Chapter 11: The Letter She Never Sent
The attic wasn't a place people visited.
Its ladder creaked. The dust was thick. Even the air felt stiller there, as if time had been folded and forgotten beneath the beams. But that morning, when a girl named Mae knocked over a broom near the kitchen and sent the attic door swinging open, something came loose.
"I didn't mean to go up," Mae said breathlessly. "But I saw something on the rafter. A box with red string."
Anya climbed the ladder herself. The dust clung to her fingertips. The wooden box was light, smaller than she expected—no lock, no name, just a string and a dried violet tucked under its knot.
She opened it slowly.
Inside was a single envelope.
Unstamped.
Unsealed.
And on the front, written in fading ink:
"To the One Who Knew Me."
They didn't open it right away.
Anya brought it down and set it on the porch table. Oriana arrived with fresh tea and sat across from her, watching the envelope like it might speak on its own.
"Do you think it was meant to be found?" Oriana asked.
"I think," Anya said softly, "it waited."
Oriana reached across the table and took Anya's hand.
"Then let's listen."
The paper inside was delicate—yellowed and folded with care. The handwriting curled gently, careful even in its grief. Anya began to read aloud, her voice quiet and even.
You knew me before I became a silence.
You knew the way my laugh sounded when I was reckless, when I let the world touch me too easily.
I don't know how to write to someone I no longer see in the mirror, but I think… I think you're still there. Under all of it. Under the years I didn't speak your name. Under the nights I said "I'm fine" and wasn't.
I loved you. I still do. I just never told you when you were close enough to hear it.
Oriana covered her mouth.
Anya paused, swallowing hard, then continued.
Do you remember the red scarf I always wore? I left it on your chair that day on purpose. I wanted you to follow me. But maybe you were waiting too.
We waited too long.
I married a man who never touched my ribs the way you did when we danced by the river. I had a daughter who once said a girl in her class made her heart feel soft, and I told her "that's lovely" even though I was afraid. I was afraid because I recognized it.
Because it was mine. And I buried it.
You were never a mistake. You were the only thing I didn't regret.
If this letter finds the wind, if it finds the soil, if it finds the one who knew me… then I've been heard.
There was no signature.
No date.
Only a small pressed leaf tucked into the fold.
Anya didn't speak for a long time.
Neither did Oriana.
They simply let the silence rest between them like another body—gentle, grieving, familiar.
Finally, Oriana whispered, "That could've been me."
Anya looked at her. "No."
"I mean—" Oriana paused, "—if I hadn't stayed. If I hadn't kissed you when I was scared. If I had left this place with a suitcase full of unsaid things."
Anya reached out and touched her cheek.
"You didn't. You stayed."
Oriana turned into her hand.
"But still… we know that ache. That almost."
Anya stood, pulling her gently to her feet. "Then let's not become it."
That night, they placed the letter in the wall.
Not buried. Not behind clay.
But inside a glass frame, at the center of the Listening Wall. A reminder that some stories don't need a name to be real. That sometimes, love waits too long—and sometimes, just sometimes, it finds its way back anyway.
They returned to their room in silence.
But it wasn't empty.
It was waiting.
Anya lit a single candle, its flame dancing across the floorboards. Oriana stood by the open window, letting the breeze kiss her skin. Her robe hung loose at her shoulders. Her hair fell down her back like water at dusk.
Anya came behind her and slid her hands slowly around her waist.
"I won't be a letter you never sent," she whispered.
Oriana turned.
"You're the whole book."
They kissed with reverence, like they were reading each other's pages line by line.
Oriana's hands slid beneath Anya's blouse, fingers splayed against her back, memorizing the curve of her spine. Anya groaned softly into her mouth, pressing Oriana against the wall, lips trailing down her throat, her collarbone, lower.
They undressed slowly, with no urgency—just awe.
When they fell into bed, skin against skin, they moved together like a tide and its moon. Every gasp a stanza. Every kiss a verse.
Oriana arched beneath her as Anya touched her with hands that trembled with devotion. And when they climaxed, it was quiet—breathless—like the final line of a letter too long unwritten:
"You are mine. And I will never forget to say it."
Later, wrapped in sheets and sleep-heavy limbs, Oriana murmured, "If I ever become afraid again…"
Anya kissed her temple. "Then I'll speak your name for you."
Oriana smiled.
"And if I forget it?"
Anya whispered against her ear, "Then I'll write it in clay. In skin. In breath. I'll carve it into the wind."
And the candle burned until morning.
Steady.
Like their love.