Maya reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled, stained envelope. It was addressed to Elias in Sarah's looping, frantic handwriting. It had been tucked inside her glove box, overlooked in the wreckage until a bored clerk decided to tidy up half a decade later.
Elias didn't look up. He traced the rim of his coffee mug with a trembling finger. "And?"
Elias sat at the booth in the back of "The Daily Grind," the same booth where he’d sat every February 14th for the last decade. In front of him was a single cupcake with pink frosting and a plastic heart ring stuck into the top. It was gaudy, cheap, and exactly what Sarah would have loved.
Elias took it. The paper felt like a ghost in his hands. He opened it slowly, his breath hitching. Inside was a handmade card. On the front, she had drawn a clumsy picture of the two of them standing under the Silver Falls clock tower.
"You know," Maya said softly, breaking the silence of the near-empty cafe. "The police finally cleared out the old evidence lockers at the station yesterday. They found a box from the night of the accident."
Elias closed his eyes, the sounds of the cafe fading away. He remembered the night of the crash—the black ice, the sudden headlights, the way he had spent years wondering if she knew how he felt. He had spent five years thinking he was mourning a 'what if.'