Baked Scribe Flashback! Issue #21

She looked down at the creased letter on her bureau. It had been sitting there for so long, dust and grime was starting to collect within the deep folds of the paper. Dozens of fading yellow rings were visible where she had set her mug down onto it as a makeshift coaster. She gazed down at the grease stains on the corners from when she had reached over while eating and picked it up to look at it; to maintain some kind of physical connection with it.

Mariah had been over that night for her weekly dinner that turned into a crying session. She always expected Mariah to spot the letter; it wasn’t like she ever tried to hide it. But for some reason she never seemed to notice it. Was that fate telling her that she was doing the right thing?

Every day, Mariah spent at least an hour walking around the neighborhoods putting up fliers. She would nail them to telephone poles, place them under windshield wipers, ask local stores to put them up and on the weekends she would knock on people’s doors, taking care to come calling after dinner but before the 9:00 news. She did this without fail, variations of the same theme every day. Because her sister had never been found. No body meant that there was still hope.

Her sister could still be alive somewhere.

Over the past year, hope had been the cornerstone of Mariah’s own five food groups alongside anger, despair, denial, and resentment. The hope she clung to was the only thing that made the other four groups even palatable.

So who was she to let that hope be taken away? Mariah was her friend, wasn’t it her responsibility to protect and take care of her? Was it just luck that she had found the letter that day? She had no idea what had possessed her to go through Mariah’s mail but she had absentmindedly leafed through it while her friend was making lunch and had found this letter, unfound, tucked away between the penny saver and the apartment finder. The official letter. All reasonable leads had been exhausted. The case would be kept on file but barring a major breakthrough, a positive outcome was becoming less and less likely.

Every day, she debated whether or not she would give Mariah the letter. Was she hurting her or helping? And would their friendship survive the anger over he violation of Mariah’s privacy? It was possible that she always knew what she had to do really, it was just a matter of going through with it.

Hope heals all.

She couldn’t take the only thing left that was getting her up in the morning. There needed to be a reason to foster hope and all this letter did was rip it to shreds.

So she placed the letter in the sink, and reached for the matches.


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