She scrambled an egg for her dinner that night, and set a place for herself at the kitchen table, using her grandmother's old dishes. It sometimes seemed like everything she had was old--the table had belonged to her great-grandmother, and the dishes had been her grandmother's. The chair in the living room was one that her mother had given her for her first apartment, as was the wooden table that sat beside it. She had bought a few things over the years, mostly small things like bookshelves and rugs, but most of the things she'd had for a long time. She was comforted by that, although she sometimes thought she should get rid of them and just go out and buy everything new--new furniture, new clothes, new dishes . . . She had the money, after all.

But every time, she shook the thought off. She didn't need new clothes, her clothes were perfectly fine. She didn't work in an office anymore, and here in Florida it didn't matter as much anyway. She hadn't worn stockings once since she'd been here, and every time she cleaned out her closet she flirted with the idea of giving away all her old suits and shoes. Maybe she'd do that, finally, this year. Maybe for Christmas she'd clean out the closet and give everything to the poor. Although what the poor would want with her old pumps and business suits, she couldn't imagine.

She read while she ate her tea and toast and the egg--a cozy murder mystery set in a needlework shop--then washed the dishes and put them in the drainer to dry. She carried her book into the living room and settled into an overstuffed chair, but didn't turn on the lamp. She sat in the dark until Dinah came looking for her and, meowing, jumped into her lap. She looked up, questioning, and bumped her head into Sarah's chin.

"I know, sweetie. I know." Sarah said. "Let's go write a letter."

She carried the cat into the bedroom, but when Sarah sat down at the computer, Dinah jumped down and ran back into the living room. "Okay, be that way," Sarah said, and pressed the power button. While she waited for the computer to power on, she walked around the room and lit candles on her dresser, on the bedside table, and on her little altar. As she walked past it she touched her finger to her lips, then to the photograph in the tiny frame.

She sat back down at the computer, opened up a web browser, typed in the address, and sat with her hands poised over the keys while the page loaded. She typed:

Dear Gaby . .

* * *

The Post Office promises to deliver mail rain or shine, through snow or sleet or dead of night . . .

Ever want to write a letter that you don't want to reach its destination?

A letter to an old boyfriend or girlfriend, an old boss, someone you have a crush on. Tying up loose ends, healing old wounds, pouring out your heart. Not that you necessarily want to actually tell that person.

Or maybe it's someone who isn't reachable by normal means--someone who has passed on, or a public personality with no published address. Or even an imaginary person, or someone whose existence you aren't sure about. Maybe you never knew your father, or your mother. Maybe you'd still like to talk to them.

You think you'd feel better if you could just write the letter, and you've been writing it in your head for months, or years. Now you can mail that special letter from the Dead Letter Office, and feel the relief of letting it go.

All mail received at The Dead Letter Office is immediately destroyed without reading. No record is made of any information about you. We have no way of knowing who you are, nor do we care. We are merely providing a much needed service.

Sarah had read the text at the web site a dozen times or more over the past year since she discovered it. She sometimes clicked through the site's pages while she was thinking of what to write, trying to put her thoughts into words that could be translated to the screen, then sent off to be, as the website put it in the FAQ, "broken apart into its component molecules and scattered into the air."

She had no illusions that the letters she wrote were reaching their intended destinations. No, in fact, her intention was quite the opposite. She prayed, and she talked to Gabrielle and James in her thoughts constantly, but there were things she found she needed to say that needed to be written in order for her to put closure to them. She wrote about her dreams and hopes and fears, she wrote about her unending grief, and sometimes she wrote about her anger at having been left behind.

Writing to the Dead Letter Office was like talking to a tree, or like talking to herself--she had absolutely no hope or feeling that anything she said ever reached another's eyes or ears, and that was why she felt so safe in writing there. She had been using the site for a year and she had never had any inkling that there was anyone with any interest in her or what she wrote there; in fact, there was nothing about the site that gave any indication that there was anyone involved in it at all. Of course, there had to be, someone had had to build the site and put it up for people to use, but for as long as she had been using it, it hadn't changed, and there was something comforting about the fact that it was always there, always the same, unchanging and available.

She had never told anyone about it. It seemed too personal, and somehow strange--she wasn't sure that anyone would understand the compulsion she felt to pour out her heart and then let her words be destroyed . . . did that make any sense at all? It did to her, but she had never wanted to share it with anyone else. She didn't want anyone to think she was crazy, and above all, she didn't want their pity.

