The Ashford Diaries is a serialized gothic mystery unfolding day by day in letters from Ashford Manor. New here? → Start reading from the beginning.
July 10, 1947
Ashford Manor
My dearest,
I wasn’t looking for anything.
That’s what frightens me most—how these pieces reveal themselves when I’ve stopped reaching.
I opened the novel by the window seat, one I’ve read a dozen times. You’d once marked the margins in pencil, teasing the protagonist for being “unbelievably noble.” I’d meant only to reread that scene, to feel near you again in some harmless way.
But as I turned to the chapter, a violet fell out; flat and brittle, but whole.
Pressed between the pages. Not one I’d picked.
Someone had dated it in the top margin, in faint graphite:
April 12, 1944
I’ve turned that date over in my mind all afternoon. It isn’t our anniversary. It isn’t your deployment. It isn’t my birthday.
But it is a date I remember for something else—something I can’t name, only feel.
There was thunder that day. And the roses had only just begun to bloom.
The strangest part? The flower smelled faintly sweet, as if the pages had preserved something beyond the physical.
I’ve tucked it into my own journal now. Not to keep it safe, but to keep it near—because I’m beginning to think this house doesn’t want secrets locked away anymore.
And neither do I.
—Calliope.
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— Dakkota Lane, author of The Ashford Diaries, a serialized gothic mystery unfolding letter by letter.