Once in the house, the strong aroma of cedar laced with a hint of old books and aged wooden furniture swept through every cell of my body. The calm cold of the house was captured by the locked doors and windows.
I looked around and noticed the pile of wood Max and I left next to the stove the last time we’d been there. A smile crept across my face, thinking about how blazing hot we had the place. It also reminded me that I hadn’t really heard from him since I called him and left a message a couple of hours earlier. I pulled my phone from my pocket and noticed he hadn’t responded to the last text I sent.
“Max hasn’t texted back yet?” J asked. She slid her hands up and down her arms, trying to warm up. Her words actually steamed and floated out of her mouth. Yeah, it was too cold.
“Nope, but he said he would be in meetings all day and that he’d call when he could,” I answered her before I slipped the phone back in my pocket. I noticed a pile of junk mail on the tiny dining room table, perfect kindling to start a fire and warm the place up. It might even give me something to focus on besides Max and not hearing from him.
Joanie rummaged around the handful of jackets, coats, and thick shirts that hung on the rack behind the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she managed to find my grandpa’s favorite lumberjack flannel—a red and black quilted button-up. Another moment that made my heart skip.
I could tell Mrs. Codwell was the one who’d brought this last stack of mail in. She was always thoughtful enough to make three piles. The first one was a heap of pure advertisements and junk mail, the second pile was important letters and bills, and the third was a newly created stack of sympathy letters and cards. The third pile began when my grandma died six months ago, then seemed to dry up a month or two after that before it found its way back to the table upon Grandpa’s death. I sorted through the junk mail, collecting anything that would burn well, and tossed the rest back in the stack. I slid my hands across the other two piles of mail, making sure I wasn’t missing a 15-day shutoff notice for my water or electricity. I was relieved to see only white legal sized envelopes and no bright-colored notices.
I dragged my fingers across the third stack of mail, watching it separate into four rectangular envelopes without windows. Handwritten and addressed to the Mooney family, I knew if I stopped and took a moment to open and read the cards it would be inviting a sadness I really didn’t want to experience right then. I just didn’t want to read the stories of a man who died of a broken heart. As I continued to drag my fingertips across the mail, in an unconscious act of feeling the table, my fingers caught behind one of the thick envelopes and I hauled it to the edge. The goldenrod colored envelope teetered for a moment before it tumbled to the hardwood floor. My eye caught the handwriting that stretched across the front. My name was sprawled in big, bold block letters, in a print that seemed recognizable but at the same time unfamiliar. I bent down and picked it up. My heart thrashed hard against my sternum. There was no return address in the left hand corner, and a ‘Forever’ stamp in the right was marred by a postage date haphazardly inked across it. I flipped it over and noticed an address written right where the flap meets the envelope. Where the name should have been was a haphazardly drawn heart. It was from someone in Seattle, Washington. I tried to link it with anyone I knew who lived in the Pacific Northwest, but I couldn’t seem to think of a single soul.
Joanie must have noticed me standing there, frozen in thought. “What is it?” she asked casually.
“I don’t know. I have a card addressed to me from someone in Seattle, Washington. I don’t know anybody from Seattle,” I answered, preoccupied as I still search the recesses of my mind trying to think of who it could be.
“Well, maybe it’s someone who went to Bethany’s with us. Let me see,” Joanie said as she meandered over and I handed it to her.
“I don’t recognize the handwriting, but whoever sent it mailed it from Crescent City, California on December 21st. Look,” Joanie, pointed to the postage marking across the stamp. “Do you know anyone from Crescent City?” she asked.
“I don’t even know where Crescent City is,” I answered her.
“Oh my God, Wilson, it’s at the border of California and Oregon,” Joanie huffed as she tossed the envelope back to me. “Open it. What do you have to lose?” she mused as she snatched the junk mail from my other hand and walked over to the fireplace.
I tried to think back to any friends of my grandparents or long lost relatives that may have moved up to the Pacific Northwest, but nobody was coming to mind.