Chapter Six

Edith’s Secret Past

Chapter Six – Summer of ’63
by MissT

Rose was halfway through tidying the sitting room when she found it — an old floral box, tucked behind stacks of dusty knitting patterns and unopened birthday cards. Inside: letters, receipts, faded photographs… and a slim, leather-bound journal.

The name etched on the inside cover stopped her cold.

> Edith Weston. Summer of ’63.

She sat down on the carpet, breath held.

The pages smelled like tobacco and time. Some were filled with half-written thoughts. Others were blank. But it was the first entry that reached through the paper and grabbed her by the heart.

It read….

Journal of Edith Weston

Summer, 1963

The orchard behind the farmhouse is heavy with bees and secrets. I sit here under our apple tree, the one with the forked trunk, and I think about how different everything was before him. Before Jack Leland.

He arrived in June, camera slung over his shoulder, shoes scuffed from walking God-knows-where. He said he was here to photograph the old ways before they vanished. I laughed. Around here, things don’t vanish—they settle. Into the land. Into silence. But Jack… he stirred something. In me. In the air.

We met properly under this very tree. I’d come to pick windfalls. He’d come, I think, looking for something he couldn’t name. I offered him an apple. He said it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. We talked until the sky bruised purple.

No one knew. Not Margaret. Not Mother. God knows Father wouldn’t have noticed. I didn’t want them to know. Jack was mine. Ours. We had a world made of long grass and lazy afternoons, stolen kisses and shared smokes. He made me laugh in ways I’d forgotten I could.

Then one morning, he was gone.

No goodbye. No promise. Just gone.

I waited under our tree until the light began to change. That’s when I saw it. A folded paper, caught in the fork of the tree.

Held down by the smooth river stone we’d once thrown for luck.

“I have to go. I’ll write when I can. Wait for me, if you want. But don’t stop living.”

That was it. No address. No name. Just Jack’s handwriting. Slanted and certain.

I read it three times. Then I walked back to the house, clutching that note like it might anchor me.

Weeks later, I left again. To Aunt Vera’s, they said. For rest.

But it wasn’t rest.

It was a boy.

Born July 23rd, 1964. On a stormy morning. No pain relief. No kind words. Just the cry of a life I wasn’t allowed to keep.

His name was Edmund.

I held him for sixty-one seconds. I counted every one. Then the nurse took him. Said nothing. Didn’t look back.

Mother told me never to speak of it. Said the shame would kill Father. Said Margaret wouldn’t understand. So I didn’t. Not to them. Not to anyone. Not for decades.

But I see him now. Sometimes. In dreams. In shadows. Once, I swear, at the edge of the orchard. Leaning against the wall with Jack’s grin.

Maybe it’s memory. Maybe it’s madness.

But I know what I saw.

He was watching me.

Then, just like his father, he vanished.

Rose put down the journal and drew a deep breath.
Wow. Auntie Edith was full of secrets.

She sat back against the faded armchair, heart pounding, eyes scanning the room like it might offer more answers. The truth had been buried in this house all along, tucked inside a shoebox, scribbled in looping ink from a time before she was even born.

Then something caught her eye.

A flicker.

Movement in the mirror above the mantle.

There he was.

Just outside the window.
Standing against the garden wall.
Grinning.

And then, he vanished.

Rose didn’t scream.
She didn’t move.
She just stared at the empty space where he’d been, her blood cold.

> “You were never trying to scare me,” she whispered. “You just wanted me to know.”