Mildred Butterworth's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Three weeks after Aj mailed the letter, a knock came at the cottage door. Mildred sat up from her chair. The knock was small, quick, the way Aj always knocked. Her heart lifted, then went tight. She had waited every day for word. Now word had come. Aj stepped in without waiting, as she always did. She held something in both hands, close to her chest, the way she once held the striped cat. She did not smile. Her large eyes stayed low. "It came back," Aj said softly. She set the envelope on the table. "They sent our own letter back. It never got opened." Mildred reached for it. The paper felt stiff and cold under her fingers. She lifted it an inch from her glasses and saw only a blur. "Read it," she whispered. "Read what they wrote." "There's a mark on the front," Aj said. She traced it with one finger. "It says no such person at this address. Someone crossed out the name." Mildred's hands shook. Sixty years she had held that name. Now a stranger had crossed it out. "So she's gone," she said. "Or moved. Or died. And I have no way to know which." Aj knelt beside the chair. She took Mildred's cold hands in her own. "I asked the postman before I came," she said. "He said the town is small. He said sometimes old letters get returned when the house changes hands. He said a person can still live nearby." "But we don't know where," Mildred said. Her voice broke. "The trail is dead. That was my only thread." Aj was quiet a moment. Then she reached into her dress pocket and drew out the old photograph. She turned it over and studied the faded ink again, slow and careful. "There's more here than a name," Aj said. "Under the town, there's smaller writing. I missed it before. It says a church. Saint something. The word is worn, but I can make out part." Mildred's breath caught. "A church?" "Churches keep records," Aj said. "Births. Marriages. Deaths. If she lived there, the church would know her." She looked up, and for the first time her sad eyes held something bright. "I can write to the church. Not the house. The church." Mildred gripped the girl's hands hard. The returned letter lay dead on the table. But in Aj's fingers the photograph held a new road. "You'd try again?" Mildred asked. "After it came back empty?" "I'd give you the world," Aj said. "One dead letter doesn't stop me." Mildred pressed the girl's hands to her cheek. The old address was closed to her forever. But the church was open. Tomorrow Aj would write again, to a place that kept the names of the living and the dead.