**THE LETTER FROM “AUNT” MARTHA**
Dad always seemed… distant. Mom said it was the war, but even after all these years, the shadows never really left his eyes. I found the box hidden in the attic, full of old photos. Him as a young man, smiling, carefree, with a woman I’d never seen before.
Then, the letter. “Dearest John,” it began. “It’s been twenty years. I think he deserves to know…” My hands started to tremble as I scanned the page. The name “Martha” was scrawled at the bottom.
The back door slammed shut. Dad was home early. ⬇️
The back door slammed shut. Dad was home early, his footsteps heavy on the wooden stairs. Panic clawed at my throat. I shoved the letter and the photograph – a stunning woman with eyes like molten gold, laughing beside a younger, vibrant version of my father – back into the box, slamming the lid shut. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
He found me in the attic, the dust motes dancing in the lone shaft of sunlight. He didn’t ask what I was doing; he never did. Instead, he stood there, his silhouette framed against the dusty window, a strange stillness in his usually restless posture. He looked… broken.
“Sarah,” he finally said, his voice raspy, like leaves skittering across pavement. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. He told me about Martha, about a life before me, a love lost to the war, not to death, but to a devastating misunderstanding. He’d believed her dead, a casualty of a bombing raid. He’d carried that grief, that crushing weight of loss, for two decades. The distance, the shadows, they were the ghosts of Martha.
Tears welled in my eyes, blurring the image of my father. He was not just distant, he was broken, a shattered vase trying to hold its precious contents – his love for me.
But then came the twist. He pulled out *another* letter, this one freshly written, addressed to him in elegant script. He unfolded it, his hand trembling so violently that the paper rustled. It was from Martha. She wasn’t dead. She’d survived, but had been trapped in a remote village, unable to reach him. She’d found his address after years of searching, fuelled by a faded photograph that miraculously survived the war. She was coming to see him.
Hope, sharp and unexpected, pierced the grief. But it was short-lived. A chilling realization dawned on me as I read Martha’s letter – she was not alone. The last sentence, almost a postscript, sent an icy chill down my spine. “I’ll be there soon, John, and I’m bringing Edward.”
Edward. The name rang a bell. A name I’d heard whispered in hushed tones in my own mother’s words, as she spoke of an unknown son, a child of a life she never really understood. The son my father never knew.
My mother entered the attic, her face etched with a mixture of fear and resignation. The carefully constructed facade of our family, the placid lake of our lives, was suddenly a raging storm. Dad stared at the letter, his face a mask of confusion and dawning terror. The letter from “Aunt” Martha was not just a revelation of the past, but a bomb, poised to obliterate the fragile peace we’d managed to build.
The final shot wasn’t one of resolution, but of impending chaos. The attic, once a repository of forgotten memories, now held the weight of three lives, three loves, three decades of unspoken truths and the impending arrival of a brother I never knew existed. The future loomed, uncertain, a tempest of emotions and revelations waiting to break over us, leaving the aftermath uncertain and the future filled with unknown possibilities. The shadows in my father’s eyes, it seemed, had only deepened.