Closing The Loop

Dear Miss Whitward,

I hope this letter finds you well. I apologise for its brevity; I am short of time. I am coming to New York. I land on April 17th. If I am welcome, I can come to you on April 19th. Please write to me in New York to confirm. Do not tell the family. I want to make amends.

Yours fondly,

Frank Whitward.

P.S. Please find enclosed a token towards my stay.

Maisee Whitward sat heavily on her bed and frowned, turning the letter over in her hands. It was, without a doubt, the oddest piece of mail she had received all year – not least for its delivery method. Who used a drone to deliver a letter? Where had Uncle Frank got the money for that? For that matter, what amends, and why was he coming to New York? It wasn’t as though he had a lot of free time lately. And furthermore… why send a letter instead of a text? And it wasn’t April.

All that aside, it was the oddest-looking letter she’d seen for a long time. Letters that had spent a month at the bottom of the sorting bag and been dropped in every puddle between here and England had seen better days. The box taped to the back of the letter had a distinctly… soggy feeling, and she couldn’t get the string on it untied.

Maisee grabbed her phone.

Hey, got your letter. What’s with that?

She began working at the string again while she waited for an answer, but it was no good. She was going to need scissors. Her phone buzzed before she could fetch them.

What letter?

Maisee frowned, tilting her head, and looked between the phone and the grubby bit of paper. She hoped Uncle Frank was… alright. Something felt really off.

About coming to visit? You’ll be welcome, but I’ll have to tell Mom and Dad. They’ll need to get groceries, and Dad will have to make up the guest room.

Another pause, and then I’d love to come sometime, but it’ll have to wait until after Christmas. I’m booked solid until then!

Maisee blinked at her phone. So… what’s with the weird letter, then?

A string of question marks followed, so she pushed the letter open on her bed to take a picture of it. The paper felt weird and stiff under her hands.

Um, that’s nothing to do with me!

Well, it’s got your name on it. She frowned, perplexed. Nobody else would call her “Miss Whitward” anyway – that was such an Uncle Frank phrase.

Definitely not mine. Where was it posted from?

He had a point there. If the letter was from England, it would have the relevant postmark. Maisee picked up the envelope and peered at the front. She hadn’t looked closely before. Her eyes fell on the address first.

Miss M. Whitward,

13 Brinley Pl.,

Wilmington, PH 19101

And there, up in the top corner, the postmark.

Southampton

5:15 PM

9 April 1912.

What the hell.

“Dad?” Maisee called, getting to her feet. “Dad, I got a really weird letter in the mail today.”

“Weird how?” He came out of the living room, frowning. “What’s up?”

“It’s from Uncle Frank, but he keeps saying he never sent it. The postmark says England, but… it says 1912.”

James blinked. “I know the mail service is slow these days, but that’s a little over the top, even for them.”

Maisee held out the envelope. “I’m serious. How can it have that postmark on it?”

“Well, it can’t.” He took it and frowned at it. “It’s some sort of fake.”

“Isn’t that a federal crime?”

“Did the mailman leave it?”

“No, it was dropped off by a drone like half an hour ago. It looks really weird, too. I mean, I’ve known Uncle Frank to use some scrappy bits of paper, but that could have been at the bottom of the Atlantic and not looked any worse.”

Her father frowned at the envelope and then peered at the letter. “Maybe misaddressed somehow…”

“How? It’s got my name on it. Well, my initial and my surname. Plus, how many people have an Uncle Frank coming to stay with them?”

“And Frank says he didn’t write it?” James looked nonplussed.

“No.” Maisee shook her head. “There was a little box wrapped up with it, but I can’t get the string off. I’ll grab some scissors.”

She headed into the kitchen, and then rejoined her father in the living room, where he had gathered the letter, envelope, and box onto their coffee table. In the better light, the items looked even worse for wear than she’d thought. The string came away easily under the blades, and she opened the box.

“Well, this is definitely some sort of prank,” James said, frowning when he saw the gleam of coins inside. “These are pre-decimal.”

“What’s that?” Maisee pulled out a coin and turned it over in her hands. British money all looked strange to her.

“Before 1971. Pounds, shillings, and pence. Those are shillings.” He nodded to the box. “And those are old pound notes. Not valid currency now, of course.”

“So… Uncle Frank is playing some kind of trick on us, right?”

