A dream - old mixed with the... less old

I'm living in Pittsburg again and driving home from class on Dukes Chapel Road. I'm almost to the house, and as I'm pulling into the driveway, I can see that a note has been stuck to the front door. I step onto the porch, and upon approaching the door, I discover that it's not just one note, but several. A stack of old, familiar love notes that I'd written to someone once, and had long since forgotten about.

I pull them off of the door and go inside. As I'm flipping through them, my heart starts to thump in my chest as I realize that the reverse sides of all the notes have new writing on them. The handwriting is unfamiliar though, and as I try to focus on it, it gets blurry and I can't read it.

For a moment I'm confused by the unfamiliar handwriting, and I can't remember who it was that should be making my heart go pitter-patter like this. At first I think that it's Erica, since I'm at the old house on Dukes Chapel Road, but then I realize that over twenty years have gone since then.

I pass by the door to my bedroom several times as I'm puttering about the house, squinting at the old notes with the new handwriting. Finally I look up to see that my bedroom door is open just a crack, and that a tall sliver of yellow light is shining where the edge of the door meets the frame. I'm suddenly very afraid to open that door, because I know that I didn't leave the light on, and I'm sure that I had closed it earlier.

Then the door opens, and Leah is standing there. She's dressed in the same clothes that she was wearing when I laid eyes on her for the first time... a brown, floor length skirt decorated with flowers and paisleys and a thin, dark green button up sweater with long sleeves and a pair of sandal shoes, with her hair pulled back into a kind of bunched up pony tail.

The surprise and the sudden realization feels like a solid blow to my midsection, and I fall backwards and hit the wooden floor, hard. As I'm sitting there on my ass, stunned, I look up and I can see Leah's silhouetted form standing in the doorway, surrounded by a nimbus of light emanating from the room behind her. I raise my forearm in an attempt to shield my eyes from the bright, disorienting glare.

Then she takes a step toward me and leans forward, effectively blocking the light, and I can see her face clearly as she smiles and reaches for my hand to help me to my feet.