The Package That Found the Right Address

Chapter 1: Package

The email arrived at 8:12 on a gray Tuesday morning.

Your package has been delivered.

Bethany smiled at her laptop, already imagining the small eBay purchase waiting outside her door. It had taken her three weeks to find it, two minutes to order it, and nearly ten days to arrive.

Then she looked at the delivery address.

Her smile disappeared.

“Oh, no.”

She read it again, hoping the letters might somehow rearrange themselves.

They did not.

The package had been delivered to her former apartment—the graduate housing unit she had moved out of months earlier.

For a few seconds, she considered abandoning it. Graduate school had taught her to measure every inconvenience against the amount of work already waiting for her. She had papers to read, notes to organize, and a meeting later that afternoon. Recovering one misplaced order hardly seemed worth adding to the list.