The house was quiet.
Rain tapped softly at the windowpanes and the ticking of the grandfather clock echoed down the hallway like a breath held too long.
Mary sat at her writing desk with her foot still slightly propped, a soft shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She had waited all morning for the house to settle—for her mother to fall into afternoon embroidery and her father to retreat into paperwork.
Only then did she pull out the pale cream stationery hidden beneath the folds of her Bible.
She dipped her pen into ink and, with a steady hand, began writing to Lily.
My dearest Lily,
Your letter made my chest ache in the best possible way.
I read it beneath the willow in the back garden while pretending to study wedding etiquette from a book about French table manners.
I wanted you to know something important. Something bold, perhaps foolish.
I did something to delay the wedding.
I threw myself down the church stairs.
Not in rage, not in drama—quietly, precisely, like everything else I do.
I bruised my ankle. Faked worse. Cried on cue.
The doctor ordered two months of rest. My parents obeyed.
It worked.
We bought time.
It's a borrowed time, I know. But it's ours.
Time to write. To remember.
To imagine something—something more than table linens and "efficient hands."
I wonder if you hate me for doing it.
I wouldn't blame you.
But I want you to know that for the first time in my life, I chose something.
And it was you.
With all my heart,
Yours,
Mary
(But only to you.)
P.S. If you sing again, imagine me in the crowd—even if I'm not there.
London, three days later
The club was alive with sound. Glasses clinked. Laughter rolled like thunder. The piano player fumbled through a jazzy ballad while smoke curled along the ceiling beams.
Backstage, Isabelle sat on a worn velvet stool, legs crossed, cigarette forgotten in one hand as she unfolded the familiar cream paper.
She read the letter once, then again—eyes wide, then stunned, then misted.
"She fell down the stairs?" she muttered under her breath, letting out a choked laugh. "Bloody hell, Mary…"
She winced, a strange mixture of admiration and guilt tightening in her chest.
"I never asked you to do that," she whispered into the empty room. "But you did it anyway."
Her fingers brushed over the inked lines, over the word ours.
A small smile pulled at her lips. "You brilliant, reckless fool."
She tucked the letter safely into her coat pocket—next to a handkerchief and a note for her next show—and whispered to herself:
"We'll make every word count."