October 16, 2024 Cordelia's House
My dearest friend,
I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that line: "I know you can see me from your window." Present tense. As if R were still out there, still tending, still waiting.
This morning I stood at Cordelia's bedroom window—the one that faces the back garden and tried to see what she had seen. The garden house squats among the overgrown hedges like a secret someone forgot to keep. From here, anyone moving around it would be perfectly visible.
Had she watched someone? Had someone been watching her watch them?
I made coffee and sat with the letter again. The handwriting was careful, deliberate. Masculine, I thought, though I couldn't say why. The paper was good quality, expensive. Not the sort of thing you use for casual correspondence.
"You're safe now, aren't you? That's all that ever mattered to me."
Safe from what? From whom?
I spent the afternoon in Cordelia's study, looking for answers in the neat files she'd left behind. Bank statements, utility bills, correspondence with solicitors; the dry paperwork of a life lived carefully. Nothing about R. Nothing about anyone who might have reason to write such letters.
But in her address book, tucked between the pages like a bookmark, I found a newspaper clipping. Yellow with age, dated October 1965:
LOCAL MAN MISSING AFTER WIFE'S DEATH Police seek Robert Thorne, 45, who disappeared from his Millbrook home following his wife's apparent suicide. Neighbors report seeing Thorne's car in the driveway the morning of September 30th, but he has not been seen since. Anyone with information...
Robert. R.
My hands trembled as I read it again. Robert Thorne, missing since 1965. The same year Cordelia's correspondence with R seemed to intensify, based on the letter I'd found.
I walked to the kitchen window and stared at the garden house. If someone had been hiding there for nearly sixty years, what would be left of them now? What would be left of the secret that had kept them hidden?
The sun was setting, painting the overgrown garden in shades of amber and shadow. And there, just for a moment, I could have sworn I saw movement near the garden house. A figure, bent and slow, tending to something I couldn't see.
By the time I found my courage and stepped outside, there was nothing. Only the wind stirring the hedges and the certain feeling that I was not alone.
—Margaret
If atmospheric mysteries are your thing, The Ashford Diaries will consume you. Follow Calliope’s devastating journey through memory, loss, and buried family secrets in this complete Substack fiction series. Your next binge-read starts with Letter 1.
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