Free A Little Bit of Everything Lost by Stephanie Elliot

know. It had been addressed to Joseph McKinley, Jr. and it had been read. It had been resealed with scotch tape. And in very womanly handwriting, angry handwriting, from the looks of it, scrawled across the front, it said: Return to Sender, No one by that name at this address.
     
    **
     
    Marnie picked up the returned card and wondered for the first time about what Joe might be like. Did he have a family? He had to have a family. Why hadn’t she ever considered this? She got married, she had children, why wouldn’t he have done the same? Maybe he got married right out of college, perhaps he met someone, maybe a woman in a bar, or at a party, or a work function, fell in love. Maybe he had the perfect marriage? Maybe he had two or three beautiful children. Maybe the card she sent landed in the wrong hands. Maybe his wife read the card? She hadn’t considered that she might have sent the card and caused trouble. She looked at the scrawled Return to Sender note again.
    She imagined what Joe’ s life might be like. Probably he had some powerful job. He was always so charismatic and charming. She doubted he took over the family bakery or trucking business. That didn’t seem like him. He always seemed bigger than that – that he would make his money his own way, that he would do it some larger-than-life way, maybe create something, find a need and figure out how to get that need fixed. But a need for a higher purpose, doing something good to benefit the world – that would be something Joe would have figured out how to do, despite everything, Marnie was sure of that.
    She was also pretty sure that his wife was someone in their community to be respected, not some stay-at-home, bathrobe-wearing talk-show-watching mom. Possibly she was a powerful attorney or a real estate agent who didn’t need to work but wanted to work, someone who could have a nanny but chose not to. One of those perfect moms who managed to do it all without the help of anyone, but the kind of woman you couldn’t hate. Because she probably also volunteered for charity organizations. She had to be the type of woman who got the kids up, made breakfast, went to work in perfect Christian Dior accessories and department store makeup counter looks every day and then came home, did homework with the children without complaining, and still prepared a good dinner each night, with a veggie, fruit and a meat. She probably read to them every night before bed too.
    And Joe’s children. They probably took piano and violin. The little girl, Marnie imagined, took dance and swim lessons, had perfect curls and was shy but adorably so. Maybe there were two girls. She laughs at the thought of Joe with girls. For a moment, she considered Joe with boys who played on a baseball team. They’d be nothing like her Jeremy and Trey. They’d be proper, and possibly painfully polite. Maybe they took tennis lessons and wore polo shirts and khaki shorts with smart belts and boat shoes. Her own boys would never pick up a tennis racket. Well, that’s not entirely true. They would, if only to hit one another over the head with it. She could picture that.
    Marnie had to get these crazy thoughts out of her head. None of it was making any sense. What if the card did get into the wrong hands and his wife had opened it? What if Joe had never spoke of Marnie to his wife and now this card arrived at his home and it’s caused a horrible fight between the two of them? What had Marnie done? But really, what did the card say? That she remembered their one summer together? It was a harmless note really, wasn’t it? Suddenly, Marnie felt a rush of guilt and regret for sending it. She almost wished she hadn’t done it.
    Almost.
    She certainly wished it hadn’t been returned.
     
     

     
     
    Chapter Twenty-One
August 1988
     
     
    Afterward, Joe left. He never just left. He always stayed the night, waking her later with his lips on some part of her body – her elbow, or her forehead, or he