Chapter 2 - The Letter

The morning came gently to Pendragon's Nook. Soft light spilled through the lace curtains, casting warm strips of light across the floorboards. The air was still, except for the faint hum of the radiator and the quiet purr of Sam, curled at the foot of the bed, a dark shadow against the pale quilt.

Lucy woke slowly, drifting between dream and waking thought. Her sleep had been peaceful, a rare thing for her lately. No strange dreams that had bothered her recently, only warm memories: her foster mother reading aloud by lamplight, her father tinkering with something mechanical at the kitchen table, the smell of toast and rain.

They had been good to her. Steady, kind, unassuming people. The kind of people who kept life steady without needing any attention for it.

She sat up, pulling the blanket closer around her shoulders, and smiled at the sight of Sam stretching luxuriously before climbing up to nuzzle against her arm.

“Morning, you lazy beast,” she murmured, scratching under his chin. “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

Sam blinked, unimpressed, then flopped down beside her again, settling in as if mornings were his personal triumph.

Lucy swung her legs off the bed and padded barefoot to the small kitchenette. Breakfast was simple: coffee, buttered toast, and a sliced apple. Simple felt right to her. It helped her think.

The aroma of fresh coffee filled the small apartment, mingling with the faint scent of old books that never quite left the air.

As she sipped from her mug, she let her mind wander. She had tried college once, two semesters, enough to know it wasn’t for her. Everything there had felt flat, like it was going through the motions. She didn’t want to study the world in theory; she wanted to feel it, to understand it in her own way. She’d taken jobs after that, a café, a tech repair shop, even a library for a time, but none had felt right. They all seemed close to what she wanted, but not quite it.

It wasn’t until she inherited the shop that she finally stopped trying to fit into paths that never felt like hers. Here, among the stories, she found herself.

She stood by the window for a while, watching the dawn creep down Main Street. The world was quiet, only the distant sound of a delivery truck, the flutter of a few early birds in the trees. It was the kind of morning that asked nothing of anyone.

But Lucy felt something waiting. Not in a foreboding way, more like a whisper at the edge of her thoughts, urging her gently forward.

Her eyes drifted to the small velvet pouch on her desk, the one she had found just yesterday beneath the loose floorboard by the counter. She had searched for that key months ago when she first inherited the shop, certain there had to be a way into the locked back room, but Lilly had hidden it well. Only by chance, catching that board slightly out of place while sweeping, had she finally uncovered it. Breaking the door open or hiring a locksmith had always felt wrong, too much like forcing something Lilly hadn’t wanted rushed. She had meant to open the room right away, but something in her had resisted. Not fear exactly. Just the sense that once she turned that key, it might change things she hadn’t expected.

Lucy finished her coffee, set the cup in the sink, and glanced down at Sam, who had materialized silently at her feet, tail twitching.

“Well,” she said softly. “I suppose we shouldn’t keep whatever’s in there waiting.”

Sam answered with a soft meow. Whether agreement or complaint, she couldn’t tell.

Lucy slipped on her house shoes and wrapped herself in a knit cardigan before descending the narrow staircase to the shop. The floor creaked familiarly beneath her, each step reminding her how long the place had been lived in. The scent of paper and dust greeted her like an old friend.

The shop was quiet at this hour, the morning light pooling in soft golden patches along the aisles. Lucy walked slowly, brushing her fingertips over the spines as she passed, moving with a kind of quiet care. Sam trotted behind her, tail held high, as though he, too, knew this was something special.

At the back of the shop stood a narrow wooden door, plain, unremarkable, except for the heavy brass lock that had resisted every attempt she’d made to open it. She paused before it, feeling the faint chill of the morning air seeping from the keyhole.

The key felt strangely weighty in her hand.

She exhaled slowly. “Alright. Let’s see what you left behind.”

She slid the key into the lock. It turned with a reluctant click, a sound that seemed to echo through the quiet shop.

Lucy glanced once more at Sam, who sat like a small guardian at her feet.

Then, with a steady hand and a curious heart, she opened the door.

The light flickered once as Lucy stepped inside, her hand still on the switch. The room smelled faintly of dust and cedar, looked tended to, not forgotten. It was smaller than she expected, plain and quiet. A single desk sat near the window, an old leather chair tucked neatly beneath it. Against the far wall stood a built-in bookshelf heavy with age, its shelves filled with worn volumes, many without titles.

She exhaled, half-smiling. “So this was your secret, Aunt Lilly. A private library.”

