Chapter one · page 1
The Letter
It was on the mat when I came home, face-down and wet at the corners, as if it had been waiting in the rain for someone else and given up.
No stamp. No postmark. Just five words across the front in brown ink that had run a little: To whoever finds this.
The seal was red wax, pressed with a number I didn’t recognise yet. 998.
I remember thinking it was a mistake, that it belonged next door, or to the people before me. I remember turning it over to check.
And I remember the feeling, the one I didn’t have a word for until later: warm windows, cold air, the sense that someone had only just left.
I didn’t open it that night.
It opened anyway.