“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.