All My Love Pat

June 2026

The letters! They weren’t addressed to her but they landed in her hands. By mistake maybe? Nevertheless they were hers now. Old, worn letters delivered to a man in a veteran’s hospital, written in 1964, four years before she was even born. Her father, the ghost, couldn’t have left her with long lost wealth, sweet words of wisdom, nope it was his sins for her to own. The letters were from someone named Pat. Not her mother and there was no one left to ask.

Then, deep within her own memory, she heard a story. Not necessarily a memory exactly. A story. One of those family stories told only a couple of times and then tucked away again. In truth she probably wasn’t supposed to hear it, but she did. Nobody sat her down and explained it. Nobody filled in the blanks. Nobody offered names but she remembered it somehow.

She had embellished the tale in her own mind. The narrative of the story was set to the song Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper. It took place in a town that was familiar but not the same, it was her hometown but not the one she grew up in. She imagined that the car was mint green with black leather seats, it probably had a few dents from her older sister learning to drive or her father driving after drinking at the local tavern. She thought of her momma, much younger than when she knew her, in a light cotton blue dress with bristle rollers in her hair, crying as she screamed at her husband. Her sister and brother were younger too. They were beyond embarrassed hunkered down in the back just wishing they could disappear. Gravel flying with a cloud of dust chasing them. Only catching up to them after her mother slammed on the brakes. 

Just fragments of a truth had existed up until this day. As she recalled, The story was ugly. Her father had showed up to pick up his clothes accompanied by another woman. He was leaving his wife, children and his life and starting over. Her mother had only heard rumors of this woman, she was infuriated that he had brought her to their home, his clothes freshly washed and his children recently fed, but there stood this stranger on her porch helping him load up his belongings in an old laundry hamper. Her father left them standing on the porch and grabbed the strange woman and hauled ass out of the driveway. Mama threw her brother and sister in their car and chased Daddy through the streets of Spottsville. Her ten year old brother and and seventeen year old sister crying and screaming in the backseat. Trauma! Her Mama laid on the horn. Yelling. Furious. Beyond humiliated. Heartbroken. Out of control!

Spottsville wasn’t much more than a few gravel roads at this time, a few churches, their family store, and neighbors who knew everybody else’s business before supper. Momma knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted people to see. She wanted curtains to twitch. She wanted porch conversations to stop. She wanted the small town to know that the man driving ahead of her was leaving his family. He had a trunk full of his belongings and another woman by his side and the whole town was forced to witness the degradation of her husband.

The war hero. The Marine. The man that earned a Purple Heart. The man everybody admired. The man everybody felt sorry for. She wanted them to know what a piece of shit he could be. And she wanted them to know exactly who was riding beside him. Was this Pat?

At least that was the story she had heard. She hadn’t even been a glimmer in anyone’s eye at the time. Years before she would be born. The story had only been mentioned a couple of times.

Then it disappeared again.

For years it sounded almost unbelievable.

One of those family stories that grows larger than life because nobody ever explains it. Something half legend and half truth. No way this could be true. How did her brother and sister live this embarrassment down.

Years and years later she would be handed an envelope by her brother’s wife. Almost like a stack of receipts that needed to be tossed years ago. Very haphazardly, like they were an after thought, letters addressed to her father that landed in her hands. Letters she never should have read. But how could she not read them?

And suddenly it became real. Painfully real. The letters put flesh on old bones. They transformed a story into people. A wife. A husband. A mistress. Was the infamous woman in the car Pat? Or was Pat simply one chapter in a much longer story? Was she just one of many women he strung along. The letters answered some questions and created a hundred more.

