I nodded, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Maybe the last letter explains who T was. Why she had the brooch.”
Noah’s eyes flicked to mine. “And why he kept his relationship hidden.”
The room felt different this time.
Maybe it was the late-afternoon light slipping through the curtains.
Or maybe it was the way Noah and I settled onto the couch, closer than last time. Close enough that the warmth of his leg brushed mine when we shifted.
Noah reached for the weathered documents tied up with a ribbon. The last unread letter sat on top, edges soft from age, the handwriting elegant but trembling, like the person writing it had been scared or rushed.
Finally, he opened the letter.
The paper crackled, whisper thin. Noah read the first lines to himself, eyes scanning quickly, then slowing… and then stopping altogether.
“What?” I asked, leaning just slightly closer.
He looked up. “It’s another letter from her. From T.”
I felt his arm tense beneath my hand but didn’t move it.
He began reading aloud, voice low and uneven.
"My dearest Edward,
I hardly know how to write this without shaking. I haven’t slept. I can barely eat. But you deserve to know, I am with child. Our child. And everything has changed."
I sucked in a breath. This was turning into one hell of a family secret.
Noah paused. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
He continued.
"My parents discovered everything. They are furious, Edward. Beyond furious. They say I have disgraced them, disgraced our name. They have forbidden me from seeing you again.
They have arranged a marriage for me with B. He has agreed to raise the baby as his own. I am to become a wife in name only, and a mother in secret. I… I don’t know how to bear it.
They say it is for the best. For the child. For the family. For everyone.
I am not allowed to contact you again.
Not allowed to send another letter. They will read everything before it leaves this house, watch every step I take.
I am a prisoner in my own home, Edward, and the walls feel smaller each hour that passes.
This is goodbye, my love. Not because I choose it, but because they have chosen it for me.
Because the world we dreamed of, was never a world they would allow us to live in. But know this, I will carry you with me. In my thoughts. In my heart. In our child.
Always yours. T."
The last line tremored across the page like something once sobbed over.
Noah said nothing.
He just stared at the paper like it had taken the ground out from beneath him.
I felt him go completely still beside me, not in shock, but in real, bone-deep disorientation.
