The Letters in the Drawer
Chapter 09 - The Letters in the Drawer
There were three hundred and twelve letters.
Birthday cards.
Christmas notes.
Pages written after nightmares.
Pages written on good days.
Pages where Laura apologized for being sick.
Pages where she begged her children not to believe she stopped loving them.
Grace read until she could no longer see through tears.
Ethan could only manage five.
One letter described his sixteenth birthday.
Laura had heard through a facility employee that he won a state science competition.
I knew you would build things, she wrote. You used to turn cereal boxes into bridges and test how many books they could hold.
Ethan remembered that.
He had believed no one else did.
Another letter was for Grace’s tenth birthday.
I hope someone still braids your hair the way you like. Start from the left side because the right side always pulls.
Grace pressed the paper against her face.
Vanessa was arrested for evidence suppression and fraud related to the estate transfer.
Charles was not arrested yet.
He resigned from the company board.
Hawthorne Manor was temporarily sealed.
Public opinion began to change.
But Laura refused to read the letters.
“I remember writing them,” she said. “I do not want to relive waiting for answers.”
Ethan respected that.
He placed the letters in a cedar chest at her new house.
“One day?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
Laura then handed him the brass key.
“You keep this.”
He closed her fingers around it.
“No.”
She looked confused.
“It belongs to the person whose door it opens.”
For the first time, Laura smiled.
She hung the key beside her front door.
May you like
Not as evidence.
As a reminder that she controlled who entered.
