Free Undeliverable by Rebecca Demarest

Fine. But I’ll figure it out, you know.” She turned it back over and smoothed it out, grabbing a pen and jotting down the address of the armadillo’s owner. “I’ll just go get this part started.”
    Ben stared after her as she left the room and then realized his hands were gripping his chair tight enough to cause his fingers to tingle. She hadn’t asked, hadn’t pried, like everyone else did. She didn’t start offering false sympathy. He told himself that was a good thing, and he didn’t want to explain it to anyone, let alone her. But she had hardly even said anything about it. He wasn’t sure which was worse. He was so used to people just diving into the burden of his life without asking, but when she saw it, she said nothing, and it had hurt.
    Shaking out his hands, he rolled his shoulders to try and release the tension caught there, then turned to the forms on his screen. He dutifully entered the information it requested and then printed out the hard copies that got sent to the filing center of the USPS in Omaha, Nebraska. When Sylvia came back, she took the armadillo from his desk and settled it carefully into the paper nest she had created in the center of the box.
    “There. He should be comfy on the ride now, don’t you think? Were there any notes or anything accompanying this that need to be retrieved from the files?”
    Ben glanced back at the claim log and shook his head. “Just the ‘dillo.” In an effort to distract himself more than anything, he added, “I really want to know the joke behind this thing.”
    “I just keep imagining some farmer being pestered by this thing rattling past outside his window all night and running out in his birthday suit, waving his gun around until he finally caught it, and then had it taxidermied in its final retreat as a trophy.”
    “Ha. So why was it lost in the mail for so long, then?”
    “Dunno. Maybe he was sending it to an old war buddy to prove there was actually something under his window all this time.”
    The laugh that erupted out of Ben was genuine, much to his own surprise. “You think up the craziest things, you know that?”
    Her shoulders hunched and she at scuffed the floor with her toe. “It’s not crazy.”
    Ben grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Come on, they’re a little crazy, I mean, I’d never be able to think up a story like that.”
    “You know what’s crazy? Let me tell you. Abandoned children, genocide, starving families, drug abuse, and broken homes. That’s crazy. And if I make up a few stories here and there to break the tension of the really crazy shit that’s out there, how is that crazy? What the hell gives you the right to call how I think crazy?” Her voice had increased in speed, but not volume, leaving her panting at the end of her tirade.
    Ben raised his hands in surrender. He had no idea what landmine he had just stepped on, but it appeared to be a doozy. “I didn’t mean crazy per se, more unique? I think they’re fun. I meant crazy in the unique and fun way.”
    Sylvia turned and stalked out of the warehouse, the boxed armadillo under her arm. Ben let out his breath in one long sigh and ruffled his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t fathom how what he said could have set her off like that, but he’d had the same problem with his wife from time to time, accidentally trodding all over her buttons. In an effort to see if he couldn’t find out what button it was he’d hit, he made his way across the way to the bullpen and wandered up to the reader, Mina, who was taking a break and stretching out her back.
    “Hey, Mina, quick question for you?”
    She bent over into a quick downward-facing-dog position and looked up at him. “Where’s your little sidekick to answer for you?”
    “Um, that’s part of the question. I kind of made a comment about how a story she made up was crazy, in a good way, but she kind of—”
    “Blew up?” Mina popped back up and clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s