The morning had come grey and still, the fog hanging low over the harbour. Thomas stood at the window a long while without moving, watching the boats disappear into the white distance. He had the letter in his hand still, unopened, its wax seal cold against his thumb.

Chapter II. The road north was longer than she remembered, the miles marked only by the slow change of trees — oak giving way to pine, then pine to bare rock and wind.

It was the kind of silence that has weight. She pressed her pen to the page and found she had nothing left to say, and that this, too, was a kind of ending.

She folded the letter carefully, twice, then a third time — a habit since childhood — and placed it beneath the loose board beside the writing desk. No one would find it there. No one had ever looked.

The last entry in the journal read simply: arrived. No date. No hour. Just the one word in his careful hand, and beneath it, a long clean line where the pen had rested before he set it down for good.