CHAPTER 5 #3
If she opened it, the past would stop being something she could blame from a distance. It would become sentences. Dates. Maybe apology. Maybe anger. Maybe proof that Colt had reached for her and she had built a life around the fact that he had not.
She set the packet back into the blue box with care that felt absurd, as if carefulness could keep the room from breaking.
"I can't read it yet," she said.
Della crouched beside her. The attic was too small for the fear on her sister's face. "Is that from Mama?"
"Part of it."
"Part of it?"
Wren passed her the outer note. She did not pass the envelope. She could not let anyone else hold Colt's name for her, not even Della.
Della read the two lines. Her hand flew to her mouth, then dropped. "What does that mean?"
Wren laughed once, without humor. "I think it means Mama has been editing more than table assignments."
"Wren."
"Do not. " The word came sharper than she meant. She softened it too late. "Please. If you sound sorry for me, I will have to do something practical, and there is no room up here for that."
Della's eyes filled anyway, which was inconvenient and unfair and sisterly in a way Wren had missed.
"Was it from Colt?" Della asked.
Wren lowered her gaze to the envelope. Her name waited there in his writing, familiar enough to hurt.
"Yes."
Della sat back on her heels. "When?"
Wren turned the packet slightly. The date on the corner was eight years old. The summer she had left. The week she had told herself he had let her go.
"Before Austin," she said.
The cottage below them creaked. Outside, a truck passed on the road and faded toward the working spreads beyond the fence. Ordinary sound. Ordinary heat. A Wednesday continuing as if Wren's life had not shifted under her feet.
Della's voice went thin. "Did Mama keep it from you?"
Wren stared at the note again. Do not give these to Wren. The words were clean and measured. A decision made in pretty handwriting, tucked under ribbon in a box meant to be called family.
"I don't know who the note was meant for," Wren said. "Sudie, maybe. Or herself. Or anyone who thought doing what Odette wanted was easier than asking questions."
"Sudie told you to bring down the blue box."
Wren let the attic blur. That look on the porch. The too-casual answer. Old ribbon.
Sudie knew something. Maybe not everything. Maybe enough.
Eight years ago, Wren had left Dusthallow with two suitcases, one scholarship packet, and a wound she had kept polished because pain was easier to defend when it had clean edges. Colt had not come. Colt had not written. Colt had let her mother stand between them.
Except the envelope in Wren's hand said he had written.
The packet might say more.
It might say too much.
"I need a minute," she said.
Della reached for her, then stopped before touching. "Do you want me to get Sudie?"
"No."
"Ruston?"
"No."
"Mama?"
Wren looked at her then, and Della flinched at whatever she saw.
"Absolutely not," Wren said.
Della nodded. For once, she did not argue.
Wren tucked the outer note back with the packet and closed the blue lid. She did not hide it under the ribbon again. Hiding had done enough work in this family.
The weight surprised her. Old ribbon, old paper, old decisions. All of it heavier than it looked.
At the attic stairs, Della touched her elbow. "Your hands are shaking."
"It is hot."
"It is, but that is not why."
Wren could deny it. She could make a joke about attic spiders. She could turn toward the practical list waiting downstairs: aisle markers, storm backup, ribbon that looked weathered by choice instead of poverty. She could offer labor in exchange for nobody looking too closely.
But Della had seen the note.
The lie had company now.
"I am going to bring these down," Wren said. "Then I am going to sit on the porch and drink whatever Sudie gives me, even if it is mostly judgment."
Della's mouth trembled. "That sounds like a plan."
They made it down the stairs slowly. Sudie looked up from her rocker as Wren crossed the hall carrying the boxes. Her gaze went first to Wren's face, then to the narrow blue lid on top.
Nothing in her expression changed.
That was answer enough to start a fire.
Wren set the boxes on the porch table. The cheap ribbon in her tote waited by the door, its color suddenly beside the point. Della stood near the steps, watching Wren as if she might split apart if the wrong word touched her.
Sudie lifted her glass of tea. "Find what you needed?"
Wren placed her palm flat on the blue box. The cardboard was warm from the attic, fragile under her hand, and real.
"I found something," she said.
Sudie's eyes held hers.
From the road came the distant hum of tires, then quiet. Heat shimmered beyond the porch rail. Somewhere past the fence line, work went on. Beau would be kept to her schedule. Colt would be moving through his day with no idea that an old envelope in his handwriting had come back from the dead.
Wren stared at the box, at Odette's beautiful note folded inside it, at the letter she could not yet bear to open.
For eight years, she had built her life around a story that might be false.