THE LOVE WE LEFT BEHIND

Why Didn't You Tell Me?

The cold autumn wind howled against the reinforced glass of the newly finished studio, but inside, the air felt suddenly, suffocatingly thin.

Daniel stood frozen in the center of the room, the yellowed, water-stained pages of the second letter still clutched tightly in his hand. His knuckles were white. The ink of Lena’s nineteen-year-old handwriting seemed to burn against the cheap lined paper, spelling out a desperate lifeline that had been intercepted, hidden, and buried just like everything else.

He looked up from the paper, his slate-gray eyes wide, dark, and filled with a raw, agonizing disbelief.

"You wrote this," Daniel said, his voice dangerously low, stripped of all its usual warmth. "Months after you left. While I was sitting in my dorm room wondering what kind of monster I was for not being enough to make you stay."

Lena stood near the edge of the desk, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if shielding against a physical blow. She couldn't meet his gaze. She stared down at the polished white oak floorboards, the guilt she thought they had permanently purged suddenly rushing back to suffocate her.

"I found it in the old binder," Lena whispered, her voice trembling. "I didn't know it was there, Daniel. I swear to you, I didn't know."

"That's not what I'm asking," Daniel stepped forward, the floorboards groaning beneath his boots. The raw shock in his voice was rapidly hardening into a jagged, defensive pain. "Why didn't you tell me? When we uncovered the first conspiracy, when we pieced together how Margaret and my father tore us apart... you told me about the night on your porch. You told me about the ultimatum." He waved the letter