He pulled a pink-and-green paper form out of a drawer beneath the counter and passed me a stubby ballpoint pen.

“Print the full name and delivery address of the recipient clearly on the front,” he said.

I wrote Margaret Carter on the top line in tidy block letters, then the address of the house I’d known by heart for thirty-four years.

The clerk pressed the adhesive barcode strip across the top flap of the mailer and fixed the green postcard to the back with two strips of heavy tape.

“That comes to six dollars and forty cents,” he said.