The Game of Unsent Wishes — Every evening, Keaton stacked Santa’s letters by candlelight: names to the left, towns to the right, wishes in the middle. Read the full story →
Every evening, Keaton stacked Santa’s letters by candlelight: names to the left, towns to the right, wishes in the middle. To keep his fingers from freezing in the drafty mail shed, he invented a game called Unsent Wishes, where he guessed which letters had been written for someone too shy to ask. The paper smelled faintly of peppermint ink, and the stove clicked like a tiny clock.
Until one night, a blank envelope slid from the bottom of the sack. Because of that, Keaton carried it outside to ask Santa where it belonged. Because of that, they heard a soft scrape inside the blue mailbox on the hill: three letters with no stamps, each asking that another child receive the warmer mittens, the last orange, the better book. No one had signed them.
Santa tucked the blank envelope on top. “Then we answer quietly,” he said. By dawn, the gifts had traveled without tags, trumpets, or thanks. If you study the mailbox snow, maybe you can guess where Keaton’s game sent the first secret wish.
