The first time was her seventh birthday.
We had a party in the backyard. Eight little girls from her first-grade class. A cake shaped like a castle that took me two days to make. Pin the tail on the donkey. A piñata shaped like a unicorn.
Hannah was happy all afternoon. She laughed. She ran around. She ate three pieces of cake.
But every half hour or so, she disappeared.
The first time, I found her standing at the end of the driveway, looking down the street.
“What are you doing out here, sweetheart?”
“Waiting for the mailman.”
“The mailman already came today, honey. This morning.”
“Maybe he’ll come back.”
The second time, I found her sitting on the front steps with Mr. Hops in her lap, staring at the empty mailbox.
The third time, it was almost dark. All her friends had gone home. Mark was cleaning up the backyard. And Hannah was standing at the mailbox with the little door open, looking inside it, even though she knew it was empty.
“Hannah,” I said softly. “What are you waiting for?”
She didn’t turn around.
“A card,” she said. “From my mom.”
My heart cracked right down the middle.
“She’ll send one,” Hannah said. Her voice was very small. “She has to. It’s my birthday. Moms always send cards on birthdays.”
No card came. Not that day. Not that week. Crystal hadn’t sent a card on Hannah’s fifth birthday or her sixth birthday either. She wasn’t going to send one on her seventh.
That night, after Hannah was asleep, I sat at the kitchen table for a long time. Mark found me there around midnight.
“What’s wrong?”
I told him about the mailbox.
He sat down across from me and put his head in his hands.
“I called her,” he said. “Last week. To remind her. She said she’d send something.”
“She didn’t.”
“I know.”
I looked down at the table. I’d been thinking about it for hours. It was a crazy idea. Maybe a terrible idea. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah standing at that mailbox in the dark.
“What if a card came anyway?” I said.
Mark looked up. “What do you mean?”
“What if I wrote one?”
He stared at me.
“Laura. That’s… we can’t lie to her.”
“It’s not a lie,” I said. “Not exactly. It’s just… a card. Telling her that she’s loved. That somebody’s thinking about her. Isn’t that true?”
“But it’s not from Crystal.”
“No,” I said. “But Hannah doesn’t need it to be from Crystal. She needs to know that her mother didn’t forget her. And maybe someday Crystal will be ready to send one herself. And until then…”
I didn’t finish.
Mark was quiet for a very long time.
“If she ever finds out,” he said, “she might hate us both.”
“I know.”
“And the postmark. She’s smart. She’ll notice if it comes from here.”
“My sister lives in Tucson,” I said. “That’s Arizona. Same as Crystal.”
Mark looked at me for another long moment. Then he reached across the table and took my hand.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You know that?”
“I know.”
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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