The reversing alert shrieked through the cab at 06:47, which was, Sprocket decided, the precise moment she began to hate Throttle Hollow.
She slammed the brake. The van lurched, the parcel shelf rattled, and somewhere behind her rear axle, a sound rose resembling a disappointed grandparent clearing his throat.
"Och, lass. Two inches lower and you'd have knocked the paint off a man who stopped caring about paint around the same time Thatcher stopped caring about Wales."
Sprocket killed the engine. Through the wing mirror she caught the shape of it now: a green tractor, so old the rust on it had become load-bearing, parked exactly where every printed map insisted there was nothing but ditch. Its front grille bore a single dent shaped suspiciously like a Royal Mail logo.
"I am so sorry," she said, hauling the handbrake with more force than the slope required. "I did not see you."
"No one sees me." The tractor's voice arrived in a slow, philosophical monotone, each syllable placed with the care of a man arranging flowers at his own funeral. "That is the trouble with being green in a place this brown. You become part of the scenery. A hedge. A particularly tall dung heap. A Tuesday."
Sprocket blinked. "A what?"
The tractor's headlamps dimmed in what she chose to interpret as a smile.
"A Tuesday, my dear. Neither here nor there. Forgotten by Thursday. That is what I am. And that, if I may be so bold, is what your bumper has the texture of."
She unclipped her seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped down into the chill of a Throttle Hollow morning. The grass at the depot's edge was still silvered with dew. A rooster crowed somewhere beyond the oak tree, giving it the full performance, and a kettle whistled in a building she could not yet locate.
"Right," she said. "I am going to need that explained."
"Then come closer." The tractor's voice carried the unhurried certainty of someone who had been waiting six years for a visitor and was in no mind to rush her now. "The hearing on this make is not what it was. Neither, frankly, is the rest of me."
Sprocket walked around the van's rear corner. Up close, Rusty was a 1958 Massey Ferguson in a coat of paint so weathered it had become a question rather than an answer. Moss climbed his rear wheels in deliberate stripes. A bracket of lichen had colonised his left wing mirror. A small ceramic figure of a saint, half the size of her thumb, was glued above one headlamp.
She checked herself for sarcasm, found none ready, and said, "You must be Rusty."
"And you must be the new route driver." The tractor did not move, but something in his voice warmed by half a degree. "I have been expecting you since Tuesday. Or possibly last month. Time has been doing peculiar things since I stopped turning over."
"Your bumper," he added, before she could press further, "has the texture of a Tuesday. Which is to say, of something that belongs nowhere in particular, that no one has yet decided whether to keep or to throw out, and that arrives at its destination without anyone quite remembering why it was sent."
Sprocket pressed her tongue into her cheek. "That is the most unkind thing anyone has said to my van since my mother retired her."
"Your mother." Rusty's voice dipped into something almost tender. "Ailsa. Yes. I knew her well. She drove her first route in 1989 and her last in 2012, and in all that time she never once reversed into me. Though I did put a dent in her wing once, in '94, on purpose. We were both younger."
She could not tell whether he was joking. She decided to assume yes.
"Right," she said again, and looked around the depot yard for what she had actually come to find. The parcel she was supposed to pick up, the small brown one addressed in looping ink to a Mrs. Something in the next hamlet, was not visible. The yard itself was a wide gravel square bordered by low stone walls, with three open-fronted sheds, a weatherboarded office, a single petrol pump older than the independence of most countries, and one enormous oak tree whose shadow covered everything except, inconveniently, the place she had chosen to park.
"Where is the parcel shelf?" she asked.
"There is no parcel shelf." Rusty sounded faintly amused. "There is a wooden crate behind the second she'd, with a folded note underneath a brick. That is the depot's system. It has been the system since before I was painted. You are welcome to improve it, but I would advise against it. The folk here have long memories and short tempers about anything new."
Sprocket walked to the second she'd. There, exactly as described, was a wooden crate with a folded note underneath a brick. The note read, in neat block capitals: FOR SPROCKET. WELCOME. SIGN HERE. There was no signature.
She signed anyway, with the biro from her own pocket, and tucked the small brown parcel under her arm.
When she returned to the van, Rusty was still there, which was not surprising, given that he had not been anywhere else in six years.
"May I ask you something?" she said.
"You may."
"How does a tractor know what a Tuesday feels like?"
Rusty considered the question for what felt like a full liturgical season.
