I should also report that His Grace has been... different. He sits with the boy every evening. Reads to him, though Master Oliver informs me (with great solemnity) that His Grace “does the voices all wrong.” Yesterday they walked in the garden together—the one you restored. His Grace pointedout the flowers you planted and told the boy their names. Master Oliver picked a handful of wildflowers and asked me to preserve them “for when Maribel comes home.”
I do not presume to advise you, my lady. But I thought you should know that efforts are being made. Whether they are sufficient is not for me to judge.
With respect,
Mrs. Allen
Maribel read the letter three times, her vision blurring with tears she refused to shed. Oliver was home. Thaddeus was trying.
But trying was not the same as succeeding. And one week of effort did not erase months of distance.
She folded the letter carefully and placed it in the drawer of her writing desk.
Two days later, a second letter arrived. This one came in a different hand—larger, uneven, the letters formed with painstaking concentration.
deer maribel,
plees come home. he reeds to me now but he dos the voyses rong. yesturday he mayd the draggen sownd like a teepot and i laffed so hard i got the hikups.
i miss you. do you miss me?
luv, oliver
Maribel pressed the letter to her chest and allowed herself, finally, to weep before writing her own letter back.
Dear Oliver,
I hope you know how much I love you. I will come back very soon. I promise. Please keep writing to me.
All my love,
Maribel
The letters came regularly after that. Sometimes from Mrs. Allen, reporting in her measured way on the household’s daily rhythms. More often from Oliver himself, dictated to various servants and transcribed in handwriting that varied from Mrs. Allen’s elegant script to the cook’s blocky capitals.
We went too the stabils today. His Grace let me pet the horses. One of them tried to eat my hat.
Thomas came to visit! His Grace says Thomas’s father works here again and we can play.
I made a drawing for you. It is you and me and His Grace in the garden. His Grace looks very tall. I made him smile because I think he is trying to smile more.
Each letter sent a jolt that brought her both immense pain and joy simultaneously. Evidence of Oliver’s resilience, his capacity for joy even after everything he had endured. And evidence, too, of Thaddeus’s sustained effort. Not grand gestures or dramatic declarations, but the quiet, daily work of showing up. Of trying. Of failing sometimes—the voices done wrong, the awkward attempts at play—but continuing anyway.
Maribel wanted desperately to believe it was real. But belief required surrender, and surrender felt like walking off a cliff with no certainty that anyone would catch her.
Lady Eleanor found her in the drawing room one afternoon, Oliver’s latest letter spread on the table before her.
“You are thinking of returning,” Eleanor observed.
“I don’t know.” Maribel traced the uneven letters with one finger. “What if this is temporary? What if I go back and he reverts to the man he was before? What if?—”
“What if you spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been?” Eleanor sat beside her, her expression gentle. “My dear girl, there are no guarantees. Not in love, not in family, not in anything that matters. You can protect yourself by refusing to risk. But that protection comes at a cost.”
“I know.” Maribel’s voice was barely a whisper. “But I am so tired of being hurt.”
“Then make him prove himself worthy.” Eleanor took her hand. “Set conditions. Establish boundaries. Do not simply return and hope for the best. Demand the partnership he claims to want. And if he balks, if he retreats into old patterns, you leave. Immediately and without apology.”
Maribel looked down at the letter—at Oliver’s careful words, at the drawing he had made showing the three of them together. A family.
