By the end of the day she had worked through most of the stack, and she was tired. She hadn't worked on her next column at all, and she felt the pressure building behind her neck, as it usually did when her deadline approached. At five-thirty she started working on a column about Kevin being away and what that was like for her. It was going better than she expected and she was almost finished when her phone rang.
It was the newspaper's receptionist.
"Hey, Theresa, I know you asked me to hold your calls, and I have been," she started. "It wasn't easy, by the way--you got about sixty calls today. The phone has been ringing off the hook."
"So what's up?"
"This woman keeps calling me. This is the fifth time she's called today, and she called twice last week. She won't give her name, but I recognize the voice by now. She says she's got to talk to you."
"Can't you just take a message?"
"I've tried that, but she's persistent. She keeps asking to be put on hold until you have a minute. She says she's calling long distance, but that she has to talk to you."
Theresa thought for a moment as she stared at the screen in front of her. Her column was almost done--just another couple of paragraphs to go.
"Can't you ask for a phone number where I can reach her?"
"No, she won't give me that, either. She's very evasive."
"Do you know what she wants?"
"I don't have any idea. But she sounds coherent--not like a lot of people who've been calling today. One guy asked me to marry him."
Theresa laughed. "Okay, tell her to hold on. I'll be there in a couple of minutes."
"Will do."
"What line is she on?"
"Five."
"Thanks."
Theresa finished the column quickly. She would go over it again as soon as she got off the phone. She picked up the receiver and pressed line five.
"Hello."
The line was silent for a moment. Then, in a soft, melodic voice, the caller asked, "Is this Theresa Osborne?"
"Yes, it is." Theresa leaned back in her chair and started twirling her hair.
"Are you the one that wrote the column about the message in a bottle?"
"Yes. How can I help you?"
The caller paused again. Theresa could hear her breathing, as if she were thinking about what to say next. After a moment, the caller asked:
"Can you tell me the names that were in the letter?"
Theresa closed her eyes and stopped twirling. Just another curiosity seeker, she thought. Her eyes went back to the screen and she began to look over the column.
"No, I'm sorry, I can't. I don't want that information made public."
The caller was silent again, and Theresa began to grow impatient. She started reading the first paragraph on the screen. Then the caller surprised her.
"Please," she said, "I've got to know."
Theresa looked up from the screen. She could hear an absolute earnestness in the caller's voice. There was something else there, too, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
"I'm sorry," Theresa said finally, "I really can't."
"Then can you answer a question?"
"Maybe."
"Was the letter addressed to Catherine and signed by a man named Garrett?"
The caller had Theresa's full attention and she sat up higher in her seat.
"Who is this?" she asked with sudden urgency, and by the time the words were out, she knew the caller would know the truth.
"It is, isn't it?"
"Who is this?" Theresa asked again, this time more gently. She heard the caller take a deep breath before she answered.
"My name is Michelle Turner and I live in Norfolk, Virginia."
"How did you know about the letter?"
"My husband is in the navy and he's stationed here. Three years ago, I was walking along the beach here, and I found a letter just like the one you found on your vacation. After reading your column, I knew it was the same person who wrote it. The initials were the same."
Theresa stopped for a moment. It couldn't be, she thought. Three years ago?
"What kind of paper was it written on?"
"The paper was beige, and it had a picture of a sailing ship in the upper right hand corner."
Theresa felt her heart pick up speed. It still seemed unbelievable to her.
"Your letter had a picture of a ship, too, didn't it?"
"Yes, it did," Theresa whispered.
"I knew it. I knew it as soon as I read your column." Michelle sounded as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders.
"Do you still have a copy of the letter?" Theresa asked.
"Yes. My husband's never seen it, but I take it out every now and then just to read it again. It's a little different from the letter you copied in your column, but the feelings are the same."
"Could you fax me a copy?"
"Sure," she said before pausing. "It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, first me finding it so long ago, and now you finding one."
"Yes," Theresa whispered, "it is."
After giving the fax number to Michelle, Theresa could barely proofread her column. Michelle had to go to a copy store to fax the letter, and Theresa found herself pacing from her desk to the fax machine every five minutes as she waited for the letter to arrive. Forty-six minutes later she heard the fax machine come to life. The first page through was a cover letter from National Copy Service, addressed to Theresa Osborne at the Boston Times.
She watched it as it fell to the tray beneath and heard the sound of the fax machine as it copied the letter line for line. It went quickly--it took only ten seconds to copy a page--but even that wait seemed too long. Then a third page started printing, and she realized that, like the letter she had found, this one too must have covered both sides.
