P.S. I Still Love You

“Why would that be surprising? No, not Margot. John Ambrose McClaren!”
Peter just looks confused. “McClaren? Why would he write you a letter?”
“Because I wrote him one, remember? Same as I did to you. There were five love letters, and his
was the only letter that never came back. I thought it was lost forever, but then a tree fell in John’s
driveway after this last ice storm, and Mr. Barber came to haul it away and he brought the letter.”
“Who’s Mr. Barber?”
“He’s the man who bought John’s old house. He owns a landscaping company—that’s all beside
the point, anyway. The point is, John only just got my letter last week; that’s why it took him so long
to write back.”
“Hm,” Peter says, messing with the heating vents. “So he wrote you an actual letter? Not an
email?”
“No, it was a real letter that came in the mail.” I watch to see if he is jealous, to see if this new
development gets under his skin even a little.
“Hm,” Peter says again. The second hm is bored-sounding, noncommittal. Not the slightest bit
jealous. “How is the Sundance Kid anyway?” He snickers. “McClaren used to hate when I called him
that.”
“I remember,” I say. We’re at the stoplight; there’s a line to get into school.
“What’d the letter say?”
“Oh, you know, just ‘how are you,’ the usual sort of things.” I look out the window. I’m feeling a
bit stingy about sharing extra information because his ho-hum reaction hasn’t merited any. Doesn’t he
have the decency to at least act like he cares?
Peter drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “We should hang out with him sometime.”
The thought of Peter and John Ambrose McClaren in the same space together again is discomfiting.
Where would I even look? Vaguely I say, “Hmm, maybe.” Perhaps bringing up the letter wasn’t such
a great idea.
“I think he still has my old baseball glove,” he muses. “Hey, did he say anything about me?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like did he ask what I was up to?”
“Not really.”
“Hmm.” Peter’s mouth turns down into a miffed sort of expression. “What’d you write him back?”
“I just got it! I haven’t had time to write anything back.”
“Tell him I say hey when you do,” he says.
“Sure,” I say. I feel around in my bag to make sure the letter is still in there.
“So, wait, if you sent a love letter to five of us, does that mean you liked us all equally?”
He’s looking at me with expectant eyes, and I know he thinks I’m going to say I liked him best, but
that wouldn’t be true. “Yes, I liked you all exactly the same,” I tell him.
“Bullshit! Who’d you like best? Me, right?”
“That’s a really impossible question to answer, Peter. I mean, it’s all relative. I could say I liked
Josh best, because I liked him longest, but you can’t judge who you love the most by how long you
love them.”
“Love?”
“Like,” I say.
“You definitely said ‘love.’”