Terry was the tallest mail carrier the town had ever had. Not the tallest in the county; Oak Ridge had one who was decidedly the tallest mail carrier anyone had ever seen, but Terry was still pretty tall. However, that was the most anybody really knew about him. He was friendly, very friendly. And he was new in town. But whenever anyone tried to ask him about himself, they left the conversation realizing that Terry had said hardly a word, but they felt much lighter.

Although he liked pretty nearly everyone in the town, Terry’s personal favorite house to stop at was Miss Carver’s. Always smiling and rosy-cheeked beneath a spray of white curls, the tiny woman waited on her porch every morning with a letter for him to collect.

“Where’s this one going today?” he’d ask her.

“Guatemala!” she’d announce mysteriously. Or Vancouver. Or Luxembourg.

“Bon voyage, little letter!” he’d say, placing it carefully into his mail pouch and closing it with a pat. Miss Carver would look up at him with a very small smile.

She’d been trying to find a pen pal since long before he knew her. There was an agency, she told him, that sent you an address where you could mail a letter and hopefully establish a fulfilling correspondence that would allow one to learn about other cultures, deepen social bonds, and improve language skills—or so the brochure said. Terry couldn’t help but notice, however, that she never received anything back from the far-flung places she sent letters to. She received very few letters at all, in fact. A few cards around Christmas. Some perfunctory notices. Nothing with international postage. He felt it was a shame, but what could he do?  

The question became more urgent when he bounded up her porch steps one spring morning to find her sitting on the bench, smiling as usual, but without a letter in her lap.

“Nothing to mail today, Miss Carver?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not today, Terry.”

“Did the agency forget to send you another address?”

“No, they always have some name to give me.”

“Have you run out of stamps?”

“No, that’s not it.”

Curious but not wanting to pry, he talked up the credit card offer he had for her, tipped his hat, and went on his way.

It was the same the next day, and the next. Miss Carver seemed tired, with an unfamiliar sadness clinging to her.

“I think you should write another letter,” he told her on the fifth day.

“It’s a silly thing,” she said.

“It’s not,” he insisted. “People sign up for these things and forget about it. Or the letter never gets to them. I wouldn’t repeat this, Miss Carver, but the postal service isn’t always reliable. You didn’t hear that from me, though.”

She smiled.

The next day she had a letter for him, this one addressed to Paris.

“One more try,” she told him.

“That’s the spirit, Miss Carver!” He tucked the letter carefully in his pouch, gave it a pat, and set off with a wave.

The mail bag felt heavier as he walked his route. After a lengthy conversation with Mr. Sanderson, he paused to adjust the strap on his shoulder. He opened the bag, just to make sure the contents were all in order. He paused. Looked over his shoulder. Then he took Miss Carver’s letter out—just to see where in Paris it was going. 20e arrondissement, it said. He went to put it back in the bag, but as he did, it caught on a buckle and the envelope tore.

“Oh, heavens!” he cried. “The mail has been compromised!” Despite his best attempts to repair the damage, it somehow managed to rip further until the letter fell out and the envelope was left in two pieces. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then picked up the letter and stuffed it, along with the envelope, into his pocket. He continued on his route with the creeping feeling that he had betrayed…everything.

When he got home, he unfolded the letter with trembling hands. He couldn’t shake the persistent feeling that he was committing a crime. With good reason, he thought. He was breaking the law by tampering with the mail. It was a mail carrier’s most sacred duty, to protect the mail, and he had broken his oath. But surely there was a higher law at work here. He didn’t know what it was, exactly, but he felt there must be something—some natural law that would vindicate his actions. When an old lady couldn’t find a pen pal, you were required to step in.

On Sunday, he took a notepad and an envelope stamped with international postage, and he walked over to the quiet grounds of the old Mason mansion. He settled on a bench, took out a pen, and got to work. Or, he tried to, anyway. After balling up his fifth attempt and tossing it into the trash can next to his bench, he looked around his surroundings for inspiration. He spotted two balloons, almost entirely deflated, caught up among some tree roots.

He began again to write:

Dear Miss Carver,

I was so happy to receive your letter. I have been waiting a very long time to have a pen pal, and I am so glad to have found one at last.

