I drop the letter to Gilda in the normal way. There is an old brick in the stone wall behind the post office that wiggles loose. I always fold the letter three times, tuck it to the right of the brick, then shove the brick back in place. I check the brick every few days. I mark my letters with a red line so that I know they are mine waiting to be delivered, just not picked up. Gilda marks hers with a blue line so that I know it came from her. It’s an easy system. We’ve never been caught.

Other women have been caught. They ended up in the stocks. Jenny Masterson, Laurie Headsworth, Abigail Bingham. Once a woman ends up in the stocks for being caught with letters, she never gets any new letters. We take her out of the network. It is too much of a risk.

The thing about letter writing is that you have to know the code names for everything. Once you learn them it’s never hard to figure out what the message is. Sometimes a new code name appears in the letters and you have to spend days or weeks deciphering. And sometimes you have to create a code name, putting enough details into the letter that your contact will know what you are passing on, but not putting so much detail that anyone not in the network can figure it out if they find the letter. It’s a fine balance.

Once the letter is behind the brick, I pick up my shopping bags and head towards the middle of town. I need a few groceries for supper and I need to pick up cough syrup. I hate spending money on cough syrup when hot tea sometimes will work just as well, but Mira has a nasty cough and she can’t sleep through the night. I adjust my scarf, pretending not to notice that Gilda is still in the stocks. The blood hasn’t been wiped from her head. Perhaps she really is dead this time.

The lines are always long at the grocery. They have to check your purchases against the list of rations you’re allowed. Massachusetts instituted rationing when the war first broke out, and all the states broke up into their own territories and nations. They’ve never gotten rid of the system of paper coupons, although they are no longer hand written by the city official. They print them now, on perforated paper, and they get delivered with the rest of the mail every week.

I stand there with my bag of potatoes and my bag of carrots, and my one onion, leafing through the coupons until I find the ones for fresh vegetables. The cough syrup is kept behind the desk. I’ll have to use one of my coupons for medicine as well to purchase a bottle. When It’s my turn at the register, the clerk takes my basket and my coupons, then rings up the order. Just as she is about to tell me the total I interrupt her by handing her the medicine coupon. “I need cough syrup,” I saw.

The clerk takes the coupon to the desk, where the manage is sitting on a stool, surveying the store. They have a short conversation, and the manager goes to the shelf behind him where all the medicines and razors are kept, pulling a bottle off the rack and handing it to the clerk. I watch her make her way back to the register with the cough syrup and the coupon. She stuff the coupon into her register drawer and bags the bottle with my other items. She types in a few numbers on her keypad and then turns to me.

“That’s $35,” she says.

“$35,” I repeat. I shake my head as I count out the bills. They look a lot like the old money I used as a kid. I wonder where this money is printed. I had heard that one of the mints (the one near DC, I think) was printing money for all the countries in the northeast and Atlantic coast now. I didn’t understand how one country could do that for all the other ones around it, but it didn’t matter too much, I guessed. I wondered if everyone was using the same money and we just didn’t know it.

I tucked the rest of the bills back into my wallet and took my purchases from the clerk. On the way home I glanced at the stocks, quickly, to see if Gilda was still there. Someone had set her free since I had come through. There was a new woman in her place. I wondered how long it would be before she had the courage to check for my letter behind the brick.