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.