Sleep didn't come easily that night. Every time Amara closed her eyes, she saw her grandmother's words again "If fate has brought these letters into your hands, then it means his shadow has stretched too close to you."
By morning, her mind was restless, buzzing with questions she couldn't quiet. She made coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and untied the faded ribbon around the letters again. Her fingers hesitated above the second envelope.
This one was dated September 12, 2002.
The paper crackled as she unfolded it.
My dearest Amara,
By now you may have questions. You may have already seen his name. I swore never to write it again, but it lingers in me like a scar. Jonas took something from me I can never get back. He left me with a choice I should never have been forced to make.
I loved him, once. I loved him too much. And that love was the beginning of the end.
Amara's chest tightened. She gripped the page, eyes racing over the next lines, desperate for more but her grandmother had stopped there. No explanation. No details.
Her pulse thudded. Loved him? Her grandmother? The woman who had never once spoken of romance, who had carried her life with quiet dignity and silence?
Amara leaned back in her chair, the words echoing. A secret lover. A man who had left scars so deep her grandmother had hidden them for decades.
She set the letter down and reached for her mug, her hands trembling. That was when she noticed it something faint and brittle, tucked between the second and third envelopes. She slid it free carefully.
A photograph.
The edges were frayed, the image faded, but the details were clear enough. Her grandmother stood in a garden, younger than Amara had ever known her, laughter caught mid smile. Beside her was a tall man with dark hair, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
Jonas.
Amara didn't need anyone to tell her. His presence seemed to leap from the photograph, unsettling in its intensity. His eyes, even blurred by time, seemed to stare directly into hers as if he could see her through the years.
She swallowed hard, a chill creeping down her spine.
Her grandmother had loved this man. But something had gone terribly wrong.
Amara traced her grandmother's smile in the photograph, then Jonas's face. Who was he really? What had he taken from her grandmother? And why did his name feel like a warning echoing through time?
A sudden memory tugged at her she must have been six or seven, half-asleep on her grandmother's lap in this very house. She remembered her grandmother whispering a name as she stroked Amara's hair. At the time, it had meant nothing. But now… now she was certain. The name had been Jonas.
Her stomach knotted.
She slipped the photograph back into the letter and retied the ribbon with shaky fingers. The room felt colder suddenly, as though the air had shifted.
For the first time since finding the letters, Amara wished she hadn't opened them.
But it was too late.
And as she gathered the letters back into the box, she didn't notice the faint smear of fresh mud on the porch outside the kitchen window.