PART 2 For six months, I’d reminded myself that this wasn’t my home.

But they were still my grandchildren.

Avoiding interference in Nolan’s marriage was one thing. Watching his children learn to shrink themselves inside their own home was something else entirely.

I placed my coffee cup on the table.

“Sweetheart,” I said to Ivy, “wait a moment. Don’t put them away yet.”

“Grandma, it’s okay,” she whispered.

“It is not okay.”

I stood.

Chloe faced me with her chin raised while her friends quietly moved aside.

I drew a breath.

“Chloe, these are not roommates. These are Nolan’s children, and they are grieving…”

Before I could finish, a sharp crack of splintering wood cut through the room.

I turned.

Priya had just sat on Chloe’s new white couch, and one of its front legs had broken straight through a floorboard.

The couch lurched sideways.

Priya cried out as wine splashed across the middle of Chloe’s spotless white rug.

For one stunned moment, the entire room froze.

Then someone laughed.

Another guest tried to hide a snort behind his glass, and uneasy laughter spread through the room.

Chloe’s face turned bright red.

“NO, NO, NO. NOT THE RUG.”

She dropped to her knees and began blotting the stain with a napkin.

After watching her scold the children over a handful of Lego pieces, I almost smiled at the timing.

But when I approached the broken floorboard, I realized the damaged rug was about to become the least important thing in the room.

I walked toward the couch while Ivy and Theo watched from the corner.

“That’s why I told you not to put the couch there.”

Chloe looked up. “Marlene, please, not now.”

“Nolan,” I said. “Move the couch, sweetheart. Careful of the board.”

Nolan and two friends shifted it aside.

He crouched beside the broken plank.

“Mom, what am I looking at?”

“Lift it.”

He pried up the damaged board.

Inside the cavity between the joists sat an old, dented metal box covered in dust.

Nolan froze.

“Mom.”

“I know, honey. Let me.”

I knelt beside him, lifted the surprisingly heavy box, and carried it to the coffee table.

“Whose is that?” Chloe asked quietly.

I kept my eyes on Nolan.

“It’s Rosalind’s.”

His expression changed in a way I hadn’t seen in four years.

“When she got sick,” I told him quietly, “she wrote letters. For the kids. For every big day she knew she wasn’t going to see. First day of middle school. First heartbreak. Graduation. Wedding day. One for you, too.”

Ivy stepped closer, with Theo following behind her.

“Mom wrote to us?” Ivy whispered.

“She made me promise I’d leave the box exactly where she hid it. When one of those days came, I was supposed to take out the right letter and put everything back.”

Nolan’s eyes filled with tears.

“She never told me.”

“She wanted her words to reach you when you needed them – not before.”

Behind him, Chloe shifted uneasily.

“Maybe we shouldn’t open them in front of everyone. They’re private.”

I looked at her.

“How do you know?”

Chloe went still. “Know what?”

“That they’re private.”

“They’re letters, Marlene. I assumed.”

I held her gaze briefly before turning back to the box.

When I opened the lid, something immediately looked wrong.

The ribbon was loose. The envelopes weren’t arranged the way Rosalind and I had left them.

A cold feeling settled in my stomach.

I counted the envelopes.

Then counted them again, more slowly.

Nine.

I looked directly at Chloe.

“There should be ten,” my voice did not shake. “There are nine.”

Nolan stared into the box.

“Maybe Rosalind took one out before she hid it.”

“No.”

“Mom, it was four years ago.”

“I helped her label every envelope.”

I spread them carefully across the coffee table.

Ivy. Theo. Ivy again. Theo again.

Nolan followed each envelope with his eyes.

“Which one’s missing?”

I already knew.

“Yours.”

His expression shifted.

Behind him, Chloe became completely motionless.

Nolan slowly turned toward her.

“Chloe?”

“The box could’ve always been like that,” she said quickly. “Maybe Marlene remembered wrong.”

“I didn’t.”

“Or the contractors found it. There were people in and out of this house for weeks.”

I looked straight at her.

“The contractors you told me never touched these floorboards?”

Chloe fell silent.

Nolan watched her.

“Did you find the box?”

She didn’t answer.

“Chloe.”

Finally, her eyes dropped.

“Yes.”

“Then stop lying and tell him what you did.”

“The contractor flagged the board,” she whispered. “I pried it up. I only took one. The one addressed to you.”

“Why?”

Chloe glanced around the room.

“Because everything in this house was still hers. Her pictures. Her things. Her stories. Every time I did something differently, someone told me how Rosalind used to do it.”

Nolan’s jaw tightened.

“You were competing with someone who was dead?”

Chloe shook her head.

“You don’t understand. She was still everywhere. And then I found a letter with your name on it.”

I stared at her.

“And one letter scared you that much?”

Her voice broke.

“I kept thinking she’d written something asking Nolan not to move on. Not to love anyone else. And I couldn’t bring myself to find out.”

“Where is it?” my son asked.

“In my nightstand.”

Nolan stared at her.

“You never opened it?”