I opened the letter alone.Not because Ethan wasn't welcome. He would have sat beside me without a word and given me the whole of it, the way he always did with things that were mine to carry first. But this felt like something that needed to happen in private, in the specific quiet of my own breathing, before I could share it with anyone.I took it to the window seat in our room, the one that looked out over the northern forest, and I broke the silver wax seal carefully, the way you handle something you understand to be irreversible.The letter was three pages. The handwriting was old but controlled, each word placed with the deliberateness of someone who had been composing this particular letter in their mind for years and was now finally, carefully, committing it to paper.She did not begin with apology. I noticed that first and it told me something about who she was before anything else did. She began with my mother's name.Her name was Lena.I had not known that. Elena Hale had n
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