INTRO

I found the first envelope between a bill for repairing a furnace and a yellowed photograph of a woman who clearly hadn't been fond of smiling. There was no stamp, no recipient's address. Just a single sentence written in blue ink, in handwriting so familiar that, for a moment, I forgot where I was.

I didn't know how to ask you to stay.

I placed the envelope on the wooden counter and drew my hand away.

The antiquarian bookshop smelled of dust, old paper, and coffee that had been sitting on a warmer for far too long. Beyond the tall windows, Lublin was waking to a wet October morning. There were no trams along this street, but the steady murmur of traffic drifted over from Krakowskie Przedmieście. Someone was dragging a suitcase across the uneven paving stones outside, its rattling wheels reminding me of the one I had left in my hallway the previous evening.

I was leaving in three weeks.

Not for a holiday. Not for one of those weekends when you pretend a change of scenery will somehow transform your life. I had accepted a one-year contract to work on a collection of correspondence at an archive in Vienna. I had signed the agreement, paid the deposit on an apartment, and given notice on my rented flat in Lublin. At forty, I had finally done something entirely for myself, without first checking whether anyone else would approve of my decision.

This assignment at the antiquarian bookshop was supposed to be my last job before leaving. Two weeks of sorting letters discovered during the renovation of an old tenement building, preparing an inventory, establishing the documents' provenance, and giving the owner recommendations for their future preservation. Everything straightforward, professionally satisfying, and contained within a fixed deadline.

At least, that was how it had looked in our email correspondence.

I picked up the envelope again. The letter z had a distinctive, excessively long downward stroke. I had once known someone who wrote that way even on shopping lists. For years, I had reminded myself that memory was not a reliable archive, especially when it preserved things we would rather never find again.

"Be careful with that drawer. One of the runners is broken."

The voice came from behind a bookcase near the entrance.

I hadn't managed to turn around before a man emerged from between the shelves carrying two mugs. He was tall, with dark hair threaded with gray and a shirt whose sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. On his left wrist was a watch I recognized immediately. An old mechanical watch with a brown leather strap.

He stopped so abruptly that coffee spilled over the rim of one mug.

"Joanna?"

I hadn't heard my name spoken in that voice for seventeen years.

"Mateusz."

For several seconds, we studied each other as though we were both searching for some missing detail in the other's face. His features had become more defined, his gaze calmer. The boyish impatience I remembered had disappeared, the impatience of someone who used to appear beneath my window at midnight because he had discovered a poem he absolutely had to read to me.

He was forty-four now.

I knew that without having to calculate it.

"You're the one running Tarnowski's bookshop?" I asked.

"For the past six years."

"You signed your emails with an initial."

"And you used your surname." He set the mugs on a clear section of the counter. "It never occurred to me that it might be you."

"Nor me."

That wasn't entirely true. When I had seen the owner's surname in the paperwork, I had briefly wondered whether there might be a family connection. Tarnowski wasn't such an unusual name that I needed to start summoning ghosts at the sight of it. I had preferred not to investigate. I needed work, not memories.

Mateusz slid one of the mugs toward me.

"I remembered you don't take sugar."

I looked at the coffee, then at him.

"Do you remember a lot of useless things?"

"Some of them turn out to be useful after a very long time."

He smiled faintly but made no attempt to come closer. I was grateful for that. I wouldn't have known what to do if he had tried to embrace me. I would have known even less what to do if some unreasonable part of me had wanted him to.

"I didn't know you'd come back to Lublin," I said.

"I returned after my father died. The shop used to belong to him."

"I'm sorry."

"Thank you."

There was no invitation to ask further questions in his reply. I understood. He had always possessed a particular talent for closing off difficult subjects. He didn't lie, but he could leave someone standing outside a door he had no intention of opening.

I used to think that was a sign of maturity.

Later, I changed my mind.

Mateusz noticed the envelope lying beside my folder. He didn't reach for it, but his gaze lingered on the blue lettering a fraction too long.

"Found anything interesting already?"

"That depends on what we consider interesting. There are bills, private letters, and documents whose origins I haven't established yet. I need to know whether they all came from the same apartment."

"Most were found in the attic. We discovered several boxes in the former caretaker's room."

"That's an important distinction."

"I had a feeling you'd say that."

The ease with which he said it surprised me. As if seventeen years could be brushed aside with one familiar gesture. As if only yesterday we had been arguing about whether it was acceptable to read old letters without their owners' permission.

I slipped the envelope beneath a clean sheet of paper.

"Before we begin, I'd like to establish some rules. These materials may contain information about people who are still alive. I have no intention of showing private correspondence to random customers or treating it as decoration for an exhibition."

"I wasn't planning an exhibition."

"Good."

"I was planning to save something nobody had cared about for decades."

