Chapter 14
Elowen eventually returned to Willow House.
Voluntarily.
That surprised everyone.
Why?
She wanted her knitting bag.
Apparently six months of trauma does not reduce attachment to expensive yarn.
Sabella went with her.
I offered security.
Elowen declined.
Then reconsidered.
“One car.”
Fair.
The house looked different when nobody controlled the gate.
Same furniture.
Same windows.
Same garden.
Elowen walked through each room naming what had happened.
Here Althea told her Sabella had been fired.
Here she waited for a photograph proving reemployment.
Here she packed twice.
Here she unpacked.
Then she entered the bedroom.
Opened a drawer.
Pulled out dozens of unsent letters.
Addressed to Sabella.
Althea had not destroyed them.
Interesting.
Why keep them?
Maybe guilt.
Maybe leverage.
Maybe inability to fully erase evidence.
Elowen read none aloud.
They belonged to Sabella.
Mother and daughter took the box home.
Over weeks, Sabella read them slowly.
Some angry.
Some apologetic.
Some ordinary.
One simply described a bird outside the window.
That one made her cry hardest.
Because ordinary life had continued while she imagined death.
They did not preserve every letter.
Some they burned.
Some kept.
Choice.
Willow House was later sold by Althea’s family.
I had nothing to do with it.
Good.
May you like
Not every contaminated place needs to become mine.
Sometimes the cleanest ending is letting someone else buy the furniture and complain about the heating.
