Page 49 of Returned Mail

My heels click against the stairs as I head back down. The lobby is empty except for me and the low hum of the air-conditioning. I cross to the mailboxes and unlock mine. Credit card offer. Grocery flyer. A coupon for a pizza place I've never ordered from.

Nothing else.

The disappointment is immediate. It’s small, and stupid, but still there. I stare into the empty metal box for one second longer than necessary, then shut it harder than I mean to. The sound cracks through the lobby.

I shove everything into my bag.

Apparently, this is who I am now. A woman getting emotionally rejected by a mailbox.

“Great.”

I don't know exactly when it started.

That's the part I keep trying to figure out.

There wasn't one moment when George Hale became someone I thought about. I haven't opened his letters. I don't know what he sounds like. I don't know if he's funny or kind. I don't know what he wants from Monica or what happened between them.

For all I know, every envelope contains the exact same sentence written fifty times.

Please remember to renew the car insurance.

That would be humiliating, but I’d almost prefer it.

I know other things now, though. Things I learned without meaning to. I know his handwriting before I see his name. I know the envelopes he uses are usually cream, except for two that were white. I know some letters are heavier than others. I know the return information connects him to the military.

Because I googled it.

I know he keeps writing to a woman who told me to throw away anything from him. And I know I haven't. That last part is the only fact that actually belongs to me. There are fifteen letters now.

All unopened, and all addressed to Monica Harris.

I stopped keeping them in the kitchen drawer three days ago. Not because I was worried someone would find them. No one comes over often enough for that to be a real concern. Lyann lives too far away to show up without warning, and the only other person who has been in the loft since I moved in was a delivery guy who handed me Thai food and left. Still, the drawer started to feel wrong.

Every time I reached past the envelopes for batteries or takeout menus, I felt this strange flicker of discomfort.

So I moved them.

I had a wooden keepsake box packed with my things from the old apartment. One my mother gave me years ago, back when I was still the kind of person who saved movie tickets, birthday cards, and receipts from dinners that felt important. Most of that stuff is gone now. The box came with me anyway.

Apparently, I'm sentimental even about the container that used to hold my sentimentality. Now it sits on the top shelf of my bedroom closet. Inside are fifteen letters that do not belong to me.

I arranged them by postmark. I wish I could say that happened accidentally. It didn't.

I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor and put them in order. Oldest to newest. Then I stared at the stack and had the deeply unpleasant realization that I had created an archive of a stranger's mail.

That should have been the moment I threw them away. Instead, I closed the lid. I told myself it was better than leaving them in a junk drawer. Safer. More respectful.

The lie was embarrassingly easy.

Two days later, another letter arrives.

Sixteen.

By the end of the week, I've almost convinced myself the situation has stabilized. The letters arrive. I keep them. I do not open them. That is the arrangement. A strange arrangement I made with myself. Possibly an unethical one. But an arrangement.

Then today happens.

It’s Tuesday, and it has been a hell of a day even before I get home.