The Postcard That Arrived Twenty Years Late

The postcard slid out of the mail stack like a ghost.

It didn’t belong—nestled between a gas bill and a garish coupon flyer, its edges were curled, the paper soft from being touched too often. The handwriting on the front stopped Mara cold. Loops and flourishes, the kind she’d memorized as a child when she’d copy her sister’s cursive in the margins of her school notebooks.

Her sister’s handwriting.

Lila.

The last time Mara had seen her was October 2005—rain hammering the kitchen windows, thunder rumbling low like a warning. Lila stood by the door, a red suitcase at her feet, coat collar turned up.

“Where are you going?” Mara asked.

“Away for a while.”

A taxi idled outside, headlights cutting across the living room.

“You’ll call?”

“I’ll call,” Lila promised.

She never did.

Mara had searched for her for years—trawling Facebook, contacting old friends, even paying a private investigator who eventually handed her a thin file and a look of defeat. Lila had evaporated.

And now here she was, in ink and paper.

The postcard was dated October 13, 2005.

Mara, I’m going away for a while. Don’t worry. You’ll understand one day.

Love, Lila.

No return address. No explanation.

It should have been a relic of the past—a piece of mail lost for decades in some postal abyss. But the ink was fresh. The faint scent of lavender—Lila’s perfume—still clung to the paper.

When Mara held it to the light, she saw something hidden beneath the seaside pier printed on the front: a watermark.

Not a manufacturer’s logo. A date.

August 5, 2025.

Tomorrow.

That night, Mara didn’t sleep. She sat at her kitchen table with the postcard in front of her, laptop open, typing search after search.

“Lavender perfume discontinued 2005.”

“How to tell if ink is new.”

“Postcards from the future.”

The results were useless—a mix of conspiracy blogs and urban legends. At 2:14 a.m., she broke and called her mother.

“Do you know where Lila went?”

Her mother’s sigh crackled down the line. “Mara, it’s been twenty years.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

A long silence. “Some things are better left alone.”

Morning found Mara on the highway, duffel bag in the passenger seat. The pier on the postcard wasn’t hard to place—she’d been there once with Lila as a child, the two of them buying saltwater taffy and daring each other to lean over the edge to watch the waves.

The closer she got, the more the air shifted—denser, heavy with a faint lavender sweetness that seemed impossible for the open coast.

When she reached the pier, her breath caught.

A figure leaned against the railing. A red suitcase at her feet.

Mara walked toward her, each step loud on the weathered boards. “Lila?”

Her sister turned. She looked exactly the same—same brown hair tucked behind her ear, same sun-browned skin, same green eyes crinkling into a smile. Twenty years hadn’t touched her.

“Hi, Mara.”

Mara froze. “This… this isn’t possible.”

Lila tilted her head. “Is it?”

“It’s been twenty years,” Mara whispered.

“Not for me,” Lila said simply.

The ocean crashed below, the sound filling the space between them.

“Where did you go?” Mara asked.

“Somewhere you can’t follow. Not yet.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I can give.” Lila’s gaze softened. “Time isn’t what you think. It bends. It folds. Sometimes it sends a postcard before the journey’s even over.”

Mara’s throat tightened. “You could have written more. You could have called.”

“I wanted to,” Lila said. “But you weren’t ready. And if you’d known where I was, you might have tried to come after me.”

The wind picked up, lavender filling the air until it was dizzying.

“What happens now?” Mara asked.

Lila reached into her coat pocket and pulled out another postcard. Blank, except for a date: August 5, 2045.

“I’ll see you then.”

Before Mara could speak, Lila picked up the suitcase and walked to the very end of the pier. She stepped forward—into the air.

Not into the water. Into nothing.

One second she was there. The next she was gone.

Mara stood frozen, waves churning below. In her palm, the postcard felt warm, as though it had been written seconds ago.

She didn’t understand. Not yet.

But she would.