A Letter Without a Sender

Ada kept the unopened mail in a clay bowl by the door, the way some people keep keys. On Thursday there was an envelope that did not belong to any of her habits. It was addressed in a script she had not used since school, and it used a version of her name that only her mother had ever spoken aloud.

The postmark was genuine enough to embarrass the clerk at the sorting office. The stamp was not. It showed a river and a bridge that Ada recognized from a holiday photograph, except the bridge in the photograph had fallen in 1999, and the stamp claimed a year after that.

She opened it over the sink. Inside was a single sheet: a list of objects she would find if she went upstairs and looked, written in the order she would notice them. The last item was 'the second key, which you will pretend not to understand.'

Ada went upstairs. The objects were there. The second key was in the lining of a coat she had meant to donate. It fit the desk in the spare room. The desk contained no letters. It contained a map of a town that had never been hers, with her childhood street drawn in twice.