He spoke quietly, without resentment. He walked over to the window and adjusted the curtain, allowing a narrow band of light into the room. Only then did I notice the faint scar near his temple. I wanted to ask how he'd acquired it, but I no longer had that right. We weren't people who knew everything about each other anymore.

And yet, when he turned his head, I noticed that he still drew his eyebrows together before saying something important.

"If you'd rather withdraw from the assignment, I'll understand," he said.

It would have taken only one answer. I could have gathered my folder, returned to my apartment, and recommended another archivist. I had savings, a signed contract in Vienna, and a life I no longer needed to explain to Mateusz Tarnowski.

Instead, I opened my notebook.

"I came here to work. Our history doesn't change the terms of the contract."

He looked at me more closely.

"All right."

"And one more thing. I'm moving abroad in three weeks. The deadline for completing this work is not negotiable."

For a moment, he said nothing. Then he nodded, although the way his fingers tightened around his mug told me more than his calm acceptance.

"Then we'll have to use our time wisely."

I remembered the young man who used to sit with me on the steps outside a Lublin tenement building and insist that some decisions weren't worth making too early. Back then, I had believed that waiting was another name for courage.

Now I knew how much waiting could cost.

Mateusz pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table. He sat facing me, leaving a safe distance between us, along with several decades of other people's words. As he leaned forward to examine the first folder, I caught the familiar scent of his cedarwood cologne. I couldn't remember its name. But I remembered a particular summer evening, his jacket draped over my shoulders, and a conversation we had never finished.

"Joanna," he said.

I looked up.

"I'm glad it's you."

I didn't answer immediately. There was no attempt to seduce me with a memory in his expression, no easy display of regret. There was only a man looking at me as though he wanted to discover who I had become, while being afraid of the answer.

I slipped the envelope out from beneath the sheet of paper.

I didn't show him the sentence written in blue ink.

Not yet.

"Mateusz, have you ever regretted not sending someone a letter?"

The sound of church bells drifted through the open window. Mateusz slowly set down his mug and looked at the envelope, then at me.

"Why do you ask?"

And for the first time in years, I didn't know which frightened me more: that he might recognize his own handwriting, or that he might tell me who those words had really been meant for.

Chapter 1 - The Terms of Returning

Mateusz didn't repeat his question. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and looked at the envelope I was still holding between two fingers. His silence wasn't awkward. It was carefully chosen, and I knew that distinction far too well. In seventeen years, I had managed to forget the color of his favorite shirt, but not the way he could wait out another person's uncertainty.

"I'm asking because we'll be working with correspondence whose authors probably never intended anyone else to see," I explained. "I'd like to know whether you understand what that means."

"I understand more than you think."

"That's not an answer."

"To the question about letters, or the question about regret?"

I looked at him over the reading glasses I wore only when examining particularly small handwriting.

"Do you always have to complicate simple conversations?"

"With you, they were never simple."

I didn't smile, although I wanted to. There was something dangerously familiar about his answer. The same calm tone he used to disarm my most determined arguments. When I was twenty-three, I had considered it part of his charm. Now I knew that a person who could always find the right words wasn't necessarily capable of making the right decisions.

I took an inventory form from my folder and slid it into the middle of the table.

"Let's start with the things we can agree on."

Mateusz studied the sheet with undisguised curiosity.

"Have you prepared a rule book?"

"A work plan."

"Of course."

"If you're going to comment on every point, we'll still be here tomorrow."

"Then I'll restrict myself to the interesting ones."

I shook my head. Apart from his composure, everything about this encounter seemed to be happening too quickly. I hadn't anticipated that someone from my past could walk into my carefully organized day and immediately make himself comfortable at the table, as though he had never left it.

I spread the preliminary schedule before him. On the first day, we would inventory the boxes according to where they had been found. Then we would arrange the documents chronologically, assess their condition, and separate the private correspondence. Finally, I would prepare a catalog and recommendations for preserving the collection. There would be no public readings, no photographs of letters posted on social media, and no sale of individual documents before their provenance had been established.

Mateusz listened without interrupting. Only when I reached the final point did he straighten and rest his hand on the paper.

"I can't promise you that."

"What exactly?"

"That everything will be locked away in boxes and put on a shelf."

"I didn't say anything of the sort."

"But that's what worries me. My father spent forty years collecting things nobody wanted anymore. Sometimes all he had to do was show someone an old photograph, and that person would see their grandfather's face for the first time. I don't want these letters to end up as another lifeless collection."

"And I don't want someone's most intimate confession framed and displayed simply because it looks beautiful on yellowed paper."

"Do you really think I'd do something like that?"

"I don't know what kind of man you are today, Mateusz."

I said it calmly. Only when I saw the change in his expression did I realize how brutal the words had sounded.

