Well, that was a bit hyperbolic; owls did not fly the two week trip across the Atlantic ocean to deliver letters, at least in his experience. The drop-off point for letters on each coastline had dramatically reduced the wait times for correspondence, and meant that her letters had never been delivered by the same owl twice — but he didn't think the travails of her owl were really the point. Ben tried to rack his mind back and remember what her last letter had even been. Had he received it? Maybe he hadn't, if it had been during December. He had left with basically no notice, after all, since Aldous had barely given him enough time to make it to Halifax before his ship departed.

It was probably better to claim he hadn't ever gotten it, either way, he decided, rather than admitting that if he had gotten it, he'd long since forgotten whatever it said.

"It must have gotten lost somewhere along the way," he said with as casual a shrug as he could manage. "I didn't have a whole lot of notice before I left, you know."