After reading the letter, she leaned backin her chair and brought her fingers to her lips. The sounds from the newsroomseemed to be coming from someplace far away. She reached for her purse, foundthe initial letter, and laid the two next to each other on her desk. She readthe 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 aprivate, secret-filled moment.
She got up from her desk, feelingstrangely unraveled. At the vending machine she bought herself a can of applejuice, trying to comprehend the feelings inside her. When she returned,however, her legs suddenly seemed wobbly and she plopped down in her chair. Ifshe hadn't been standing in exactly the right place, she felt that she wouldhave hit the floor.
Hoping to clear her mind, she absentlybegan to clean up the clutter on her desk. Pens went in the drawer, articlesshe'd used in research were filed away, the stapler was reloaded, and pencilswere sharpened and set in a coffee cup on her desk. When she finished, nothingwas out of place except for the two letters, which she hadn't moved at all.
A little more than a week ago she'd foundthe first letter, and the words had left a deep impression, though thepragmatist inside her forced her to try to put it behind her. But now thatseemed impossible. Not after finding a second letter, written by presumably thesame person. Were there more? she wondered. And what type of man would sendthem in bottles? It seemed miraculous that another person, three years ago, hadstumbled across a letter and had kept it hidden away in her drawer because ithad touched her as well. Yet it had happened. But what did it all mean?
She knew it shouldn't really matter muchto her, but all at once it did. She ran her hand through her hair and lookedaround the room. Everywhere people were on the move. She opened her can ofapple juice and took a swallow, trying to fathom what was going through herhead. She wasn't exactly sure yet, and her only wish was that no one would walkup to her desk in the next couple of minutes until she had a better grasp ofthings. She slipped the two letters back into her purse while the opening lineof the second one rolled through her head.
Where are you?
She exited the computer program she usedto write her column, and in spite of her misgivings, she chose a program thatallowed her to access the Internet.
After a moment's hesitation, she typed thewords:
WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH
into the search program and hit the returnkey. She knew something would probably be listed, and in less than five secondsshe had a number of different topics she could choose from.
Found 3 matches containing WrightsvilleBeach. Displaying matches 1-3.
Locator Categories-Locator Sites-MariposaWeb Pages
Locator Categories
Regional : U.S. States : North Carolina :Cities : Wrightsville Beach
Locator Sites
Regional : U.S. States : North Carolina :Cities : Wilmington : Real Estate-Ticar Real Estate Company-also offices inWrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach
Regional : U.S. States : North Carolina :Cities : Wrightsville Beach : Lodging-Cascade Beach Resort
As she sat staring at the screen, shesuddenly felt ridiculous. Even if Deanna had been right and Garrett livedsomewhere in the Wrightsville Beach area, it would still be nearly impossibleto locate him. Why, then, was she trying to do so?
She knew the reason, of course. Theletters were written by a man who loved a woman deeply, a man who was nowalone. As a girl, she had come to believe in the ideal man — the prince or knight of her childhood stories. In the real world,however, men like that simply didn't exist. Real people had real agendas, realdemands, real expectations about how other people should behave. True, therewere good men out there — men who lovedwith all their hearts and remained steadfast in the face of great obstacles — the type of man she'd wanted to meet since she and David divorced.But how to find such a man?
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