Trying to stay calm, I took a closer look at the card myself. I’d been so relieved when it arrived that I never questioned the details. Now, I noticed things I had missed—the date stamp was smudged, almost unreadable, and the return address area was left blank. Still, the message felt so personal, as if the sender knew our relationship well enough to mimic her tone. I remembered the exact moment it arrived: I had been folding laundry when the mailman dropped it off with the usual stack of letters. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary then. But now, piecing things together with my daughter beside me, the harmless postcard suddenly felt out of place. Not threatening—just unsettling. Like a puzzle piece from the wrong box somehow ending up on our table.
Over the next few days, I gently reached out to neighbors, friends, and even our longtime mail carrier, asking if anyone had sent postcards recently or seen something unusual around that time. No one knew anything. Our mail carrier did mention one detail, though—he vaguely remembered the postcard because it looked “a little old-fashioned,” as if it had been tucked away somewhere before being mailed. That comment stayed with me. That night, unable to sleep, I went through an old box of family belongings looking for some kind of explanation. And there it was, tucked beneath a stack of my late mother’s holiday cards: another postcard from the same roadside attraction, identical except for the message. It must have been from a childhood trip I barely remembered. Someone—likely my mother long ago—had bought a pack of them. The one I received had simply been one of the unused cards from that set. Continue reading…
