I raced up the basement stairs, leaving my pile of elephants for later as I speed-walked through the house to get to my bedroom and up to Narnia. It was serene as ever up there, but my brain felt like it was on fire. Did he reject her? Did she demand the note back, hurt and enraged? Or did she never send it, and hold her secret to herself for her whole life? Did this break her?

Nothing up there had a keyhole that would fit the silver one she’d hidden with the letter’s end. I unzipped the throw pillow case in which I’d stashed the original pages, pulled them out, and added the last—only one, but somehow it made the whole thing infinitely heavier in my hand. I heard Nick enter the bedroom below me and came within a second of calling out to him. But my voice died in my throat. The doomed love of a sibling’s partner. A spurned spare whose relationship with her sister never recovered. This all felt uncomfortably familiar. Was Georgina’s future the same one that awaited Freddie? If I told Nick, would he feel like destiny foretold that he’d never forgive Freddie, and needlessly self-fulfill a prophecy?

I prayed he wouldn’t notice the armoire door ajar. The letter burned hot in my palm. But then Nick’s footsteps receded and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I wasn’t about to let Lyons family skeletons intrude on another Porter wedding day, so I folded the whole thing up with the key inside it and zipped them back into the pillow. The secret had kept for half a century. It could keep again. For now.

*  *  *

Nick and I drove into Cambridge the morning of the wedding. My loyalty as far as ancient university towns went obviously lay with Oxford, but its rival was nonetheless powerfully charming. If Oxford felt like living history, then Cambridge and its picturesque river dotted with punters was a living postcard, and especially on my sister’s wedding day, I would be delusional not to see them as gems of equal beauty. We could arm-wrestle for ultimate bragging rights later.

The service at the registry office would be families only, and then we’d head over to the pub for a small party. The Eagle was an ancient, boxy spot on a nondescript street off King’s Parade, famously where Watson and Crick barged in to announce their discovery of DNA, and it had won Lacey’s heart because the ceiling of the otherwise generic back bar was covered in graffiti, courtesy of British and American World War II pilots who’d burned their names and squadron numbers into it with lighters and candles. (She liked the nod to the alliance of her and Olly’s birthplaces.) My haul of elephants waited for us on the tables there. Everything was ready.