The Year We Stopped Talking — Chapter 2

The letter, when they finally worked up the courage to open it together, was not from who any of them expected.

It was addressed to their mother in handwriting none of them recognized, dated eleven years back, and signed with only a single initial — a letter that made their mother’s careful, ordinary life suddenly look like it had rooms in it none of her children had ever been shown.

“Did you know about this?” the eldest asked, though she already knew the answer from her siblings’ faces.

No one had known. That, more than the letter itself, was what none of them could stop turning over for the rest of the night.