The note came out with the leaves when the pool was drained. It had been sealed in a plastic sleeve and weighted with a coin. Meet me where the sky is upside down, it said. The motel owner, Luis, assumed it belonged to a child's game.
The handwriting matched a postcard displayed behind reception. Its sender had stayed every summer with his wife until his death. Luis called her, expecting her to dismiss the note as another joke. She asked whether the coin was foreign, then described it before he answered.
Her husband had proposed beside that pool and later tried to recreate the evening. She had missed the clue, and he never admitted arranging it. Years afterward, the coin lay beneath layers of ordinary summer debris, preserving a second invitation nobody had accepted.
Luis photographed the reflected sky before the pool emptied completely. He sent the photograph with the note and coin. The widow replied that she preferred this ending: an invitation arriving late, still recognizable, without requiring her to pretend she could return to the person she had been when it was written.