She reached for the copies as the fax machine beeped, signaling an end to the transmission. She took them to her desk without reading them and placed them facedown for a couple of minutes, trying to slow her breathing. It's only a letter, she told herself.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted the cover page. A quick glance at the ship's logo proved to her that it was indeed the same writer. She put the page into better light and began to read.
March 6, 1994
My Darling Catherine,
Where are you? And why, I wonder as I sit alone in a darkened house, have we been forced apart?
I don't know the answer to these questions, no matter how hard I try to understand. The reason is plain, but my mind forces me to dismiss it and I am torn by anxiety in all my waking hours. I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.
I try to remember the way we once were, on the breezy deck of Happenstance. Do you recall how we worked on her together? We became a part of the ocean as we rebuilt her, for we both knew it was the ocean that brought us together. It was times like those that I understood the meaning of true happiness. At night, we sailed on blackened water and I watched as the moonlight reflected your beauty. I would watch you with awe and know in my heart that we'd be together forever. Is it always that way, I wonder, when two people are in love? I don't know, but if my life since you were taken from me is any indication, then I think I know the answers. From, now on, I know I will be alone.
I think of you, I dream of you, I conjure you up when I need you most. This is all I can do, but to me it isn't enough. It will never be enough, this I know, yet what else is there for me to do? If you were here, you would tell me, but I have been cheated of even that. You always knew the proper words to ease the pain I felt. You always knew how to make me feel good inside.
Is it possible that you know how I feel without you? When I dream, I like to think you do. Before we came together, I moved through life without meaning, without reason. I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step
toward finding you. We were destined to be together.
But now, alone in my house, I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless him, and I find myself wondering why--out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved--I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.
Garrett
After reading the letter, she leaned back in her chair and brought her fingers to her lips. The sounds from the newsroom seemed to be coming from someplace far away. She reached for her purse, found the initial letter, and laid the two next to each other on her desk. She read the first letter, followed by the second one, then read them in reverse order, feeling almost like a voyeur of sorts, as if she were eavesdropping on a private, secret-filled moment.
She got up from her desk, feeling strangely unraveled. At the vending machine she bought herself a can of apple juice, trying to comprehend the feelings inside her. When she returned, however, her legs suddenly seemed wobbly and she plopped down in her chair. If she hadn't been standing in exactly the right place, she felt that she would have hit the floor.
Hoping to clear her mind, she absently began to clean up the clutter on her desk. Pens went in the drawer, articles she'd used in research were filed away, the stapler was reloaded, and pencils were sharpened and set in a coffee cup on her desk. When she finished, nothing was out of place except for the two letters, which she hadn't moved at all.
A little more than a week ago she'd found the first letter, and the words had left a deep impression, though the pragmatist inside her forced her to try to put it behind her. But now that seemed impossible. Not after finding a second letter, written by presumably the same person. Were there more? she wondered. And what type of man would send them in bottles? It seemed miraculous that another person, three years ago, had stumbled across a letter and had kept it hidden away in her drawer because it had touched her as well. Yet it had happened. But what did it all mean?
She knew it shouldn't really matter much to her, but all at once it did. She ran her hand through her hair and looked around the room. Everywhere people were on the move. She opened her can of apple juice and took a swallow, trying to fathom what was going through her head. She wasn't exactly sure yet, and her only wish was that no one would walk up to her desk in the next couple of minutes until she had a better grasp of things. She slipped the two letters back into her purse while the opening line of the second one rolled through her head.
Where are you?
She exited the computer program she used to write her column, and in spite of her misgivings, she chose a program that allowed her to access the Internet.
After a moment's hesitation, she typed the words
WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH
into the search program and hit the return key. She knew something would probably be listed, and in less than five seconds she had a number of different topics she could choose from.
Found 3 matches containing Wrightsville Beach. Displaying matches 1-3.
Locator Categories--Locator Sites--Mariposa Web Pages
Locator Categories
Regional: U.S. States:North Carolina:Cities:Wrightsville Beach
Locator Sites
Regional: U.S. States:North Carolina:Cities:Wilmington: Real Estate-Ticar Real Estate Company--also offices in Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach
Regional: U.S. States:North Carolina:Cities:Wrightsville Beach:Lodging
-Cascade Beach Resort
As she sat staring at the screen, she suddenly felt ridiculous. Even if Deanna had been right and Garrett lived somewhere in the Wrightsville Beach area, it would still be nearly impossible to locate him. Why, then, was she trying to do so?
