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In the Shadows

It was early October. The earth had turned far enough to hide the sun but it was still light and unseasonably hot as I turned y car into the driveway. I almost didn't stop at the mailbox but in the gloom I could see a corner of white, which was unexpected because the mailman had been before I had left that morning.

The envelope was thick, my name spelt out in neat cursive writing that I did not recognise, yet felt I should. There was no address, and no stamp. I was curious, but also tired, so I put it on the seat beside me and continued up to the house.

As was my habit, I put my key and my handbag on the hall table, my shoes under it, and slipped my aching feet into the soft slippers I kept there. The letter I left on the dining room table as I passed it, needing to refrigerate the perishables before the heat spoiled them. The kettle sang merrily just as I finished packing the groceries away so I made my cup of tea, helped myself to an indulgent Tim Tam' and finally, sighing with pleasure, sank into my easy chair.

I drank my tea as I studied the envelope that now lay on the little table beside me. The handwriting was unusual, too neat to be from a young hand, but the strokes forming the letters of my name Meghan Johnson were thick and perfectly formed, so not from so old a hand either. I have an interest in handwriting but, other than my own, or outside of calligraphy, rarely saw it as neat as this example.

My mother, dead these past three months, was the last to call me Meghan, my father having died many years before, and my friends called me Meg, so the writer could not know me. I closed my eyes briefly at the thought of my mother and waited for the feeling to pass. Not grief although I had felt that, for who wouldn't mourn the passing of their mother but more a sense of something undone, or not done. She had died suddenly, unexpectedly, and as a nurse I knew that the psychological effect of losing a parent could strange things so I didn't worry overmuch about it.

My mother had not been young 78 but I had been a late baby, born when she was 44, so I had no memories of her as a young woman. There were no siblings for me to share my grief with; apart from my friends I was alone in the world.

Opening my eyes, I turned the envelope over. There was no return address. I flipped it back over and wondered about the unknown person a stranger who, earlier today and unbeknownst to me as I went about my daily business, had been thinking about me, had sat down

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