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The retired man lived a life calibrated by routine. His days were measured not by grand events, but by the precise temperature of his morning tea, the predictable patterns of sunlight across his worn oak floor, and the nightly schedule of news consumption. Forty years had passed since he left the bustling chaos of his youth for this quiet coastal town, and he had built a second life of comfortable, if rather sterile, stability. His memories of the first life—the reckless passion, the blinding idealism, and the woman who embodied it all—were neatly cataloged and filed away, like antique documents rarely disturbed.
Then, the letter arrived. It was wedged between a utility bill and a brochure for garden services, yet it felt impossibly heavy. The paper was thick, cream-colored linen, slightly foxed at the edges. The handwriting on the envelope was familiar yet agonizingly distant—a fluid, looping script he hadn’t seen in four decades, instantly recognizable as belonging to the lost love of his early twenties. What truly stopped the breath in his chest, however, was the postmark: a smudge of ink bearing a date from three years prior. Three years it had taken to travel thirty miles, a testament to bureaucratic inefficiency or, perhaps, a cruel twist of fate
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