Letter 60

My fingers caught on something loose beneath a faded floorboard.

June 27, 1947
Ashford Manor

My dearest,

While searching the nursery, my fingers caught on something loose beneath a faded floorboard. Pulling it back revealed a small bundle tied with a ribbon, the same soft blue, now faded to gray with time. Inside, I found a tiny key, delicate but heavy with purpose.

The ribbon is frayed, as if it has been waiting patiently for decades to be discovered. There’s an intimacy to it, like someone meant for me to find this, like a message left in shadows.

I don’t know what this key opens. The nursery doors and drawers have long been explored. Could it belong to a hidden chest, a forgotten drawer, or a secret compartment? Or perhaps to a locked box in the attic or the writing shed?

The weight of this small key feels like a promise or a burden yet to be understood. It is both an invitation and a question: What else lies buried beneath the surface of Ashford and its stories?

Every day, this house releases more of its past. I feel myself drawn deeper into its fold, tangled in secrets I’m only beginning to grasp.

—Calliope.

The Ashford Diaries is an unfolding epistolary serialized novel told in real time. One letter each day..💌 Start at the beginning

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— Dakkota