Page 52 of Returned Mail

I stand in the lobby holding it. For the first time, I don't feel excited. I feel sick. Because now I know something I didn't know before. Not the whole story. Just enough to understand that the silence between George and Monica may not be as simple as I wanted it to be.

I take the letter upstairs. Pull out the box, and open it. My thumb moves to the edge of the flap, but it stops. I can hear my own breathing.

“This is wrong,” I say as I put the letter with the others and close the box.

Chapter Fifteen

Mia

It happens on a Sunday morning.

Rain has been hitting the window since before I woke up, hard enough to blur the city into gray shapes.

Monica still hasn't answered. It’s been four days since I texted her. By now, I have seventeen letters from George. One returned letter from Monica. Eighteen envelopes total. All sealed. Still…

All sitting inside the wooden box on my coffee table like I invited them there.

I sit on the couch in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt, holding a mug of tea that went cold twenty minutes ago.

I should put the box away.

That's what a normal person would do. Actually, a normal person would have thrown everything away when Monica told her to. A better person would have taken the letters to the leasing office. A sane person would not be sitting here staring at someone else's private mail like it's a bomb with a ribbon around it.

I pull the box closer anyway.

My fingers rest on the lid.

Four days.

That's how long I've given Monica to respond. I know that doesn't mean anything. She could be busy. She could be traveling. She could have changed numbers. She could have read my message and decided I was officially too strange to answer.

But the returned letter changed something. She wrote to him, and he never got it. I don't know what that means, and that's the part that keeps catching behind my ribs. The not knowing.

I lift the lid. The envelopes are exactly how I left them. George's letters are in chronological order, oldest to newest. Monica's returned letter sits beside them, separate, like it doesn't belong with the rest. My hands are shaking.

“Okay, I’ll open just one,” I whisper.

The lie comes too easily.

Just one of George's. Just enough to understand why he kept writing, just enough to know whether I should be worried. Just enough to make myself feel less insane.

I pick up the oldest envelope from George, and slide my thumb under the flap. For a second, I stop breathing. Then I open it. The sound of tearing paper is small. Too small for what it feels like. I unfold the page. His handwriting is the same as it is on the envelopes, but somehow different when it becomes sentences. It feels less controlled, more human.

Monica,

Mail's slow out here, so I'm trying not to read too much into the gaps.

Trying is the key word.

Sergeant Barkley stole half of Martinez's lunch today. I know I shouldn't be impressed, but the dog has better tactical instincts than half the people on this base.

A laugh slips out before I can stop it, and I keep reading.

Jackson says if we don't stop feeding him, he's going to follow us home and outrank all of us by Christmas.

Honestly, he might deserve it.

I keep reaching for my phone to text you before I remember I can't. Stupid habit.