Read Chapter 6: The Sealed Letter

The attic light had begun to fail by the time Inès returned from Bordeaux with the cedar chest balanced on her hips like a stubborn child. Camille heard her youngest sister on the stairs, the soft knock of her heels against the wood, and then the sound of the chest being set down in the library with a thud that seemed to shake the dust from the shelves.

Élodie looked up from the window where she'd been watching the rain streak the glass. "You actually brought it."

"I didn't bring it. I opened it." Inès's voice was thin. She stood in the doorway, her coat still wet at the shoulders, and in her hands she held a bundle of envelopes bound with a faded ribbon the color of dried blood.

Camille rose from the desk where she'd been pretending to sort through papers. "Inès—"

"She wrote to someone." Inès crossed the room and set the letters on the mahogany table between them. "Not to me. Not to us. These are love letters, but they're not for our father."

Camille felt the temperature of the room shift. Élodie stepped away from the window, her arms crossed, her face unreadable. The rain had picked up, drumming against the glass like a warning.

"What do you mean, not for our father?" Camille asked carefully.

"Look for yourself." Inès unbound the ribbon and spread the letters across the table. The paper was yellowed but well-preserved, the ink a steady, practiced hand. Camille picked up the topmost letter and read the salutation.

*Ma chère L.*

She flipped to the signature. There wasn't one, only a single initial. *J.*

The handwriting was not her father's. Antoine Marchetti had written in a broad, impatient scrawl, his letters leaning forward as if perpetually in motion. This was different—slanted, careful, the strokes of someone who weighed each word before committing it to paper.

"L," Camille said slowly. "Not M. Not Élodie. Not Inès."

"Mother's name was Marguerite," Élodie said flatly. "Everyone called her Margot."

"I know what her name was." Camille turned over another letter, then another. All addressed to *L.* All signed with that single initial. She scanned the opening lines of one: *I think of you in the mornings, when the light comes in off the sea and I remember the way you laughed at the harbor that day.*

"It's an affair," Inès said, her voice cracking. "She had an affair. All this time—all the stories she told us about Father, about how much she loved him—and she was writing to someone else."

"You don't know that." Camille's voice came out sharper than she intended. "You don't know that these are romantic. They could be from a friend, a cousin—"

"A cousin who signs his letters with a single initial and writes about the way she laughed?" Inès shook her head. "I know what this is, Camille. I'm not a child."

"No one said you were—"

"You're defending her." Élodie spoke from the window, her voice low and even. "You haven't even read them, and you're already defending her."

"I'm not defending anyone. I'm saying we shouldn't jump to conclusions about a woman who isn't here to explain herself." Camille set the letter down. Her hands were trembling, though she couldn't say why. "Mother had secrets. We know that now. But that doesn't mean she—"

"Did you read yours?" Inès asked.

The question landed like a stone in still water. Camille felt Élodie's gaze slide toward her, heavy and accusatory.

"Her letter," Inès pressed. "The one from the will. You told us she wrote you something. Did you read it?"

"Of course I read it."

"And what did it say?"

Camille hesitated. The letter was still folded in her coat pocket, its edges beginning to soften from how often she'd touched it. She could feel the weight of it against her chest, the accusation burning there like a coal.

*Your father was murdered.*

"I told Élodie," Camille said carefully. "It was about Father. About his disappearance."

Inès waited. When Camille didn't continue, she said, "That's all? She wrote you a letter about Father, and that's all?"

"She wanted me to know something." Camille's throat tightened. "She wanted me to ask questions."

"What questions?"

"I can't—" Camille stopped herself. The rain seemed louder now, filling the library with white noise. "Not yet. I need to understand it better first."

"Understand what?" Élodie's voice had gone sharp. She'd crossed the room and stood now at the edge of the table, her hands pressed flat against the wood. "What aren't you telling us, Camille? You've been walking around this house like you're carrying something, ever since the funeral. The letter. The attic. The ledger. You've been digging into Mother's secrets—into Father's—but you won't share any of it with us."

"Because I don't know what any of it means yet."

"No." Élodie shook her head. "You're hiding something. You've been hiding it since the reading. I saw your face when you opened that letter. You looked like someone who'd been struck."

Camille's jaw tightened. "You burned yours without reading it. You have no right to ask me what mine said."

The words hung in the air between them, ugly and raw. Élodie's expression flickered—something wounded passing over her features before she shuttered it away.

"I burned it because I already knew," Élodie said quietly. "I knew what she would say. I've known for twenty years."

"Known what?" Inès looked between them, her face pale. "What is everyone else knowing that I don't?"