"Ah," he said at last. "Because I have spent many of them. Tuesdays are the days the milk lorry does not come. Tuesdays are the days the post arrives late and the bread arrives early and the two of them collide in the lane outside the Connors' place and nobody speaks to anybody for a week. Tuesdays are the days Piston, our new courier, takes the wrong turning and ends up in the McAllister's kitchen garden and has to be towed out by hand. Tuesdays are when the village breathes in. I have made a study of them."
Sprocket leaned against her van's front wing. The metal was cold even through her coat. "And you are saying my van is a Tuesday."
"I am saying your van is a Tuesday," Rusty agreed, "and that this is not, on balance, an insult. Tuesdays get things done. Tuesdays are when the washing gets hung out and the gutters get cleared and the small forgotten errands get run. Tuesdays are the spine of the week. Without Tuesdays, nothing else stands up."
She had not expected to be reassured by a tractor before seven in the morning, but there it was.
"Now," Rusty continued, in the voice of a man who had been waiting six years to deliver a particular sentence, "I believe I owe you something."
"You do not owe me anything. I reversed into you. If anything, I owe you."
"Strictly speaking, you reversed into me. But I had reversed into your lane first, in spirit, sometime around 2019. We shall call it quits."
From somewhere inside his engine compartment, a sound emerged. Sprocket watched, half alarmed, as a small drawer, the kind she had not known tractors could possess, slid open in the dashboard beneath his steering wheel. Inside, on a square of waxed paper, lay a single piece of chewing gum. It was pale green, almost luminous, and shaped with the careful geometry of something that had been pressed by hand.
"Dandelion petal," Rusty said. "Compressed, with a little beeswax, a little mint oil from old McAllister's still, and just enough sugar to keep it civilised. It is the village currency. One piece will get you a cup of tea at the depot. Two will get you directions you can trust. Three will get you a bed for the night at any of the seven farms on your route, and you will want one of those, mark my words, because the new B and B at the crossroads closed in March and nobody has mentioned it."
Sprocket took the gum. It was warm, which seemed improbable, and faintly sweet, which did not.
"Thank you," she said.
"You are welcome. Chew it slowly. It tastes of decisions made and unmade."
She put the gum in her coat pocket, next to the receipt for her van's last MOT and a mint she had been carrying since November.
"Right," she said for the third time that morning, because she was beginning to suspect it was going to be her word for the foreseeable future, "I have a parcel to deliver and a route I don't know and a van whose bumper, apparently, has the texture of a Tuesday."
"Yes," Rusty agreed. "You have all of that. And you have until half past nine before the Connors expect you, and the McAllisters will not be up until ten, and somewhere on the back road there is a dog called Magnus who will pretend to bite your tyres but will not actually commit. He is all theatre."
Sprocket climbed back into the cab. The seat creaked. The mirror showed her, briefly, a woman in a Royal Mail fleece with a parcel on the seat beside her and the faint impression of moss on her left cuff from where she had steadied herself against Rusty's wing.
She started the engine.
"One more thing," Rusty called, in a voice that had been carried, she suspected, all the way from 1958 without ever once being raised. "Treaty."
"What treaty?"
"The Chewing-Gum Treaty. Unwritten. Undated. As binding as anything in this village, which is to say, entirely. You have accepted the gum. You are now, in the eyes of the depot, the lane, and the seven farms, an honorary Tuesday. Do not let it go to your head."
Sprocket looked in the wing mirror. Rusty's dent caught the early sun, and for a moment the Royal Mail logo on his grille shone as if freshly painted.
"Drive carefully, lass," he said. "The first delivery is the one they remember."
She put the van into first, checked her mirror twice, and pulled out of the depot yard without reversing into anything at all.
The road out of the depot yard dipped, then climbed, and Sprocket let the van find its own rhythm in second gear. The parcel on the passenger seat shifted with every pothole, a soft thud of cardboard against the vinyl, and the heater exhaled its particular perfume of old dog hair and the lavender sachet Mrs. Henderson had tucked into the vents back in March.
Sprocket drove the way she had been taught, which was the way her mother had been taught, which was the way the original Throttle Hollow postmen had been taught in some vanished decade when the lanes were still cart tracks and the villages still had shops. Hands at ten and two. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre. Eyes up, mouth shut, radio off. The only sounds were the tick of the indicator and the thin complaint of a wheel bearing she had been promising herself she would report since February.
