Chapter 4
The first letter Callahan opened was addressed to Maple.
Evelyn had written it three years earlier.
Not five.
Three.
Long after her memory returned.
Callahan read only enough to understand what it was.
Then stopped.
Maple’s letters belonged to Maple.
He asked her therapist how to handle them.
The therapist advised starting slowly.
One age-appropriate letter at a time.
No avalanche of adult pain onto an eight-year-old.
The letters addressed to Callahan were different.
He opened the oldest.
Evelyn wrote:
Delphine says you still believe I died. I don’t understand why she thinks telling you now would destroy Maple. I need to hear that from you, not from her.
Callahan read it twice.
He had never received it.
The second:
I agreed to wait because Delphine said Maple had finally stopped waking up screaming for me. I believed one more month might be kinder. Now she says you’ve told Maple I abandoned you both. Did you?
Callahan’s jaw tightened.
He had told Maple no such thing.
The third letter was angrier.
If you want me gone, say it yourself. Stop sending your cousin to explain what my daughter supposedly feels.
Callahan placed it down.
Nathan sat across from him.
“She thought Delphine spoke for you.”
“Yes.”
“And you thought Evelyn was dead.”
“Yes.”
Delphine had not merely intercepted packages.
She had controlled both sides of a silence.
Rebecca found the matching correspondence in Delphine’s old email archive after a court-approved preservation process began.
Messages to Evelyn described Maple as emotionally fragile.
Messages claimed Callahan’s grief had hardened into anger.
One said:
Callahan believes reappearance now would destroy Maple’s stability. Give him time.
Callahan stared at it.
“I never said that.”
Rebecca nodded.
Another message:
He has asked me to remain the point of contact until Maple is older.
False.
Then something changed in the correspondence about two years earlier.
Evelyn stopped accepting Delphine’s explanations.
She began demanding direct contact.
The gifts increased.
The letters became more urgent.
Then Delphine stopped replying regularly.
And around that same time, Maple began being locked inside the garden shed during larger family parties.
Nathan saw the connection first.
“Why hide Maple at parties?”
Callahan looked toward him.
“If Evelyn ever came near the estate…”
Nathan finished:
“She wouldn’t see the child.”
May you like
The shed was not only punishment.
It could also be concealment.
