When Tink walked in with the mail, I was working at the kitchen table, where I often write if I’m not on the back porch.
Normally, he only opens “green” envelopes, which hold residuals from television shows he has written. Sometimes, the checks are for as much as $2.34.
On this particular day, he handed me the mail and said, “Hurry to the bank with that one for 78 cents.”
I flipped through the mail, setting aside bills and tossing out catalogs and junk mail, when I ran across a postcard. It was plain, without scenic sights, and it did not look like a reminder for a doctor’s appointment or vaccines for any animals.
It was addressed by hand. I turned it over to read the message, “Hi Buddy, This is a big day for you, and I wish I could be there to celebrate your 11th birthday. I miss you very much, and I’ll come home to you just as soon as possible. Count on that. Be a big man, and keep your spirits up until I return. Love, Dad.”
“How strange,” I mumbled to myself.
Standing at the sink and washing his hands, Tink asked, “What?”
I was so caught up in my thoughts that I answered distractedly, “This postcard.”
Turning it over, I saw that it had an unfamiliar male name. The address — the road — was one I had never heard of, and the town was a county over.
“How in the world did we get this?” I asked. “It’s not the name of our road, town, or ZIP code.”
In the lefthand corner was a return address with a small town in a state that sounded familiar to me. I thought for a second.
Rapidly, I typed the name in and discovered that what I suspected was correct – it was a prison. Not just any prison but one for death row inmates.
What the man had done didn’t matter to me at that moment. I was concerned about a little boy suffering through his 11th birthday, watching the mailbox, and wanting to hear from his father. He probably had no idea where his father was or what he had done.
All I could hear in the quiet of our kitchen was the sound of a boy’s heart breaking.
Tink’s eyes widened as I explained the card and where it had come from.
I shook my head. “It’s so sad. This little boy will never know that his daddy wrote him on his birthday.”
Suddenly, I snapped my fingers. “Wait a minute.
I know someone at this post office. Let me call her.”
I rang her cell phone, and she answered, seeing my name. She said, “Hey! What are you up to?”
“We have a piece of misdelivered mail,” I explained. “I have no idea how it wound up in this ZIP code.” I named the road. “Are you familiar with it?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, then told me where it was and which carrier had the road.
“We need to make sure this postcard gets delivered,” I explained the situation and read the card to her. “Do I need to drive it up to you?”
“No, just take it to your post office and have them put it in an official envelope that will come straight to me. I promise, I’ll handle it personally.”
Within an hour, I took the postcard to our local post office (where chickens are often seen pecking behind the loading dock), and Jamie, the clerk, was waiting for me. “I've got the call. I've got the envelope right here.”
As I told Tink later, “That postcard, with that incorrect address, could have gone anywhere, but it came to us. Most people would have thrown it away.”
But it came to the right place because a little boy needed a bit of cheer. We found him.
Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of St. Simons Island: A Stella Bankwell Mystery. Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free newsletter.