Throttle Hollow opened around her in pieces. A field of sheep, their wool catching the low sun like dirty cotton wool. A cottage with a cat on the wall, judging her. The sign for the primary school, its paint peeling in a way that suggested the letters were trying to escape one by one. She knew every one of these things. She had delivered to them for eleven years. She had, in some quiet way, become the road, and the road had become her.
At the junction by the war memorial, she turned left instead of right.
It was not the route she had planned. It was not, strictly speaking, the route at all. But Rusty had mentioned Magnus the dog, and the Connors, and the McAllisters, and somewhere in the recitation she had heard the word village square, and her hands had voted before her head could object.
She told herself it was efficiency. A parcel for the post office counter, perhaps. A stamped envelope someone needed posting. A perfectly legitimate reason to cut through the centre of Throttle Hollow on a Tuesday morning in early autumn.
The van's clock said half past eight. The square was quiet in that particular way English village squares are quiet on weekday mornings, when the shops are not yet open and the war memorial stands in the middle of the roundabout without anyone to commemorate. A few cars were parked along the kerb. A woman walked a terrier past the chemist. Somewhere, a doorbell chimed and was not answered.
Then the sound reached her.
It came from the far end of the square, past the pub and the bus shelter, a rising mechanical yowl that climbed and climbed like something trying to outrun itself. Tinny. Triumphant. Wrong.
Sprocket knew that sound. She knew it the way a cat knows the particular rustle of the treat bag. It was the sound of a small engine being asked to do something its manufacturer had never intended.
She pulled the van to the kerb. She did not switch off the engine. She sat, hands still on the wheel, and watched.
Piston came around the corner of the old haberdasher's like a missile with a personality disorder.
He was a courier bike in his twenties, all chrome and bad decisions, with a chipped rear spoiler that must have cost more than the rest of him combined. His paint was a kind of corporate racing red that had faded unevenly, as though he had been resprayed in haste by someone who had heard the word custom and misunderstood it. His number plate was a personal one. Sprocket could not read it from this distance, but she could see that it was trying too hard.
He was not, strictly speaking, breaking any laws. He was simply moving through the square at a speed that suggested he had confused Throttle Hollow with somewhere else, somewhere with straights and chicanes and a podium at the end of it. His front wheel lifted fractionally as he took the slope by the memorial. His headlight flicked on, then off, then on again, the way a strobe does when it has been asked to perform beyond its capacity.
Piston braked too late.
The handbrake turn, when it came, was more of a handbrake suggestion. The rear end stepped out. The front end disagreed with the rear end. For one suspended moment, the courier bike achieved a kind of automotive Schrodinger's state, simultaneously in the square and on the pavement and in the front wing of a navy blue convertible that had been parked, until that instant, in perfect peace.
The convertible was a soft top. The convertible was, by the look of it, older than most of the residents of Throttle Hollow. The convertible was also, very evidently, the property of a woman in a cashmere coat who was now standing on the kerb with a handbag raised like a weapon.
Piston's front wheel mounted the bumper. The bumper made a sound that was not, technically, a scream, but which carried similar emotional weight.
"Oh," Sprocket said, to no one.
The convertible's owner advanced. The convertible's owner was joined by the convertible's owner's friend, who had been sitting in the adjacent car and who now emerged with the particular righteousness of someone who has been waiting for an excuse. A third convertible, parked further along, contained a man who was already dialling.
Sprocket let the engine idle. She watched.
Piston was attempting to reverse. Piston was not reversing well. The sound of his engine, when he finally found reverse, was the sound of a small animal being asked to apologise.
Then a shadow fell across the square.
It was not, strictly, a shadow. It was a truck. A great long-nosed freight truck in depot blue, with a dented thermos lashed to the wing mirror and a cab that sat high enough to see over the rooftops of the smaller buildings. The truck did not so much park as occupy. It took its position at the kerb with the slow inevitability of something that had nowhere else to be.
The driver's door opened. A boot came down. Then a leg, then a torso, then the rest of Diesel.
Diesel was a truck. There was no other word for it. A long-haul rig in his prime, with a grille the width of a card table and a sleeper cab that could have housed a small family. He had not been a long-haul rig for some years. The accident, the one nobody talked about except in fragments, had done something to his back axle, and he walked now with a hitch in his right rear strut that he pretended was affectation and was not.
