Page 50 of Returned Mail

My alarm doesn't go off. I spill coffee on the only clean blouse I actually like. My boss sends me an email at eight fourteen in the morning that begins with Just circling back, which is corporate language for I've decided your day belongs to me now.

By noon, I have a headache.

By three, I've eaten six almonds and half a granola bar.

By five thirty, I'm fantasizing about sweatpants, leftover Thai food, and the kind of television where attractive strangers make terrible decisions in expensive houses.

I climb the stairs to the loft with my work bag digging into my shoulder. I don't check the mailbox, which feels important. Like a victory, maybe small, but mine. I unlock the apartment door. Push it open, and stop.

There's an envelope on the floor.

Just inside the entryway. For one stupid second, my heart jumps. Then I see the handwriting. Is not George's. I know that immediately. This handwriting is rounder. Less controlled. I step inside and close the door behind me. The envelope stays on the floor as I stare at it.

Maybe it was delivered to the wrong unit, and someone slid it under my door. That has to be it. Except the apartment number is right.

I bend down. Pick it up. And my stomach drops.

George Hale.

His name is on the front. Not in the return corner. In the center. He’s the recipient. I stop breathing for a second. Then I look at the upper-left corner.

Monica Harris.

“Oh shit.” The words come out quietly. I turn the envelope over. Then back again. That's when I see the postal marking stamped across the front. Red ink. Block letters.

RETURN TO SENDER

Below it, another mark.

UNDELIVERABLE

I read both twice.

My work bag slides from my shoulder and hits the floor.

The envelope doesn't look new. There are scuffs along one edge. A dark streak near the bottom. Several postal markings overlap each other like the letter has been passed from one place to another before somehow finding its way back here.

Back to the return address. Back to this apartment, my apartment.

I still stand in the entryway holding it. Monica wrote to George. That much is obvious. She mailed it. It didn't reach him. And now, after however long it took to move through the postal system, it has come back to the address she no longer lives at.

To me.

“No.”

I don't know who I'm saying it to. The letter. The apartment. Myself. I turn it over again. The flap is still sealed. I should put it down. I should call someone. The leasing office, maybe. Monica. Except I already called Monica. I can hear her voice as clearly as if she's standing in the room.

Anything from George can be discarded.

But this isn't from George. This is from her. To him. I look toward the bedroom. My pulse starts beating harder. “No.” This time, I say it more firmly, but I walk to the bedroom anyway. The wooden box is on the top shelf of the closet. I pull it down and set it on the bed.

For a moment, I just stand there with Monica's returned letter in one hand and the box in front of me. Then I open the lid. After all these letters from George to Monica, this one is different.

Something shifts.

It’s not like I suddenly understand them. I still don't. That's the problem. I know almost nothing. But until now, the situation had one direction. George wrote. Monica didn't want the letters. That was all I had. A sender. A recipient. A clear instruction.

Throw them away.