The letter said:
Elara Voss.
My name is Maya Marchetti. I am Cael's sister. He doesn't know
I'm writing this.
I need to talk to you before this goes further. Not because I want
to stop it I don't, I swear I don't. But because there's something
about our father that Cael doesn't know, something that will
change how he understands Elena, and he needs to hear it from
me before he reads it somewhere he's not prepared for.
Can you meet me? Alone. Tomorrow, noon, the coffee shop on
Harrow Street the one with the blue awning. Don't tell Cael yet.
I'll explain why when I see you.
Please come.
Maya
I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and held this letter for
a long time.
Different handwriting. Not cream paper but plain white, the kind of
paper that comes in reams. Not E's careful loops but something faster,
slightly uneven, the handwriting of someone who writes quickly when
they're anxious.
Maya Marchetti. Cael had mentioned her the sister who needed rent
money, the sister the letters had predicted. He spoke of her with the
careful, slightly exhausted affection of an older sibling who has been the
responsible one for too long.
She had found me. Which meant she knew where I lived.
I did not sleep well that night.
The coffee shop on Harrow Street had a blue awning and a cat who
sat in the window and regarded customers with professional detachment. I
arrived at five to twelve and found a table near the back, because
apparently I had internalized the instruction to sit near the back of things.
Maya Marchetti arrived at noon exactly. She was nineteen, I knew
from Cael, but she looked younger in person or perhaps older, it was hard
to say. She had her brother's dark eyes but without the controlled stillness;
her eyes moved constantly, taking inventory. She was wearing a coat that
was slightly too big and carrying a bag that clinked when she set it down.
She slid into the chair across from me and said, without preamble:
'Thank you for coming.'
'You said you had something about your father.'
'Yes.' She ordered tea from the server who appeared, waited for them
to leave. 'My father didn't just know Elena Voss. They it was more than my
brother thinks it was.'
'They were in love. I know that.'
She shook her head. 'There's more. Dad kept journals. After he died, I
was the one who went through his things Cael couldn't, he was too he
wasn't ready. I was the one who packed up the apartment.' She reached into
the bag that clinked and produced a battered notebook. 'I've been carrying
this for two years. I didn't know what to do with it. But the letters changed
that.'
"The letters?'"
'I got one too.' Her voice was careful. 'About a week ago. It said it
said the time had come to give this to you. It said you would know what it
meant.'
She slid the notebook across the table. On the cover, in Marco
Marchetti's handwriting: Elena private.
'He kept a journal about her?' I said.
'Not exactly.' Maya wrapped her hands around her tea. 'He kept a
journal for her. He wrote to her for years after she died. He never stopped.'
She paused. 'And in the last entry, the one dated two months before he died
he wrote something about you.'
'About me? He didn't know me.'
'He didn't know you by name.' Her dark eyes were steady on mine.
'But Elena had told him. Before she died, she told him about you. She told
him that her work her letters would eventually reach a girl who had her
lungs and her face, and that this girl would need' she stopped.
'Would need what?'
Maya was quiet for a moment, looking at the notebook between us.
'She told him this girl would need his son,' she said. 'Not just to find
each other. She told him that Cael's specific the way Cael has learned to
hold things, to be steady in rooms that are falling apart she said it would be
essential. That you would need someone who had learned that particular
kind of steadiness.'
I thought about Cael in the November rain, not noticing the weather.
Cael holding hot things with both hands. Cael saying you made it through
and meaning it the way only someone who has had to make it through
understands.
"Elena told his father about him,' I said slowly. 'Before Cael was
born.'"
'My father was barely twenty when Elena was diagnosed. Cael wasn't
born for another three years.' Maya looked at me. 'She saw Cael before he
existed. She knew he would be what he is.'
We sat with the improbability of this.
"Why didn't you want Cael to know yet?' I asked. 'He should hear
this.'"
'He should.' She nodded. 'But not before he reads this.' She pushed
the notebook closer to me. 'His father's last journal entry. He needs to read
it. But he needs to be somewhere safe when he does, because' she stopped
again.
"Because?'"
'Because our father knew he was going to die,' Maya said. 'And
the last thing he wrote was that he had been leaving things behind
for Elena. Letters. Hidden letters, in a place he described to her
years before she died. And Cael is the only one who knows where
that place is, even though he doesn't know he knows.