Meg found the Corvallis address through the postcard postmarks.
There were eleven cards total. She spread them across the kitchen table in chronological order: Portland, Eugene, Roseburg, Grants Pass, Medford, Ashland, back to Medford, Klamath Falls, Bend, Redmond, Corvallis. Her sister's handwriting didn't change across any of them. The same careful print, the same sign-off. Thinking of you. — R.
The moves didn't look like fleeing. Each postcard mentioned the new apartment fondly. You'd love the light in this one. Or: There's a bakery on the corner that does sourdough the way Mom used to. Each place sounded fine. Each departure sounded optional.
But Meg had taped a map to the wall above the table, and she'd drawn lines between the postmarks. Portland to Eugene. Eugene to Roseburg. The lines didn't make a route. They made a tangle — south, then further south, then a sharp turn east, then north, then west. No trajectory. No destination. Just a series of recalculations.
She'd called the Medford landlord. Left a message with the Klamath Falls post office. The Bend address was a P.O. box that hadn't been checked in four months.
She wrote back to Corvallis. She kept it short.
Rachel — I'm not asking you to come home. I'm asking whether you know you're moving. Because from here, the postcards don't look like eleven choices. They look like one thing that happened eleven times.
The card she got back was postmarked Corvallis, same address.
Meg — Of course I know. Each time, something shifts. The neighbors change, or I change, or the distance between what I want and what's around me opens up just enough. It's never dramatic. It's never even unpleasant. I just recalculate.
The part I can't explain is that I keep landing in places that look exactly like the last one.