Chapter 3 - The Letters Beneath the Floorboards
The clock on the mantel ticked loudly between us.
Only hours earlier, Daniel and I had stood in that same room promising to spend the rest of our lives together. White roses still surrounded the piano. Two champagne glasses remained on the table, and my wedding dress brushed the floor beside my chair.
Now Daniel looked like a man preparing to destroy the happiness he had just given me.
“What do you mean someone made sure you wouldn’t find me?” I asked.
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees.
“When I was released, I spent almost two years in hospitals. My memory came back in fragments. A dance. A hill. Your face. The name Ellen.”
He pressed two fingers against the scar near his temple.
“I couldn’t remember your street at first. I couldn’t even remember the name of the town correctly. By the time enough returned, your parents’ old address was the only place I knew to go.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“Our childhood home?”
Daniel nodded. “It was the summer of 1978.”
The year struck me like a physical blow.
I had been thirty years old in 1978. I lived less than a mile from my childhood home and worked at the library. I had still written to military offices every month.
Daniel had been in the same town.
“How long were you here?”
“Three days.”
“Three days?”
“I went to the house on the first afternoon.”
The property had already passed to Margaret after our parents moved into a smaller home. She and Frank had lived there with Susan for several years.
Daniel’s gaze shifted toward the family photographs on the piano.
“A woman answered the door. At first, I didn’t recognize her. Then she said she was your sister.”
My mouth went dry.
“Margaret.”
“Yes.”
I stood so abruptly that my chair scraped across the floor.
“What did she tell you?”
Daniel rose too, but he kept his distance.
“She said you had married.”
The words hung between us.
“She said you moved to California with your husband. She told me you had two children and that you wanted no contact with anything connected to the war.”
“No.”
“She said my letters had caused you years of pain and that hearing from me would destroy the life you had finally built.”
“No!”
I struck the table with my palm. One champagne glass fell and shattered.
Daniel flinched.
“I never married. I never left this town. Margaret knew that.”
“I know now.”
“She knew I was waiting for you.”
My voice broke on the final word.
Daniel took a step toward me. I raised my hand, not because I blamed him but because I could not bear to be touched.
“Why did you believe her?”
Pain crossed his face.
“I was not the man who left you, Ellen. I had nightmares in daylight. I sometimes forgot where I was while standing in the middle of a room. Doctors told me to avoid emotional shocks. When Margaret described your children, she knew their supposed names. She knew details about your life.”
“What names?”
“David and Caroline.”
I covered my mouth.
Those were the names Daniel and I had chosen for our imaginary children on the hill.
Only a few people knew that. Margaret had been one of them.
“She used our plans to make the lie believable.”
Daniel nodded miserably.
“She gave me a photograph. It showed you standing beside a man with two children.”
I remembered it immediately. The photograph had been taken at Susan’s tenth birthday party. I stood beside Frank’s brother and his children.
Margaret had turned a harmless family picture into evidence of an invented marriage.
“I asked for your address,” Daniel continued. “She refused. She said you had made her promise never to give it to me. Then she gave me a letter.”
“A letter?”
“She said you wrote it after hearing I might still be alive.”
Daniel reached inside his overnight bag and removed a small leather folder. From it, he produced an envelope yellowed with age.
My name was written across the corner.
The handwriting looked like mine.
He handed it to me.
The paper shook in my fingers as I unfolded it.
Daniel,
Learning that you may be alive has opened wounds I spent years trying to close. I am married now. I have children who need me, and my husband does not deserve to live beneath the shadow of a love that ended long ago.
Please do not search for me. Please do not write. The girl you remember no longer exists.
I wish you peace, but I cannot be part of your life.
Ellen
I read it twice before the words blurred.
“I didn’t write this.”
“I know.”
“I would never have written this.”
Daniel looked toward the prom dress hanging near the piano.
“I know that now too.”
Anger surged through me, followed by an even deeper pain.
“But you believed it for forty-six years.”
“I believed I was respecting your wishes.”
“You were here, Daniel. I was less than a mile away.”
My voice rose until it filled the house.
“You could have gone to the library. You could have opened a telephone book. You could have asked anyone in town.”
“I did ask someone.”
“Who?”
“A clerk at the motel. He remembered your family, but he said he thought one of the Grayson sisters had moved away. I took that as confirmation.”
“One of us did move away for a few years. Margaret lived in Chicago after college.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew this town. You knew people here.”
“I remembered pieces, Ellen. Not enough.”
I turned away, tears burning my eyes.
The cruelest part was that both of us had acted from love. I had waited because I believed Daniel could return. He had stayed away because he believed I had asked him to protect my family.
Margaret had understood us well enough to weaponize our loyalty.
“Where did you go after that?” I asked.
