My brother and his wife came for Christmas dinner, bringing a wine bottle with a message inside that they’d found that day on a Chappaquiddick beach. While we sat around eating hors d’oeuvres, the nine of us speculated about where and when the bottle had been put in the water – maybe yesterday off the same beach where it was found. We finally got the cork out and extracted the message with chopsticks.

It read: “From here comes the dilemma. I feel passionate about this beautiful woman who feels the same, however I don’t know if it was meant to be. I believe that a response of this note would be determination! If you receive this beacon of faith, would you please respond.” It was signed “anxiously awaiting,” with the name “Sandy,” a phone number, and address.

There was a pregnant silence after the note was read, and then everyone had a theory about who this Sandy was, how old he was, and why he was wondering if this relationship was meant to be. After all, if they both loved each other, what was the problem? Or since the note only mentioned passion, maybe true love wasn’t involved. And what if Sandy was a woman? Maybe that created a problem.

Ten minutes or so into this debate, my husband, in a proactive move, picked up the phone and dialed Sandy’s number. There was a collective gasp of disbelief. It was Christmas Day, and what advice did we really have for him? What if he was some psychopath we were about to get involved with? He was just a stranger come to us in a bottle!

Someone answered the phone. Sandy wasn’t home; he was with his girlfriend. Hmmm, we thought: did this mean they’d gotten together without waiting for our advice? After a few more questions from my husband, the speaker on the other end seemed to clam up, as if she thought she might be speaking to someone dangerous. Who was this man calling on Christmas Day, asking questions about Sandy’s love life? My husband left a message that the bottle had been found and Sandy could call us back.

A few days later, he did call, and left a message on our machine that sounded as if he’d be interested in hearing from us. With a little prodding from me, my husband called back, his outgoing, devil-may-care mood long since passed.

Sandy answered the phone. He sounded as if his own mood – trusting fate to deliver the answer to his love problems – had also passed, but he was interested to hear that the bottle had been found. He’d thrown it in the water off the Cape at Yarmouth, one year and two months earlier. The woman he was passionate about was married with children. Her husband was also having an affair. She broke off with Sandy because her conscience was bothering her.

He said he was in another relationship, but it wasn’t working out, and the fact that the bottle was found might be a sign that he should try to contact the woman. “She might be living a life of misery,” Sandy said.

I wonder if they will get together. I doubt if Sandy will let us know. It doesn’t really seem fair that we’ve been involved in this life-changing decision but won’t know the outcome.

But on the other hand, it does seem like a simple, not too emotionally messy way to get answers to some of life’s difficult problems. Actually, I have a few questions of my own that need a second opinion.