He didn't try to contradict me.

"Fair enough," he admitted after a moment. "Then let me tell you what I want. I'd like to find the families of the building's former residents. If someone has the right to recover this correspondence, they should have that opportunity. And if some of the documents turn out to be important to the building's history, I'd like them preserved in a way that allows people to learn about it."

"With the consent of those entitled to give it."

"Yes."

"And without opening sealed envelopes merely out of curiosity."

"Only insofar as it's necessary to establish the documents' provenance."

I raised my head.

"Now that sounds like a negotiation."

"I run an antiquarian bookshop. Negotiation is part of my life."

"And I'm an archivist. Precision is part of mine."

For a moment, we regarded each other across the table. Finally, Mateusz slid the form back toward me.

"Let's put down exactly what is and isn't permitted. I don't want your signature on anything you disagree with."

That answer surprised me more than his earlier objection. I had expected him to try to persuade me, perhaps employing a little of his old charm. Instead, he left the decision with me and waited.

"I need one more condition," I said. "All the documents, regardless of where they came from, must remain in separate groups until we've established their histories. We can't arrange them by subject simply because someone happened to write about love or leaving."

"Even if it would make a beautiful story?"

"Especially then."

Mateusz nodded.

"All right. I agree."

We returned to work. I opened the first box, marked in chalk with the words "attic, right side," and he brought me an additional lamp. Its warm light spread across the table, revealing shades of ivory, gray, and old gold in the paper. Among the envelopes, I found a receipt from 1968, several postcards from Zakopane, and a letter written in a neat feminine hand. The envelopes varied in size, but they all carried a similar smell: dry dust and wood that had remained shut away for years.

Mateusz worked at the opposite end of the counter. He removed metal paper clips, handed me successive folders, and wrote box numbers on the labels I had prepared. He didn't ask unnecessary questions. When he noticed that one of the letters had a torn edge, he placed it on a separate support sheet before I had a chance to tell him.

"Do you still remember what I taught you about old paper?" I asked.

"That you mustn't force it flat, even when you desperately want to see what's inside."

"I was talking about paper."

"So was I."

There was amusement in his voice, although he didn't look at me. It was almost unfair that after all those years, he could still make me want to laugh with a single sentence.

Before noon, we reached a folder relating to the Wysocki family, who had occupied a second-floor apartment for several decades. It contained official notices, old photographs, and a dozen or so letters addressed to Maria Wysocka. Several envelopes remained sealed. I noticed handwritten annotations on the backs of two of them.

"Not delivered."

Beside another letter was the brief instruction "Keep."

"Who made these notes?" I asked.

Mateusz leaned over the documents.

"I don't know. The boxes were brought out during the renovation. My father once spoke to the building's owners about taking some of the books left there, but I don't remember him mentioning any letters."

"Do we have a transfer record?"

"It's in the office. I'll get it."

While he was gone, I examined the annotations again. The writing was uneven, done in graphite pencil, probably many years after the letters themselves had been written. It wasn't proof that the correspondence had actually failed to reach its recipients. The notes might have been added later by someone trying to organize family keepsakes. Nevertheless, I felt uneasy. Someone had considered it important to distinguish messages that had been delivered from those that had remained in the senders' possession.

I thought about the envelope I had found earlier and its blue ink. I slipped it into a separate transparent sleeve, recording where it had been discovered. I had no right to draw conclusions from a single sentence. I did, however, have a duty to treat it exactly like the other documents, even if some part of me secretly wanted to do otherwise.

Mateusz returned with a folder of paperwork and his phone pressed to his ear.

"No, don't throw anything away," he said firmly. "Even if it looks worthless. I'll come over this afternoon and check it myself."

He ended the call, and I closed my notebook.

"Problem?"

"The renovation crew has found two more chests in the storage compartment beneath the stairs. The site manager wants them removed because they're installing utilities tomorrow."

"If they contain documents, they need to be protected before work begins."

"I know. I'll go over after the shop closes."

"We can't wait until this evening. If those chests are standing in a damp room, every hour could matter."

He looked at me with mild surprise.

"I thought you said your schedule was untouchable."

"It is. Which is why I have no intention of losing two days rescuing something we can move safely today."

"So you'll come with me?"

"I'm coming to assess the documents' condition. Don't confuse that with helping you move house."

He smiled in a way I remembered far too well.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Twenty minutes later, he closed the bookshop for a short break, and we set off on foot toward the tenement building. The rain had stopped, but the pavements still glistened. Mateusz walked beside me, matching his pace to mine. He didn't ask about Vienna or what had happened during the seventeen years we had spent apart. I found that restraint both considerate and irritating.

Halfway there, I stopped at a pedestrian crossing.

"Why haven't you asked whether I'm happy?"

