The official story, the one I’d grown up on, suddenly rang hollow in my ears.My father’s death in combat, honorable and tragic, mourned by the town, softened by ceremony.But what if that wasn’t the truth?What if it was easier—for everyone—to invent a death than to explain betrayal?
Protect me… or protect themselves?
I pressed a fist to my chest, breathing unevenly.The fragments didn’t tell the whole story.But they told enough.Enough to crack open the foundation of everything I thought I knew about my family… about Charlie.
The worst part wasn’t the lies.It was that I could no longer tell who they were meant to shield: me, or the people who’d made choices too ugly to name.
And staring down at the burned edges, I whispered aloud to the empty library: “What really happened?”
The silence that answered was heavier than ash.
I found him in the hall, hunched at a window latch, shoulders squared like the storm outside was an enemy line.His hands moved with automatic precision, tightening, securing, but his eyes—when they flicked to me—were sharp, cautious.
I held the envelope against my chest, the brittle ash still clinging to my fingers.My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“Charlie,” I said.“I found letters.From my dad.And from… R.”
He froze.The metal latch clicked once more beneath his palm, and then he went utterly still.His profile was stone—scarred and hard-edged, unreadable.
“Put them back,” he said, voice low, final.
I stepped closer, ignoring the way my heart thundered.“They were burned.Hidden.Why?”
That got him.His gaze dropped to the envelope in my hands, and I swore I saw the flicker of something raw, panicked, before he buried it.The air felt thick, every second stretching longer, heavier.I could almost hear the choice clicking into place inside him: silence, always silence.
“You told me not to poke where I don’t belong,” I said carefully, not raising my voice.“But these are my father’s words.I belong.”
His jaw tightened.“Not to this.”
“He wrote to you.”I held the envelope out like proof, like accusation.“He trusted you.”
Charlie’s eyes burned when they met mine, but his voice stayed flat, clipped.“And I kept that trust.”
“By lying to me?”
“By leaving it alone.”
I staggered back a step, as if his words had pushed me.I wanted to shout, to demand answers, to shake the truth loose from him, but there was something in the way he stood—rigid, arms crossed over himself—that told me he wouldn’t budge.Not yet.
But that didn’t mean I would, either.
My throat tightened, but I forced myself to keep my tone steady.“Do you have any idea what it’s like, growing up with holes in your story?To hear only half-truths and funeral speeches and whispers you’re not allowed to ask about?And now here they are.His words.His handwriting.And you’re telling me to just—leave them alone?”
For a heartbeat, I thought I saw him flinch.Just barely.Like the scarred armor cracked for half a second.But then it was gone, shuttered behind those walls he’d spent years building.
“I’m telling you,” he said, voice gravel, “that some truths don’t do anybody any good.”
I swallowed hard; the sting rising in my chest, but I met his stare.“Maybe not for you.But for me?They’re everything.”
His face hardened further, but I caught it—that one betrayed flicker in his eyes, grief carved so deep it hurt to look at.He turned away before I could say more, wrenching the latch a final time, shutting the window as though he could shut me out with it.
And I stood in the hall, envelope trembling in my hands, more certain than ever of one thing: whatever this truth was, it was tied to him, to me, and to wounds neither of us could outrun.
Charlie moved first.Not toward me, not toward an explanation—toward the fragments on the desk.His hands were steady but too precise, stacking the letters, aligning the edges as though neat piles could erase the burn marks.
“It’s safer this way,” he muttered, almost to himself.“Paper gets ruined easy.”
But I knew it wasn’t about safety.It was about delay.About burying something raw under the weight of logistics.
