The Second Letter

Two weeks passed before Sophie returned to the bookshop. She told herself she wasn't going back for the letters. She told herself she needed a new book—something in French to improve her reading speed. She told herself the detour down Rue Clément was purely practical. She was lying, of course. The bell above the door chimed as she entered, and Madame Leclerc glanced up with an expression that suggested she'd been expecting her. "The letter wall is in the back," the old woman said. "Where you left it." Sophie felt heat rise in her cheeks but went straight to the shelf. She found Le Petit Prince, pulled it out with slightly trembling fingers, and opened the cover. Her letter was there. And beneath it, a new one. Dear S— I cannot tell you how it felt to find your reply. I wrote that letter on a night when I was convinced that Paris was beautiful but fundamentally lonely. Your words proved me wrong. You say you're still the same person. I've been thinking about that. What if being "the same person" is not the problem? What if the problem is that we only show people the version of ourselves we think they want to see? Here, in these letters, with no names and no faces, there's no performance. Just truth. Tell me something true, S. Something you wouldn't say out loud. Also—I need to know: which bakery? If you say Du Pain et des Idées, we might be soulmates. If you say Paul, I'm afraid this correspondence must end immediately. — N. Sophie laughed. Right there in the bookshop, she laughed so suddenly that two other customers looked up from their browsing. She pressed the letter to her chest like it was something precious—because it was. She sat in the armchair by the window (the bookshop had three armchairs, all worn to perfect softness, all positioned near good light) and wrote: Dear N— Something true: I talk to myself. Not in a cute, quirky way. In a full-conversation way. When I'm cooking, when I'm walking, when I'm trying to decide what to wear. I narrate my life like I'm the protagonist of a novel that no one else is reading. I've never told anyone that before. As for the bakery: it's neither. There's a tiny place on Rue Montorgueil run by a woman named Françoise who makes pain au chocolat that I'm fairly certain is illegal. I go every Saturday morning. The line is always out the door, and it's always worth it. Tell me something true in return. Fair is fair. — S. She tucked the letter into Le Petit Prince and returned it to the shelf. On her way out, she paused at Madame Leclerc's desk. "Does this happen often?" Sophie asked. "The letters going back and forth like this?" Madame Leclerc smiled—a knowing, ancient smile. "More often than you'd think. Less often than I'd like." "Do people ever meet? The letter writers?" "Sometimes. When they're ready." Sophie walked out into a Paris afternoon that was somehow brighter than when she'd walked in. She found herself smiling at strangers on the metro, wondering if any of them might be N. The city had felt lonely for months. Now it felt full of possibility. All because of a stranger's handwriting in a borrowed book.