Page 77 of Into the Shadows

When Teddy catches my gaze, his whole face softens. I mouthI love youto him, and he says it back, a happy little smile tilting up the side of his mouth. It seems I’m not the only one having a hard time accepting that this is real life.

While there are many unknowns ahead of us, I’ll never question his devotion to me. He’ll stand by my side, steadfast and strong, until the day we die. I couldn’t have gotten any luckier.

Chapter 43

Lottie

“Okay, where do we start?” Ginny rubs her hands together through Gia’s phone screen. It makes me weirdly happy to see her blue eyes sparkling again. After our conversation at spa night last week, I’ve been racking my brain to think of ways to get her to open up about how she’s doing. I can’t come up with a single option that isn’t as subtle as a bulldozer.

“Let’s divvy up the letters first. Ginny, I emailed you photos of them so you can read them, too,” I say.

“Then we can make notes on what each one contains to make referencing them faster,” Ryan suggests.

“Good idea.” I run into my office to grab my laptop. “We can pass this around when we’ve finished reading. Should we sort them chronologically?”

“Until something else comes up that we might want to use instead.” Gia starts passing out stacks of letters. We end up with five apiece.

Reading the first one in my stack breaks my heart. It’s so full of longing and the desire to be together. I make a note toask if anyone comes across a reason why they couldn’t be together.

We’re all quiet as we read. I keep track of the main points in my letters. Most of them are mundane discussions of what they’ve been up to. One of them describes how elated they were to meet that day. My last letter makes me pause. “Are anyone else’s letters in different handwriting?”

“What?” Gia leans over to look at mine.

“Look, this one has more of a script-type font. It’s much harder to read than this one.” I hold the two side by side.

“Mine looks like this one.” Gia points to the fancier writing.

The rest of the group compares their letters to mine. Most of them are from the person who wrote a little sloppier. Gia has the majority of the ones from the other person.

“Did she have two lovers?” Gia asks.

“Maybe. They all talk about their affection for her, but it’s hard to tell for sure with how they used to write,” Carson says.

“I think it’s romantic,” Ginny says through the phone.

“Very romantic, but it makes it difficult to know exactly what they’re saying,” I point out.

Michael grimaces. “No kidding. I’m struggling to get through all mine.”

“Same.” Carson sighs as if he’s grateful to vent his frustrations.

“How about I read through them, make notes, and send the doc to you guys when I’m done?” Ginny offers.

“Are you sure you have time for that?” Gia asks.

“Trust me. I’ve got plenty of time to kill.” The annoyance in her voice doesn’t go unnoticed by us. If she’s got time to kill, why can’t she come home?

“You’re not working on a new album right now?” Carson’s surprise matches all of ours.

“Kind of hard to focus when a constant stream of peopleare coming in and out of my house.” Ginny shakes her head and visibly refocuses her mindset. “Anyway, I’ll be happy to read these. I love how open and honest they were with her. Can you guys figure out who they belong to?”

“That was our next stop today,” I tell her.

“I was thinking we should start with property records,” Michael suggests. “Noah and Nellie found this in the floorboards of their house. It would stand to reason these belong to a person who lived in the house.”

“Unless it was a maid or something,” Gia says.

“Maybe, but weren’t they upstairs in the bedrooms?” Carson asks me.

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