He straightened. He looked at Piston. He looked at the convertible. He looked at the convertible's owner, who had stopped advancing and was now considering retreat.
"Piston," Diesel said.
Piston stopped reversing. The courier bike's engine dropped to an embarrassed idle.
"Piston," Diesel said again. "I have a complaint."
"I, ah, I can, look, I was just, the turn was, the road was, technically, technically wet, and the, ah, the handbrake is a, it's a, look, I'll fix it, I'll, the bumper's only, ah, superficially, only superficially damaged, and I'll, ah, I'll write a report, I have forms, there's a, the company sends, the company sends forms, there's a whole, ah, a whole procedure, I think, I'm fairly sure there's a, a procedure."
"There is a procedure," Diesel agreed. His voice was the voice of a man who had spent thirty years on motorways and had heard every alibi ever invented. "The procedure is this. You will get off that bike. You will apologise to Mrs. Calloway, who owns that convertible, and to Mr. Peters, who owns that convertible, and to Mr. Singh, who owns that convertible and who is, at this moment, on the phone to the depot. And then I will tow your pride and your ego to the scrap field, and I will leave you there until you have learned how to use a handbrake in a thirty limit."
The square was very quiet. The convertible's owner had lowered her handbag.
Piston sat, engine idling, and did not get off the bike.
Sprocket watched from the van. She watched the way she had watched for eleven years, with the patience of a woman who knew that most problems solved themselves if you gave them long enough. She did not move. She did not need to move. The road was not hers to drive. The square was not her jurisdiction. The chip on Piston's spoiler was not her business.
And yet.
And yet there was something in the way he sat on the bike, with his front wheel still on the bumper of a navy blue convertible, that she recognised. She recognised it the way you recognise your own handwriting in a stranger's notebook. It was the particular posture of someone who had been told, recently and at volume, that he was not quite enough. That his paint was the wrong colour. That his spoiler was the wrong kind. That his number plate was trying too hard, because it was, because he was, because he had been built for somewhere louder than Throttle Hollow and did not know yet how to be smaller.
Sprocket switched off the engine.
She climbed down from the cab. She crossed the square at the pace of a woman who had somewhere to be and was not, technically, involved. She stopped three paces from Piston's rear wheel.
"I have a parcel," she said, "for the post office. Which is, as it happens, on the other side of your front tyre."
Piston turned. His headlight flicked. She saw the chip on his spoiler properly for the first time. It was a deep one, the size of a thumbnail, with the bare metal showing through like a wound.
"You can't park here," Piston said, "I mean, I can't, I mean, ah, technically I'm not, I'm between, I'm in a sort of liminal, a parking liminal, look, if you could just, if the parcel could, if you could go around, the, ah, the other way, there's a, I think there's a, a path, or something."
"I cannot go around," Sprocket said. "Because you are on the path. And because Mrs. Calloway is about to call the constabulary, and I would rather be at the post office when she does."
Piston looked past her at Mrs. Calloway, who was, indeed, reaching for her phone.
"Right," Piston said. "Right, yes, that's, that's fair, that's, ah, that's a fair point, the, the constabulary, the police, look, I'll, I'll just, I'll reverse, I'll, the, the handbrake is, it's a, it's a known issue, the company says, the company says it's a, a tolerance, not a fault, which is, which is corporate for, ah, for we know but we're not, anyway, I'll reverse."
He did not reverse. He sat, engine idling, and the square held its breath.
Sprocket stepped closer. She stood so that her shadow fell across his rear tyre. She spoke quietly, in the voice she used for the McAllisters' cat and for parcels marked fragile.
"My headlight flickers," she said.
Piston looked at her.
"It has flickered for two years," she said. "Every third or fourth time I switch it on. The left one. Not the right. The left one has a, ah, a, what did Tinker call it. A mood. I hide it. I switch it on early, when I'm still on the lane, so by the time anyone sees it I've already turned it off. Or I turn it on late, after I've parked, and claim I just arrived."
She straightened her cuff.
"I mention this," she said, "because you are not the only one in the depot who has a part of themselves they don't show in company."
Piston was still. The engine idled. The chip on his spoiler caught the sun.
Something in the courier bike's expression shifted. It was not a softening, exactly. It was more the way a wave changes shape before it breaks, a gathering of something that had been loose. His front headlamp, the undamaged one, held steady. The damaged one, low and chipped, seemed to draw itself in.
