Page 76 of Songbird: Black Kite
“Did you find them?” I asked as I closed the door behind him.
“Yeah.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small bundle. My heart leapt as I caught sight of the collection of small, sketched feathers on the envelopes. I reached for them, taking them out of his hands and staring at them carefully. Immediately I recognized the handwriting on the envelope’s return address, the harsh, jaggedly formed letters the same as on all the other letters I had from her.
It was them. Lewis had delivered. “Right where I thought they’d be.”
“Then what the fuck took you so long?” I asked, not really caring about the answer now that I had Wren’s letters in my hands. All I wanted to do was head to my study and read them. I let my gaze drift over the decorated envelopes, held together with a sparkly gold elastic band. I noticed they had a piece of plain white paper wrapped around them, like a stack of hundreds from the bank, covering the addressee to any casual observer.
That clever bitch. Anyone who would have glanced at these envelopes would never have noticed that they had been addressed to me.
I would have admired her cunning if she wasn’t such a cunt.
“I got there just as Tori was leaving, so I had to listen to her bitch for twenty minutes about how the cleaning staff rearranged her shoe collection again. Sorry.”
I nodded absently, flipping over the stack of envelopes and scowling when I saw the back side.
“They’re open!” I accused.
“What?” Lewis asked dumbly, as though he hadn’t just had the letters in his possession. “I didn’t do it.”
“Fuckin’ with the mail’s a federal offense, man,” Alex said from his spot by the stairs. “They’ll put your ass in postal jail or some shit.”
“I swear I didn’t do it, guys. I literally just grabbed them out of the safe, stuffed them in my pocket, and came right back here.” He looked panicked, as though he was terrified that we wouldn’t believe him, but at the moment, I didn’t have it in me to care about Lewis’s feelings.
Because there were three letters from Wren in my hands and every single one of them had been opened.
The sense of violation was intense, like someone had broken into my home and rifled through my personal things. That was how I felt about Victoria having opened and read through Wren’s letters. Like she had desecrated something sacred to me, defiled it with her very touch. It was enraging; I was as angry with her as I had ever been, and that was fuckin’ saying something.
Flipping through the stack, I noticed there were only three letters.
“Is this all of them?” I asked Lewis, getting in his face again. “You said there was a stack, and this is only three. Where the hell are the rest?”
“I mean, I’d guessed at the number, man. That was all that was in there. I’ve never seen any others.”
I stared at him, searching his face for a lie. I’d known the guy most of my life, and I thought I could read him fairly well, even now.
Lewis was telling me the truth. This was all there was.
I didn’t understand why that thought was so upsetting, making it feel like I’d just taken a punch to the chest. It had been more than fourteen years since the letter Wren had sent telling me she’d gotten tickets to our show. Fourteen years, and these three skinny envelopes were all I had of her.
Clutching them tightly, I nodded at Lewis and then headed down the hall, slamming the study door behind me. Settling into my chair, I unbound the letters and laid them out on the desk in front of me, arranged chronologically by postmark. These three letters were also over fourteen years old, and they had been sent in quick succession, with only a handful of weeks between them, which struck me as odd. Previously, Wren had gone a year or two between correspondence, her letters flowing naturally with the events of her life. So why had she chosen to send them rapid fire this time?
Staring down at them, I took in the drawings, frowning as I did. They were the same as the others, but they were different, too, the feathers smaller and much less numerous than the previous letters. It made the envelopes look empty, sad almost. As though there was no life in them like there had been with the others.
Something had happened, something that changed Wren, made her harder, I thought. Guarded.
Flipping open the first one—feeling my rage rise again at the sight of the torn flap, the carelessness with which it had been handled—I slid out the letter and read it.
Then I read the second.
When I got to the third, something else tumbled out of the envelope when I pulled out the letter, and my whole world fucking exploded.
Chapter forty-four
Wren's Letter
Hawk,
I’m writing this letter because even though I have no proof you’ve ever read the others, I have no other way of contacting you.
