Part 1: Opening

Every Christmas morning, Samuel Hayes found a letter waiting beneath his front door.

It was always addressed in the same familiar handwriting.

And every year, it contained the same impossible message.

I want a divorce.

The first letter had arrived five years ago, exactly one year after his wife, Eleanor, died.

Samuel had burned it without reading the second page.

The next Christmas, another appeared.

Then another.

By the fifth year, he had stopped feeling angry. He simply collected the letters, placed them inside an old wooden box, and returned to his life on the ranch.

Eleanor had been dead for six years.

He had watched them lower her coffin into the ground. He had stood beside the grave while the preacher spoke. He had even kept the black dress she wore on their final Christmas together.

There was no possible explanation.

Until this Christmas.

Samuel woke before sunrise, made himself a cup of bitter coffee, and opened the front door.

A white envelope lay on the porch.

His name was written across it.

But something was different.

There was no red wax seal, no familiar greeting, and no short message asking him to sign the divorce papers.

Instead, the envelope contained a legal document from the county courthouse.

Samuel unfolded it beside the fireplace.

His eyes moved slowly across the page until they reached the final paragraph.

The divorce had already been granted.

The date was six years earlier.

The very same day Eleanor’s funeral had taken place.

Samuel felt the room grow cold.

How could a woman be legally divorced from him on the day she was buried?

He rushed to the wooden box and pulled out the previous letters. For the first time, he examined every page carefully.

The handwriting was Eleanor’s.

So were the small mistakes she used to make whenever she wrote in a hurry.

But beneath the signature on each letter was a tiny mark he had never noticed before.

A number.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

The newest document had the number six.

Samuel turned the papers over, searching for an explanation.

Then he noticed a sentence written in pencil on the back of the oldest letter.

If you are reading this, it means he has finally stopped watching you.

Samuel froze.

He knew that handwriting too.

It belonged to his younger brother, William.

William had disappeared from town six years ago, three days after Eleanor’s funeral. Everyone believed he had left to find work in another territory.

Samuel had never heard from him again.

A knock suddenly sounded at the door.

Samuel grabbed his revolver and approached cautiously.

Outside stood a young woman in a dark green coat, holding a leather suitcase.

“Are you Samuel Hayes?” she asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Rose. I was Eleanor’s nurse.”

Samuel lowered the revolver slightly.

“Eleanor never had a nurse.”

The woman looked at him with pity.

“She did, sir. For almost a year before she died.”

Samuel shook his head.

“You’re mistaken.”

Rose opened her suitcase and removed a small wooden music box.

The moment Samuel saw it, his knees nearly gave way.

He had bought that music box for Eleanor on their first wedding anniversary. He had placed it beside her bed the night she died.

Yet here it was, in the hands of a stranger.

Rose placed it on the table.

“Your wife asked me to give you this only after the sixth letter arrived.”

Samuel opened the lid.

A familiar melody began to play.

Then a hidden compartment clicked open, revealing a folded note and a brass key.

The note contained just one sentence:

Samuel, if you ever loved me, don’t sign the divorce papers until you discover who was buried in my grave.

He looked up at Rose.

“Who was buried there?”

The nurse’s eyes filled with tears.

Then she whispered:

“Your wife wasn’t the woman who died six years ago.”