The books drew her first. Some bindings were cracked and delicate, others smooth but unmarked. She opened several, scanning the first pages for any sign of The Chronicle of Uther Pendragon, but found nothing. Most were in Latin or French, and a few she didn’t recognize at all. She ran her finger along the faded lettering of one that smelled faintly of travel and old paper, wondering just how far her aunt had traveled to find it.

After checking every shelf, she turned her attention to the desk. Papers and notes were spread around in a way that felt intentional, research entries, correspondence, lists of titles, shipping records. She opened a drawer and found a small journal. The handwriting was her aunt’s, neat but hurried in places.

It wasn’t a personal diary. It was a ledger of her travels, where she went, who she met, what she found. Each entry chronicled a different hunt for rare manuscripts, with dates, costs, and small observations about the people who helped her along the way. It read more like a traveler keeping track of where she’d been.

Still, there was no mention of The Chronicle of Uther Pendragon.

Lucy sighed, sitting in the worn chair. Sam leapt gracefully onto the desk, curling his tail around his paws, watching her as if to ask what came next.

“Well, we’ve come this far,” she murmured, and started checking the drawers one by one.

The second drawer contained pens, seals, and old receipts. The third held nothing but a faded photograph: Aunt Lilly in her thirties, one arm around a much younger Sarah, no more than ten or eleven. Both were smiling beneath a bright summer sky, auburn hair bright in the sun. Lilly looked steady and sure, Sarah bright and alive. In their faces, Lucy could see pieces of her own.

She touched the photograph gently. “You were beautiful,” she whispered. The ache in her chest shifted, sharper and softer at once. She had always felt separate; now she saw pieces of herself in them.

She had never known her father; he was gone before she could remember him. Her mother had raised her alone until that night, the car accident, the drunk driver, the darkness that followed. And then the Carters, her kind, quiet foster parents who had given her a good life but could never fill the ache left behind.

Until now, she had believed Aunt Lilly hadn’t known she existed.

The bottom drawer stuck a little as she pulled it open. She leaned down, noticing a scrap of paper taped to the back panel, a string of numbers. A combination: 05 12 04. The numbers weren’t random; Lucy knew them the moment she saw them. Her birthday. A quiet signal meant for her, left by a woman she’d never had the chance to know. Her gaze flicked to the corner of the room where a small safe sat half-hidden behind the desk.

“Well, Sam,” she said with a soft smile, “it’s worth a try.”

The dial turned smoothly beneath her fingers. One number, then another. With the final click, the door creaked open.

Inside were more papers, more notes, nothing remarkable at first glance. Then, toward the back, a small envelope caught her eye. Yellowed with age and sealed carefully, with For Lucy written on the front.

Her heart tightened. For a moment she just held the envelope, afraid that opening it would make it real twice over: that her aunt was gone, and that she had cared enough to write.

She sat back in the chair, breaking the seal. The letter inside carried a faint hint of lavender. She unfolded it and read aloud in a whisper.

“Lucy, if you are reading this, then I am no longer among the living. I hope that you have taken ownership of the bookshop. It should stay in the Pendragon family.”

Lucy paused on the word. Pendragon. Her aunt had signed every local document as Lilly Rowan. Seeing the old family name here made the truth fall into place. Rowan was the name she’d lived under in public; Pendragon was who she truly was. The name change had always seemed like a quirk of privacy, but now Lucy wondered if it had been something more, perhaps protection, or distance born of love.

“Most of my personal belongings are stored at the estate in England. As you are now the owner of the bookshop, so too are you the rightful owner of the estate in England. You should go there as soon as you can. Contact the following lawyer in London, Russell J. Martin. I’ve left instructions with him should you come calling about the estate. The choice is yours.

I wish I had come forward sooner, had been in your life, in your mother’s life, but I spent many years traveling, researching, and tending to responsibilities I could never fully explain. It was always busy for me, and I was always on some adventure or another to find a rare tome in some far-flung location.

I wish you all the best, and I hope what you find answers the questions that I know are haunting you. Go to London. Meet with Mr. Martin. He will give you access to the estate. Go there. You will find the answers you seek.

Aunt Lilly.”

Lucy lowered the letter slowly, her mind a storm of thoughts.

“So the book isn’t here,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s at the estate.”

Sam meowed softly, blinking up at her.

Lucy let out a breath she couldn’t quite steady. “Wait, Sam, we have an estate. In England. That sounds strange, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t even know what that means,” she said softly. “But if I go, it has to be for answers, not for whatever’s in the will.”

