Page 5 of Wrong Mail

I let myself in and give her thirty seconds against my legs before I go back out for the boxes and packages.

Inside, the house is cool and dim. It smells of fresh coffee, with a faint trace of cut wood drifting from the far end where the renovation is. We sealed that whole wing off behind heavy plastic sheeting six months ago. The sunroom and little study were supposed to become my office, but the contractor stopped returning David’s calls.

Now, the plastic hangs across the hall, milky and still, and I barely notice it anymore. After a while, anything that never changes goes invisible.

I carry the mail to the kitchen island and go looking for my glasses.

Through the window over the sink, I can see the aviary at the far end of the lawn. It is already loud with birds, yellow and blue behind the mesh, dropping and rising in the shade of the maples.

I'll go down after. I always go down after.

Then I realize I can't find my glasses.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

This isn't new. I have three pairs and I can never lay a hand on any of them.

Screw it.

I snag a box cutter from the drawer. The labels are all facing down or half torn, and if I'm honest, I'm a little impatient.

So I slit them open without reading them.

One is vitamins. Another dog food. And of course the dress I ordered in a weak moment and will send back. Then the last is a large padded envelope, heavier than it looks. I run the blade along the top, reach in, and pull out a thick stack of paper that isn't anything I ordered.

It's newsprint.

There are dozens of pieces, some original clippings gone soft and yellow with age, others black-and-white photocopies with the machine's shadow along one edge. The top one is a column of dense gray type under a headline in a typeface I know from a hundred small regional papers.

I can’t make out the smaller print without my glasses, but one word in the headline is impossible to miss.

MURDER.

I stand very still in the kitchen with the cold coming off the tile through my bare feet.

I turn the large padded envelope over and squint at the mailing label. The print is large and dark enough that even without my glasses I can just make out the name and address.

Henry Westburn. 5216 Hunts Point Road.

Not 5261. 5216. Two digits swapped, the sort of mistake a tired driver makes at the end of a route, my six where his one should be, my one where his six should be.

It's not my house. Damn, it's not even my mail.

So this is him. The new fella Frank was so hungry to meet, the one who took Eleanor's place off her hands.

Twenty minutes ago he was a rumor at a mailbox. Now he has a name and an address a quarter mile up the road.

I should put it down. I know exactly what a decent person does here. She puts it back, tapes it shut, walks it up the road, and apologizes. That’s the end of it.

I don't.

I spread the stack of clippings across the island under the bright light, then go looking for my glasses. This time I find them.

When I come back, I start skimming, my eyes jumping from one detail to the next.

Wealthy couples. Homes on quiet streets. No forced entry. Little sign of struggle. County names I don't recognize, dates stretching back years, article after article.

The more I read, the stranger the feeling gets, because I know this rhythm. I know how these sentences are built, how the reporter withholds, then delivers, how the last line turns and leaves you cold. It’s like hearing a song from another room, one I’m certain I’ve heard before but can’t name.