Undeliverable Read Online Free Page B

“There’s certainly a lot to remember. But there was one thing; she mentioned Hail Mary’s before an auction? I was wondering what sort of things we might be able to use to find an owner that the readers missed.”
    “Well, if something seems particularly obvious, like the reader overlooked the address written on the tongue of a boot, then you get to double-check their research. Otherwise nothing, really, you just store and sell ‘em. It’s super rare to find something; they hardly ever miss anything.” The last comment had been a bit rueful, and Ben wondered what a reader found Sylvia doing to make her sound so bitter about their observational skills, but decided this wasn’t the time to ask.
    “Have you ever heard of them selling something that someone tried to claim later?”
    “Ha. No. After a year or so, no one is looking for anything. It just sits there. The only reason we hold onto journals is ‘cause we hope whatever titillating bits are in them are long out of date, and we hold onto expensive jewelry in case someone tries to file an insurance claim. That’s it.”
    They sat in silence a moment, Ben acutely aware that their knees were touching. He hooked an arm around the railing above him and hauled his gangly form erect, not quite avoiding jostling Sylvia. “Well, thanks. That answers my most pressing question.” He peered into the hole leading to the shredder. “What were you shredding today, anyway?”
    “Letters. Undeliverable and unreturnable; the ones without anything else in them, like photos. Just…letters that never make it anywhere.” She shivered, then pulled on his arm, hauling him away from the opening. “Leave ‘em be. You’ll go mad if you think about them too much.”

Sorting
    You’ll rarely need to engage in this task. It’s really not your area of responsibility, but every once in a while, those idiots seem to get overwhelmed and need a hand. So here are the basic rules of sorting lost mail, should you ever need them.
    ~ Gertrude Biun, Property Office Manual
    A s Ben drove home, he noticed that the liquor store was still open. After a quick mental calculation involving his new paycheck and how much he needed to be setting aside for his search, he swerved into the parking lot. At the coolers, his first inclination was to reach for the cheap 6-pack of Budweiser, but his eye was drawn to the sale signs below the Peachtree Pale Ale. It had been his favorite beer since he left college. He normally felt guilty spending the money on a microbrew now, but with the sale price, he could allow himself to splurge on it.
    When he got home, he stashed five of the beers in the fridge and took the sixth into the living room. The room was nearly empty except for a battered desk in the middle of the floor. The desk faced the one uninterrupted wall. On the left was a map of Georgia, a close-up of Savannah in one corner. The map was riddled with pushpins and these were wrapped in yarn and twine, connecting an aura of papers to the map. There were printouts and news articles, sticky notes and photographs. The map was ragged as though someone had torn it repeatedly from the wall and the perforations created by the constellation of pushpins gave it the look of old lace.
    On the right-hand side of the wall was an enlarged map of Atlanta. A handful of pins had begun their march across the surface roads and a few of them were connected by strings. Centered above the two maps was a black and white photocopy of a poster. There were only two lines of text; the top line read Missing, and the bottom:
Have you seen this boy?
They framed a photograph of his son, taken from the same photo that Ben had put in his desk drawer at work.
    This is where he knew his time was supposed to be spent, at this web of interconnecting data. The job at the warehouse was only a means to the end, a way to earn enough money to have someplace to put up these maps and spend every moment he could sifting through the mountains of