“She wrote back to me?” His whole face changed instantly.
“Yes. All this time, actually.”
Louise started crying. “Your letters came through directly to us first. At the very beginning, everyone genuinely believed limiting direct contact might help Willa settle in properly. She kept writing replies anyway, regardless.”
Callum stared hard into the box. “Then why didn’t I ever actually receive them?”
Louise wiped at her own eyes. “We kept telling ourselves we’d send them along, once things felt more genuinely stable. Then too much time simply passed, and admitting we’d waited so long became considerably harder to actually do.” Nolan looked down at the floor. “We should have fixed it properly, a long time ago.”
Callum opened one letter with shaking hands. From upstairs, a door opened somewhere. A girl appeared at the top of the staircase. She stared down at Callum. Neither one of them spoke a single word. Then she ran back upstairs again just as quickly.
Callum’s face crumpled entirely. “I knew it,” he whispered.
But footsteps came thundering back down the stairs immediately afterward. Willa came running back, carrying a battered old stuffed rabbit in both arms. Callum stopped breathing entirely. She held it up toward him. “You gave me Mr. Buttons.”
Callum covered his own mouth with one hand. Willa ran straight into him. He dropped to his knees and wrapped both arms around her tight. I looked away deliberately, and didn’t approach either of them. That particular moment belonged entirely to the two of them alone.
