Nicholas
Gordon is stuck in a rut. Day in and day out he does the same thing, deliver
the mail, do errands and hang at home—alone. It’s been the same since he left
high school nearly five years ago. He’d never been able to push himself outside
the self-imposed box of shyness he lived in, too afraid to be ridiculed and
hurt, or worse, rejected as worthless. His parent’s certainly thought he was
worthless, they’d said it enough times.
Nic
knew lots of people—through their mail. He knew Mrs. Farnsman had a daughter in
prison because he’d seen the letters with the return name and address. He was
aware that Mr. and Mrs. Carnilton’s son was serving in Afghanistan and had been
there for about eight months. It was obvious Mrs. Davenport was having an
affair on her husband, though that was because he’d seen the man coming and
going from the house when Mr. Davenport was out of town, not from the scarce
mail they received.
Mrs. Pulman was caught up in a money scandal
based on the mail she received. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly looked as if they were
thinking of buying a condo in Malibu from the multiple brochures they received
and Mr. Kerns was either going to surprise his wife, or was planning with his
wife, an Alaskan cruise. The Fienstens at the end of the block kind of scared
Nic since most of the mail they received looked to be credit cards—a lot of
them. He wondered if they were in some kind of identity theft ring.
Of
course, none of it mattered since it was against federal law to tamper with the
U.S. mail and Nic wouldn’t contemplate such a thing anyway. Authority figures
terrified him, always had. He was shaking in his shoes whenever Officer Daley
drove by, slowing down to stare at Nic as if he were a criminal and not
supposed to be in the neighborhood, despite his very prominent mailman’s
uniform.
Nic
only wished he had the courage to stare back, because—oh my stars and puppy dog ears—but Officer Bridger Daley was every
fantasy Nic had ever had in his lonely life.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
No comments:
Post a Comment