THE COURIER HANDED ME A BOX ADDRESSED TO SOMEONE WHO DIED YEARS AGO
I almost didn’t answer the door, the rain was pouring so hard against the glass. The courier shoved the soaking wet box into my hands, his face obscured by his deep hood, barely mumbling the name printed on the label before turning away abruptly; the cardboard felt heavy, strangely cold, and alarmingly damp under my fingers, immediately chilling me.
My heart immediately started hammering against my ribs; the name printed clearly on the box was Masha, my great-aunt, who passed away unexpectedly seven years ago in another country entirely. This felt absolutely impossible, a terrible mistake I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
I carried the strange box inside the quiet house, the heavy, almost earthy smell of wet paper filling the hallway, strangely mixed with something else. Shaking badly, my hands unsteady, I grabbed a kitchen knife and carefully sliced through the thick tape. “Why would anyone send this, now?” I whispered out loud, my voice trembling.
Inside, nestled under crumpled, yellowed newspaper, lay a small, worn wooden music box and a single, fragile letter. The handwriting on the envelope was unmistakably Masha’s delicate script, familiar from old postcards. My hands trembled violently as I carefully lifted it out.
The letter wasn’t addressed to Masha at all, but to a name I’d never heard before in my life.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…The name was “Eleanor Vance.” It meant absolutely nothing to me. Who was Eleanor Vance, and why would my great-aunt Masha write a letter to her and put it in a box addressed to herself, only for it to arrive years after her death? My mind reeled.
With trembling fingers, I unfolded the brittle paper. The ink was faded in places, but Masha’s elegant loops and flourishes were unmistakable. The letter was dated just a week before she died.
“My dearest Eleanor,” it began. My breath hitched. “If you are reading this, then the time has come for you to have this piece of our past back. I held onto it for so long, perhaps foolishly, hoping… well, that doesn’t matter now. Life took us on different paths, but I never forgot you, nor the happiness this little box brought us.”
The letter went on, detailing a story I’d never heard – of a vibrant, passionate relationship Masha had in her youth, before she met my great-uncle. Eleanor was the love of her life, a talented musician she met while travelling. They planned a future together, symbolised by the music box, a gift they bought at a small market. But circumstances – families, expectations, the harsh realities of their time – forced them apart. Masha returned home, married, and built the life I knew, carrying the secret of Eleanor and the music box locked away.
She explained that she had planned to send the box and the letter years ago, perhaps as a way to finally close that chapter or reconnect, but she never found the right moment, or perhaps, the courage. In her final days, knowing her time was short, she had entrusted the box to someone, with instructions for it to be sent to Eleanor upon her passing. But she included her own name and old address on the outer box as a precaution, maybe a failsafe if Eleanor couldn’t be found, or perhaps simply an old habit. The letter inside, she wrote, contained Eleanor’s last known address. Masha hoped against hope that Eleanor would still be there, or that the box might somehow find its way to her eventually.
My eyes blurred with tears, not just for Masha’s hidden sorrow, but for the sheer, heartbreaking romance of it all. She had lived a full life, seemingly content, yet carried this deep, unspoken love with her until the end.
The music box felt different now. It wasn’t just an old trinket; it was a vessel of memory, of a love story buried by time and circumstance. Carefully, I wound it up. A sweet, melancholic tune filled the quiet hallway – a melody I didn’t recognise, but which sounded achingly familiar, like the echo of a forgotten dream.
Inside the letter, tucked into a small fold, was a separate slip of paper with an address scrawled on it – an address in a city I’d never been to. Eleanor Vance. Masha’s final wish was for this box to reach her. The delay in delivery remained a mystery – perhaps lost in transit, held up by bureaucracy, or simply a mistake that fate, in its strange way, had finally corrected by bringing it here, to me.
I sat there for a long time, holding the box, the letter, and this newfound understanding of my great-aunt. She wasn’t just the kind, sometimes formidable woman I remembered; she was a woman with a hidden depth of feeling, a secret life she had held close. The strange journey of the box, the years of silence, it all felt like a message from the past, a plea carried across time. My hands no longer trembled with fear, but with a sense of purpose. Masha’s final delivery wasn’t meant for her, and perhaps, not even truly for Eleanor anymore. It felt like it had arrived for *me*, to reveal a part of her I never knew and to perhaps, finally, complete her unfinished journey. I knew then what I had to do. I had to find Eleanor Vance.