The air in the attic was thick with dust and the faint scent of old paper. Isabelle had spent the better part of the morning sifting through the boxes, moving stacks of forgotten belongings, some marked with faded labels that no longer held meaning. It was strange, the way time seemed to accumulate in places like this—layers of forgotten lives, memories that had long since been sealed away and tucked out of sight. The attic in her mother's house had always felt like an afterthought, a space that was neither here nor there, forgotten in the daily ebb of life.
But today, the silence felt different. The house, too, felt different. She couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was on the edge of her consciousness, just out of reach. She paused, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, her fingers brushing the old leather cover of a small, intricately bound journal. The journal that had been tucked away in a forgotten box beneath a pile of moth-eaten blankets.
It was another clue in the puzzle she was trying so desperately to solve.
Isabelle opened the journal, its pages yellowed with age. At first glance, it seemed unremarkable. A collection of disjointed thoughts and memories, much like the others she had found. But as she flipped through the pages, a name caught her eye. Evelyn Bellamy.
She froze, her heart skipping a beat. Evelyn's name had been cropping up everywhere. But this time, it felt different—personal, almost like a whisper from the past, calling her forward.
The entries were cryptic, nothing like the clean, polished notes of someone trained in academia. They were raw, unrefined, written in a hurried scrawl that seemed almost frantic. Isabelle's eyes traced the first line:
"I am the last to remember her, but I will not be the last to speak her name."
A chill ran down her spine. Evelyn, the woman whose life had been twisted by lies, whose memory had been buried beneath layers of falsehoods, was still speaking to her—somehow. The words felt like a plea, a cry for recognition.
Isabelle turned the page, the sound of paper scraping the still air. As she read on, she learned more about Evelyn's life in Oxford, about her relationship with Margaret, and the growing fear Evelyn had of the forces that sought to silence her. But it wasn't until the next entry that something truly unsettling surfaced.
"The portrait of Margaret—broken, shattered. They came for it in the night. I could hear their footsteps on the stone, but I never saw their faces."
The words haunted Isabelle. What portrait? Why had Evelyn mentioned it? What could it possibly mean?
Unable to tear herself away from the journal, Isabelle continued reading. The entries grew more urgent, more desperate:
"I must leave Oxford, or they will come for me next. I must destroy the evidence. If they find it, they will kill me. I cannot let them find the portrait."
The portrait. A portrait of Margaret, now broken. Isabelle's mind raced. Had this portrait been part of the Bellamy family's legacy? Or was it something more personal, something that had belonged to Evelyn herself? And if it was broken, what had happened to it?
As Isabelle turned the pages, she found herself yearning for more answers, for a sense of clarity that had long eluded her. But instead of peace, she found more fragments, more echoes of a life that had been shattered by betrayal and lies.
Her fingers brushed against something cold. Startled, she pulled her hand back, glancing down. Beneath the journal, hidden in the corner of the box, was an old, tarnished frame. Isabelle's breath caught in her throat. It was a portrait—though not of Margaret, as she had expected. Instead, it was a portrait of Evelyn.
Isabelle carefully removed the frame from the box, her hands trembling as she wiped away the layers of dust. The image was a painting, delicate and faded, of a young woman with dark, sorrowful eyes. The likeness was unmistakable—the eyes, so full of grief, so haunting. Evelyn.
But the portrait was damaged. The canvas was torn along the left side, the paint chipped away in several places. Isabelle's fingers traced the jagged tear, her heart racing as she wondered what had happened to it. The portrait was clearly old, but it was also a part of something larger—a story that had yet to be told.
She turned the frame over, hoping for some clue about its origins. But the back was just as mysterious as the front. There was no name, no inscription, nothing to explain who had painted it or why it had been kept hidden for so long.
Isabelle's mind raced. What was it about this portrait that had been so important? Why had Evelyn kept it? And why had someone—someone who had been willing to destroy evidence—broken it?
The questions multiplied in her mind, each one more pressing than the last. She needed to know more. She needed to find out what had happened to Evelyn and Margaret. The pieces were starting to come together, but she was no closer to understanding the truth.
As Isabelle stood in the dim light of the attic, staring at the broken portrait, she felt the weight of the past settling on her shoulders. The legacy of Evelyn Bellamy was not just a series of forgotten letters or dusty journals. It was a living, breathing entity—one that had been suppressed, hidden away, only to rise again now, in this very moment.
The portrait of Evelyn, once pristine and whole, now fractured and torn, seemed to speak to Isabelle in ways she could not yet comprehend. And as she looked into the eyes of the woman in the painting, Isabelle knew that she could not let the story of Evelyn's life end here. She had to keep digging. She had to find the missing pieces, the fragments that had been broken, like this portrait, and put them back together.
She took a deep breath, the resolve settling over her like a cloak. She had come this far. And now, there was no turning back.