Thenext day, after calling the professor's office at Boston College to leave amessage for him that the payment had been sent, she went to work with her headspinning. The possible existence of a third letter made it difficult to thinkof anything else. True, there still wasn't any guarantee that the letter wasfrom the same person, but if it was, she didn't know what she would do. She'dthought about Garrett almost all night, trying to picture what he looked like,imagining things he liked to do. She didn't understand quite what she wasfeeling, but in the end she finally decided to let the letter decide things. Ifit wasn't from Garrett, she would end all this now. She wouldn't use hercomputer to search for him, she wouldn't look for evidence of any otherletters. And if she found herself continuing to obsess, she would throw the twoletters away. Curiosity was fine as long as it didn't take over your life — and she wouldn't let that happen.
But,on the other hand, if the letter was from Garrett . . .
Shestill didn't know what she would do then. Part of her hoped it wouldn't be, soshe wouldn't have to make that decision.
Whenshe got to her desk, she purposely waited before going to the fax machine. Sheturned on her computer, called two physicians she needed to speak with aboutthe column she was writing, and jotted a few notes on possible other topics. Bythe time she had finished her busywork, she had almost convinced herself thatthe letter wouldn't be from him. There are probably thousands of lettersfloating around in the ocean, she told herself. Odds are it's someone else.
Shefinally went to the fax machine when she couldn't think of anything else to doand began to look through the stack. It hadn't been sorted yet, and there werea few dozen pages addressed to various people. In the middle of the stack, shefound a cover letter addressed to her. With it were two more pages, and whenshe looked more closely at them, the first thing she noticed-as she had withthe other two letters-was the sailing ship embossed in the upper right corner.But this one was shorter than the other letters, and she read it before she gotback to her desk. The final paragraph was the one she had seen in ArthurShendakin's article.
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