It’s la vie en rose here in the 20e arrondissement. I am sitting in a park right now, and at my feet are two balloons, pink ones. Their strings are all tangled together in the roots of a tree, and they’re sadly withered. I think I know how they feel.

You see, I recently moved to this part of France, and not very many people know me. I feel as though I know them, but it’s difficult for me to allow myself to be seen. I’ve always preferred to do the seeing.

I suppose I should start out slow with a small detail: I love to swim. Every year when my brother and I were small, my parents would take us to the sea for three weeks, and I spent every moment I could in the water. I don’t get much chance for it nowadays, but I think of it often.

I would love to hear something about yourself in return.

Your new friend,
Michel

He read it through, folded it up, and sealed the envelope. He wouldn’t be able to send it from abroad, of course, but he trusted that the international stamp would be enough to convince Miss Carver.

It wasn’t until the following Tuesday that he delivered the letter with a low bow. Her face lit up with surprise and excitement, and Terry was left buoyed for several days after. He hadn’t entirely considered that he would have to keep writing to her as her new friend Michel. After a while, though, he found that he enjoyed it. He sprinkled in little tidbits of what he imagined Parisian life to be like. He researched the 20e arrondissement and used a French-English dictionary to add authenticity. But under all that, he found himself telling her the truth about his own life. In a way he never had before, he inched himself into someone else’s view, and soon discovered that he didn’t mind being seen—at least, not by Miss Carver.

All through the fall, they wrote back and forth. Her excitement never dimmed whenever he pulled one of his letters out of the bag and handed it to her with a flourish. Sometimes he felt bad for deceiving the woman, but their conversations about her “ami Michel” reconciled him to it. She seemed so proud each week to update him on what Michel had been doing. It was strange to hear his own words repeated back to him, but Miss Carver seemed happy. That was what mattered.

One Monday when the air was brisk enough that he needed a scarf, he reached Miss Carver’s house and was surprised to find the door wide open. A large man wearing a back belt came out. He carried a standing lamp with a tasseled shade in one hand.

“What’s going on?” Terry asked, alarmed. “Where’s Miss Carver?”

“Dunno,” the man said, breathing hard. “Think she died. Saturday, maybe? We’re just clearing out whatever’s not worth selling.” He took the lamp to a moving truck idling across the street.

Terry was shaken. He very nearly didn’t finish the rest of his route. As it was, he found out later that he’d mixed up several houses, and neighbors were visiting back and forth all afternoon to straighten things out. Back at home, he sat on the living room floor with Miss Carver’s letters spread out around him, and he read and re-read them until he fell asleep.

After the funeral, a woman with dark hair pulled back into a tight updo approached Terry.

“Are you Terrence Warner?” she asked.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m Miss Carver’s attorney. I represent her estate.”

She seemed to be waiting for a response, so he gave a vague, “Oh.”

She pulled out a brown paper parcel. “As you may know, Miss Carver left behind no heirs. Her estate was not large, and most of her assets were left to her church. However, she asked that you be given these.”

“What are they?” he asked as he took the parcel.

“That’s really none of my business,” she said with a curt smile. “If you have any questions, my card is there.”

He looked at the card tucked beneath the paper flap. Genevieve Ipswich. He felt sorry for the little girl who’d been forced to carry around that name.

As soon as he got back to his apartment, he took off his shoes and loosened his tie. He poured himself the dregs of coffee from the pot and settled into a chair by the window. Carefully, he opened the parcel.

There, all neat and orderly, he found a stack of letters addressed to Miss Carver, bearing international stamps and a return address in Paris.

He thumbed through the folded papers. She could have had them returned to sender; why would she bequeath them to him? She must have figured it out, but how could she have known?

Then he saw. At a certain point, about halfway through August, he’d started signing his own name instead of Michel’s. He tried to remember back to the end of the summer, whether anything had changed in his chats with Miss Carver, any hint that she’d found out his tricks. He couldn’t think of anything. She hadn’t given it away.

He searched the stack of letters for any word from her, any final note to say she understood or forgave him, but there was nothing. Just his own words left for him. A picture of himself.