The wind had grown colder by the time they reached the edge of town, where ivy strangled old stone walls and time seemed to hold its breath. Jean Dubois lived alone in a weathered cottage that sagged with memory. A man with eyes like wilted violets opened the door, his hands trembling as he invited them in.
Elias held out the diary, its leather cracked and stained by years and grief. "She wrote about your father. About Anna."
Jean took it wordlessly. The pages flipped beneath his fingers like ghosts.
"My father," he said finally, "was a man who lived two lives. The one he shared with us. And the one… he never spoke of."
Celeste leaned forward. "Did he ever mention her?"
Jean shook his head. "Only once. He was drunk. He whispered a name—Anna—and cried like a child. I didn't understand. I thought maybe he was mourning someone from before Mother. Now I know."
Elias coughed softly, his lungs a cage of broken glass. Celeste steadied him with a hand on his back.
"He left her," she said. "When she was pregnant."
Jean flinched. "Then she never told him. Or he refused to see it. I don't know. My father… he carried regrets. But he never had the courage to name them."
The silence afterward was heavy, like the air before a storm.
"And the child?" Elias asked, his voice thin.
Jean met Celeste's eyes. "There was no child. At least, none he ever claimed. If there had been… it never reached us."
Celeste closed the diary. "Maybe that was the tragedy. That none of it ever reached anyone."
As they stepped back into the chill dusk, Elias scribbled in his notebook, his fingers shaking:
"Some truths die unnamed—buried not by time, but by fear."
Beside him, Celeste's gaze was distant, drawn toward the cliffs where her sister's story still waited.