Letters to Elise by Amanda Hocking Read Free Book Online

I don’t make you as happy as I should, try as I might. I’m an imperfect man filled with imperfect thoughts and capable of imperfect deeds. I hope to be a better man when I see you again.
    Please write me soon. I already miss you so, and it will be months until we are able to see each other. I will send for you as soon as Ezra and I get ourselves established, and you set the house in Ireland in order.
    I am counting down the days until you and Hamlet will join me. Until then, I will be half a man, living half a life. My heart is with you, where it always will be, and I won’t be whole until I am with you.
    You are my love, my true, my only, my Elise.
     
    Eternally yours-
    Peter
     

April 28, 1863
     
     
    Elise, my love –
    Have I done something to offend? It’s been over a month since your last letter, and I used to be able to set the calendar by the arrival of them. I’d expected to hear that you were on your way to America, or at least close to leaving.
    Perhaps I’m only being paranoid. I’ve had this bizarre illness that I cannot seem to shake. It started about a month ago. I was walking down the street one night, and a spasm came over me. I collapsed to the ground, unable to stand, and waited for the pain to abate, but it never truly did.
    Since then, I’ve felt this odd loneliness that I don’t quite know how to explain. I’ve been without you for so long already, missing you terribly this entire time. But something about it feels different. The distance between us feels more vast than ever before. I am so lost without you.
    So perhaps that is what is talking, driving me to write this. My own paranoia and malaise. Your absence always leaves me half a man, and I fear that I’ve left both my brain and my heart in your possession. I will be unable to think or feel until you return to me.
    In your last letter, you sounded better than you have in such a long time, more like the girl I’d fallen in love with. The darkness had faded, ebbed back from your words. Was that not true? Are you not as excited to join me as you claimed to be?
    I do believe you’ll find New York as lovely as I do. The flat we have has an amazing view of the park. I know it’s not a house, but you’ll love this place, and we can search for a house together.
    How are things with Catherine? The last you told me she’s been agitated about you leaving. I hope the two of you have managed to make some peace before you go. You have been together for a long time, and I’d hate to see your history destroyed over this.
    I’ve been thinking a lot about the past. I looked up my younger brother Joseph last week. Ezra had always encouraged me to avoid my family, but I couldn’t help myself. Being back in this City, even though it’s changed so much, still reminds me of home.
    Joseph only lives a few blocks away from my flat, in the same brownstone my elderly aunt once owned. She’s long since passed, and her home went to my brother, who had cared for in the years before her death.
    Obviously, I couldn’t go to his home and inform him that I’m his long lost brother, unchanged from the last time he saw me a quarter of a century ago. But I had to see him. I wandered the street around his address, waiting for a chance to bump into him.
    As I waited near the flower shop by his home, watching his front stoop, it occurred to me that I might not know what he looks like. He’d been a scrawny boy of fourteen when I saw him last, and now he would be a man of forty.
    Then I spotted someone. A tall, slender man in a dark suit. He walked with a cane, though he didn’t appear to limp. He stopped at the flower shop, admiring some daisies, and I couldn’t help but gape at him.
    His thick hair was peppered with salt, and his face was lined with age. A dark moustache grew below his nose, hiding features that might belong to my brother. When he looked up from the flowers, his eyes meeting mine, I nearly gasped. He had the same green eyes I see every time I