She knew the reason, of course. The letters were written by a man who loved a woman deeply, a man who was now alone. As a girl, she had come to believe in the ideal man--the prince or knight of her childhood stories. In the real world, however, men like that simply didn't exist. Real people had real agendas, real demands, real expectations about how other people should behave. True, there were good men out there--men who loved with all their hearts and remained steadfast in the face of great obstacles--the type of man she'd wanted to meet since she and David divorced. But how to find such a man?
Here and now, she knew such a man existed--a man who was now alone--and knowing that made something inside her tighten. It seemed obvious that Catherine--whoever she was--was probably dead, or at least missing without explanation. Yet Garrett still loved her enough to send love letters to her for at least three years. If nothing else, he had proven that he was capable of loving someone deeply and, more important, remaining fully committed--even long after his loved one was gone.
Where are you?
It kept ringing through her head, like a song she heard on early morning radio that kept repeating itself the entire afternoon.
Where are you?
She didn't know exactly, but he did exist, and one of the things she had learned early in her life was that if you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it. If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out you were wrong in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been.
But where would this all lead? And what did it mean? Had the discovery of the letter been somehow fated, or was it simply a coincidence? Or maybe, she thought, it was simply a reminder of what she was missing in her life. She twirled her hair absently as she pondered the last question. Okay, she decided. I can live with that.
But she was curious about the mysterious writer, and there was no sense in denying it--at least to herself. And because no one else would understand it (how could they, if she didn't?), she resolved then and there not to tell anyone about what she was feeling.
Where are you?
Deep down she knew the computer searches and fascination with Garrett would lead to nothing at all. It would gradually pass into some sort of unusual story that she would retell time and time again. She would go on with her life--writing her column, spending time with Kevin, doing all the things a single parent had to do.
And she was almost right. Her life would have proceeded exactly as she imagined. But something happened three days later that caused her to charge into the unknown with only a suitcase full of clothes and a stack of papers that may or may not have meant anything.
She discovered a third letter from Garrett.
CHAPTER 4
The day she discovered the third letter, she had of course expected nothing unusual. It was a typical midsummer day in Boston--hot, humid, with the same news that usually accompanied such weather--a few assaults brought on by aggravated tensions and two early afternoon murders by people who had taken it too far.
Theresa was in the newsroom, researching a topic on autistic children. The Boston Times had an excellent database of articles published in previous years from a variety of magazines. Through her computer she could also access the library at Harvard University or Boston University, and the addition of literally hundreds of thousands of articles they had at their disposal made any search much easier and less time-consuming than it had been even a few years ago.
In a couple of hours she had been able to find almost thirty articles written in the last three years that had been published in journals she had never heard of, and six of the titles looked interesting enough to possibly use. Since she would be passing by Harvard on the way home, she decided to pick them up then.
As she was about to turn off her computer, a thought suddenly crossed her mind and she stopped. Why not? she asked herself. It's a long shot, but what can I lose? She sat down at her desk, accessed the database at Harvard again, and typed in the words
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
Because articles in the library system were indexed by subject or headline, she chose to scan by headlines to speed up the se
arch. Subject searches usually produced more articles, but weeding through them was a laborious process, and she didn't have time to do it now. After hitting the return key, she leaned back and waited for the computer to retrieve the information she requested.
The response surprised her--a dozen different articles had been written on the subject in the last few years. Most of those were published by scientific journals, and their titles seemed to suggest that bottles were being used in various endeavors to learn about ocean currents.
Three articles seemed interesting, though, and she jotted down the titles, deciding to pick those up as well.
Traffic was heavy and slow, and it took longer than she thought it would to get to the library and copy the nine articles she was looking for. She got home late, and after ordering in from the local Chinese restaurant, she sat on the couch with the three articles on messages in bottles in front of her.
An article published in Yankee magazine in March of the previous year was the first one she picked up. It related some history about messages in bottles and chronicled stories about bottles that had washed up in New England over the past few years. Some of the letters that had been found were truly memorable. She especially enjoyed reading about Paolina and Ake Viking.
Paolina's father had found a message in a bottle that had been sent by Ake, a young Swedish sailor. Ake, who had grown bored during one of his many trips at sea, asked for any pretty woman who found it to write back. The father gave it to Paolina, who in turn wrote to Ake. One letter led to another, and when Ake finally traveled to Sicily to meet her, they realized how much they were in love. They married soon after.
Toward the end of the article, she came across two paragraphs that told of yet another message that had washed up on the beaches of Long Island:
Most messages sent by bottle usually ask the finder to respond once with little hope of a lifelong correspondence. Sometimes, however, the senders do not want a response. One such letter, a moving tribute to a lost love, was discovered washed up on Long Island last year. In part it read: