Chapter 46

Chapter 46 —Beneath the board

The night did not bring peace. Not to Isla. Not to the house that still held too many echoes of her mother’s silence. The rain had softened into a hush by midnight, but inside the walls, the weight of memory still pressed down like an invisible fog.

She had tried to sleep. Curled under the same floral quilt that had once brought her comfort as a child, she had closed her eyes and listened for calm—but her thoughts refused to quiet.

Elena’s face haunted her. Not as she’d last seen it, sick and pale, but younger—laughter in her eyes, rebellion in her smile. Victor’s words had painted the woman she used to be with strokes so vivid, Isla felt like she’d never really known her mother at all.

At 3:14 a.m., Isla rose. She lit the lamp by the window and padded barefoot across the old wooden floor. The room had changed little since she left for college. Faded posters, a stuffed bear on the bookshelf, her name still etched in the corner of the dresser drawer.

She pulled it open slowly and reached for the old diary she hadn’t touched in years. Tucked inside were the last letters her mother had written before her death—short, cryptic, often poetic in a way Isla hadn’t understood at the time. But now, after hearing Victor’s truth, every sentence carried new meaning.

She read one again:

> “We are all made of shadows, my darling. But the heart keeps a trace of every light it’s ever known.”

Isla sat back, heart pounding. That line had felt like nothing once. A poetic farewell. But now she was sure—it was a clue.

The attic.

Elena had spent hours up there when Isla was younger. Tinkering, organizing, sometimes just sitting with old records playing. There was something sacred about that space. Isla had avoided it since her death, afraid of what it might stir.

But now, she needed answers.

Clutching the diary to her chest, she crept down the stairs, careful not to wake the house.

The attic door groaned as she opened it.

Dust swirled in the beam of her flashlight. The smell of cedar, old fabric, and forgotten memories clung to the air. Boxes lined the walls—labeled and stacked with the neatness only her mother had the patience for.

She moved slowly. Pulled open drawers. Ran her hands along the wooden beams. Nothing.

Until she stepped on a floorboard that gave way with a soft creak. She paused. Pressed it again. It moved.

Kneeling, she pried at the edges with her fingernails, heart thudding with each tug. And finally, it lifted.

Beneath the floorboard was a flat wooden box, no larger than a shoebox, wrapped in velvet cloth. A string of dried lavender still tied around it. Isla’s fingers trembled as she pulled it free and unwrapped it.

Inside were letters—old, yellowed with age. Dozens of them.

She pulled one out. The handwriting was unmistakable.

“My dearest V—”

It was her mother’s.

She read by the dim light, lips parted, breath shallow.

> “If you’re reading this, it means I was too much a coward to tell Isla myself. I loved you. I never stopped. But I made a choice, and I lived with it. She doesn’t know, and she must never think she was anything less than a blessing, no matter who her father might have been.”

Isla stopped.

No. No.

She blinked hard. Read it again. The words didn’t change.

No dates. No definitive proof. But the implication hung in the air like smoke. Her mother hadn’t confirmed it—but she hadn’t denied it either.

Isla’s chest rose and fell with jagged breaths. She wasn’t crying. Not yet. But something inside her was breaking.

She read on.

> “Victor, I fear that by the time you read this, everything will have unravelled. I wanted to protect her. From our past. From our choices. I wanted her to have a future unburdened by shadows. But she is too much like you. Curious. Stubborn. Brave.”

A tear slid down Isla’s cheek, unbidden.

She couldn’t stop now. She read every line. Every confession. Every sentence Elena had never dared say aloud.

There were details about the summer they’d run away together. The night her grandfather had found them. The deal made in silence: Elena would return, marry the man chosen for her, and in exchange, Victor would be spared the wrath of a powerful family.

They’d parted on a bridge. No goodbyes.

Isla closed the box and hugged it to her chest. She didn’t care that dust coated her knees or that dawn had begun bleeding through the attic window.

Her entire life had been shaped by secrets.

But now, she held the truth in her hands.

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