The postcard showed a lake neither of them had visited. On the back, in his mother’s handwriting, were the words: “I meant to tell you”. Nothing followed. Daniel found it under old instruction manuals while looking for a spare battery. He took it to the kitchen, where his mother was peeling an apple in one long, uncertain ribbon.
“Who was this for?” he asked. She looked at the photograph first, as though the lake might help. “Your aunt, perhaps.” Then she shook her head. “No. I don’t remember.” Daniel placed it between them. He had spent much of his life believing that unfinished things held larger truths than finished ones. His mother cut the apple into pieces and offered him the first.
He imagined apologies, a family secret, a decision changed at the last moment. His mother watched him thinking. “It might have been a recipe,” she said. He laughed, disappointed in a way he could not defend. She turned the card over again. “Or that the train was leaving earlier. We used to write things like that down. Everything didn’t have to arrive immediately.”
Later, before putting the postcard back, Daniel noticed a small crease across the lake. Someone had carried it in a pocket. Whatever the message was, it had travelled a little. He found a pencil and wrote beneath the unfinished sentence: “that we had apples in the kitchen, and you gave me the first piece.” He did not ask whether this was the right ending. For once, he wanted to keep something ordinary.
This is an original fictional story. Its characters and events are invented. Created with AI-assisted writing for Lorevion.