Postmarked
The letter arrived in her own handwriting. It described the night she spent in the Postmaster's bed, and the afternoon, seven days from now, that she died.
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The story
The story
The letter arrived in her own handwriting. It described the night she spent in the Postmaster's bed, and the afternoon, seven days from now, that she died. Obituary writer Mara Redmond came to Marlowe Cove to bury her aunt and inherit a post office. She found a locked sorting room, a two-hundred-year-old courier bound to carry the last words of the dead, and a second sealed letter with no name on it that her aunt wrote as she died. Rose had a warning too. It did not save her. A gothic romance about grief, control, and choosing someone with your eyes open.
Spice map
Where it gets hot
Heat, chapter by chapter. No spoilers, just warning.
The world
Know your way around
Character
- Elias Lowry
- A tall, ink-stained man with gray eyes and a nose broken once, who calls himself the Postmaster and has worked out of Rose's sorting room for twenty-one years. The estate records don't mention him, and the blue ink in one hand looks driven under the skin.
- Graham Weller
- Rose's estate attorney, silver-haired and polished, who meets Mara with the will, the keys, a locksmith already called and fish stew left on the porch. He is, as Mara reminds him, the estate's attorney and not hers.
- Mara Redmond
- An obituary writer for a Chicago wire service, called to Marlowe Cove by her aunt Rose's death to take over the estate, post office and all. The minute she crosses the post office threshold, a black-sealed letter arrives in its locked sorting room, in her own handwriting.
- Noah Pike
- Marlowe Cove's chief of police, a lean man with the patient face of someone who prefers facts before comfort. He tests a door twice before he trusts it, and when a letter appears out of nowhere, his first thought is to have it bagged.
- Rose Ellery
- Mara's aunt, seventy-four, who kept the town's old post office and was found at her desk on a Sunday evening by the neighbor whose pear tree she raided. The town paper's draft calls her private, dedicated and tireless, and she left everything to a niece she hadn't called in eleven months.
Place
- Marlowe Cove
- The steep, rain-soaked town a drive up from Portland where Rose was a beloved fixture. Its federal post office sits two streets uphill, and Rose's keeps a postmaster of its own.
- The post office
- Rose's old post office, shut since she died, with a sign in the window sending customers to the federal branch and radiators that tick without heat. Behind the public counter, a locked sorting room of black pigeonholes, brass markers and canvas mail sacks holds mail Elias calls undelivered.
Spoiler-safe. Only what you learn in chapter 1.
