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PART 2
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It was a photograph.
Old.
Creased down the middle.
Black and white.
But I recognized the face in it instantly.
My fiancée.
The one I buried eighteen years ago.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered.
Emily wouldn’t look at me.
Grace was crying so hard she could barely breathe.
“We found it last year,” Emily said.
“In a box in the attic.
The one you told us never to open.”
“I kept that box locked for a reason.”
“I know, Dad.
But we had to.”
“You had to what?”
Grace reached into the second towel and pulled out a folded letter.
She placed it on the table beside the photograph.
“Read it,” she said.
“Please.”
I unfolded the letter.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
It was my fiancée’s.
She had written it three days before she d*ed.
My eyes went to the first line.