Letter 54

Ashford has its secrets, yes.

June 20, 1947
Ashford Manor

I opened the envelope.

But first, I waited.

I stood inside that little writing shed for a long time, long enough that the morning chill gave way to warmth and the dust began to settle. I ran my fingers along the desk, traced the cracked glass of the window, nudged the trunk in the corner with the toe of my boot (locked), and finally when I could no longer put it off, I broke the seal.

Inside: a single page

No greeting. No date. But unmistakably familiar handwriting.

“There are versions of the truth we write in ink, and others we only entrust to fire. This is neither. This is the part I could never say aloud.”

It goes on but not far. It's fragmented. Mid-thoughts. Hints and evasions. Whoever wrote it seemed to be circling something, building courage they may never have had time to summon.

One line stops me:

“You are not the ghost I expected to haunt me.”

There’s something about that phrasing that makes my chest burn.

Also inside the shed: a shelf lined with glass bottles, most of them empty. One still holds a dried-up violet ink. A sketchbook with a pressed flower in the spine. And war documents in the trunk—maps, telegrams, lists of names.

Ashford has its secrets, yes. But this place, this shed it feels like the nucleus. The pulse beneath the skin.

I’m taking the letter back with me. I’ve placed it inside the back of my journal. It hums there. I can feel it, somehow, like it’s warming the paper around it.

I think I was meant to find it.

—Calliope.

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