Ayesha cries after learning that STEPHEN CURRY hid a secret for 12 years, but the truth is that…
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The Sound of Paper Wings
The rain came softly that morning in Savannah, tapping gently against the tall windows of the Bellamy house like an old friend asking to be let in. Evelyn stood in the kitchen, stirring a pot of oatmeal with one hand, balancing her phone on her shoulder with the other, listening to her daughter on the other end go on about school pick-ups and dentist appointments.
“Yes, Claire, I heard you,” she said, trying to hide the tremble in her voice. “Of course I’ll come stay with the kids while you and Henry are away. I’ve missed them.”
She didn’t mention the envelope that had arrived the day before, or the name written on the return address—Isaac Marlowe. A name she hadn’t spoken aloud in over thirty years.
After she hung up, Evelyn wiped her hands on a towel and walked slowly to the dining room, where the envelope still sat on the table, untouched. It was aged, as if the letter had taken decades to find her, though the postmark read only last week. Her fingers hovered over the flap.
She opened it.
Inside, a single page, folded neatly in thirds. The handwriting was unmistakably his—still slanted slightly left, still exact. She read.
*Dear Evelyn,
If this letter finds you, then I suppose time has finally given in.
I’ve spent most of my life collecting quiet things—moments, memories, and regrets. You were all three. But you were also the best thing I never deserved. I don’t expect forgiveness, or even a reply. I only hope you’ll do one thing:
Open the music box.
Yours always,
Isaac*
Evelyn’s heart stopped. The music box. She hadn’t thought of it in decades. Tucked away in the attic of this house—her parents’ old home, now hers—it had been a gift from him. They were just twenty then, two dreamers with empty pockets and bursting hearts. They’d spent that summer making music and promises in equal measure, most of which dissolved into nothing when Isaac left for New York with only a duffel bag and a song he said would make them both famous.
She never saw him again.
Until now.
Rain still pattering overhead, Evelyn climbed the attic stairs slowly. Dust clung to the air. She found the box beneath a stack of books in a corner trunk—small, wooden, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Her hands shook as she wound it.
The song was still the same.
A lilting melody Isaac had written for her, called “Paper Wings”, about the way her hands moved when she wrote, how her ideas always looked ready to take flight.
But as the music played, she noticed something strange—a small catch in the sound, as if something were stuck. She turned the box over. A false bottom. Inside was a stack of yellowed papers, neatly tied with string, labeled simply: “The Paper Wings Project”.
She carried them downstairs, sat on the floor like she used to at twenty, and began to read.
The first pages were lyrics—dozens of them, all in his hand. Songs she’d never seen, never heard, but every one about her. About the summer they spent in the South, about her laugh, about how he’d tried to forget her and failed miserably.
Then came sketches. Ideas. Letters he never sent. A note from 1998: “I saw your name in a magazine. I almost called. But what would I say? I’m sorry I never came back?”
Each page was a time capsule, each word a crack in her carefully patched-over heart.
By evening, the storm had passed, and Evelyn sat with the last sheet in her hand. It wasn’t a letter, but a map—a literal map of Savannah, marked with circles. In the corner, one more message.
I left pieces of our story across this town. If you’re reading this, maybe you’ll find them. Maybe you’ll understand why I left. Maybe you’ll know that I never truly did.
Two days later, Evelyn told Claire she needed a few days away. “A short trip,” she said. “A bit of unfinished business.”
She started at Forsyth Park, where the first circle on the map was drawn. Beneath the old oak tree where she and Isaac used to sit, she found a small tin box buried shallow in the earth. Inside, a cassette tape labeled “July 1982 – Ev.”
She played it in her car. It was Isaac, younger, laughing, singing a rough demo of “Paper Wings.” And then—her voice. Talking. Laughing. Reading one of her poems. She hadn’t realized he’d recorded them.
The next location was Beaufort Books, still standing after all these years. She found a signed copy of a poetry book on the top shelf, and on the inside cover: “To the girl with wings. You were always the muse.”
Each location unveiled another relic—an old concert ticket with her scribbles in the margins, a photograph tucked inside a Bible at the church where they once danced in the rain, a handwritten recipe from her mother’s kitchen that Isaac had somehow copied word-for-word. At every stop, Evelyn felt her anger wane and her wonder grow.
How had he managed this?
Why?
At the final mark on the map—River Street, by the water—there was no hidden box, no object to hold. Just a bench. And a small brass plaque:
“For the girl who taught me how to stay, even when I left. – I.M.”
She sat for hours, watching boats drift past. She didn’t cry. She just sat with the weight of all he’d carried, and all she hadn’t known.
The next morning, she called the number on the envelope.
“I wasn’t sure you’d call,” the man said on the other end. His voice was older, but it was still Isaac.
“I read everything,” she said.
A pause. “I didn’t know where to send it. I thought maybe… if you were still in the house—”
“I was,” she said.
“Did you find the tape?”
“All of them.”
Another pause. “I didn’t mean to disappear, Evelyn. I meant to make something of myself and come back. But life—music—it took more than I thought. I lost myself in it. And when I tried to find my way back, it felt too late.”
“You could’ve written,” she said.
“I did. Dozens of times. I just never had the courage to send them.”
Silence.
Then, softly, she asked, “Why now?”
“I’m sick,” he said. “And I couldn’t leave this world without putting the pieces back where they belonged.”
She felt something in her chest fracture.
“Do you want me to come see you?” she asked.
Another long pause.
“I’d like that very much.”
Isaac lived in a quiet hospice home outside of Asheville. When Evelyn arrived, he was thinner, older, but his eyes still lit up the same way.
“I never stopped writing about you,” he said as she sat beside him.
“I never stopped wondering,” she replied.
They spent the next three days reading, remembering, laughing. No resentment. No bitterness. Just time—precious and fleeting.
When Isaac passed the following week, he left everything to her—his music, his notebooks, the Paper Wings Project.
She took it all home.
A year later, a new exhibit opened at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center: “Paper Wings: The Lost Legacy of Isaac Marlowe.” Curated by Evelyn Bellamy. It featured tapes, letters, poems, and a reconstructed version of their summer studio.
People came from all over.
Not for fame.
But for the story.
For the way music could carry love across time.
At the center of the exhibit stood the music box.
Still playing.
Still flying.
The End.
