On his first morning of retirement, Edwin Marsh swept the old Hollowbrook post office one last time. Behind a coat rack he found a brass mail slot in a wall that never had one. The little plate read TOMORROW'S DEPARTURES. As a joke, he scribbled a grocery list and fed it in. By noon, the milk he'd written down sat on his porch, in a glass bottle stamped with tomorrow's date.

Edwin's hands shook, but he grinned. He grabbed a pen and wrote a careful request: 'Tomorrow's newspaper, please.' He folded it and slid it into the brass slot. Then he sat by the window to wait, watching the empty road.

At noon the newspaper thumped onto his porch, dated the next day. The front page screamed: BRIDGE COLLAPSES ON RIVER ROAD, FIVE HURT. Edwin's stomach dropped. The accident hadn't happened yet. He could still stop it.

Edwin drove straight to River Road and waved down every car he could. He told a young mother to take the long way home. She thought he was strange, but she listened. That afternoon the bridge groaned and cracked, and the road sat empty. Nobody was hurt. Edwin sat in his truck and finally breathed.