Camille looked at her youngest sister—at the bewildered anger in her eyes, at the way she'd clutched those love letters to her chest like a shield. Inès had been eight when their father disappeared. Eight years old. So much had been kept from her. So much had been kept from all of them.

"There are things about Mother," Camille said slowly, choosing each word with care, "and about Father—things I'm still piecing together. The letter she wrote me claimed something I can't prove yet. Something that, if it's true—"

"If it's true, what?" Élodie demanded.

Camille looked at her. Élodie knew. Camille could see it in the set of her mouth, in the way she'd refused to cry at the funeral, in the way she'd burned her letter without reading it. Élodie had known something about their father for decades. And she'd never told them.

"Your letter," Camille said. "The one you burned. You never read it, but you knew what it said. How?"

Élodie's face closed like a door. "That's none of your business."

"You made it my business when you burned it. You made it all of our business when you decided you'd rather destroy the truth than share it."

"I destroyed a lie. Mother's letters were always lies—beautiful, poisoned lies meant to make us love her more or hurt us more, depending on her mood. I didn't want to read another one."

"But you knew what it would say," Inès said softly. "You knew before you burned it. So you must have known what she was like. You must have known about her secrets." Her voice dropped. "You must have known about L."

Élodie's silence was answer enough.

"You paid Robert Benoît," Camille said. "You made the payments for that roof repair, eight years of them, through Mother's hidden accounts. You knew about the bakery. You knew about the list of names." She stepped closer. "What else did you know, Élodie? What else are you keeping from us?"

The question cracked something open. Élodie's composure broke—just for a moment, just enough. Camille saw it in her eyes: fear. Not anger. Fear.

"You want to know what I'm keeping from you?" Élodie said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I'm keeping the fact that our father didn't disappear. He ran. He ran from her—from the woman we had for a mother, the one who wrote love letters to a man who wasn't him while she tracked his every movement in that ledger like he was a criminal." She pointed at Camille. "And you—you found that ledger. You know how she watched him. You know how she controlled him. And yet you're still defending her. You're still carrying her letter like it's a holy relic."

"Because she told me Father was murdered!" The words tore out of Camille before she could stop them. "She wrote it down, Élodie. She wanted me to know he didn't run. She wanted me to find out what really happened to him."

Silence fell like a curtain.

Inès stared at Camille, her love letters still clutched against her chest. Élodie's face had gone white.

"She lied," Élodie said finally. "She lied to you. She lied to all of us. Father left us, Camille. He got tired of being watched and tracked and accounted for, and he left. And Mother spent the rest of her life trying to rewrite the story so she didn't have to be the villain." She gestured at the letters on the table. "There's your proof. She was in love with someone else, and Father knew it. He knew, and he couldn't stay."

"You're wrong." But even as Camille said it, doubt crept in like cold water through a cracked hull. The love letters lay on the table between them, mute evidence of a version of events she hadn't wanted to imagine. Her mother, in love with another man. Her father, driven away.

"Ask her," Élodie said. "Go ahead. She's in the ground now, but you can ask her. See if she answers."

"That's not—"

"Or ask him." Élodie's voice cracked. "Ask our father, wherever he is. If he's even still alive. Ask him why he never came back." She laughed—a broken sound. "But you can't, can you? Because he's gone. He's been gone for twenty years, and Mother made sure we never knew the truth about why."

She turned and walked toward the door. At the threshold, she paused, looking back at Camille with something that might have been pity.

"You want to know what I think?" she said. "I think Mother's letter wasn't a confession. It was a weapon. And she gave it to you because she knew you'd be the one to use it."

The door closed behind her. Inès began, very quietly, to cry.

Camille stood alone amid the scattered letters, her mother's voice still ringing in her ears, her sister's accusation burning like a brand against her skin. She thought about the letter in her pocket—the precise, careful words her mother had written in her final days, the claim that had set all of this in motion. What if Élodie was right? What if the letter was nothing more than a final manipulation, a way to turn her daughters against each other one last time from beyond the grave?

But no. She couldn't think that way. There was too much evidence pointing in another direction—the ledger, the list of names, the baker's testimony, the man who'd watched the house from the lane. Her mother had been hiding something. But Élodie was hiding something too.

Camille reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her mother's letter. She read it again, slowly, tracing each word with her finger.

*Your father was murdered.*

*Ask Élodie why she never came home.*

She folded it carefully and returned it to her pocket. Outside, the rain had stopped. Through the window, she saw Élodie crossing the garden toward the old stable block, her silhouette small against the grey sky.

Behind her, Inès was gathering up the love letters, her hands shaking.

"Camille?" Inès's voice was small. "Who do you believe?"

Camille didn't answer. For the first time since she'd arrived at the manor, she wasn't sure she knew.