Chapter 2: The Second Letter
My knees hit the floor before I even understood what was happening.
Someone grabbed my arm.
A stranger.
A woman in the row behind me.
"Sir — are you alright?"
I couldn't answer.
June's voice carried across the whole auditorium.
"We want to read this out loud," she said.
"Because he never told anyone.
Not once.
In twenty-two years."
Ava unfolded the paper slowly.
It was a letter.
Handwritten.
Old enough that the creases had gone soft.
And the name at the top wasn't mine.
It was my brother's.
He had written it.
Dated the week he left.
"He wrote this the night before he disappeared," Claire said into the microphone.
Her voice cracked on the last word.
The room went completely still.
Ava began to read.
The first line was: *"Noah will be angry.
But Noah will stay.
He always stays."*
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
But then June looked up from the paper and directly at me.
"There's a second letter," she said quietly.
"We didn't find it until last week."
Ava folded the first one carefully.
And reached back inside her gown.
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May you like
That second letter is what broke the entire auditorium — and it revealed something about Noah that none of the girls had ever been told.
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