The Emails in the Office
Marlowe hadn't been back to this house since the funeral.
Eight months, and the porch light was still the same amber yellow, the same wind chime clinking by the door. Only the woman who answered it was different.
"Marlowe." Corinne's smile arrived a half-second too late, like she'd had to go looking for it. "We weren't expecting you."
"It's the anniversary." Marlowe held up a small bouquet of white asters — Ilsa's favorite. "I wanted to see Nell."
She found her niece curled on the porch steps around a stuffed rabbit, staring at nothing. When Nell saw her, something in her small face cracked open with relief so raw it made Marlowe's chest ache.
"Aunt Marlowe." Nell was in her arms before she finished the name.
Inside, Graham looked older than eight months should have made him — grayer at the temples, a new stoop to his shoulders. He hugged Marlowe stiffly.
"She's still not calling Corinne anything," he said, low, apologetic, like it was a problem to be managed. "The therapist says give it time."
"Maybe she doesn't want to."
"Marlowe." A warning in his voice now. "Don't."
She didn't push it — not yet. She stayed for dinner, watched Nell eat in careful silence, watched Corinne's eyes track the girl like she was cataloguing something. Watched Nell flinch, almost invisibly, when Corinne reached past her for the salt.
That night, in the guest room that used to be Ilsa's home office, Marlowe couldn't sleep. She went looking for a spare blanket in the closet and found, instead, a box that had survived the great post-funeral purge — Ilsa's old laptop bag, unopened, forgotten.
Inside was a folder of printed emails Marlowe had never seen. Between Graham and someone signing off only as C.
The dates started four months before the accident.
The last one, sent the night before Ilsa died, read: After tomorrow it'll be easier. I promise.
Marlowe sat very still on the floor of her dead sister's office, the paper shaking in her hands.