Mateusz turned his head.

"Because I didn't want you to feel obliged to answer."

"What if I wanted to?"

"Then I'd listen."

The light turned green. We crossed the street without so much as brushing against each other. It was precisely that distance that made me unbearably conscious of his presence for the next several steps.

The tenement stood on a narrow street not far from the Old Town. Its façade, partly concealed by scaffolding, showed the marks of numerous renovations. The gateway smelled of wet plaster. The site manager led us to a small room beneath the stairs, where two wooden chests stood beside sacks of rubble. One had a damaged lid, and damp stains were visible along the bottom of the other.

I immediately knelt beside the first.

"I need photographs before we move anything. And nobody is to force anything open."

Mateusz took out his phone but first asked which angles would be useful. He photographed the markings, the arrangement of the objects, and the condition of the containers. When he had finished, he helped me lift the lid, easing up only the sections that hadn't been nailed down.

Inside were binders, books, and bundles of correspondence tied with string. A sheet of paper listing residents' names lay on top. I recognized the Wysockis, but I also noticed several other families whose names had appeared in the documents that morning.

"We can't simply transport this to the shop," I said. "We need to preserve the order and describe the contents before moving anything."

"How long will that take?"

"Two hours. Maybe three."

"Then we're staying."

He didn't discuss the decision with me. He discussed it with the site manager, who was clearly less than delighted. Mateusz proposed postponing the installation work by a day and agreed to cover the additional cost of securing the room. He spoke matter-of-factly, without raising his voice. Only when they had settled the details did he return to me.

"We have until noon tomorrow. What do you need?"

"Gloves for handling dirty chests, clean paper, folders, and someone who won't pretend he knows my job better than I do."

"The last one might be difficult."

"Then start with the paper."

He laughed, briefly and genuinely, just as he used to when he forgot for a moment what he was supposed to say.

We worked until late afternoon. The chests turned out to be less damaged than I had initially feared. Most of the documents could be safely transferred into temporary boxes while preserving their original arrangement. Among the papers were old notebooks and addressed envelopes bearing no evidence of ever having been posted. I made a separate list, noting that they were not to be opened without justification.

When the final bundle had been secured, I rose from the floor and steadied myself against the wall. My knees were numb, and strands of hair had escaped from my carefully pinned bun.

Mateusz handed me a bottle of water.

"You look pleased."

"We've probably saved several dozen valuable documents."

"So breaking your schedule was worth it?"

"I didn't break it. I adapted it to changing circumstances."

"Of course."

He studied me so closely that I instinctively pushed a loose strand of hair away from my temple.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. I'd forgotten how much you enjoy being right."

"And I'd forgotten how much you enjoy having the last word."

He didn't answer. He merely smiled and turned back toward the chests.

On our way back, he told me that if there were more documents than we had anticipated, he would like to extend my contract. I refused immediately. I explained that I was leaving in three weeks and had no intention of postponing my departure by even a single day.

"Then we'll need another person," he said.

"Or we limit the work to proper preservation and a preliminary catalog."

"That won't be enough to locate the families."

"Not everything can be done at once."

He stopped outside the entrance to the bookshop and took out his keys.

"Do you know what always irritated me about you?"

"It could be a long list."

"You can decide something is impossible before you give anyone a chance to try."

"And you think wanting something badly enough makes its consequences disappear."

His expression grew serious.

"No. I stopped believing that a long time ago."

I didn't ask what had changed him. I wasn't ready to know how much pain lay behind that answer.

Back at the bookshop, we placed the protected bundles in a separate room. Mateusz locked the door, and I completed the transfer record. Only then did I notice that the envelope with the blue sentence was still lying on the counter.

I picked it up.

"We should establish where this particular letter came from."

Mateusz looked at the protective sleeve.

"Yes."

"Do you recognize the handwriting?"

He hesitated for barely a moment.

"It reminds me of someone I used to know."

"Me too."

He said nothing more. We both knew we were no longer talking exclusively about work.

When I left, he walked me to the door. He made no attempt to keep me there. Only as I reached the threshold did he speak again.

"Joanna, I don't want you to regret accepting this assignment."

I turned around. He stood in the bookshop's warm light, his hands in his pockets, looking like a man who had learned not to ask for too much.

"So far, my only regret is that I didn't bring more comfortable shoes."

He smiled.

"Tomorrow I'll find you a chair that doesn't look like an instrument of torture."

"That would be a good start."

I stepped out onto the damp street, gripping my folder more tightly than necessary. I knew I would return the following day. Not because the past had any power over me, but because the work needed to be finished.

And yet, when I reached home, the first thing I did was open an old box of keepsakes.

I found no letters from Mateusz.

What I did find was a seventeen-year-old train ticket I had never been able to throw away.