Larry’s letter came six days after we buried him.

I found it wedged between a phone bill and a grocery flyer, in a thick white envelope with my name written across the front in his handwriting. I knew that handwriting. I’d watched him fill out hospice forms with it, his hand shaking so badly the nurses offered to write for him.

He always said no.

“My hand still works,” he’d tell them. “Mostly.”

I smiled when I saw the envelope. I thought Larry had written me a goodbye. The man couldn’t take a cup of coffee from me without thanking me three separate times. Of course he’d written a goodbye. He probably thanked me in it twice.

I made tea. I sat at my kitchen table. I opened the envelope carefully, because it felt like the last thing I’d ever get from him and I didn’t want to tear it.

The first line read:

“Sarah, I need to apologize before I thank you.”

I read it twice.

An apology was strange. Larry never had anything to apologize for. He was the one sleeping outside a subway station in January. I was the one who got to go home to a warm apartment every night and feel good about buying him socks.

Then I read the next line.

“Nobody was going to bury me as a John Doe.”

The blood drained out of my face. I don’t know how else to describe it. I felt cold from the top of my head down, the way you feel when a doctor pauses too long before saying something.

I set the letter down.

“No,” I said, to nobody. My apartment was empty. The heater ticked. My tea went cold in front of me.

Because I already understood what he was about to tell me. I understood it before I read the rest. And the understanding sat in my chest like a stone.

Larry had lied to me.

The whole thing had been a lie.