“Well, I suppose.” James looked a little doubtful. “Though where he’s got old British money from, I’ve no idea. These went out before he was born. Long before then.”

“I’ll call him.” Maisee went to grab her phone, feeling a little strange. Uncle Frank had a good sense of humor, but this didn’t really feel funny. It was just weird. She snapped a few pictures of the letter and the strange money, and then sent them across and dialed his number.

“Why have you sent us a bunch of old coins?” she asked, when she heard him pick up.

“Maisee, I honestly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about or what you’re showing me.” He sounded baffled. “I’ve never handled a shilling in my life, and I certainly wouldn’t be paying to ship lumps of old metal to America!”

“You can see your signature on the letter! So unless I’ve suddenly got some other Uncle Frank who’s got access to defunct currency…”

“I will swear up and down that this wasn’t me. And that’s not my signature.”

“Come on, Frank.” James shook his head. “It’s a great joke and I’m really impressed with the postmark, nice touch – but Rachel is gonna want to know if you’re actually coming to stay so she can take some time off work and see you.”

“Folks, I am not kidding. I didn’t send you a letter. I’m in England, with no intentions of fording the Atlantic, much as I would love to see you all.”

Maisee and her father looked at each other. “Is there any chance I do have another Uncle Frank?” she asked, jokingly.

“Not a living one!” James shook his head. “It’s a family name, but nobody else in our generation got it.”

“Well, who last did?” she asked. “Maybe it’s a missive from the past!”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Yeah, delivered by drone…”

“It could be!” Maisee waved one of the pound notes in his face. “It would explain these!”

“Uh huh. Sure.” He sat back down. “Frank? Any other Franks you can think of?”

“Um, shoot, no idea. I think the last one would’ve been a great uncle of ours.”

“I don’t remember having an Uncle Frank.” He frowned.

“Yeah, he died young. 22, I think. Long before either of us were born. Probably before our parents were, too.”

Maisee picked up one of the shillings and tossed it back and forth in her hands. “Maybe he’s writing to us from beyond the graaaaaave.”

“Are you sure about that, Frank?” James rolled his eyes at her playfully. “I really don’t remember it.”

“I’m surprised. I remember my mother telling me about it, a little before she died. There was some family fallout, I think.”

“Wait…” Maisee grabbed the letter and frowned, peering at the narrow, loopy writing. Frank was right that it didn’t look much like his.

I want to make amends, it said.

She and James looked at each other again.

“Do you know when he died?” James asked.

“No. He disappeared in 1912 after an argument, and nobody knows what happened to him. He was logged as missing, presumed dead when they brought in the Military Service Act in 1916. The police investigations up to that point hadn’t turned anything up.”

“Wow.” Maisee frowned. “That must’ve been really… hard.”

“I think so,” Frank said. “My grandmother was only 17 when he vanished. She talked about him a lot. Told me that not knowing what had happened was the worst part. She hoped he’d turn up with the family in New York, since he was very fond of his niece, your Aunt Mary, but he never did. She never quite managed to let it go.”

Maisee glanced at the letter in her hand. Miss Whitward. And on the envelope… Miss M. Whitward.

It wasn’t possible, though. She picked up the shilling and tossed it again. All of this was coming from Uncle Frank. He was definitely trying to trick them. It was a good try, but she was onto him.

“So this Great-Uncle Frank… if he had been going to visit his family in New York, how come he never showed up?”

“Well, maybe he changed his mind. Like I said, there was an argument.”

Maisee raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, but why write and never come?”

“Perhaps Mary never wrote back to him,” James suggested. “Assuming we’re even on the right track… however implausible that may be.”

“Well, she couldn’t have written back to him, since she apparently never got this letter.”

There was a silence for a few moments.

“So something happened to the letter, then…”

“Yeah, it certainly looks like it,” James said, eyeing the envelope again.

“So we don’t know whether he even got to New York,” Frank said thoughtfully.

“No.” Maisee frowned. A few minutes ago, she hadn’t even known she had a Great-Great-Uncle Frank. Now, she wanted to wind back the clock and retrace his every movement. The writing on the page in front of her felt like it was tugging, pulling, teasing. She had to know more.

“We’ll call you back later, Frank,” James said. “When I’ve figured out how to prove this is some very elaborate game on your part.”

A loud sigh came down the line. “Well, good luck with that.”

And then he was gone, and it was just James and Maisee, sitting and staring at the grubby package between them.