"Right," he said. "Right. That's, ah, that's, I mean, that's, that's not the same, my, my spoiler is, it's, it's a, it's a choice, it's an aesthetic, it's, look, it's not the same as a, as a flickering, a flickering is, is functional, is, ah, is mechanical, mine is, mine is just, just a chip, it's just, just paint, it's, look."
"It's a wound," Sprocket said. "And you keep showing it on purpose. Which is, I think, worse."
The square was quiet. Diesel had not moved. Mrs. Calloway had not dialled. The third convertible's owner was watching with the particular attention of someone who had forgotten why he was cross.
Piston's engine revved, then dropped, then revved again. He did not reverse. He did not advance. He sat, exactly, where he had been.
"Move your bike," Diesel said, from three lanes away. "Or I move it for you."
Piston moved his bike. He moved it the way a child moves when caught, in small, embarrassed increments, until the front wheel cleared the bumper and he could, at last, reverse into a parking space that was, technically, for loading only.
Sprocket climbed back into the van. The parcel on the passenger seat had slid. She set it straight. She started the engine.
In the wing mirror, she watched Piston dismount. She watched him bow, fractionally, to Mrs. Calloway. She watched Diesel approach, slow, deliberate, the thermos glinting on his wing.
She watched, and she drove on, and she did not look back.
She drove. The van's wipers ticked a slow metronome against the drizzle that had started somewhere between Mrs. Calloway's square and the turn onto Veering Lane. Sprocket did not turn on the radio. The parcels in the back rustled when she took the bend at the old smithy, a sound like someone shifting in their sleep.
Her hands were steady on the wheel. They always were. Eleven years of the same routes had worn the steering wheel leather to the shape of her grip, and the grip was the shape of her grip, and the roads were the shape of her roads, and that was how she liked it.
She passed the sign for Hollow's Bend and did not slow. She passed the rusted gate where someone had once chained a goat, and the goat was long gone, and the chain was long rusted, and she did not slow for that either. The parcel on the passenger seat ticked softly as the suspension worked over a pothole she should have reported three winters ago.
In the wing mirror, the square had shrunk to a grey suggestion, then to a smudge, then to nothing.
She thought about what she had said. About wounds, and about people who kept showing them on purpose. She thought about Piston's chipped spoiler, and the third convertible's owner, and the particular quality of attention he had paid when his grievance had become, briefly, ungovernable.
She thought about Diesel, who had not moved, and who had said, from three lanes away, exactly the right thing at exactly the right volume, and she thought: that is a man who has learned to wait.
She did not think about her own wounds. She did not have them. She was, by every available measure, unscarred. The van had dents. She did not.
The van laboured up the last hill before the depot. The engine coughed once, twice, then settled into a sulk that Sprocket recognised as the carburettor warning of a proper tantrum sometime next week. She patted the dashboard the way you pat a dog that has been told, repeatedly, not to bite.
"There you are," she said. "There's the good lad."
The van did not answer. The van never answered. The van had answered once, eleven years ago, on the first morning she had driven it, when the radio had come on by itself and played a song she had not known and had never been able to find again, and she had taken it as a sign, and she had not taken a sign since.
She pulled into the depot yard. The lights in the dispatch office were on. A mug sat on the sill of the window, which meant Rusty was inside, which meant Rusty would have a question, and a comment, and a story she had heard before, and she would not be able to leave for at least eleven minutes.
She cut the engine. The parcel on the passenger seat slid, again, toward the door. She set it straight, again. She climbed out, locked the van with the key rather than the fob because the fob had stopped working in February and she had not yet got around to having it fixed, and walked the long way around the bonnet so that her bootlaces did not catch on the broken step.
The dispatch office door was open. Rusty was sitting where Rusty always sat, on the stool by the radiator, with his tea and his hands folded and his eyes on the middle distance.
"You're back late," he said.
"Am I."
"You usually are, on a Saturday. But later than usual."
"Is that right."
"It is. Tinker rang. He wanted to know if you'd looked at the chute. He said you'd know what he meant."
Sprocket stopped in the doorway. The chute. The delivery chute. The chute that had been making a noise she had described, accurately, as a wet sneeze for the past fortnight. The chute that had, on Tuesday last, deposited a parcel not at the recipient's door but on the recipient's dog, and the dog had taken it personally.
"Tinker rang," she said.
"He did."
"At home?"
