One box was marked letters; the other, deliveries. Both were empty when Ben inherited the house. His aunt had died alone, and he wondered whether the second box had served a business she never mentioned.
At the back of a cupboard, he found bundles tied in different colors. The letters were personal. The deliveries were books sent by a friend who traveled for work. Each book carried a note about where it was bought and why she might like it. The boxes had kept rain-soaked parcels away from envelopes, nothing more secret than that.
Yet one bundle contained a draft she never posted. She asked the friend to stop sending books about distant places and come for a visit instead. The next parcel contained a railway timetable with a date circled. Ben checked the guest book and found the friend's signature that summer.
He kept the two boxes when he repaired the gate. Inside the house, he put the draft beside the timetable. The arrangement preserved both the years of distance and the moment when somebody finally understood that another book was not what she wanted.