Return to Sender

Eleanor’s mornings had followed the same rhythm for years. Tea. Crossword. Good morning talk shows. A glance at the clock around ten, when no one ever called. She wasn’t lonely (or so she told herself) just long-accustomed to silence.

This morning was different.

The envelope was an aged-white, slightly crumpled – folded in the middle – and dirtied by years of dust and pocket lint. The corners rolled inwards; the flap peeling from retired old glue. There was no name on the envelope, only an address and an old stamp.

When Eleanor opened the door and saw the postman holding it, she assumed it was for her. She smiled. Who was it from?

The postman handed it to her directly, called her by her name, and smiled back in that tired, knowing way that he reserved for elderly women living alone in houses too large. She carried it into the kitchen, made some tea, and opened it by the window where the morning light spilled in like honey across the marbled counter.

Before reading the words, Eleanor noticed the elegant handwriting first. Each stroke carefully considered, channelling the weight of the hands that scribed them:

Dear Thomas,

I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me. I doubt it.

But I’ve carried this for ten years, and I must let it go.

The fire wasn’t your fault. It was mine.

I wanted the insurance. I didn’t know your daughter would be inside.

I think about her every day.

I still see her face when I close my eyes. I can’t sleep.

I am sorry.

M.

Eleanor stopped reading. She lowered the letter. Put it on the counter. Read it again, from a different angle.

There was no last name. No return address. No date. Just the scrawled signature: “M.”

She read the letter three times, then once more aloud, hoping her voice would make sense of the words. It didn’t. The words stayed the same, but the weight they carried grew heavier, warping the air around her. The honeyed light beam turned grey, casting a gloomy pall throughout the kitchen. Her teacup went cold. Outside, a dog barked twice. Inside, Eleanor’s silence stretched like a held breath.

She knew no Thomas.

No daughter.

No fire.

Yet the letter had come here. To her. But why?

The next morning, she took it to the post office. The clerk, a young man with bitten nails and sunken eyes, shrugged.

“It was addressed to you,” he said, “and there’s no return address. Maybe it was for a previous resident?”

Eleanor had lived in that house for the past 30 years.

“It’s a mistake.” she said.

He nodded, but not like he agreed. More like he understood people said things they didn’t mean all the time. He had no interest in getting to the bottom of it.

Eleanor returned home. Stopped by her front door-- and looked at the keys clutched tightly in her right hand. Just then the sharp teeth of the key biting into her hand reached her consciousness, and she winced in pain. She loosened the grip in her fingers, then looked at the crumpled letter in the other hand.

It was her address. That was for certain. But whose eyes were the words meant for...?

Judith! Of course. Judith, who lives opposite. She’s a few years older than Eleanor and has lived on this road longer than anyone. If anyone knew who lived in this house before her, it would be Judith.

She knocked on the weathered door and waited. Then, through the frosted glass window, a frail shadow emerged. Several locks and chains rattled behind the bulwark, eventually parting to reveal not a frail old lady, but a portrait of rooted constancy through the ebb and flow of time.

“Ever hear of a Thomas living here before me?” Eleanor asked.

Judith squinted. “Can’t say I have. You’ve been here ages. Before you, maybe the O'Sullivans? Or the Krupas?”

“Anyone with a daughter?”

Judith thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not that I recall. Why?”

“No reason.” Eleanor said, already turning to leave.

She brought the letter home, placed it in her desk drawer, and tried to forget about it. Days passed. Then a week. Then two. Then several months went by.

She began rereading the letter in different lights: once at dawn, once by the desk light, once beneath the dim yellow bulb above the back porch. Sometimes, she brought it with her on outings. Just in case, by some cosmic coincidence, she would bump into this ‘M’. Or this ‘Thomas’. Afterall, it arrived by coincidence at her door – perhaps that’s how it was meant to find its way.

“The fire wasn’t your fault.”

This simple declaration pierced her soul. Had Thomas bared that underserved guilt, for all those years? And this letter – this fragile collection of ink on paper – held the power to unshackle him from it.

Eleanor tried to reason with herself. It was not her burden. It was not her fire. It was nobody she knew. But the letter had come. And in her mind, that had to mean something. Mean that someone had chosen her, even if by mistake.

She thought about Thomas. About that girl in the fire. About M, walking around with that kind of guilt for ten years, and then finally letting it go… to the wrong person.

And the thing that haunted Eleanor most was that now she carried that guilt, too. Her shoulders draped not only by the redemption of one soul, but by the absolution of another.

She thought a lot about why the letter ended up in her hands. Is Thomas, or this ‘M’, still alive? Did Thomas ever learn the truth? Did ‘M’ seek forgiveness, or to simply unburden the weight they had carried for all these years? She had to do something, but what?

She considered burning the letter. It would have been ironic, maybe even cruel, but perhaps it would set her free from its hold. Its curse.

She wrote a letter back. But not after drafting it multiple times.

Dear M,

To the one who wrote me this truth,

I do not know who you are, or why your letter ended up at my door.

But I read it, and I cannot ignore it.

I know what it is to carry such guilt. And I forgive you.

Maybe that forgiveness isn’t mine to give. But someone has to say it.

Because maybe truth seeks a harbour, wherever it can find one.

And sometimes, the wrong person is the only one left to listen.

E.

She left it on the bench at the bus stop in a sealed envelope, no address, no name.

Just words, waiting for another wrong person to read them.