“This was intact yesterday,” she said.
“You remember?”
“I delivered a certified-looking envelope here at four twenty yesterday afternoon.”
“From Sutton?”
“White, heavy paper, embossed seal.”
Diane pulled her scanner from the bag and explained that the envelope had been sent with tracking but without a signature requirement.
Her delivery photo showed the envelope inside our mailbox, the brass flag standing upright beside it.
It proved the letter had arrived.
It did not prove who took it.
“You need to report this to the postal inspectors,” Diane said.
“And let the police know the box was damaged.”
I photographed every angle and put the loose metal pieces in a paper bag.
Diane watched my hands.
“Don’t go accusing anyone because you think you know,” she said quietly.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good, because people who steal mail sometimes count on their neighbors fighting each other instead of looking at what happened.”
I thought about Celeste stepping away from her kitchen window.
I thought about Sophie asking me not to call her.
Then I went inside and dialed Sutton.
A woman in the trust office answered on the third ring.
Her name was Maya Chen, and she sounded as though she had been answering anxious parents all morning.
I explained that an important letter had been taken from our mailbox.
“I’m sorry that happened,” Maya said.
“May I confirm the applicant’s date of birth and your address?”
I gave both.
She paused longer than I expected.
“Mr. Mercer, I need to ask whether you contacted our office last Tuesday to withdraw your daughter’s application.”
I gripped the phone harder.
“No.”
“We received an electronic withdrawal request.”
“From who?”
“It was submitted through the parent portal.”
“We don’t have a parent portal.”
“An account was created under your email address in February.”
I checked the spelling she read aloud.
The address was almost mine.
It had an extra dot before my last name, and the domain belonged to a mail provider I had never used.
“That isn’t my email,” I said.
Maya fell silent.
“Please don’t discuss this with anyone outside your office,” I added.
“I believe somebody has been using my identity.”
She said she needed to notify the program director and suspend all changes to Sophie’s file.
Then she asked me whether Sophie was safe.
The question frightened me more than the missing letter.
When Sophie came home, I was sitting at the dining table with the phone record and Diane’s delivery photograph.
