The River Writes Back to My Sister

How it begins

The river corrected my letter in red ink.

I found the scrap caught against a mooring ring below the footbridge.

You said she left first, it read.

I had written those words three weeks earlier to my sister.

They had been inside a sealed envelope.

I looked upstream.

The water carried leaves, a broken reed, and a tennis ball moving with unreasonable confidence toward the sea.

Nothing else looked interested in our argument.

I took a photograph.

Then I rang Mara.

She answered on the fifth attempt.

"I'm in town," I said.

"I know."

"How?"

"Somebody saw your van."

Not the river, then.

I was relieved by how disappointed I felt.

"Can we meet?"

"No."

"I've been writing."

"I noticed."

Below me, another strip of paper caught against the ring.

This one bore Mara's handwriting.

You always stop the story before you get wet.

I said nothing.

On the phone, my sister breathed once, sharply.

"What?"

"Have you been down by the bridge?"

A pause.

Then she ended the call.

I stayed where I was.

My recording equipment sat in the van above the bank. I had come home pretending to need river sounds for a commission. Water against stone. Footsteps over timber. The ordinary textures of a place I had not visited in nine years.

Now the river was making its own edits.

The second scrap turned in the current.

On its reverse was a third line.

Neither of us wrote it.

I knew because the words described what had happened after I switched off the recorder.

At the top of the steps, Mara appeared without a coat.

For a moment, we looked exactly as we had the last time we stood on opposite sides of this bridge.

I put the recorder on the stone between us, switched off, and waited for her to choose where to begin.

Then she came down to read the paper herself.