The ink after goodbye

ch - 4 " planning "

Chapter 4 – Planning

Ashlyn’s POV

Ryder.

The name still lingered in my head like unfinished poetry — familiar yet impossible.

It had been two days since the visit to the old library. Since that frail, silver-haired woman recognized me as a girl who used to sit with a boy named Ryder. She said he was gentle, observant. Not loud like his brother.

His brother.

Lily and I had talked it all out during coffee. She had gone quiet after I told her about Ryder — Asher’s twin brother. How I’d never met him. How I hadn’t even known he existed.

And how every single memory I held could belong to someone else.

The letters were no longer arriving. The last one — the one that ended with "Ash" — still sat on my desk. I hadn’t touched it in days, but its presence in the room felt louder than ever.

No one had called me “Ash” in the past two years. Not since... not since he stopped being him. Not since I married Asher.

But I remembered now. The way he used to say it, almost in a whisper. Only when no one else was around. And Asher — the man I married — never used it once.

I didn’t know what scared me more:

The idea that I married a stranger…

Or that I had once fallen for someone who never told me his real name.

The door clicked open. Lily entered with a notebook and an energy drink. Her detective mode.

“Okay,” she announced, tossing the notebook onto the bed. “If Ryder existed, and he knew you, and he’s the one behind those letters… then we trace him.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And how do we do that exactly?”

She smirked. “We start where secrets like to rot — in family trees.”

I let out a laugh I didn’t know I had in me. “You’re insane.”

“Possibly,” she said, sitting beside me, “but I’m also right. First thing: Selena Blackwood.”

I stiffened at the name. “His mother.”

“Yep. You said you’ve never had a real conversation with her since your wedding, right?”

I nodded. “She was cold. Distant. And then she disappeared again after Asher's accident. No calls. Not even a text.”

Lily clicked her pen. “Let’s change that.”

“You think she’ll tell me anything?”

“No. But people reveal more in silence than in words. Let’s just... visit. Watch. Ask little. Let her feel cornered.”

There was something dangerous in Lily’s calmness. And something safe, too.

We were digging into something deeper now. Not just letters. Not just lost memories.

We were unearthing a life.

“Let’s go tomorrow,” I said finally, my voice soft.

She smiled. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Lily stayed the night. Said it was to make sure I didn’t chicken out, but I knew she didn’t want me waking up alone with all those thoughts clawing back at my sanity.

We made a mess of my room — half-drunken mugs of tea, her notebook now filled with doodles and bullet points like “Was Ryder ever officially dead?” and “Why hide a twin?”

Questions neither of us could answer. Not yet.

At around 2 AM, I sat cross-legged on my bed, facing her, the streetlight leaking in through the blinds.

“I keep thinking back,” I whispered. “There were days… early in the marriage… where I felt like he was just gone. Not dead. Just… missing. Inside his own skin.”

Lily leaned forward. “Whatever we find now, Ash… It’s not just about answers. It’s about making sure you’re not living in someone else’s shadow anymore.”

I met her eyes. “Tomorrow. We go to the Blackwood estate.”

“And if she doesn’t open the door?”

“Then I burn the damn place down,” I muttered, half a joke.

Lily snorted. “That’s the spirit.”

We didn’t sleep. Not really. But we rested in a silence that finally felt like movement. The storm had been circling for too long — and maybe it was time to walk into it.