Letters between Tully and Kate

Tully and Kate’s letters are the material thread of a friendship that must survive distance, loss, and repeated separation. Written faithfully back and forth over three years, they turn weekly news into a lifeline: a place for Tully to be more fully herself with Kate, and an object she carries when the life they shared is interrupted.

A weekly lifeline

After Kate watches Tully leave, unable to call goodbye, the two keep writing. Every Sunday evening, Tully sits at the white desk in her lavender-and-pink childhood bedroom and fills notebook paper with her thoughts, dreams, worries, and frustrations. The letters range from the haircut that makes her feel foxy and the Gunny Sax dress she wears to junior prom to more vulnerable disclosures: nights when she cannot sleep and dreams that her mother will return and say she is proud of her.

Writing gives their friendship a dependable rhythm where distance makes telephone calls rare and expensive. When Tully’s grandfather dies, Kate’s call of sympathy brings her to tears; for once, Tully does not substantially lie or embellish. In the letters and in their exchange, she can be mostly herself, and Kate accepts that self without requiring performance.

Separation and the limits of choice

By the summer of 1977, the friends are approaching senior year at separate schools. Tully has a summer job at the Queen Anne Bee, spending nearly every waking hour in its cramped offices learning the newspaper business. She still writes to Kate every Sunday, sharing the small particulars of the week, while Kate is away on the Mularkey family’s annual camping trip.

Tully rereads her own eight-page letter, signs it “Best Friends Forever, Tully V,” and carefully folds it into thirds. Beside it is Kate’s postcard, full of camping pleasures: playing hearts, roasting marshmallows, and swimming in a freezing lake. Tully envies the family holiday and had wanted to go, but turning down the invitation was among the hardest choices she had made; her job and her grandmother’s declining health left her little choice. The correspondence keeps Kate close without erasing the unequal circumstances that keep them apart.

Letters carried through loss

When Tully is preparing to leave, she packs Kate’s letters in her suitcase and snaps it shut. Unable to say that she is ready, she takes the suitcase and her macramé purse instead. The letters are no longer only a record of Sunday exchanges: they are something of Kate’s presence that Tully can bring with her at a moment when departure is difficult to speak aloud.

The letters’ significance belongs to the larger pattern of their friendship. When Tully later tells Kate that her grandmother has died, Kate holds her as she breaks down; when Kate is gravely ill, Tully stays beside her in the hospital. In those moments, care is immediate and physical, while the letters preserve the years and distances that preceded it. Together, written messages and face-to-face comfort show how the friendship repeatedly gives Tully a place to turn when loss leaves her without words.