Fan Fact
Why did Emily and Maddie stop writing to each other in Kiss Me, Captain?
Updated: Covers chapters 1–24. No spoilers beyond that.
Short answer
Neither of them chose to stop. Maddie kept writing after her family moved, but her letters went to Emily's old house on Maple Street. Weeks after Maddie left, Emily's family had moved to an apartment on Cedar following her parents' divorce, so the letters never reached Emily. Each girl believed the other had forgotten her.
What actually happened to the letters
The truth comes out in chapter 21, when the two meet at the empty rink before dawn and start trading barbs. Maddie says she wrote Emily a lot of letters after moving away and never got a reply. Emily says she never received any of them.
When they compare notes, the explanation is painfully ordinary. The letters went to Emily's old house on Maple Street. After her parents' divorce, Emily's family had moved to an apartment on Cedar, just weeks after Maddie left. Nobody was ignoring anybody. The letters were going to a house Emily no longer lived in.
How each girl read the silence
Before any of this comes out, both girls carry the same hurt from opposite sides. During a fight in their dorm room in chapter 4, Emily says she was the one who got dropped. In chapter 12, Maddie remembers writing to Emily at thirteen and hearing nothing back after her last letter, and that silence changed the way she protects herself.
In chapter 21, they both admit they'd each believed the other had forgotten them. That's what makes the mix-up so cruel. A lot of the anger between them at Lakeview University looks like two people grieving the same lost friendship without realizing it.
Why the unanswered letters hit Maddie so hard
In the same chapter 21 conversation, Maddie shares two more things. Her last letter told Emily she loved her, and she was being bullied at her new school while her letters went unanswered. In chapter 24 she goes into more detail about that bullying.
Put those two details together and it's easy to see why the silence would sting so badly. From Maddie's side, no reply came after she confessed her love, and it came during a hard stretch at a new school. You can understand why she might have taken it as rejection instead of a lost letter.
What changes once they know
They don't try to go back to their childhood friendship. They agree to start fresh as the people they are now. Then, as the sun comes up, they skate together hand in hand and in silence, for the first time without practicing.
Their rivalry starts to soften from there. A few chapters later, in a hotel room, they share childhood memories and redo an old routine together.
The takeaway
Nobody stopped writing on purpose: Maddie's letters went to Emily's old house after Emily's family moved, and each girl believed the other had forgotten her.
Meet Emily and Maddie at the empty rink before dawn and watch the silence between them finally start to break.