CHAPTER 27
Maya
THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I GOT HOME WAS SEARCH through my belongings.
I had no clue what the letter looked like, when he gave it to me, or if I’d received it at all. It’d probably long disintegrated by now, its contents nothing more than a lost memory.
But something in my gut told me it still existed somewhere. I felt it calling to me; I just had to figure out where it was.
As expected, Sebastian didn’t return any of my texts or calls, so I spent a week tearing through my closets and rummaging through my drawers. I looked in every pocket and under every bed. I even went to the post office and pestered the supervisor into checking to see if I had any missing mail.
Nothing.
I sank into a brief bout of despair before I remembered I’d left a veritable treasure trove at my parents’ house.
After I’d graduated from boarding school and college, I’d packed up all my things and stored them in their attic.
If Sebastian had given me a letter, it had to be in there.
If it wasn’t, then it really was lost forever.
So the weekend after my epic post office fail, I drove to Westchester and asked Diya for help digging up my old storage boxes. She didn’t ask any questions, but the giant bowl of chocolates she left for me communicated her concern.
I’d accumulated a mountain of mementos from my school years, and it took me the whole weekend to sort through them all.
My hope had dwindled to almost nothing by the time I got to the last two boxes. I opened the closest one and sneezed at the cloud of dust wafting up into my face.
Once I got my allergies under control, I flipped through a stack of notebooks. They were filled with handwritten observations from my classes, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Just when I was about to give up and move on to the last box, I came across a stiff corner hiding between the pages of my social studies notebook.
My heart skipped a beat. I held my breath as I slowly pulled the timeworn paper free.
And there, tucked in a yellowed envelope with my name scrawled across the front in distinctive black lettering, I found it.