DAHLIA:
I paced the room back and forth, trying to think carefully of what my father had told me before I sent him secretly away through the giant window that gave a direct access to the garden.
He really said there were no such letters, right? My papa didn’t receive my letters, save but one…
“Here, Dahlly,” he said as he produced a parchment from inside his vest. “This is the letter I received from you. The one and only letter I have ever received for the two months you have been away...”
I unfolded the parchment my papa handed to me. It did look like the parchments I have used when I was writing those letters to him.
The first few lines of the letter had caught my eyes suspiciously. It wasn’t like any of the letters I had written to papa before. It read:
Father,
I’ll go straight to the point. I do not wish to see you. Please stop trying to get into the district and leave quietly.