"He did."
"On a Saturday."
"He was at home. On a Saturday. And he rang. He wanted to know about the chute. Specifically."
Sprocket took off her cap. She held it in her hands. She looked at Rusty. Rusty looked at the middle distance.
"Right," she said. "I'll look at the chute."
"Tomorrow," Rusty said. "He said tomorrow would do. He said he didn't want to be accused of rushing you."
"Did he now."
"He did. He also said, and these are his words, that the chute had been making a noise that offended him on a spiritual level. I didn't ask him to clarify. I never ask him to clarify."
Sprocket put her cap back on. She picked up the parcel from the passenger seat of her van. She walked to the back. She opened the rear door. The chute was there, mounted on the bulkhead, with its feed tray and its hinged flap and its small brass plate that said, in Tinker's neat engraving, PROPERTY OF THE THROTTLE HOLLOW DEPOT, DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PAIN OF BEING ASKED TO REINSTALL IT.
She set the parcel on the tray. She closed the flap. Nothing happened.
She opened the flap. The parcel was, exactly, where she had set it. She closed the flap, harder. The parcel did not move. She opened it again. She pressed the small lever Tinker had installed for just this purpose, the one that engaged the auxiliary feed. The chute coughed. The chute clicked. The chute made a sound like a man clearing his throat at a funeral.
The parcel slid forward, into the dark, and did not appear at the recipient's end.
"Christ," Sprocket said, mildly.
She went round to the recipient end, which was the small door at the back of the van, and she opened it. The parcel was there. It had been there, it appeared, all along. The chute had, in its quiet way, been working. The noise, however, had not been the noise of a working chute. The noise had been the noise of a chute that was thinking about working, and considering its options.
She got the torch from the glove compartment. She shone it up the chute's throat. Something, at the back, glinted. She reached for it. Her fingers found paper.
She pulled. The paper came. It was not a parcel. It was not a packet. It was a letter. It was an old letter. It was a letter that had been folded, and refolded, and folded again, until it was the size of a thumb, and it was warm, and it was giving off a faint light the colour of weak tea.
She unfolded it, carefully, on the bonnet of the van. The light did not fade. It sat on the dark paint and made a small, steady pool, and the rain that had been falling all evening did not seem to fall on it. The droplets parted around the paper and ran off, and the paper stayed dry, and the paper stayed lit.
The writing was not handwriting she recognised. It was not handwriting anyone would recognise. It was, in some way she could not have explained, the shape of writing, rather than the substance, and yet it read:
To the one who carries what others discard, the road is longer than you think. The Postmaster of Throttle.
Sprocket read it twice. She read it a third time. She held it up to the torch. There was no signature beyond the line. There was no return address. There was no postmark, no stamp, no indication that it had ever been through any postal system she had ever heard of, including, crucially, her own.
There was no postmaster in Throttle. There had never been a postmaster in Throttle. Throttle had postmistresses, and postmasters for a brief and unhappy period in the 1940s, and a deputy postmaster for a single week in 1972, and then no one at all for the last decade except for Sprocket herself, and her mother before her, and her grandmother before that.
She refolded the letter. Her fingers were clumsy. She folded it twice, then a third time, and tucked it under the driver's seat, where she kept the spare fuse and the paperclip she was always losing. It sat there, giving off its faint tea-coloured glow, and she watched it, and then she stopped watching it, and then she watched it again.
She shut the van. She locked the van. She walked back to the dispatch office. Rusty had not moved. His tea had not been drunk. His eyes had not left the middle distance.
"Chute's clear," she said. "Mostly."
"Mostly," Rusty said.
"Mostly."
"Did Tinker mention anything else?"
"He did not. He said, and these are his words, that he would come by on Monday with a part. He didn't say what part. He never says what part."
"He never does," Sprocket agreed. She sat on the stool beside his. She did not ask for tea. He did not offer. They sat, together, in the warmth of the radiator, and listened to the depot tick and settle around them.
In her van, under the seat, the letter glowed on.
She did not tell him. She did not know what to tell him. She did not know, yet, what to make of it. The road was longer than she thought, and she had thought about it, and she had been right to think about it, and now she thought about it more, and the thinking did not help.
She drove home. She parked. She locked. She climbed the stairs. She set the kettle on. She sat at the kitchen table, in the dark, and listened to the kettle tick as it warmed.
