old. I am nearly ten decades old and there are some things I want to make sure you know while I still have the chance. I write you this letter today to tell you that you are part of a love story...

Olivia feels the familiar prickle of emotion play across her cheeks, her nose, her welling eyes. She takes off her reading glasses and tucks them onto the top of her head for safekeeping. Her fingers tangle in the precious blonde locks splayed across her lap as she rubs her granddaughter's head. Ruby is sound asleep in the fading October sun. Her perfect light lashes flutter ever so slightly as she dreams.

Olivia glances across the yard to where her husband is wrangling the twins. They are all boy; rough and tumble and wild contagious laughter, while Ruby is all folklore and fairytale and willowy limbs. She can hear their sons, her son and his, joking and jostling each other from the porch.

Yesterday afternoon as the height of his birthday festivities was dying down, Walter had pulled her husband aside and motioned for her to follow. He'd told them privately that his cancer has returned and at ninety-nine years old, he is readily putting himself on hospice. Their granddaughter declared Walter one of her "best friends in the world" from the day she met him at the ripe old age of three.

They all know this, which is why they haven't told Ruby, not yet.

Before they left, Walter wordlessly pressed a bundle into her husband's hands, a bundle of letters. He has written their granddaughter letters for birthdays, graduations, special occasions, and the ordinary days in between.

In her hands, she holds the first of the bunch, the one he'd requested Ruby open today...

My dear, your precious little life is wrapped up in love. You have wonderful parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and brothers who adore you. You also have two sets of grandparents who think you hung the moon. Your grandma and grandpa are two of my favorite people in the world, and theirs is one of my favorite stories to tell. It is a love story, a story of love thought lost and love forever found by two people who are bound to each other and to you…

She senses more than feels him and she leans her head back against her husband's chest. When she glances up at him, his ocean eyes are stormy, as if he understands the breadth and depth of what Walter has left for their granddaughter.

"How many did he write?" She whispers, smoothing her hand over Ruby's hair, brushing the blonde strands away from her perfect porcelain cheek. He intertwines his fingers with hers to rest on Ruby's shoulder.

"So far?" He asks mildly, because they both know the man has nine lives. He squeezes her hand with his own and she feels him take a deep breath before he answers.

"Twelve."

The smallest laugh of surprise escapes her lips and she shakes her head. He bends closer to press his mouth to her temple, kissing her there and halting the movement. She feels him gingerly take her glasses from the top of her head and slips them on himself so they can both read...

Your grandfather never gave up, he never stopped writing. She may never have written him a letter, but your grandmother was his answer all along. Together they are a plea, a promise, and an answered prayer. The day your grandmother came into my life, she answered one of mine. She came for the letters, for your grandfather, and for you.

She came for this, your future, too.

All my love,
Walter


Author's note: Thank you