Pat mentioned talking to him on the phone. She mentioned upcoming visits. She mentioned missing him in her bed. There it was. No misunderstanding. No room for interpretation. No way to convince herself this was some innocent friendship. Pat missed him in her bed. Then, as casually as discussing the weather, Pat mentioned getting her period. She wrote that she was disappointed. She had hoped they could try again for their own little red-haired boy, just like her brother. Their own little red-haired boy. She read that line twice. Then a third time. Their own little red-haired boy. Pat had a husband. Pat had children. Her father had a wife. Her father had children. And still there they were discussing a future together. Not a flirtation. Not a passing affair. A future. A baby. Plans. Phone calls. Visits. Hope.

“What a shit show!” She numbered to no one. That was the only phrase that seemed adequate. A wife writing to a married man. A husband sitting in a VA hospital. A woman at home praying her husband would get well. A seventeen-year-old daughter who knew. A ten-year-old son who adored his father. Children on both sides. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, letters traveling back and forth carrying hope, disappointment, longing, and plans that should never have existed.

It wasn’t just an affair. That would have almost been easier. He obviously loved this woman. The realization sat heavy on her chest. For years she had tried to understand her father. Tried to separate the man from the war. Tried to make sense of the nightmares, the hospitals, the drinking, and eventually the suicide. Standing there holding those letters, all she felt was anger. “Fuck PTSD”, she thought. For years everybody blamed the war. The war explained the nightmares. The war explained the hospitals. The war explained the drinking. The war explained the sadness. But these letters were harder to explain away.

How dare he. How dare he hurt Momma. Momma was home praying her husband would get well. Praying the doctors at the VA could somehow bring back the man she married. Praying the nightmares would stop. She was probably relieved he was in the hospital instead of in the arms of another woman. At least sickness had dignity. How dare he hurt her sister. Seventeen years old and already carrying knowledge no child should have to carry. How dare he disappoint her brother. Ten years old and still believing his father hung the moon. And how dare he leave this behind for her.

Sixty-two years later. A final gift from the grave. There was no one left to explain. No one left to tell her if Pat was the woman Momma chased through Spottsville. No one left to tell her if there were others. No one left to tell her how long it lasted. No one left to tell her what Momma said after the horn stopped blowing and the children stopped crying. The witnesses were gone. Only the letters remained.

Her brother had kept them all those years. Why? She was sure he read them. How could he not? An envelope addressed to your dead father sits in a drawer for decades and curiosity eventually wins. He had carried those letters from house to house as they moved around. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to throw away one more piece of the father he lost. Even an imperfect piece. Especially an imperfect piece.

Here she was sitting in a stunned panic. What was she supposed to do with such letters. The only people that she knew from these letters were gone.

She carried the letters outside. The backyard was ordinary. Grass needing cut. Birds fussing in the trees. The same Kentucky sky hanging over everything, it felt different somehow that day. The clouds hung heavier than the day before. The world had the nerve to keep going. She struck a match. The first letter caught quickly. The edges curled inward. The careful handwriting darkened. My Darling. Gone. She fed another letter into the fire. Then another. Then another. Page by page. Secret by secret. Heartbreak by heartbreak. The flames reached the signature she had come to dread. All my love, Pat. Gone too.

She watched every page burn. Not because she hated Pat. Not because she hated her father. And not because she thought fire could erase sixty-two years of truth. She burned them because there was no one left. No one left to explain them. No one left to defend them. No one left to apologize for them. No one else needed to read them. Momma had carried the hurt. Her sister had carried the knowledge. Her brother had carried the letters. She would carry the story.

That was enough. The questions remained. The truth remained. The story remained. Stories always do. She watched the last ember disappear into the Kentucky dirt and thought about how strange it was that a woman named Pat, writing letters on an ordinary day in 1964, could still break someone’s heart sixty-two years later. Then she turned and walked back toward the house. The letters were gone. And they would stay gone. 

She made sure that every word was turned to ash. She tried to forgive a man she didn’t know, she felt the hurt for her momma, her brother and her sister. And ultimately for herself. So many questions that would never be answered.  How does one forgive a ghost? How could she forget? It was a normal June afternoon, but Pat made sure it wasn’t so normal.