Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Reiko Hiroyama lives on Ishigaki, a subtropical island in Japan. One morning, she went out to comb the beach near her house. Beachcombing conjures up a leisurely world of sand dollars and Daiquiris, but Hiroyama’s practice was actually about bringing in the trash. Over the years, she’d retrieved flip-flops, jerricans, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, fishing nets, and a seemingly endless array of bottles—jugs, flasks, milk bottles, beer bottles, water bottles, detergent bottles, baby bottles, motor-oil bottles. Yet that day a turquoise glass bottle caught her eye. Its neck was sticking out of the sand. There was a scroll-like object inside. “The sunlight shining on it gave it a strong presence,” Hiroyama recalled. “It seemed to say, ‘I’m here!’ ”

The cap was so thoroughly rusted that she couldn’t twist it off, so she decided to break the bottle open on a rock. “My heart was pounding,” she said. She extracted the scroll: a sheet of white paper covered in cursive handwriting. Hiroyama’s spirits sank when she realized that the letter was written in French. Lauren Collins, The New Yorker