Today she would do just that. Yes, being back home evoked some hideous memories, but the vast majority of them were wonderful.
Decision made, Savannah took the path to the guesthouse. After her grandfather had moved from the guesthouse back into the mansion, she and her sisters had taken over the small house as their meeting place. Whenever they had wanted complete privacy to talk “girl” stuff, the guesthouse had been their oasis. A place for privacy and a sanctuary.
She opened the front door and was immediately reminded of all the sister meetings they’d had here. Secrets had been shared, tears shed, and plans made.
The décor hadn’t changed much since her grandfather had lived here. A new sofa here, a fresh coat of paint there. Built years after the Wilde house, the guesthouse looked from the outside like an exact replica of the mansion, just on a much smaller scale. But the inside had a completely different floor plan. A small living room and kitchen and two large bedrooms made up the first floor, an open loft took up the entire second floor, and the third floor held a smaller bedroom and an attic. The guesthouse was cozy and comfortable—a perfect hideaway.
Savannah took a few minutes to walk around the interior, picking up a framed photo of her and her sisters at the beach when they’d been barely old enough to walk. Some of the things here were castoffs from the mansion that one Wilde or the other no longer needed but couldn’t bear to part with.
She wandered into a bedroom and stopped. Dozens of boxes she’d never seen before were stacked against one wall. She strode over to them, flipped the top off one of the boxes, and gasped. It was filled with letters. Withdrawing a stack, she dropped down onto the bed and read:
My dearest Camille, today I went to the library and checked out five of your favorite books.
She shuffled to another letter. The first line read:
Cammie, I had dinner with the Neelys tonight. Marvin still drinks too much.
Letters from her grandfather to her grandmother. Were all the boxes filled with them? Standing, she opened another box and found the same thing.
Touched beyond measure, Savannah sat on the bed again and flipped through more of the same. Every detail of her grandfather’s life was written to the wife he lost years ago. From the looks of it, he wrote her every day.
How he must have missed her.
Getting to her feet, she suddenly noticed that dates and years were written on the sides of some of the boxes. She stacked and restacked, putting what she could in correct date order, and then began to read in earnest.
Two hours later, the sun was glaring full force through the blinds and she had only made it through half a box. So many letters … so many memories. They detailed her grandparents’ romance, from the day they met through their courtship and too-short marriage. She didn’t know what moved her most … that he had loved her from the moment he met her and chronicled that love with letters, or that even after her death, he had continued writing to her. The boxes to her left were dated long after her grandmother’s death. One box was dated the year of his death.
She’d had no idea about the letters. She knew he had worked in his office each day for years. Somehow she had assumed it was related to family business. Now she knew many of those hours were spent in long conversations with her grandmother via these letters.
Opening up another box, Savannah picked up a letter that was apparently the first one written—the night a young Daniel Wilde had met his future bride, Camille Rose Harris.
My dear Camille, we met tonight at a party given by my good friend Carver Nelson. You were wearing a pink dress with white lace and I couldn’t help but think that your name fit you to perfection. Your skin was like the cream color of a white rose, and the way you styled your golden hair reminded me of a beautiful camellia flower. The moment you smiled at me, my heart almost burst. When you accepted a dance, it was the happiest moment of my life.
Her grandfather had often shared stories of their courtship. He’d said that it was love at first sight. His letter bore that out. How would it feel to be so loved and adored that even after death, the love was as