2010

It was a perfectly ordinary day when a truly extraordinary letter was delivered to the wrong mailbox.

The boxes were identical, positioned side by side and made of the same thin, cheap metal, now slightly rusted near the hinges. They were drilled into the brown brick wall beside the door to the antiques shop; the door whose bells jingled delightfully—or irritatingly, depending on whom you asked—every time a patron entered or exited.

The mailbox for Thompson’s Antiques & Used Books was on the left and displayed the number one in a peeling gold sticker. The mailbox for the apartment above the shop was on the right with a matching label that bore the number two. There was hardly any difference, really, and yet it made a great deal of difference to Nancy Mitchell, who lived in the apartment upstairs and didn’t know about the letter she hadn’t received.

The address line didn’t specify which unit number the letter was destined for at the old building on College Street, and so the envelope was dropped unceremoniously into the box for the antiques shop while the mail carrier continued on his hurried route without a second thought.

The letter held its breath for three hours—squashed between a postcard from the store manager’s son, who was currently traveling in France, and that Friday’s junk mail—until the proprietor brought it inside on the way in from a cigarette break. She tossed the entire pile of mail into the in-tray, where it would later be sorted—and so critically misplaced—by a careless employee.

Its contents wouldn’t be discovered for another seven years. And that letter would change three women’s lives forever.