Something Borrowed, Something Bleu Read Online Free PDF

amazing mile-high blue that verges on purple. An arching lenticular cloud hovered on the far eastern horizon, but otherwise the sun beat relentlessly down upon pavement, flora, and fauna alike. Inside Dad’s Subaru Outback, I cranked the air conditioning as high as it would go.
Traffic on College Avenue had worsened since I’d lived in Spring Creek, but it still didn’t take long to get to the post office downtown. Only one other person stood in line ahead of me, and in no time I was talking with a clerk. When I told her about Bobby Lee’s letter being returned after eighteen years, she looked puzzled.
“Eighteen years?”
“My mother assumed it had been in the dead letter office.”
She shook her considerable mane of dark hair and squinted at me through thick eyeliner. “I don’t think so, honey. First off, we don’t call them that anymore. Now they’re Mail Recovery Centers, and if something ends up there it’s because it was undeliverable and couldn’t be returned to the sender. That return address is still the residence where your parents live?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then it would have been returned back then, not treated as a dead letter.”
“I see.” I wasn’t exactly surprised at this news, since I never really bought into the dead letter theory that seemed to satisfy my mother. Something about a letter showing up like that was suspicious—especially one that happened to be a suicide note. Over the years I’d learned not to trust coincidences.
“And,” she continued, “if it had gone to the Mail Recovery Center, it would have been opened to try and determine the identity of the sender and returned if possible. Or else burned.”
“Burned? You burn letters you can’t deliver?”
“Sure.” She leaned over the counter, and I took a step backward. “What would you have us do with them? Build a monument?”
“Er, no.” Sheesh. Settle down lady. “So what do you think happened?”
“Beats the heck out of me,” she said.
“Do you think someone might have an idea? Maybe your supervisor?”
She sighed, but disappeared into the back and returned with a portly man with a salt-and-pepper buzz cut and unfortunately large ears. He hooked his fingers through the belt loops of his dark trousers and hitched them up.
“Agatha here says you’ve got a question about the Mail Recovery Center.”
“Well, sort of. Actually, I’m wondering if you might have a theory about how this letter ended up being returned after eighteen years.”
Intelligence lit up behind his eyes. “Eighteen years? That might be a record. Let me take a look.”
I handed over the letter with reluctance, as if he’d take it and run away.
He held it up, turning it this way and that. “There are tales we hear every once in a while about letters that got stuck under a cabinet or a copy machine and then were found and sent on their way.”
“Do you think that happened here?”
He glanced at me. “Those are just stories. But sometimes they find letters in mailbags or machinery that hasn’t been used for a while.”
I perked up at that.
He shook his head. “But those items are stamped ‘Found in Supposedly Empty Equipment’ and sent on their way.”
“Really? You have a stamp that says that?”
“Yup. But lookie here. This was returned to …” He held the envelope at arm’s length and peered at it, ignoring the reading glasses poking up out of his shirt pocket. “… returned to Bobby Lee Watson back when first-class stamps cost twenty-nine cents.”
Now he put on his glasses and looked at me over the top. “I take it you’re not Bobby Lee.”
“He was my brother.”
My use of the past tense was not lost on him, and he nodded. “Ah. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” But I was distracted. The Bines had lived in the same house for several years after Bobby Lee died. Tabby had been there for at least another year, and after she moved into her own place her parents could have easily passed on any mail that came for her. But someone had handwritten the words Return to Sender on the envelope.
The post office