reputation

Puzzles

May 25, 2018.

Thirteen - Emma

Taylor flipped through the stack of mail that had been gathered from the New York apartment over the course of the past week. Every couple of letters she would hand Emma one that was addressed to her, and Emma would look over it and declare it junk mail and toss it in the trash or sit it next to her on the counter. The whole process was quiet, neither of them said a word more than 'here' or 'yours.'

Emma continued to put them in the two piles until she came across one she wasn't sure of. The plain white outside had her name and address in the center with no return address. When she opened it, four small papers stuck out of the envelope. Each contained a different type of puzzle: a word search, cryptogram, crossword, and sudoku. She put it in the keep pile, figuring it could provide some entertainment for later if nothing else.

Taylor handed her another piece of mail, a plain white envelope similar to the last one she opened. She studied the outside, taking note of the way this one also had no return address and her name and address were scrawled in a handwriting so illegible it was a miracle it made it through the postal system. She opened it and pulled out the tri-folded paper. It was blank, save for her name written in small letters in the bottom right corner.

"Is that another one with no return address?" Taylor asked as Emma threw the envelope in the small trash can. Emma nodded and Taylor made a face at the lack of whatever answer she was looking for. "What's in it?"

"Just some things I need to pay," she lied. She didn't know why she didn't tell Taylor the truth. That piece of mail, as confusing as it was, wasn't even close to the worst thing they had received in the mail recently. Recently the mail with no return address contained pictures of the two of them with a letter demanding money in exchange for not selling the pictures. Without any way to identify the sender, the pictures had ended up being published more often than not.

"Like what?"

"Student loans, subscriptions, normal people things."

"I didn't know that. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what? That I was paying student loans? Was I supposed to inform you?"

Taylor shrugged and tossed the last envelope in her hands onto the counter. "Yes. I could've helped."

"I don't want your help. I can pay for the stupid degree I just had to get at eighteen without the help of my sugar mummy."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I don't really care how you meant it, I'm telling you I don't want your help. I'm not charity." Emma adjusted her small stack so that the bottoms all lined up evenly and stuffed them in the outer pocket of her suitcase, making plans to go back to both the important things and the random puzzles when she couldn't sleep that night.

The lock on the door clicked as someone scanned a hotel keycard from the outside. Emma glanced up from her suitcase just in time to catch a red ponytail she had become all too acquainted with in the past few weeks swinging back and forth ever so slightly. Tree stared at them both with a scowl on her face. She sat the laptop she was holding down on the countertop, typed in the password, and turned it to face Taylor.

"Here's some drafts of how I think you should address your relationship if that's still what you want to do. Feel free to adjust it, just run any changes by me. Please." Tree waited a moment, obviously expecting some kind of answer, but when no answer was offered, she continued. "I would just like to say that it makes it so much easier for me to sell the narrative of how happy you two are when you actually are happy."

"We are happy, stay out of it," Taylor said. She was barely trying to hide the fact that they weren't. Neither of them had really been happy since they got home from the trip she had proposed on. She pulled on her glasses from where they had been discarded after reading the mail and started reading some of Tree's carefully crafted speeches.