My heartbeat changed.
Evelyn’s name was written across the top in Claire’s careful handwriting.
I took the paper.
It was not a grocery list.
It was a letter, unfinished.
Dear Evelyn,
I don’t know if people are allowed to write to someone they never met, but sometimes this house feels so full of you that I catch myself expecting an answer.
Your boys miss you in ways they don’t know how to say. Lucas pretends to be brave. Owen carries sadness like a blanket. Their father loves them, but he is lost behind a wall he may not know he built.
I promised someone once that if I ever found them, I would make sure they were not alone.
I stopped reading.
“Promised someone?” I whispered.
Ruth looked frightened. “I don’t know what it means.”
The house seemed suddenly too quiet.
I turned the page over.
On the back was a small sketch of the east garden, with an X marked beneath the white roses.
Beneath it, Claire had written one line:
Evelyn said he would understand when he found the locket.
My breath left me.
“Ruth,” I said slowly, “did Claire ever say she knew my wife?”
“No, sir.”
I looked toward the dark windows, toward the garden where white roses gleamed faintly under the moon.
At dawn, before the boys woke, I walked outside with a small spade from the gardening shed. The air smelled of wet earth and early summer. For several minutes, I stood before the roses, afraid of what I might find and more afraid of finding nothing.
Then I dug where Claire’s sketch had marked the soil.
Four inches down, metal struck metal.
I brushed away dirt with shaking hands and uncovered a small silver locket wrapped in oilcloth.
It had belonged to Evelyn.
I knew because I had given it to her on our first anniversary.
Inside should have been a tiny photograph of us.
Instead, there was a folded slip of paper, brittle with age but protected from the damp.