The letters were finished, and I wasn't sure how to feel about the whole endeavor through time. I knew one thing for sure, I needed to find James and Beth to see if they were still alive. They'd almost become fictional to me, like reading a story in a magazine. I needed to find them, getting a chance to talk to these two people would be amazing.

I reorganized the pile of letters just like I'd found them, feeling suddenly as if I were invading someone's privacy. 

I looked up the name Beth Astrew, hoping to find the woman whose name was perfectly printed on each of the letters. No one the right age popped up, only a few thirty-year-olds on Facebook and a woman trying to sell an old brown couch. 

I thought hard, there had to be something I was missing. I looked at the letters again and typed up James' name in my computer; James Lawrence. Again, nothing. It didn't make sense, if they were still alive, there would need to be something.

I typed up Beth Lawrence, hoping that they had indeed gotten married and she'd possibly changed her name. After I scrolled through countless random Facebook pages and a few motivational websites run by a woman named Beth Lawren, I finally found the link to a retirement residence called Sunnydale Corner. I clicked and found a phone number and a few pictures of happy elderly folks. One was labeled; Beth Lawrence writing at her desk, and showed a photo of a grey-haired woman bent over a typewriter.  

I called the number, and after a few short rings someone answered.

"Sunnydale Corner Retirement, how may I help you today?" The voice was high and seemed almost too cheerful. Too much coffee for the staff of Sunnydale, I guessed.

"Hi, my name is Julie and I was wondering if you had someone named Beth Lawrence living at your residence?" 

"Oh! Of course, sweet Beth. Is that you Dale? We haven't had a visit from you since you moved to Europe!"

"Uh," I paused, "no, sorry. I'm an... old family friend. Is it possible that I could visit her anytime soon?"

"For sure! How about tomorrow at three? Does that work for you, if you have a job maybe I could book it later around five or-"

"No," I stopped her, "three sounds good." 

***

I walked into the retirement residence,  holding all of the letters under one arm. I was suddenly very nervous at what I would find, the story I'd read in the letters seemed to have ended so perfectly, just like some old romance movie. I was terrified of spoiling it, of discovering that maybe the couple hadn't married, or that they'd had some terrible divorce in the end.

But I was curious, too curious to skip an opportunity to hear what had really happened. 

I was led to Beth's room down a narrow hallway lined with old photographs, the kind you'd see in your grandmother's scrapbook. I stopped in the doorway of her room and found myself staring at an old woman nothing like the girl I'd seen in James' photographs. 

Her skin was rough and showed with no mercy how many years she'd weathered through. Her hair was the short cut that most women got when they couldn't care for it anymore. She heard me stop and slowly turned in her chair, taking me in. 

No matter how much her body had changed, her eyes were the very same. Time could take a lot away from a person, but the eyes were the pathway to the soul. Her eyes were the very same.

"Who are you?" she squinted at me and I realized she probably couldn't see all that well. I took a few steps closer and smiled.

"I'm Julie," I said, realizing that this fact would be nothing to her. "I found some letters, I think they belong to you."

"Letters?" she laughed, a hoarse sound that held the shadow of who she might have once been. An empty laugh, devoid of joy. "I haven't been able to write anything with these hands for many years, damn arthritis. This typewriter serves much more of a purpose."

"Well," I said, "you write a lot to a person names James."

"My James?"

"I guess so." 

She looked down at the oakwood floor and laughed again, yet this time it contained actual happiness. It was like a bottle had been opened from within her and the sullen aged lady sitting before me suddenly transformed into the happiest person on earth.

"He died five years ago, we'd been married almost sixty years." I breathed a sigh of relief, so much of me had wondered if he'd been dead for many years. I felt like I knew them both so well, like I'd known them all of my life, yet James would never know of me and to Beth I was just a stranger.

"That's wonderful," I smiled.

"Three children," she added.

I noded and placed the bundle of letters on her bed, and stood to leave.

"Wait," she whispered from her chair, "won't you read them? I cannot anymore."

So I sat next to a stranger I knew better than myself and read her life back to her. When I finished, many hours later, she was staring into the distance like a doll, lost deep in thought. 

"Goodbye Beth," I whispered, touching her hand. She looked at me with those eyes I knew so well but didn't say a thing.

I left the letters with the nurse and asked the nurse there to give them to Beth's children, but I kept only the picture of Beth as a young woman. 

I later discovered that Beth died only two hours after I visited, thank god I didn't wait to see her later. I would have missed my chance.

So I kept the photo only to remind me that time is a fragile thing, moving so quickly that you go from a young girl in love to an old woman who'd been married for almost sixty years. Without her knowing it, Beth had taught me more than any teacher ever could.