14. Mia
Chapter Fourteen
Mia
The letters keep coming.
Not every day. Which I think it would be easier. It would be predictable, and I could form a routine out of it. Instead, a new letter arrives every three or four days. Sometimes five. Never perfectly spaced, but often enough that I've started noticing the gaps.
I hate that I notice the gaps.
This evening, I was halfway up the stairs when I realized I forgot to check the mailbox. I stop. One hand on the railing. My work bag hanging from my shoulder. For a second, I consider continuing upstairs. I made it through an entire day without checking. That should count for something.
Then I turn around.
“Pathetic,” I mutter.
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.
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.
Now there is this. Proof that, at some point, Monica wrote back. Maybe once. Maybe a hundred times. I have no idea. But she wrote this one. And George never received it.
I sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips beneath me.
My brain starts doing what it does best. Making everything worse. When did she send it? Before she left? After? Before she decided she was done with him? Was this the letter where she told him? Told him what? I don't know. I don't know anything.
I force myself to stop.
The envelope is not an answer. It is just another question. A dangerous one. I look at George's letters. All of them unopened.
For weeks, I've been building a story around their existence without admitting that's what I was doing.
He keeps writing. She told me to throw them away.
I filled in the space between those facts myself.
Maybe she never cared. Maybe he cared too much.
Maybe he was trying to save something. Maybe she had already let it die.
All assumptions. All mine. And now one returned piece of mail has blown a hole straight through them.
“This is none of your business.”
I look at Monica's letter again.
RETURN TO SENDER. UNDELIVERABLE.
She may not know it came back. George may not know it exists.
That is all I know. It should be enough, but it isn't. I grab my phone.
Find Monica's number. My thumb hovers over the call button.
I could tell her. I should tell her. Hi.
Sorry to bother you again. A letter you sent to George came back. Simple. Responsible. Normal.
I press call.
The line doesn’t ring. It goes straight to voicemail. I hang up before the message finishes. I stare at the screen, then I hover to the message app, and type.
Me: Hi, Monica. It's Mia from the loft. Sorry to bother you again. A letter was delivered here today that appears to have been returned to sender. It's from you and addressed to George Hale. Let me know what you'd like me to do with it.
I read the message twice. Send it. There. Good.
That is what a normal person does. I place the phone beside me and wait. Nothing happens. People do not organize their lives around responding instantly to strangers who accidentally inherited their returned mail.
I put Monica's letter on top of George’s, and close the box.
Monica didn’t respond last night.
Or this morning.
By lunch, I've checked my phone seven times.
At two seventeen, my phone buzzes during a meeting. I look down so fast my coworker glances at me. Not Monica. Lyann. A picture of a dog wearing sunglasses.
I lock my phone.
By six, there's still nothing. I tell myself that means nothing. She's abroad. She's busy. Maybe the number doesn't work internationally. Maybe she saw the message and decided it wasn't worth answering.
Maybe she blocked me after the first call. Fair. Honestly, fair.
I go home. Check the mailbox, and it’s empty again. The disappointment comes automatically.
Upstairs, I change into sweatpants and reheat leftovers.
I watch half an episode of something without absorbing any of it.
At ten thirty, I take my phone to bed. No response.
The wooden box is in the closet. I can feel its existence from across the room.
Which is ridiculous. Objects do not radiate guilt.
I turn off the lamp, close my eyes, and try to fall asleep.
The next evening, Monica still hasn't answered.
But another letter from George arrives.
Seventeen now.
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.