"I beg your pardon?"
"The Reading, Pennsylvania letters. Blue envelopes, nice hand, every two or three weeks since the first of the year. I wondered about them. I don't read the mail," she added, to Nehemiah, sharply, as if he had accused her, "but I see the outsides, and you can't run a post office forty years without wondering about outsides."
"Fenna," Nehemiah said, "who's been taking the Morgan mail out of the box?"
The postmistress's eyes went from him to Linnet and back.
"Why, Kezzie has," she said. "Same as always. She's picked it up since she was ten years old. Caleb used to send her in with the egg money on Saturdays and she'd take the mail home. She's been coming in on the Rock Creek road with the Dimmock wagon since spring, regular as clocks. Nem, you knew that."
"I knew she came in," he said. "I didn't know she was fetching the mail."
"Well, who else would? You weren't." Then Fenna seemed to hear herself, and her face softened. "I'm sorry, Nem. That wasn't kind. I know you've had your hands full." She looked at Linnet again. "Has something happened?"
"I'm not sure yet," Linnet said. "I think something has been happening for a long time."
Nehemiah put a hand flat on the counter. "Fenna. Did she post letters too?"