Sam yawned, unimpressed.

Lucy laughed quietly. “Yeah… I suppose it does.”

She leaned back in the chair, the letter still open in her hands. Odd, she thought. The lawyer from Burlington must not have known anything about an estate in England, or he had been told very firmly to leave that part unspoken. The morning light shifted through the window, illuminating the dust motes that drifted between her and the shelves. Somewhere in the silence of the room, she felt a faint sense of her aunt lingering in the quiet.

Lucy tucked the letter back into its envelope and set it gently beside the journal. The shop clock downstairs chimed the half hour. It was still early; Pendragon’s Nook wouldn’t open until noon. The air beyond the door felt bright and cold, a good morning for thinking.

She locked the room, slipped the key into her pocket, and went upstairs to trade her cardigan for a windbreaker and wool cap. Sam followed, hopeful and nosy in equal measure, then resigned himself to the windowsill as soon as she pulled on her boots.

Her foster father always said the bicycle was the best way to move through the world. He’d add, with a grin, that he did his best engineering on two wheels. Lucy believed him. Some of her clearest thoughts came with the steady metronome of pedals.

She wheeled her bike out the back, down the narrow alley that smelled of damp leaves and woodsmoke. The November sun was pale but gentle, the sky a clean wash of blue. She pushed off, felt the first cool bite of air on her cheeks, and let the town unfurl.

Main Street was quiet, a delivery van outside the bakery, a bundled couple walking a small, determined dog. She rode past clapboard houses and stone walls, past a stand of bare maples that shivered in the wind. Her breath steamed, rhythmic with the turn of the cranks. With each block the weight in her chest loosened.

An estate. In England. The words felt unreal and strangely expected at the same time. She pictured a house she’d never seen, hedgerows, a gate, perhaps a field beyond it where the grass bent in the wind. Was that where the book was? Had Aunt Lilly hidden it there, waiting for the right time, the right hands?

She climbed a gentle hill and coasted down the far side, letting the ride quiet her thoughts. If the Chronicle existed at all, it was tied to something Lilly hadn’t wanted lost. Something she wasn’t meant to lose track of. Lucy didn’t know what it meant yet, about her family or about herself, but the not-knowing pressed at her in a way she couldn’t ignore. She wasn’t afraid of change, only of walking into it without knowing why.

By the time she circled back toward town, her thoughts had arranged themselves into something like order. She would open the shop at noon. She would work her hours. She would take inventory of the back room properly, copy Lilly’s journal, and make a list of what to bring if, when, she decided to go. She would call the number for Russell J. Martin on Monday morning and at least confirm he existed. If that call felt wrong, she could always stay. If it felt right, then the world was already changing, whether she moved or not.

She hauled her bike into the small hallway at the back of the shop, locked the door behind her, and, with numb fingers and pleasantly tired legs, brought a small sense of clarity with her inside.

Sunday passed in the kind of gentle rhythm Lucy loved. Two regulars came in for mythology, a young woman bought a battered travelogue with pressed flowers between the pages, and an elderly man asked for anything about Roman roads and left promising to return with a map. Between customers, Lucy penciled notes in a small ledger: items from the back room to catalog, questions to ask the London lawyer, titles from Lilly’s journal that might matter later.

At seven, she turned the sign, dimmed the lamps, and did her evening rounds, straightening stacks, aligning spines, letting her fingertips rest on a few familiar titles. Sam padded along the counter like a supervisor checking her work.

Upstairs, she made tea and opened her own journal, a simple clothbound book, the pages softened by years of thoughts saved for no one but herself. She dated the top of the page, then sat for a moment, listening to the radiator ticking softly.

Today I opened Lilly’s locked room. It looked ordinary. It felt important. There was a journal of her travels and a letter for me. There is an estate in England, and a lawyer named Russell J. Martin. I don’t know what I’m meant to find there. I only know that I want to go, not to escape, but to understand.

She paused, pen hovering.

I have always loved this quiet life. Shelves, regulars, Sam, the radiator that sighs in winter. I won’t abandon it lightly. But I think some doors open for reasons we don’t see at first. I’m not sure which this is yet.

Sam butted his head against her elbow and collapsed into her lap with the air of a cat who believed he had overseen everything. Lucy smiled and set the journal aside to scratch behind his ears.

Tomorrow: inventory the back room. Call London. Ask good questions. Move carefully. Be brave.

She closed the journal, finished her tea, and let the town’s quiet fold in around her. For now, the decision could rest. Morning would bring it back, and she’d face it when she was ready.