I run into the house from the frameshop for a quick something to eat. Running by, I log onto Spinning, open my e-mail program, grab a bag of pretzels and a slice of cheese to settle a moment, read and eat. At the sound of the UPS truck slowing down I close out all open Windows, start for the kitchen door. The shop phone rings inside the house, I go back to answer it before the answering machine can pick up. “Good afternoon, Frame Artisan,” I say, then listen for a moment and reply, “I don’t know.”
Racing out the door I see the UPS truck pull away, passing right in front of my neighbor who is sitting in her car at the end of the driveway, across the road from her mailbox, withing twenty feet of my shop door, hanging up her car phone from her call to me. As I go inside my shop, she pulls out slowly, driving by just up a ways to turn around and pass by again to glide to a stop in front of her mailbox. A moment later, she turns back into her driveway, pulls back out and drives by the shop again, this time disappearing down the street.
Another day. Another “Did the mailman come yet?”
I don’t know. I don’t know if he has.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology