Nicholas Sparks - Message in a Bottle

The caller had Theresa’s full attention and she sat up higher in her seat.

“Who is this?” she asked with sudden urgency, and by the time the words were out, she knew the caller would know the truth.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Who is this?” Theresa asked again, this time more gently. She heard the caller take a deep breath before she answered.

“My name is Michelle Turner and I live in Norfolk, Virginia.”

“How did you know about the letter?”

“My husband is in the navy and he’s stationed here. Three years ago, I was walking along the beach here, and I found a letter just like the one you found on your vacation. After reading your column, I knew it was the same person who wrote it. The initials were the same.”

Theresa stopped for a moment. It couldn’t be, she thought. Three years ago?

“what kind of paper was it written on?”

“The paper was beige, and it had a picture of a sailing ship in the upper right hand corner.”

Theresa felt her heart pick up speed. It still seemed unbelievable to her.

“Your letter had a picture of a ship, too, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did,” Theresa whispered.

“I knew it. I knew it as soon as I read your column.” Michelle sounded as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders.

“Do you still have a copy of the letter?” Theresa asked.

“Yes. My husband’s never seen it, but I take it out every now and then just to read it again. It’s a little different from the letter you copied in your column, but the feelings are the same.”

“Could you fax me a copy?”

“Sure,” she said before pausing. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, first me finding it so long ago, and now you finding one.”

“Yes,” Theresa whispered, “it is.”

After giving the fax number to Michelle, Theresa could barely proofread her column. Michelle had to go to a copy store to fax the letter, and Theresa found herself pacing from her desk to the fax machine every five minutes as she waited for the letter to arrive. Forty-six minutes later she heard the fax machine come to life. The first page through was a cover letter from National Copy Service, addressed to Theresa Osborne at the Boston Times .

She watched it as it fell to the tray beneath and heard the sound of the fax machine as it copied the letter line for line. It went quickly—it took only ten seconds to copy a page—but even that wait seemed too long. Then a third page started printing, and she realized that, like the letter she had found, this one too must have covered both sides.

she reached for the copies as the fax machine beeped, signaling an end to the transmission. She took them to her desk without reading them and placed them facedown for a couple of minutes, trying to slow her breathing. It’s only a letter, she told herself.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted the cover page. A quick glance at the ship’s logo proved to her that it was indeed the same writer. She put the page into better light and began to read.

March 6, 1994

My Darling Catherine,

Where are you? And why, I wonder as I sit alone in a darkened house, have we been forced apart?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, no matter how hard I try to understand. The reason is plain, but my mind forces me to dismiss it and I am torn by anxiety in all my waking hours. I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.

I try to remember the way we once were, on the breezy deck of Happenstance. Do you recall how we worked on her together? We became a part of the ocean as we rebuilt her, for we both knew it was the ocean that brought us together. It was times like those that I understood the meaning of true happiness. At night, we sailed on blackened water and I watched as the moonlight reflected your beauty. I would watch you with awe and know in my heart that we’d be together forever. Is it always that way, I wonder, when two people are in love? I don’t know, but if my life since you were taken from me is any indication, then I think I know the answers. From now on, I know I will be alone.

I think of you, I dream of you, I conjure you up when I need you most. This is all I can do, but to me it isn’t enough. It will never be enough, this I know, yet what else is there for me to do? If you were here, you would tell me, but I have been cheated of even that. You always knew the proper words to ease the pain I felt. You always knew how to make me feel good inside.

Is it possible that you know how I feel without you? When I dream, I like to think you do. Before we came together, I moved through life without meaning, without reason. I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step toward finding you. We were destined to be together.

But now, alone in my house, I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless him, and I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

Garrett

After reading the letter, she leaned back in her chair and brought her fingers to her lips. The sounds from the newsroom seemed to be coming from someplace far away. She reached for her purse, found the initial letter, and laid the two next to each other on her desk. She read the first letter, followed by the second one, then read them in reverse order, feeling almost like a voyeur of sorts, as if she were eavesdropping on a private, secret-filled moment.

She got up from her desk, feeling strangely unraveled. At the vending machine she bought herself a can of apple juice, trying to comprehend the feelings inside her. When she returned, however, her legs suddenly seemed wobbly and she plopped down in her chair. If she hadn’t been standing in exactly the right place, she felt that she would have hit the floor.

Hoping to clear her mind, she absently began to clean up the clutter on her desk. Pens went in the drawer, articles she’d used in research were filed away, the stapler was reloaded, and pencils were sharpened and set in a coffee cup on her desk. When she finished, nothing was out of place except for the two letters, which she hadn’t moved at all.

A little more than a week ago she’d found the first letter, and the words had left a deep impression, though the pragmatist inside her forced her to try to put it behind her. But now that seemed impossible. Not after finding a second letter, written by presumably the same person. Were there more? she wondered. And what type of man would send them in bottles? It seemed miraculous that another person, three years ago, had stumbled across a letter and had kept it hidden away in her drawer because it had touched her as well. Yet it had happened. But what did it all mean?

She knew it shouldn’t really matter much to her, but all at once it did. She ran her hand through her hair and looked around the room. Everywhere people were on the move. She opened her can of apple juice and took a swallow, trying to fathom what was going through her head. She wasn’t exactly sure yet, and her only wish was that no one would walk up to her desk in the next couple of minutes until she had a better grasp of things. She slipped the two letters back into her purse while the opening line of the second one rolled through her head.

Where are you?

She exited the computer program she used to write her column, and in spite of her misgivings, she chose a program that allowed her to access the Internet.