cheerful and looping. She wrote that they had decided to stop in Vermont to visit friends and would return two days later than planned.

I remember feeling oddly relieved, like the house itself had exhaled.

Those extra days passed slowly. I carried the postcard in my pocket, rereading it during breaks, grounding myself in the familiar

curve of her words. When my family finally walked through the door two days later, they looked tired but happy—until they saw my face.

I teased them about extending the trip without

calling, holding up the postcard like proof. My father frowned. My siblings exchanged looks. My mother laughed at first,

then stopped. She told me they hadn’t sent anything. No postcard. No Vermont stop. They had driven straight back from Canada, exactly as planned.

The room shifted. My mother swore the handwriting wasn’t hers. My father checked the stamp, the date, the postmark. It was real. It had arrived when

I said it did. We searched the house together, opening drawers, flipping through trash, as if answers could hide in paper. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about how calm

I had felt when the postcard arrived, how it had erased my loneliness. It hadn’t warned me. It hadn’t threatened me. It had comforted me. That, somehow, felt worse.

Years later, I understand the postcard differently. I don’t believe it was a trick or a mistake, but I also don’t believe it was sent by anyone

trying to harm me. I think it was something quieter—an echo of expectation, a reassurance shaped like familiarity. The mind, especially a young one left alone, looks for patterns and safety.

It fills gaps. That summer taught me that comfort can arrive wearing the face of certainty, even when certainty doesn’t exist.

I still don’t know where the postcard came from, but I know what it gave me: two days of peace. And sometimes, that’s the most unsettling mystery of all.