Storytelling Specialist

At ten minutes to five, the river gave Inez a postcard.

It nudged the ferry's bow between a brass button and a wooden spoon. Every autumn brought such things. She kept a biscuit tin for the buttons and leaned the spoons against the landing rail, where people could recognize them on their way home.

The card was different. Its edges were dry.

Inez lifted it with the boat hook and turned it over.

To Inez, ten autumns from now.

Underneath was the ferry house's address, written in letters that leaned left, as hers did when her fingers were cold. There was no stamp. Where the message should have been, someone had written: There is room for you here.

On the front stood a blue chair beside a window. Beyond the window lay a river. It might have been this river; the artist had given it only three strokes of grey.

Her own chair was brown and had a split across its seat. She looked through the ferry house window to make certain.

The clock above the ticket hatch clicked.

She ferried from seven until five. Before seven, the boat would not loosen from its mooring; after five, the channel would not receive it. Her mother had kept those hours, and her mother's mother. Inez had once pushed off late and found herself alongside the same landing after an hour of rowing. She did not try again.

On the opposite bank, a man in a yellow scarf raised his hand. The last passenger.

She slipped the postcard into her apron and crossed while there was still time. The man brought a basket of apples and asked whether the river had returned a glove.

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

Coming back, Inez watched the current fold around the ferry. Somewhere beneath it were all the things that had not yet arrived. She tried to imagine ten autumns laid end to end, but could reach only tomorrow's glove.

They landed with two minutes left. The man went uphill, and she tied the ferry securely. At five, the water between the banks smoothed like a sheet being drawn taut.

Now she could neither take the postcard elsewhere nor ask the far bank what its windows looked like. She stood with it under the ticket hatch until the clock ticked again.

In the ferry house, she fetched an empty envelope. The card might belong to someone she would become. It might be a stranger's mistake, or the river's. She did not want to lose it merely because she could not yet tell.

She wrote the date on the envelope, then added: Found at the landing. Brown chair still here.

For a moment she considered painting the chair blue. Instead, she ran her thumb along the split and put the envelope in the drawer where she kept the ferry's old timetables. She would open it next autumn, and the next, if she was here.

Outside, the wooden spoon knocked softly against the rail. Inez went to bring it indoors. There was room in the tin beside the buttons, once she moved a few things.