Sixty-One Letters

.One.

She found them bundled up in the corner of a shelf in the dusty attic. At first, she hesitated –going through her dead sister-in-law's belongings because her older brother was too grief stricken to deal with it was daunting enough, but to find something so personal? There was no doubt that the bundle held a stack of letters and Caroline Manning was nothing if not nosy, so if she convinced herself to pick up the stack, there would be no way of stopping herself from going through the letters and reading the personal details word by word.

"Caroline? Are you okay back there?" Caroline's head perked up at her boyfriend's voice. "Or did the dust finally suffocate one of us?"

She smiled to herself and grabbed the stack of letters before she stood.

"Yeah, I'm okay...but seriously, the dust is kind of awful up here. Let's get some food and maybe force lunch into Grayson's stomach."

She walked to the front of the attic where her boyfriend, Adam, stood with a wrinkled nose.

"There's dust in my nose," he grumbled, letting out a sneeze that threw his whole dark head back. Caroline laughed and pulled him out of the attic, tossing her own blonde hair over her shoulder as they climbed down the stairs and entered the main hallway. "Caroline, what've you got there?" Adam questioned, raising a weary eyebrow at the stack of letters in his girlfriend's hands. "You're not seriously about to invade a dead woman's privacy, are you?"

Caroline rolled her eyes.

"Kimberly wouldn't have minded," Caroline defended, bringing up the image of her dead sister-in-law. Thirty-one was a young age to die, but Kimberly had been sick for years. Kimberly had married Caroline's brother, Grayson, seven years ago, much to the surprised of 13-year-old Caroline who hadn't even been aware that Grayson was dating the blonde. It didn't take long for Caroline to become fond of her new sister-in-law...she was soft spoken and polite, and even her hard-to-please parents made it clear that they thought Kimberly was the perfect addition to the well-bred Manning family that Caroline and Grayson had been born into.

"Caroline-" Caroline waved off Adam's warning and unwrapped the band, surprised to see that the letters, unlike everything else in the attic, did not have a single layer of dust on them. They weren't just left to rot upstairs, like everything else up there had been.

What was even more surprising was that the name on the first envelope wasn't 'Kimberly' or even 'Grayson'. It was 'Scarlett' and it was written in her brother's distinct half print-half cursive handwriting...as was the name on the second and the name on the third and the fourth and fifth and sixth and...she stopped counting when she reached the 17th and turned to face Adam.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"What?" Caroline frowned and handed the stack of letters to Adam. His eyes scanned the name on the first envelope and his eyebrow raised a little further. "Who's Scarlett?"

Caroline's brown eyes drifted down the hallway to where her brother was no doubt wallowing in his room and back to the stack of letters in Adam's hands. She reached forward and dragged the top one off the thick pile.

"Well, let's at least take the first step to finding out, shall we?"

Adam made his usual disapproving noises and Caroline made her usual 'I'm ignoring you' gestures as she pulled the first letter from the envelope and unfolded it in her hands. The paper was crisp but a bit yellowed, making it obvious that the letter was written a while ago, shoved in the envelope, and never removed again. Until now.

Caroline smirked to herself when she felt Adam lean over her shoulder so he could scan the letter as well –he was just as curious as she was, even if she was just a bit more open about it- before she silently started to read.