I was seventeen—old enough to crave freedom, young enough to be unsettled by silence. When my family left for Canada without me that summer, the house felt enormous. Every sound echoed. Even the clock felt loud. I worked mornings at a grocery store, ate microwaved dinners, and slept with the radio on just to feel less alone. They were meant to be gone for seven days.
On the seventh day, a postcard arrived. My mother’s handwriting curved across the front—warm, familiar, comforting. She wrote that they’d decided to stop in Vermont to visit friends and would return two days later. I remember the relief washing over me, as if the house itself relaxed. Those extra days passed slowly, but I carried the postcard everywhere, rereading it whenever the quiet pressed too hard.
When my family finally came home, they looked happy—until I showed them the card, teasing them for extending the trip without calling. The smiles faded. My mother said she hadn’t written it. My father checked the stamp and postmark. It was real. The date matched. But there had been no Vermont stop. No postcard sent. The house felt strange again, like something had shifted.
That night, sleep wouldn’t come. I kept thinking about how calm I’d felt when the card arrived. It hadn’t frightened me. It had soothed me. That was the unsettling part. We searched for explanations, but found none. The postcard had appeared, delivered comfort, and left only questions behind.
Years later, I don’t see it as a trick or a threat. I see it as something quieter—a reassurance shaped like familiarity. The mind, especially a lonely one, looks for safety and fills the silence with certainty. 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 strangest mystery of all.