“I suppose a lot of mail does go missing,” Maisee said tentatively. “Gets lost and delivered years late?”

“Not over 100 years late. No.”

“Well, you have to admit that it looks like it could have been in the mail for 100 years.”

“Honey, there’s no way -”

“So if Great-Great-Uncle Frank did come over to New York in 1912, just after sending this letter, how would he have traveled?”

“Well, there weren’t exactly passengers planes back then. It would have been by ship. Probably a big cruiser. Maisee, this is silly. You know Uncle Frank is just winding you up, right?”

“So if I find Frank’s name on a ship, will that change your mind?”

James sighed. “Why does it matter? It’s so long ago.”

Maisee said nothing for a few moments, looking out of the window. Half an hour ago, she’d been wondering what to do with her Saturday. She’d been planning a walk to the park, maybe buying an ice cream. She hadn’t been thinking about an uncle who had vanished when he was 22 – just 5 years older than she was now. She hadn’t been thinking about family members who had never got a chance to grieve. She hadn’t been thinking about how some things just… stopped. Unresolved. Unclosed. Unfinished.

“It would have mattered to them. Imagine just… sitting and waiting and hoping to hear.”

“That’s a long time ago now, honey.”

“Yeah. But it still happened.” She picked up the letter and moved to her laptop. “I wanna find out if he got here. Maybe he started a whole new life in New York, when Auntie Mary didn’t answer his letter. Maybe he made a family of his own, since he’d fallen out with everyone. Maybe I’ve got a whole string of cousins we don’t even know about.”

“Well, I hope not – not right before Christmas!” James laughed. “Think about all the extra work for Santa!”

“I’m serious, Dad. It’s crazy how easy it is to lose people.” She booted the computer and pulled up a search engine. “Think about all the things he might have done with his life when he got here. Or maybe he stayed in England and married a princess and became royalty, or perhaps he crossed to South Africa and went for adventures in…” She trailed off, looking at her search engine.

Beneath her hastily-typed passenger ships uk new york 1912 was the top result: Titanic – Wikipedia. 10 April 1912.

“Dad… what city was the letter posted from?”

He craned his neck and peered at the envelope. “Says Southampton.”

“Oh.” Maisee was silent for a moment, and then opened the passenger list linked in the article. It didn’t take long to search for his name. “Oh.”

James crossed to stand beside her at the computer. There was another silence as they both absorbed it.

“But then… what was the point. Why did the letter even…”

James put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m afraid sometimes life doesn’t explain itself very well, sweetheart,” he said. “Don’t be sad. Great-Uncle Frank would be long dead by now even if he’d never set foot on a boat in his life.”

“But they never even knew…” Maisee tried to imagine it. His parents, waiting day after day to hear from their son. The letter, the last little piece of him, lost in time, until it fell out in the wrong moment – into her hand. Too late.

“I’m afraid that’s a tragedy we sometimes have to live with.” James picked the letter up from the desk and folded it shut. “Life’s not like in books. We don’t get all the answers.”

“We… should call Uncle Frank back,” Maisee said, feeling dazed. “Tell him what happened…”

“Later, honey,” James said. “We’ll tell him later.”

Maisee sat quietly, looking at the sun falling on her knee through the window. It was a bright sun, but it felt unusually cold on her skin. The same sun had shone yesterday, and the day before that – and all the days before, stretching back like an endless picture through time, to the deck of a ship beyond the reaches of her memory, or her father’s memory, and even her grandfather’s memory.

He stood on the deck, but she didn’t know what he looked like. She didn’t know what he was doing there. He was her flesh and blood, and yet time had made him a mystery. A few blinks ago, she hadn’t even known he existed. How many more blinks stood between her and the other people of the past?

James was right. It was a long time ago. Just the thought made her head ache.

“You know, I’ve just realized something,” James said. She heard his desk lock click, and realized that the letter, the envelope, and the shillings had gone. He turned to face her.

“What?”

“Well, it seems like we did unlock a mystery, whether accidentally or through Frank’s machinations and sense of fun. It seems like you did get a piece of the past – a letter intended for another Miss M. Whitward, in another moment of time, from another Frank Whitward. An intention never carried out, but a little gleam of another life.”

“Yeah?” She tilted her head, watching him.

“Which leaves me with one question.”

“What, Dad?” She sighed.

“Who sent the letter to you?”