"I don't remember."
It was the first lie I ever told in front of my whole family.
Audrey panicked at once.
"How can you not remember? Don't you keep every single letter?"
Wesley walked in from outside just then.
He only caught the second half.
"Why would you be keeping Nightide's letters?"
Audrey shot up like she'd been startled.
"Wesley, don't blame my sister."
"She's just... she's always envied us."
Mom sighed too.
"Rita's always been the brooding type. Whatever Audie has, she wants it."
I looked at Wesley.
This was the third time.
At the airport, when I tried to say I was Nightide, he said first that I loved to steal my sister's things.
At the bookstore, when I tried to say those habits were mine, he said I was copying her.
Now, before I'd said a word, he'd already believed them.
Wesley said coldly, "Delete them."
"Those are private, between me and Nightide."
I asked, "And if I don't?"
"Then I can only assume you have feelings about her and me that you shouldn't."
Audrey tugged at his sleeve.
"Don't be like this. My sister's just very lonely."
The way she pleaded for me looked so gentle, so kind.
Suddenly I felt exhausted.
"Fine."
I said, "I'll deal with it."
Wesley thought I'd agreed to delete them, and his face softened.
But that night I exported everything from seven years, every email, every chat log, every scanned letter, and handed it all to Sadie Abbott.
Sadie was my classmate from college, now an editor at a publishing house.
She read through the whole folder and went quiet for a long time.
"You came to ask me how to win the man back?"
"No."
"Then what do you want?"
I looked at the titles of eighty-four letters on the screen.
"My name."
Sadie nodded.
"Then the first thing is copyright registration records."
"As for the man, he's worthless. Not covered by protection."
I let out a soft laugh.
Three days later, Wesley announced he'd be holding an exhibition of the seven years of letters between Nightide and Stillmount.
He said anonymous letters had carried him through the hardest seven years of his life.
He wanted to give Nightide a proper beginning, in front of every reader.
Audrey was so thrilled she didn't sleep all night.
Mom dug out the paper letters I'd saved and picked through them for her, one by one.
"This one's beautifully written. Put it first."
"This line's romantic too. He can read it out during the proposal."
I reached for them.
But Mom clutched the box to her chest.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Those are my letters."
"Yours? How are they yours?" Dad pushed a document across to me. "Audie can't write. You just tidied up a few lines for her, that's all."
The title read Work Authorization and Ghostwriting Statement.
It said all writing published under the name "Nightide" belonged, in true emotion and creative authorship, to Audrey, and that I was only responsible for the ghostwriting.
I stared at those few lines, my fingers going cold, one degree at a time.
"Who told you I was writing on her behalf?"
Mom lost her patience.
"In real life the one Wesley likes is Audie. Doesn't that prove enough?"
"Rita, you've taken the older-sister spot for twenty-five years. Now all she wants is one person who genuinely likes her, and you still have to take that too?"
"I didn't take her spot."
My voice shook. "I'm the one who's your daughter."
"So is she!" Mom slammed the table. "Which is exactly why you should give way to her!"
Dad pointed at the authorization.
"Sign it."
"We're family. If this gets out, how does that look for any of us?"
I didn't sign.
The next day, I went to the exhibition hall.
A huge poster hung at the entrance.
A girl in a red dress standing by the sea, her smile bright and vivid.
The poster read:
【Nightide, real name Audrey Hughes.】
【Seven years of letters, revealed for the first time.】
And the name I'd written under for seven years was set in one line of tiny text at the very bottom of the poster.
【Text compilation: Rita Hughes.】
