Without Kevin, the house seemed strangely silent. It was tidy as well, though, and this somehow made it a little easier. It was nice to come home to a house and only have to clean up after herself once in a while.

She thought about the two weeks of vacation she still had left this year. She and Kevin would spend some time at the beach because she had promised him they would. But that left another week. She could use it around Christmas, but this year Kevin would be at his father’s, so there didn’t seem to be much point in that. She hated spending Christmas alone—it had always been her favorite holiday—but she didn’t have a choice, and she decided that dwelling on that fact was useless. Maybe she could go to Bermuda or Jamaica or somewhere else in the Caribbean—but then, she didn’t really want to go alone, and she didn’t know who else would go with her. Janet might be able to, but she doubted it. Her three kids kept her busy, and Edward most likely couldn’t get the time off work. perhaps she could use the week to do the things around the house she had been meaning to do . . . but that seemed like a waste. Who wanted to spend their vacation painting and hanging wallpaper?

She finally gave up and decided that if nothing exciting came to mind, she would just save it for the following year. Maybe she and Kevin would go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks.

She got into bed and picked up one of the novels she had started at Cape Cod. She read quickly and without distraction and finished almost a hundred pages before she was tired. At midnight she turned off the light. That night, she dreamed she was walking along a deserted beach, though she didn’t know why.

*  *  *

The mail on her desk Monday morning was overwhelming. There were almost two hundred letters there when she arrived, and another fifty arrived later that day with the postman. As soon as she walked into the office, Deanna had pointed proudly at the stack. “See, I told you so,” she had said with a smile.

Theresa asked that her calls be put on hold, and she started opening the mail right away. Without exception, they were responses to the letter she had published in her column. Most were from women, though a few men wrote in as well, and their uniformity of opinion surprised her. One by one, she read how much they had been touched by the anonymous letter. Many asked if she knew who the writer was, and a few women suggested that if the man was single, they wanted to marry him.

She discovered that almost every Sunday edition across the country had run the column, and the letters came from as far away as Los Angeles. Six men claimed they had written the letter themselves, and four of them wanted royalties for it—one even threatened legal action. But when she examined their handwriting, none of them even remotely resembled the letter’s.

At noon she went to lunch at her favorite Japanese restaurant, and a couple of people who were dining at other tables mentioned that they had read the column as well. “My wife taped it to the refrigerator door,” one man said, which made Theresa laugh out loud.

By the end of the day she had worked through most of the stack, and she was tired. She hadn’t worked on her next column at all, and she felt the pressure building behind her neck, as it usually did when her deadline approached. At five-thirty she started working on a column about Kevin being away and what that was like for her. It was going better than she expected and she was almost finished when her phone rang.

It was the newspaper’s receptionist.

“Hey, Theresa, I know you asked me to hold your calls, and I have been,” she started. “It wasn’t easy, by the way—you got about sixty calls today. The phone has been ringing off the hook.”

“So what’s up?”

“This woman keeps calling me. This is the fifth time she’s called today, and she called twice last week. She won’t give her name, but I recognize the voice by now. She says she’s got to talk to you.”

“Can’t you just take a message?”

“I’ve tried that, but she’s persistent. She keeps asking to be put on hold until you have a minute. She says she’s calling long distance, but that she has to talk to you.”

Theresa thought for a moment as she stared at the screen in front of her. Her column was almost done—just another couple of paragraphs to go.

“Can’t you ask for a phone number where I can reach her?”

“no, she won’t give me that, either. She’s very evasive.”

“Do you know what she wants?”

“I don’t have any idea. But she sounds coherent—not like a lot of people who’ve been calling today. One guy asked me to marry him.”

Theresa laughed. “Okay, tell her to hold on. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

“Will do.”

“What line is she on?”

“Five.”

“Thanks.”

Theresa finished the column quickly. She would go over it again as soon as she got off the phone. She picked up the receiver and pressed line five.

“Hello.”

The line was silent for a moment. Then, in a soft, melodic voice, the caller asked, “Is this Theresa Osborne?”

“Yes, it is.” Theresa leaned back in her chair and started twirling her hair.

“Are you the one that wrote the column about the message in a bottle?”

“Yes. How can I help you?”

The caller paused again. Theresa could hear her breathing, as if she were thinking about what to say next. After a moment, the caller asked:

“Can you tell me the names that were in the letter?”

Theresa closed her eyes and stopped twirling. Just another curiosity seeker , she thought. Her eyes went back to the screen and she began to look over the column.

“no, i’m sorry, I can’t. I don’t want that information made public.”

The caller was silent again, and Theresa began to grow impatient. She started reading the first paragraph on the screen. Then the caller surprised her.

“Please,” she said, “I’ve got to know.”

Theresa looked up from the screen. She could hear an absolute earnestness in the caller’s voice. There was something else there, too, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“I’m sorry,” Theresa said finally, “I really can’t.”

“Then can you answer a question?”

“Maybe.”

“Was the letter addressed to Catherine and signed by a man named Garrett?”

The caller had Theresa’s full attention and she sat up higher in her seat.

“Who is this?” she asked with sudden urgency, and by the time the words were out, she knew the caller would know the truth.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Who is this?” Theresa asked again, this time more gently. She heard the caller take a deep breath before she answered.

“My name is Michelle Turner and I live in Norfolk, Virginia.”

“How did you know about the letter?”

“My husband is in the navy and he’s stationed here. Three years ago, I was walking along the beach here, and I found a letter just like the one you found on your vacation. After reading your column, I knew it was the same person who wrote it. The initials were the same.”

Theresa stopped for a moment. It couldn’t be, she thought. Three years ago?

“what kind of paper was it written on?”

“The paper was beige, and it had a picture of a sailing ship in the upper right hand corner.”

Theresa felt her heart pick up speed. It still seemed unbelievable to her.

“Your letter had a picture of a ship, too, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did,” Theresa whispered.

“I knew it. I knew it as soon as I read your column.” Michelle sounded as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders.

“Do you still have a copy of the letter?” Theresa asked.

“Yes. My husband’s never seen it, but I take it out every now and then just to read it again. It’s a little different from the letter you copied in your column, but the feelings are the same.”

“Could you fax me a copy?”

“Sure,” she said before pausing. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, first me finding it so long ago, and now you finding one.”