The Postcard Man

The Postcard Man

When a lonely postman receives a letter no living soul should have written…

Harold Linton had spent thirty-four years delivering other people’s words birthday wishes, overdue bills, postcards from places he had never seen. But since his wife, Eleanor, passed away two winters ago, the world had grown unbearably silent. His small cottage felt like a hallway that no longer led anywhere. Even the radio, once Eleanor’s constant companion, crackled now with an emptiness he couldn’t stand.

He still went to work, sorting envelopes, stamping parcels, carrying his faded blue satchel door to door. People in the village greeted him kindly enough, but kindness wasn’t the same as company. When Harold returned home each night, he found himself glancing at the mailbox out of habit half hoping for a letter, half afraid of proving once again that none would come.

Then one evening, while sorting undelivered mail at the office, he found a stack of envelopes with names so smudged or addresses so wrong that they had no hope of reaching anyone. Usually these were shredded, but something in Harold tightened at the idea. These were words meant for someone. Words that would vanish unread.

He slipped a handful into his coat pocket.

That night, he opened them one by one. A birthday card that had lost its address label. A letter from a son stationed overseas. A postcard from a honeymooning couple who had probably returned home months ago. They weren’t his words, but they were pieces of lives, fragments of connection.

Loneliness has a peculiar way of rewriting rules.

By midnight, Harold had taken out his old stationery set the one Eleanor had given him for their tenth anniversary and began writing back.

He chose a name from an undelivered letter Margaret Halley. He crafted a gentle, harmless note:

Hello Margaret,

I hope this letter finds you well. I don’t know you, but I wanted to share a small brightness in case you needed it today…

He didn’t ask anything of her. He didn’t reveal himself. He just wrote.

Then he wrote another. And another. Not expecting replies perhaps not even wanting them. The act of writing felt like speaking again.

For weeks, he continued this quiet ritual: selecting a name, sending a kindness into the world, imagining someone smiling at the unexpected envelope.

But one afternoon, while emptying his mailbox, he froze.

There was an envelope addressed to him.

No return address.

Just his name, written in handwriting he hadn’t seen in two years.

Eleanor’s handwriting.

His hands trembled as he tore it open.

Hello Harold,

You sound lonely these days. I’ve missed you too.

Write back, won’t you? It feels like old times…

Harold sat down on his front steps, the late sun washing over him in blurred gold.

Someone was responding. Someone who knew him. Someone who dared to imitate Eleanor or worse, claimed to be her.

He wrote back that night, cautiously:

Who are you? How do you know my wife’s handwriting?

The reply came three days later.

Harold,

It’s me. I never left you. You’re writing letters to strangers, but I’m still here. Let me keep you company.

A chill settled in his chest. The letters grew more intimate, echoing memories only Eleanor should have known things about their garden, their holidays, the way she used to hum when nervous. Details Harold had never spoken aloud.

Each new letter seemed torn between comfort and dread. A part of him wanted to believe in miracles. A grieving heart is a fragile thing.

But Harold was a postman a man of sorting, logic, and accuracy.

Someone had access to the undelivered mailroom. Someone had found the letters he’d written. Someone knew enough to imitate a ghost.

He set a simple trap: he wrote a final letter, mentioning a detail only Eleanor and he had shared a code word they’d invented during their first year of marriage.

If the writer repeated it, then the illusion would finally shatter.

The response arrived at dusk:

Of course I remember, Harold. I always will.

Eleanor

Harold closed the letter gently, as if holding something fragile.

Then he smiled a sad, knowing smile.

Whoever was writing these letters wasn’t his wife.

But they were someone who cared enough to keep him company. Someone who saw his loneliness and answered it.

For the first time in years, he felt a strange warmth.

Not the past returning…

but the future knocking.

He picked up his pen.

If you want to keep writing, he wrote,

I’d like that very much.