**Three Letters Without a Return Address**
The air was thick with silence—no wind, no rustling leaves, no birdsong—as though nature itself had frozen in eternal stillness. The mourners stood motionless around the open casket, the gaping grave beside it. Emily held her father’s arm. He stood there, hunched and bewildered, his gaze fixed on her mother’s lifeless face.
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 dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, while Vincent stared past the coffin into the distance. Across from Emily and her father, three of her mother’s colleagues stood, eyes red and swollen from crying. Strangers, too—people Emily had never met. But if they were here, they must have known her.
No one else came forward to say goodbye. The farewells had already been said at the mortuary, the prayers already whispered. Now, they simply waited for the ceremony to end.
Emily caught the eye of one of the gravediggers—the one in charge, it seemed. He raised his brows silently: *Ready?* She gave a small nod. *Yes.* They moved swiftly, lifting the coffin lid propped against a tree and stepping forward.
“Everyone said their goodbyes? We’ll close it now,” the gravedigger muttered.
But then—a voice, quiet yet commanding.
“Wait.”
Every head turned. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat approached the coffin. The workers paused, the lid still in their hands. The stranger placed two white roses inside, then cupped his palm over her mother’s folded hands, as if to warm them. He stayed like that for minutes, while the others watched in uneasy silence. A cough from one of the gravediggers urged him on. The stranger withdrew his hand and stepped back. The lid was secured, the screws tightened. Then the casket was lowered, and Emily was the first to toss a handful of earth into the grave.
As the workers filled the hole, Emily searched for the man in the hat, but he had vanished. When the wreaths and the headstone were in place, the mourners trickled away. Only Emily and her father lingered.
“Dad, let’s go,” she whispered, and he let her guide him away.
The question nagged at her the whole walk home. *Who was he?* He had slipped in unnoticed and disappeared just as quietly. The hat had shadowed his face—just a clean-shaven chin and perhaps glasses, though she wasn’t sure about those.
The wake was held in a café near their house. Emily couldn’t eat. She was exhausted, desperate for the day to end. At last, the last of the guests left. She and her father were the final ones to go. She held his arm, her other hand clutching her mother’s framed portrait—the same one left on the grave.
“How are you?” she asked.
Her father only nodded.
“Dad… that man at the grave. Who was he?”
“How should I know?”
There was an edge in his voice. They walked home in silence. The flat smelled of medicine and sickness, despite the open windows.
Her father collapsed onto the sofa, eyes closed. Emily draped a blanket over him and sat beside him.
Her gaze drifted to her mother’s room. *”Free at last,”* she repeated in her head—words whispered by nearly every mourner today. Free from the torment: her mother from the disease, Emily from the endless dread, her father from the helplessness.
Tears welled up. She slipped into the kitchen and wept soundlessly into her hands.
Time dulled the pain. Emily cleared her mother’s room of all traces of illness. She returned to university but felt hollow, alone.
Her father hardly spoke, shuffling around in slippers like an old man. The sound grated on her. He made his grief so visible, but wasn’t she suffering too? *She* had lost her mother. *She* carried the weight of the house, of him.
“Dad, what should we do with Mum’s clothes?” she asked once, just to force him to speak.
“I dunno. Give them away.”
Easy to say. But to whom? That weekend, she sorted through them. The better pieces she kept; the rest, she bagged for the charity shop.
Their shoe sizes didn’t match, either. She left the worn-out pairs by the bins—maybe some rough sleeper would take them. But in one box, she found pristine white pumps. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away. She slipped them on—too big. As she packed them back, she saw it: three yellowed envelopes, two decades old. Two addressed to her mother, a month apart. The third, two years later. None had a return address.
Why had her mother hidden them? Why not destroy them? Reading them felt wrong—but her mother was gone. Maybe the writer was, too.
She couldn’t leave it. If there was a secret, her mother wouldn’t have kept them. Unless she *wanted* them found. They weren’t even well-hidden. Had she forgotten? If Emily hadn’t found them, they’d have been tossed out with the shoes.
No—her mother had left them there deliberately. She couldn’t have known the shoes wouldn’t fit.
Emily opened the first letter.
*…You are my happiness. I miss you already…*
A lover’s words. A breakup.
The second:
*…I feared this, but knew it would come. What will you do? I’m married—I never lied. I won’t abandon my children. But you’re young. You’ll marry. If you keep the baby, tell me. I’ll send money—don’t refuse. It’s the least I can do…*
Then regret, longing. A love that came too late.
The third:
*…I’m to blame. But what’s done is done. You named her Emily? I’m leaving. I don’t know when—or if—I’ll return. Live. Be free. Forget me. Keep our secret. Burn these letters…*
No signatures. No names. Just—once—hers.
So her father wasn’t her father. There was another. Her mother had loved someone before him, had *her* with him. Straight out of a spy novel. Someone important, if he wouldn’t sign his name. The last letter had a small mark—a bird, like a tick. *Gone. Goodbye.*
Why had her mother kept them? Couldn’t bear to burn them? Forgotten?
What now? Without these letters, she’d never have known. But it didn’t matter. Her father *was* her father—the one who’d sat by her sickbed, scolded her for sneaking cigarettes. The other man had abandoned them.
She tucked the letters under her clothes in the wardrobe. Her father would never look there.
Her parents had rarely argued. She’d never doubted he was her father. He’d loved her mother. Loved *her*. And now, he grieved.
Her mother had been beautiful before the illness. Emily took after neither of them—why hadn’t she noticed?
She wouldn’t tell him. Wouldn’t ask. He had no one else. If she revealed the truth, she’d take even *herself* from him.
That man at the funeral—had it been him? Come to say goodbye in secret. *Had* he loved her? Hidden behind that hat. Some celebrity, maybe.
*So many secrets. Oh, Mum. You were quite the spy.*
By her fourth year at university, a famous magazine celebrated its silver jubilee with a gala. A few invites went to her faculty—one to Keith, her new boyfriend, already making waves in journalism.
“You coming?” he asked, waving the ticket.
“You *bet*,” she grinned.
The ballroom glittered with celebrities. Champagne flutes clinked. Speeches droned on.
The magazine’s logo hung above them—an open journal, a torn page shaped like a bird. Something about it made her pause.
“What’s the logo mean?” she asked a passerby.
“The seagull—symbol of the magazine. Don’t you know? Founded by *Charles Seagull*. You should know men like that. There he is, actually.”
Emily followed his gaze—to a tall, silver-haired man in gold-rimmed glasses. Distinguished. Handsome.
Then it hit her. The *tick*—the *seagull*—in that letter. And the founder’s *name*.
No coincidence.
She darted toward him before he could vanish again. Up close, she froze. What to say?
“I’m Emily Whitmore,” she blurted.
A few heads turned. His eyes were unreadable behind the glasses.
“Do you remember Anne Whitmore? My mother.”
A flicker of recognition.
“Let’s talk in the hall,” he muttered, steering her away.
They sat.
“What do you want, Emily?”
“You were at her funeral. I recognised you. I found your letters. She didn’tShe held the seagull-engraved business card in her hand for years, never calling, choosing instead to keep the truth as buried as her mother’s letters.