The letter was under the seat. The road was longer than she thought. The postmaster of Throttle,
The postmaster of Throttle Hollow had a name, but it had never been important enough to learn. He came in on Tuesdays, mostly. He signed things. He drank from a mug that said WORLDS OKAYEST POSTMASTER, which Sprocket had always thought was unduly harsh on the man, since he had, by all available evidence, never wronged anyone. The mug was a gift from Rusty, years ago, and Rusty claimed he had not meant it as an insult.
The kettle ticked. Sprocket sat in the dark. The letter sat under the seat. The road sat between them, longer than she thought.
She did not open it. Not that night. She made tea. She drank it. She washed the cup. She went to bed. She did not sleep well. She woke at four, which was usual, and lay in the dark for the eleven minutes between waking and getting up, which was also usual, and in those eleven minutes she thought about the letter, and the glow, and the words on the envelope, and the long road, and then she got up anyway because eleven minutes was eleven minutes.
She went down to the van. She opened the door. The envelope was under the seat, exactly where she had left it, and it was still glowing, faintly, the colour of weak tea held up against a window.
She picked it up. It was warm. It was lighter than she expected. She turned it over in her hands. The handwriting was hers, or near enough to hers that the difference did not seem worth mentioning. The address was hers. The postmark was hers. The date on the postmark was a date that had not yet happened, and would not happen for another eleven days.
She sat in the driver's seat. She held the envelope in both hands, the way she had held her mother's first letter, the one from the depot, the one that said she had the job if she wanted it. She had wanted it. She had taken it. She had not, in eleven years, regretted it.
She opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper. The paper was lined, the way school paper was lined, and on it was written, in the same near-handwriting:
> Sprocket, > > The road is longer than you think. You were right to think it. > > On the eleventh of the month, take the van to the depot, but not the depot you know. Take the long way. Don't take the shortcut past the old quarry. Take the road through the woods. > > You will know which road. You have always known. > > Bring tea. Bring Rusty. Bring the fuse under your seat. > > Don't tell Piston until the morning of. He will only worry, and worry doesn't suit him. > > Yours, > S.
She read it twice. She read it a third time. She folded it, carefully, along the original creases, and put it back in the envelope, and put the envelope in her jacket pocket, the inside pocket, the one over her heart.
She drove to the depot. She parked. She locked. She went inside. Rusty was there. His tea was there. His eyes were on the middle distance.
"Rusty," she said.
"Aye."
"I need to ask you something."
"You always do."
"On the eleventh. Eleven days from now. Can you come with me on the route? The long route. The one through the woods."
He looked at her then. Properly. For the first time in a long while.
"The woods route," he said. "Why?"
"Because the road is longer than I thought."
He nodded slowly. He picked up his tea. He put it down again without drinking.
"I wondered when you'd ask," he said.
"You knew?"
"I knew you would. Your mother asked me the same thing, once. Twenty-eight years ago. I took her through the woods that day. We came back the long way around. She never told me what she saw. I never asked. It wasn't my business then. It isn't my business now."
"What did she say?"
"She said the road was longer than she thought."
Sprocket sat down. The radiator clicked. The depot ticked. Outside, the morning was beginning, grey and patient.
"Rusty."
"Aye."
"What is it? The woods. The long way. What's there?"
He shook his head. He picked up his tea. He drank, at last, a long slow mouthful.
"There is what there is," he said. "You'll see it when you see it. I can't tell you. I was there. I didn't see the same thing your mother saw, and I won't see the same thing you'll see. That's how it works."
"That's not very helpful."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't. But the tea is."
He poured her a cup without being asked. She took it. They sat. The morning came in through the window, pale and uncommitted. In her jacket pocket, the envelope sat warm and quiet, the glow fading, as if it had done its work.
In eleven days, she would drive the long way. She would bring Rusty. She would bring the fuse. She would not tell Piston until the morning of, because worry didn't suit him, and because some things had to be seen before they could be said.
She did not know, yet, what she would see. She did not know if it was a place, or a person, or a version of herself she had not yet met. She did not know if the postmaster of Throttle Hollow had anything to do with it, though she suspected, vaguely, that he might.
She knew only that the road was longer than she thought, and that she had been right to think so, and that on the eleventh of the month she would find out, at last, what waited at the end of it.
She drank her tea. Rusty drank his. The depot ticked. Outside, the world went on being the world, grey and patient, and longer than anyone thought.