Three Letters Without a Return Address
The air was still—no wind, no rustling leaves, no birdsong—as if nature itself had frozen in eternal silence. The crowd stood motionless around the open casket and the gaping grave beside it. Emily held her father’s arm. He stood hunched and bewildered, his gaze fixed on her mother.
Nearby stood her parents’ old friends: Margaret and her husband Vincent. Emily had known them since childhood, always calling them by their first names. Margaret kept dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, while Vincent stared past the casket into the distance. Opposite them were three of her mother’s colleagues, red-nosed and swollen-eyed. And others—people Emily had never seen before. But if they had come, they must have known her mother.
No one else stepped forward to say goodbye. They had all done so at the chapel, where the service had been held. Now they just waited for it to end.
Emily’s eyes found the two gravediggers. The one in charge seemed to be waiting for a signal. He caught her eye—*Is it time?*—and she gave the faintest nod. They stirred, lifted the coffin lid leaning against a tree, and approached.
“Everyone said their goodbyes? We’ll close it now,” said the lead gravedigger.
Then a quiet but commanding voice cut through the silence—
“Wait.”
Every head turned toward the speaker. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat walked to the casket. The workers hesitated, holding the lid. The stranger placed two white roses inside, then covered her mother’s folded hands with his palm, as if warming them. He stood like that for minutes while the others watched, wondering who he was. One of the gravediggers coughed—a nudge to hurry. The man withdrew his hand and stepped back. The lid was secured with screws at each corner, and the casket lowered into the earth. Emily was the first to throw a handful of soil.
As the workers shoveled dirt into the grave, she searched for the man in the hat, but he had vanished. Once the wreaths and headstone were set over the fresh mound, the mourners filed toward the cemetery gates. Emily and her father lingered a little longer.
“Dad, let’s go,” she said, and he let her lead him away.
All the way home, she wondered who the stranger had been. He appeared unnoticed, left the same way. His face had been hidden beneath the hat’s brim—just a clean-shaven chin and, perhaps, glasses.
The wake was held in a café near their house. Emily couldn’t swallow a bite. She was exhausted, desperate for the day to end. At last, the guests left. She and her father were the last to go. She kept his arm, clutching her mother’s framed portrait—identical to the one left at the grave—against her chest.
“How are you?” she asked.
Her father only nodded.
“Dad, who was that man at the cemetery?”
“How should I know?”
His voice carried a sharpness she hadn’t heard before. They walked the rest of the way in silence. The flat still smelled of medicine and illness, despite the open windows.
Her father collapsed onto the sofa and closed his eyes. Emily draped a blanket over him and sat beside him.
Her gaze drifted to the bedroom door. *She’s at peace now*, she repeated to herself—the same words everyone at the funeral had murmured. Peace for all of them. Her mother, from the cruel, wasting illness. Emily, from the endless dread and waiting. Her father, from the helplessness of watching.
Tears pricked her eyes. She slipped into the kitchen, dropped her head into her hands, and wept soundlessly.
The pain dulled with time. She cleared the bedroom of all traces of sickness. She attended university but felt hollow, alone.
Her father barely spoke, shuffling around in slippers like an old man. The sound grated on her. His silence was a weight, a reminder of his grief—but wasn’t hers just as heavy? She had lost her mother. The house, her father—all of it fell to her now.
“Dad, what should we do with Mum’s clothes? They don’t fit me,” she asked once, just to make him talk.
“Dunno. Give them away.”
Easier said than done. To whom? That weekend, she sorted them. The newer pieces she kept; she’d decide later. The worn-out ones she bundled into a sack and took to the bins. It didn’t feel right, but neither did keeping them.
Their shoe sizes didn’t match either. She left the old pairs by the bins—maybe someone would take them. In one box, she found pristine white pumps. She couldn’t bring herself to toss them. When she tried them on, they were too big. As she packed them away, she spotted three yellowed envelopes tucked beneath, all postmarked decades ago. Two were addressed to her mother, sent a month apart. The third, two years later. None had a return address.
Why had her mother hidden them here? Why keep them at all? Reading someone else’s letters was wrong—but her mother was gone. Maybe the writer was too. All afternoon, Emily glanced at the envelopes.
She wouldn’t rest until she read them. If they held a secret, her mother wouldn’t have kept them. Unless she *wanted* them found. They weren’t even well-hidden—just slipped under shoes. Forgotten, perhaps?
Emily decided her mother had placed them there intentionally, never guessing her daughter’s feet would be smaller. She pushed her doubts aside and opened the first letter.
*…You’re my happiness. I’ve only just left, and I already miss you unbearably… Thank you for being in my life. I think of you constantly. I love you…*
A love letter. A man parted from his beloved.
The second letter was different.
*…I feared this, but it was inevitable. Thank you for telling me. What will you do?… You know I’m married—I never hid that. I have two children… I won’t leave them. I can’t. You’re young, beautiful—your life is ahead of you. You’ll marry. The choice is yours… If you keep the child, let me know. I’ll send money. Don’t refuse—it’s the least I can do. Forgive me…*
Then more about love, regret, how time had betrayed them.
The third letter was the final blow.
*…It’s my fault, I won’t deny it. But what’s done is done… You named her Emily? I’m leaving. I don’t know when—or if—I’ll return… Live! You’re free! Don’t wait for me. Don’t look back. It’s better this way. Promise you’ll keep our secret. Burn these letters. Thank you for everything…*
No names. No signatures. Just a small drawing of a bird—a swallow—on the last page.
So her father wasn’t her real father. There was someone else. Her mother had loved him first, borne his child. A clandestine affair, straight out of a novel. He must have been important, to write so cautiously.
*Why didn’t she burn them? Couldn’t bring herself to? Forgot?*
What was she supposed to do with this knowledge? If not for the letters, she’d never have known.
*Does it matter? He’s my father—the one who sat by my bed when I was ill, who pushed me on the swings, who scolded me for smoking… That other man? A stranger. He abandoned her. Never checked on us.*
She hid the letters under her clothes. Her father would never look there.
Her parents had rarely fought. She’d never once doubted he was her father. He’d loved her mother. Loved *her*. Now he was shattered. Her mother had been beautiful before the illness. Emily looked nothing like her. Nothing like him, either. How had she never noticed?
She decided never to tell him. Never to ask. He had no one but her. If she spoke the truth, she’d take even that from him.
She thought of the man at the cemetery. *He could have come to say goodbye. Did he love her after all? But why hide? Was he someone famous? So many secrets. Oh, Mum, you could’ve been a spy.*
By her fourth year at university, a renowned magazine celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a gala. Her journalism department scored a few invites.
One went to Daniel, her new boyfriend—a promising writer already published in papers.
“Fancy going?” he asked, waving the tickets.
“Obviously!” she laughed.
The restaurant was dazzling, packed with celebrities. Waiters wove through the crowd with champagne flutes. Speeches and toasts filled the air.
On the wall hung the magazine’s logo—an open journal with two torn pages fluttering like wings. Something about it nagged at her.
“Excuse me, what’s the logo meant to be?” she asked a passing guest.
“A swallow—the magazine’s symbol. Didn’t you know? The founder was Jonathan Swallow. You’She never called him, never cashed in on his offer, because some secrets were better left untouched—just like the letters gathering dust beneath her clothes.
