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Also, is that meant to be a picture of me?
FJF
Frederick,
Not exactly Jane Austen, eh? Intriguing. Well in either case, thank you for trying to call me by my first name.
And yes, that’s supposed to be a picture of you. Don’t you see the resemblance?? Tall, stick-figure arms and legs,surly expression, clothes straight from the set ofDownton Abbey?
Cassie
DearMiss GreenbergCassie,
Oh, yes. I suppose I do see SOME resemblance. Though I do think my actual hair looks much better than it does on the bald little man you’ve drawn here. Don’t you?
(What isDownton Abbey?)
FJF
Frederick,
Downton Abbeyis an English TV show. I think it’s set about a hundred years ago? Something like that. Anyway, it’s not really my thing, but my mom and all her friends love it. Also, you dress just like Cousin Matthew, one of the characters.
Oh, and by the way—you got a few packages this morning. I stacked them on the table for you—right beside your Regency romance novels. (You’ve been getting a lot of packages lately, actually. I know they’re not addressed to me, so I’m not examining them too closely, but I have to admit—I am INTRIGUED. They’re so weird???)
(Also, Regency romance novels, huh? I haven’t read many of them myself, my guilty pleasures trend more towards trash television, but—I definitely approve.)
Cassie
Dear Cassie,
Cousin Matthew, you say? Interesting. (Is he bald, too?)
Thank you for handling the packages for me. You are correct; theyarestrange. Hopefully there will not be any more of them.
I am glad you approve of my reading selections. I do not care much for the focus on romance, but I find reading stories set in the early nineteenth century comforting. I guess you could say they remind me of home.
FJF
I reread his most recent note, as amused by his defense of his Regency romances as I was disappointed in his lack of a more concrete explanation for the packages he’d been getting.
Because those packages...
Well.
They were truly something else.
He’d gotten six of them since I’d moved in. They all had the same return address—the sender was anE.J.,from New York—written in an ornate, flowery cursive that reminded me a lot of Frederick’s pretty handwriting but for the fact that it was always written in blood-red ink.
The packages came in different sizes and shapes, each wrapped in a hideous floral wrapping paper that reminded me of the decor in my grandmother’s Florida condo. Some of the packages emitted strange smells. One of them appeared to have smoke coming out of it. I swore I could hear actual hissing coming from another.
Those had to be optical illusions, I decided. There was no way the mail would deliver anything that wasactuallyon fire. Or living snakes.
Even though those packages were addressed to Frederick, not me—and even though their contents were patently none of my business—since he hadn’t given me clarification in his notes I decided I’d ask him about them the next time we were in the same room together.
Whenever that might be.
“You’ve had a good run,” I murmured apologetically to the painting of the hunting party in my bedroom.