Cate was the only one here that knew her history, although Sarah assumed Cate had probably given at least the bare minimum of information to Jason. He had never said anything to her about it, but she had noticed him treating her a little more delicately lately, not teasing her quite so often. She remembered the night she had told Cate. They had been working late at the store shelving a shipment of new books, and when they finished, they had both been reluctant to head for home alone, so Sarah had invited Cate home with her for a glass of wine.

They had ended up having several glasses of wine, and on her way back from a trip to t he bathroom, Cate, having detoured through Sarah's bedroom, stood in the doorway holding the framed photograph and asking, "Sarah? Who's the baby in the picture?"

Sarah fought down the panic she felt at the question; if not for the wine, she probably would have made something up. But she walked to the bedroom and took the photograph from Cate, set it back on the altar, and sat down on the bed.

"I was married."

"Yes, I knew that. I never knew what happened, though. I assumed you'd been divorced."

"No." She paused, and took a deep, shuddering breath. "No. We'd been married a little over a year. I was pregnant. Eight months pregnant. I'd painted the nursery, and hung mobiles from the ceiling--The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, that was the theme. I'd had someone come in--someone like you--to paint a mural on the walls. There was this gorgeous big cow with black spots jumping over a big, fat moon . . ."

She sat, staring into space, as her eyes began to fill with tears. Cate thought, she's somewhere else entirely. She's not here at all.

"It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. No," she said again, the tears spilling down her cheeks. "That's wrong. That mural wasn't the most beautiful thing I ever saw."

She looked at Cate then, her eyes shiny with tears. "Gabrielle was. My baby. She died." She began to sob then, and dropped her face into her hands. Cate leaned forward and took her in her arms, and then she was crying, too, and their tears mingled on their faces. "Oh, Sarah," she said, "I'm so sorry." They sat that way for a long time, their arms wrapped around each other. Sarah spoke into Cate's shoulder.

"I was eight months pregnant, and she stopped moving. I went in to the hospital, and they did the tests and found out that she was dead, and I had to deliver her, knowing it, and it was the worst thing I've ever had to do. I didn't think I could bear it, but I did, somehow, and my husband, James, was there, and it was the only time I've ever seen him cry . . ." She broke off and wiped her hand across her face, smearing the tears. "He told me that we would get through it somehow, that we would survive even though I couldn't imagine how."

Cate waited.

"I was in the hospital for a few days; there were complications. I was pretty doped up, and while I was sleeping, he left for a little while, and . . ." She took another deep breath. "He got into a car accident and they came and woke me up and told me that he died. He died, too. We had two funerals on the same day. I named her Gabrielle, and they dressed her in a little white christening gown with a white bonnet on her head, and I buried them both the same day."

This was worse than anything Cate might have imagined. She had assumed that Sarah was divorced; maybe a terrible, bad divorce--Sarah had all the signs--but nothing like this. How did you ever come back from grief like this? She reached out for Sarah again, but Sarah said, "No, it's okay. I'm okay. I haven't talked about it for a long time. I probably needed to." She wiped her face again.

"Our parents were wonderful, both his and mine, but they were smothering me. I felt so guilty all the time, guilty that I lived and he didn't, that I hadn't been able to give them their first grandchild, that if only I had done something differently, maybe Gaby wouldn't have died, and then James wouldn't have died. And I thought that maybe I should have died . . ."

"Oh, Sarah, it wasn't your fault! None of it was your fault! You shouldn't feel guilty."

"I know. But guilt isn't a very rational emotion, you know? They didn't mean to make me feel guilty, but I always felt like I was trying to hold myself together because of them, for them, that I had to be strong because if I fell apart, then they'd fall apart, too, and I just couldn't stand it."

"Is that why you came here?"

"Uh huh. We had come here on vacation a couple of times and I'd always liked it, and I had the insurance money and a job I didn't much like, and I just felt like I had to get away from all the memories. So I came here and after I'd been here awhile, I bought the shop, and here we are."

Cate got up off the bed. "Is there any more wine?" she asked. "I think we need another drink. And if you don't, I do." She walked off into the kitchen to investigate the refrigerator, while Sarah went into the bathroom and washed her face. She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink and sighed. She had assumed it would get easier with time, but so far it hadn't seemed to. The memories were still as painful as the fresh wounds, and she couldn't imagine that they would ever heal. As soon as Cate left, she'd write another letter. Maybe that would help.

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