Margaret Whitmore had lived in the same white farmhouse on the edge of Rosewood, Ohio, for seventy-two years. Her children were grown and scattered across the country, her husband had passed fifteen winters ago, and her days now passed quietly—morning tea, crosswords, tending to her violets, and listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock her father had built.
That clock was ticking on the warm April afternoon when the letter arrived.
The envelope was cream-colored, sealed with wax, and addressed in a delicate, cursive hand she hadn’t seen in over five decades. Her hands trembled as she opened it.
“Dear Margaret,
If you’re reading this, then I am likely gone. I’ve left something for you—a small wooden box buried beneath the dogwood tree we planted together the summer we turned eighteen. I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’ve kept from you.
With love always, Beatrice.”
Beatrice Ellis. Her childhood best friend, her confidante, her heart’s companion during the years when young girls whisper dreams and keep secrets under willow trees.
They hadn’t spoken since the summer of 1964.
Margaret clutched the letter to her chest and sat down in her kitchen chair, heart pounding with memories too vivid for time to dull. Beatrice had been sunshine in a bottle—wild curls, red lipstick, a laugh that could echo through an entire orchard. Their bond had been unbreakable until it wasn’t. One June day, Beatrice left town without a word, and Margaret never knew why.
For fifty-nine years, Margaret buried that silence. And now, Beatrice had broken it.
She moved slowly to the backyard, to the dogwood tree that still bloomed faithfully each spring. The earth beneath it was soft, covered in petals. With a small garden spade, Margaret dug, breath shallow, until the metal edge struck something solid.
A wooden box. Small. Carved.
Inside, wrapped in faded linen, was a gold heart-shaped locket—and another note.
“Open it when you’re ready.”
Margaret held the locket in her palm, its weight unfamiliar yet comforting. She didn’t open it that day. She placed it on her windowsill, beside her violets, and let it sit beneath the morning sun.
The following days were a storm of memory. She found the old photo albums, reread journals, and discovered a pressed daisy Beatrice had once given her in a library book. It was like the past had been waiting, patient and quiet, for its cue.
A week later, Margaret opened the locket.
On the left side: a photograph of them both, arms wrapped around each other, grinning, Beatrice wearing that red dress from the county fair. On the right: a tiny scrap of paper with a single sentence.
“You were the love of my life.”
Margaret dropped the locket. Her hands shook. She gasped, not from shock—but from recognition. Somewhere deep down, she’d always known. The stolen glances. The way Beatrice looked at her that last night before she disappeared.
She’d spent her whole adult life wondering why Beatrice left. Now she understood: the world hadn’t been ready. Neither had they.
Tears slipped down her cheeks, not of regret, but release.
That night, she wrote a letter. To Beatrice. Maybe to herself. She folded it, tied it with ribbon, and placed it beneath the dogwood tree.
The next morning, Margaret baked lemon scones and brought out the china. She placed a second teacup across from her own and whispered, “Just in case you’re still listening.”
She told no one of the locket. But she wore it every day.
And from that spring on, the violets bloomed brighter, and Margaret’s laughter returned to the orchard wind.