“Colorado. A veterans’ rehabilitation program accepted me. I built furniture for a living. I tried to make a life.”
“Did you marry?”
“No.”
I turned back.
Daniel’s expression carried no pride in the answer.
“I came close once. Her name was Rebecca. She was kind, but I kept a part of myself locked away. It wasn’t fair to her. We ended things before the wedding.”
“Did you ever try to find me again?”
“Many times. But every search began with the assumption that you were married and living in California. There were thousands of Ellen Graysons. Later, I thought your surname had changed.”
He swallowed.
“Part of me was also afraid. That letter had been clear. I thought searching more aggressively would be selfish.”
“Then why did you search now?”
“Six months ago, I attended a veterans’ reunion. A volunteer helped digitize old records. She found a newspaper archive from our hometown.”
Daniel removed a printed page from the folder.
It was an article published when I retired from the library. The headline read LOCAL LIBRARIAN ELLEN GRAYSON HONORED FOR FORTY YEARS OF SERVICE.
The article stated that I had never married.
“When I read that sentence, I knew something was wrong,” Daniel said. “I contacted the library. A young employee remembered you. She gave you my first letter, but I don’t think she understood who I was.”
I remembered receiving an unsigned envelope months earlier. It contained only a question: Did you once know Daniel Mercer?
I had assumed it was from a historian researching local soldiers. I wrote back immediately.
Yes. I have waited for news of him my entire life.
Daniel received my answer.
Three weeks later, he stood on my porch.
I lowered myself onto the sofa.
“Margaret knew you had returned.”
“Yes.”
“She knew for forty-six years.”
“Yes.”
“And she sat across from me at birthdays and Christmas dinners. She watched me open that garment bag every spring.”
Daniel knelt in front of me.
“I should have told you before the wedding.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of Margaret?”
“Of losing you again.”
I stared at him.
“I thought you might look at me and see a man who should have tried harder. A man who let one forged letter steal our lives.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Every day.”
The answer softened something inside me, but it did not erase the wound.
I touched the forged letter.
“How could Margaret imitate my handwriting so well?”
“Maybe she copied it from your letters.”
“My letters to you were returned to me.”
“Were all of them returned?”
I thought about the boxes I had kept for years. There had been dozens of letters. Some came back unopened, while others simply disappeared.
Margaret worked at the town bank in the early seventies, but before that, she had briefly worked at the post office.
A memory surfaced.
Margaret standing at our kitchen table with one of my envelopes in her hand.
You’re still writing to him?
Until someone proves he’s dead.
She had smiled sadly and offered to mail it for me.
The memory turned sour.
“We need to speak to her,” I said.
Daniel shook his head. “Not tonight.”
“She skipped our wedding because she knew you might recognize her.”
“Ellen, you’ve just learned—”
“I have lost fifty-five years. I will not give her another night to prepare a lie.”
I changed into a sweater and trousers. Daniel tried to persuade me to wait until morning, but he knew stubbornness had carried me through half a century.
We drove to Margaret’s assisted-living community shortly before ten. The night attendant recognized me and hesitated when I asked to see my sister.
“She’s resting.”
“Tell her Ellen is here with Daniel Mercer.”
The attendant’s expression changed.
A few minutes later, she returned and led us down the hall.
Margaret sat in an armchair beside her window. She wore a blue robe, and her white hair was tied neatly at the back. On the table beside her sat an untouched cup of tea.
Her eyes moved from me to Daniel.
For one suspended moment, the three of us were young again.
Then Margaret whispered, “You should have stayed gone.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
I placed the forged letter on the table.
“Did you write this?”
Margaret stared at it.
“Answer me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Did you write it?”
Her shoulders lowered.
“Yes.”
The confirmation hurt more than I expected. Until that second, some desperate part of me had hoped there was another explanation.
“Why?”
Margaret looked at Daniel.
“Because he had already ruined your life once.”
“The war took him.”
“The war sent him back broken.”
Daniel’s hand tightened around his cane.
“You had no right to decide what she could survive.”
Margaret gave a bitter laugh.
“You disappeared, and I spent years putting her back together. I watched her mother beg her to eat. I watched her wake up crying. Then you arrived looking half-dead and expecting her to begin all over again.”
“I expected the truth.”
“I protected my sister.”
“You watched me wait!” I shouted. “You watched me grow old alone.”
Margaret’s face crumpled, but she did not apologize.
“You think this was only about protecting me,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
Her gaze shifted.
Daniel saw it too.
“What else happened?” he asked.
Margaret turned toward the dark window.
I stepped closer.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Her fingers gripped the arms of the chair.
Finally, she whispered, “There are things beneath the floorboards of the old house.”
“What things?”
“Your letters.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“How many?”
May you like
Margaret closed her eyes.
“All of them.”
