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Tawny Summers eased the mail truck to the curb in front of Shaun Powell’s house, wincing and smiling at the squeal of the touchy brakes that broke the peaceful quiet of the small town of Green Valley.
Even squeaky brakes couldn’t dampen the day.
It was spring, and it was gloriously spring as if to make up for the late winter. Blue sky spread above trees glittering with early shades of green and lawns that were springing emerald from the ugly, dull brown that had covered them for so many months.
Cheerful birds sang love songs for each other from every corner, and somewhere not far away, children in the park were hollering happily about their new freedom from the indoors.
Best of all, it was Tawny’s last day of work. This was her very last delivery, in fact.
She would never have to drive the clunky mail truck again, or dread Christmas, or get trapped talking to Stanley for three hours about how badly the mail service had gone down since that new-fangled Internet started causing diabetes or whatever he had last read.
It was an ending without fanfare. Her replacement had been training for two weeks, and everyone kindly said they would miss her on her route, but otherwise, it had been a day like any other.
Tawny opened the sticky truck door and swung down to the pavement.
It even smelled like spring, and Tawny inhaled happily.
Starting tomorrow, she would be wrist-deep in soil, planting the greatest garden she had ever had. She’d spent every evening for the last month planning every inch of her little plot, ordering seeds and researching varieties. Several trays of tiny green sprouts were crowded on her kitchen table and the piano under desk lamps, waiting for their new homes in the ground.
The only work she had to continue to do was teach piano on weekends to help stretch the retirement checks a little bit further.
The last package was strapped in the very back of the truck, and Tawny’s knees protested climbing up to get it.
The last package, she reminded her knees.
Tawny frowned down at the address label. There was no return address, but the postage cancellation was from right here in Green Valley.
It was unusual for someone to ship something within the town. If it had been a different address, Tawny might have assumed one of the town seniors had gotten confused and accidentally shipped a gift to themselves.
But Shaun Powell, and his wife Andrea, were young and Andrea was not that much of an airhead.
It was Express mail, too, with a guaranteed date and time of delivery. Who would blow that kind of money to ship a box a few blocks?
It was a light box, for the size, and Tawny carried it easily down the path and up the porch to the house. She knocked on the door, and was surprised when it swung open under her knuckles.
“Shaun?” she called hesitantly into the dark house. All of the curtains were drawn and It smelled like fresh sweet rolls. That would be Shaun’s handiwork.
“Andrea?” Tawny called. After a moment, she added, “Trevor?” At six years old, it was most likely that Trevor had left the door open.
It disturbed her sense of order to have to leave her last package without a signature, but Tawny sighed and reached for her scanner, setting the box down just inside the door.
As she was bending over to scan it as delivered, the lights in the house suddenly flicked on, and a chorus of voices shouted, “Surprise!”
Tawny jolted upright and put a hand to her throat. “What?!”
“Happy retirement!” a familiar voice congratulated. Patricia, belly round with pregnancy, was sitting on the couch, and dozens of Green Valley residents crowded forward to draw Tawny into the streamer-strewn house as the curtains were flung open.
“We’re going to miss you!”
“Thank you for your service!”
“I’ve got big shoes to fill.” That was her replacement, an earnest young man with red hair.
“You never lost a single one of my letters!”
“Christmas deliveries won’t be the same without you!”
“You won’t miss the catalogs!”
She was buffeted with hugs, and Tawny had to blink back tears of emotional joy as Trevor came forward to lead her to a cake, frosted like a canceled postage stamp. The sweet rolls she had smelled were just one of the offerings on the loaded table; an entire neighborhood potluck had been laid out.
“You folks didn’t have to do this,” she protested as a paper plate of cake was pressed into her hands. “It’s not like I’m moving away or going anywhere.”
“You’ll always be an establishment of Green Valley,” Patricia told her, rising awkwardly to give her own encumbered hug. “We’re just celebrating how much we’ve appreciated you. And how happy we are that you’ll be enjoying a well-earned retirement.”
Someone put a paper crown on her, and there were gifts, to Tawny’s flustered pleasure. A ribbon-adorned wheelbarrow to replace her rusted one was filled with wrapped packages—most of them in official post office packaging.
She sighed theatrically. “You know it’s a federal offense to use this packaging for purposes other than its intended application,” she teased them.
She was sitting on the broad couch, carefully unwrapping what was clearly a spade covered in post office shipping bags from Shaun and Andrea, when the sound of a throat clearing made her look up at the doorway with an automatic smile.
A finely dressed stranger stood there at the door no one had bothered to close. He was a large older man, with broad shoulders under an expensive looking button-down shirt, and he had a close-cropped beard that was a much white as it was blond.
Even as Tawny had a naughty moment to wonder if they had hired a good-looking stripper for her party, he caught sight of her, and the glare melted from his face into soft astonishment.