**Three Letters Without a Return Address**
The air was still, not a whisper of wind, nor a rustle of leaves, nor the song of a single bird—as though nature itself had slipped into eternal slumber. The mourners stood silent around the open casket and the gaping grave beside it. Mary held her father’s arm as he stood hunched and lost, his gaze fixed on her mother’s face.
Nearby stood her parents’ old friends, Margaret and her husband, Vincent. Mary had known them since childhood, always addressing them by their first names. Margaret dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief while Vincent stared blankly into the distance. Across from them stood three of her mother’s colleagues, their noses reddened, their eyes swollen with tears. Strangers, too, had come—people Mary had never met, but their presence meant they had known her mother.
No one approached the casket now. The farewells had been said at the mortuary, the prayers murmured there. They simply waited for the ceremony’s end.
Mary’s gaze found the gravediggers. The older one, perhaps foreman, caught her eye—*Is it time?*—and she gave the faintest nod. They lifted the coffin lid from where it leaned against a tree and stepped forward.
“Everyone said their goodbyes? We’ll close it now,” the foreman said.
Then, a quiet but commanding voice:
“Wait.”
Every head turned toward the speaker—a tall, broad-shouldered man in a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat. The workers hesitated as he approached. He laid two white roses upon the casket and rested his palm over her mother’s folded hands, as if to warm them. For long minutes, he stood there while the others watched, wondering who he was. One of the gravediggers coughed, urging him on. The stranger stepped back, and the lid was secured, the casket lowered. Mary was the first to scatter a handful of earth.
As the men shoveled dirt into the grave, Mary searched for the man in the hat—but he had vanished. When the cross and wreaths were set upon the fresh mound, the mourners trailed toward the cemetery gates. Mary and her father lingered a while longer.
“Dad, let’s go,” she said, and he let her lead him away.
All the way home, she puzzled over the stranger. He had arrived unnoticed and slipped away just as quietly. His face had been hidden beneath his hat, but she had glimpsed a clean-shaven chin and perhaps glasses—though she wasn’t certain.
The wake was held in a café near their house. Mary couldn’t eat. She was exhausted, desperate for it all to end. At last, the guests departed. She and her father left last, Mary clutching her mother’s framed portrait—identical to the one left on the grave—while steadying her father’s unsteady steps.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
He only nodded.
“Dad, who was that man at the cemetery?”
“How should I know?”
There was an edge in his voice. They walked the rest of the way in silence. The flat smelled of medicine and illness, despite the open windows. Her father collapsed onto the sofa, eyes closed. Mary draped a blanket over him and sat beside him, her gaze drifting to the bedroom where her mother had spent her final days. *”She’s at peace now,”* Mary repeated the words nearly everyone had said at the funeral. Peace. Her mother, free from pain; Mary, from the dread of waiting; her father, from helplessness.
Tears welled. She fled to the kitchen, buried her face in her arms, and wept.
Days passed. The sharpness of grief dulled. Mary cleared away the reminders of her mother’s illness, returned to university, but felt hollow.
Her father moved like an old man, shuffling in his slippers, silent. His silence grated on her. Did he think his loss was greater than hers? She had buried her mother. The weight of the house, of caring for him, fell on her shoulders alone.
“Dad, what should we do with Mum’s clothes?” she asked one day, just to force him to speak.
“I don’t know. Give them away.”
Easy to say. To whom? That weekend, she sorted through them. The newer items she kept for later; the worn-out ones she bundled for the bin. It felt strange, discarding them—not sad, just uneasy.
Her mother’s shoes didn’t fit her either. She left the old pairs by the bins, hoping someone might take them. Then, in one box, she found pristine white pumps. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them out. Trying them on—too big—she noticed three yellowed envelopes tucked beneath, postmarked twenty years ago. Two were addressed to her mother, a month apart; the third, two years later. None had a return address.
Why had her mother hidden them? Why keep them at all? Reading them was wrong—but her mother was gone. Perhaps the sender was, too. Mary kept glancing at the envelopes as she worked.
She couldn’t rest until she knew. If they held a secret, her mother wouldn’t have saved them. Maybe she’d left them to be found. They hadn’t been hidden well. Forgotten, perhaps? If the box had held only old shoes, Mary would have tossed it unopened.
She reasoned her mother had placed the letters there deliberately, never guessing her daughter’s feet would be smaller. Resolved, Mary opened the first.
*…You are my happiness. I’ve scarcely left, and already I miss you terribly… Thank you for being in my life. I think of you constantly, I love you…*
A lover’s letter, a farewell.
The second:
*…I feared this, yet expected it. 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 won’t be alone, you’ll marry. Still, the choice is yours… If you keep the child, let me know. I’ll send money. Don’t be proud, don’t refuse. It’s the least I can do. Forgive me…*
More words of love, regret for time lost, for meeting too late.
The third:
*…I’m at fault, I don’t deny it. But what’s done is done… You named her Mary? I’m leaving. I don’t know when—or if—I’ll return… Live! You’re free! Don’t wait, don’t look back. It’s better this way. Promise you’ll keep our secret. Burn these letters. Thank you for being in my life…*
None were signed. Only the last bore a small mark—a bird in flight.
So her father wasn’t her father. There was another. Her mother had loved someone before, borne his child—her. Straight out of a spy novel. Important, perhaps, if he wouldn’t sign his name. That bird—*I’m flying away, goodbye.* Why hadn’t her mother burned them? Couldn’t? Forgot?
And what now? Without these letters, she’d never have known. *But so what? He’s my father in every way that matters. He worried over me, sat by my bed when I was ill, scolded me when he caught me smoking… That other man? A stranger. He abandoned her. Never cared how she fared.*
Mary tucked the letters into her drawer, beneath her clothes. Her father would never look there.
Her parents had rarely argued. She’d never doubted he was hers. He’d loved her mother, loved her. Grieved deeply now. Her mother, before illness, had been beautiful. Mary looked nothing like her—nor like her father. Why had she never noticed?
She resolved to say nothing. He had no one left but her. If she revealed the truth, she’d take even that from him.
She thought of the man at the cemetery. *Could it have been him? Come to say goodbye? Then he did love her. But why hide? Some celebrity? So many secrets. Oh, Mum, you sly thing.*
Mary was in her fourth year when a prestigious magazine celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a grand event. Their journalism faculty received a handful of invitations.
One, plus a guest, went to Cyril, already making a name for himself, his bylines in papers. They’d only just begun dating.
“Fancy going?” he asked, waving the ticket.
“Need you ask?” she laughed.
The ballroom glittered with celebrities. Mary’s eyes shone. Waiters wove through the crowd with champagne. Speeches brimmed with praise.
A poster bore the magazine’s logo—an open journal, a fluttering page shaped like a bird in flight. The same as on the invitation. Something nagged at Mary.
“Excuse me, what does the logo mean?” she asked a passerby.
“The seagull—the magazine’s symbol. Didn’t you know? Founded by Jonathan Seagull. You’ve heard of him? Really, one should know such men. There he is, actually.”Mary slipped the business card into her pocket unread, knowing some truths were better left undisturbed.
