The chair that came back

I had just been writing another post but had to stop and begin this one instead, because one of the weirdest experiences of my life just happened. It's about, of all things, a broken chair.

We used to have a pair of kitchen chairs that my partner had had forever before dating me. They served us well but started to get a bit old, and were starting to fall apart; the fasteners that held them together were getting loose and we didn't know how to fix them. One almost fell out from under my partner one night as we were sitting down to dinner, so we then decided it was time to let them go. They weren't completely trashed, we figured someone who had a workshop could fix them up, so we left them by the side of the road with a sign that said "Free" on them. They were gone the next day and they faded into memory. This happened probably at least two years ago. 

I had no reason to think of them again until last night, when I was looking through old photos for something else, and in the same batch of pics I was looking through, an older pic of our kitchen popped up, taken around the time we did some rearranging & cleaning.

I scrolled past the pic, a few of my brain cells firing on "Huh, oh yeah, those old chairs. I remember them." This photo was taken on 6th September, 2017. I acknowledged the memory, and then I moved on to whatever else I was doing.

And here, now, less than 24 hours later...

About half an hour ago, my partner came back in from taking out the trash to find that one of the chairs, one of THOSE chairs, had....returned. 

To the same spot we had left it by the road a couple years ago in front of our apartment.

With a sign on it saying "Free." In different handwriting.

I had made no mention of the photo of the chairs that I had literally just found the night before.

I asked my partner to bring it up to our porch, because I had to see it to believe it.

I mean, I haven't thought about these chairs in years. And less than 24 hours after seeing that old photo above, this just SHOWS UP.

Fucking HELL.

And the weird thing is?

It appears to be intact -- was it repaired?? 
Who the fuck would have done it - chair elves??

I don't even know how to wrap my head around this one.

There's gotta be an explanation for this, right?

I swear to Christ I am not making any of this up. 

Maybe someone in my partner's family did this? I don't know. They are not the practical joking type. We're going to ask my partner's dad, our landlord, if he can watch the security cam footage. I kinda hope there's NOT a logical explanation for this. It CAN'T be one of those same chairs, can it??