Mr. Castellan studied me for a moment, something like approval crossing his otherwise professional expression.
“I don’t see why not,” he said. “Mr. Ashworth clearly trusted you. That trust doesn’t have to end just because he’s gone.”
Over the following weeks, I worked alongside Mr. Castellan’s office, tracking down whatever leads existed for Isla’s current whereabouts.
I spent evenings after class combing through old records, old addresses, anything that might lead somewhere useful in this strange, improvised investigation.
My roommate thought I’d lost my mind, spreading printouts across our small living room floor most nights.
She started calling it “the Ashworth wall” eventually, half joking, though she never once complained about the mess taking over our shared space.
She eventually got invested in the mystery too.
The old address led to a forwarding address, which led to a phone number that had been disconnected for over a year.
I remember the exact feeling of hitting one dead end after another, each lead promising something before quietly collapsing into nothing useful at all.
There were nights I genuinely wondered if we’d ever actually find her, whether Mr. Ashworth’s final wish would simply remain unfulfilled despite everyone’s best efforts.
Mr. Castellan stayed patient through all of it, reminding me gently that these things sometimes took months rather than the weeks I kept hoping for.
“People who’ve been hurt tend to make themselves harder to find,” he told me once. “It’s not carelessness. It’s self-protection.”
That sentence stuck with me, reshaping how I thought about the entire search from that point forward.
Eventually, a private investigator Mr. Castellan hired found her working at a veterinary clinic two states away, living quietly under her married name.
The investigator’s report arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, a plain manila folder that felt strangely anticlimactic given how much weight it actually carried inside it.
I opened it alone in my dorm room, hands trembling slightly as I read through the details.
An address, a phone number, a small photograph pulled from somewhere online.
She looked so much like the photos I’d seen of Mr. Ashworth as a younger man, the same steady eyes.
The same set of the jaw I’d come to recognize so clearly during our Sunday visits.
I called Mr. Castellan immediately, both of us agreeing the next step needed careful handling.
Given everything Isla had presumably assumed about her own grandfather for over a decade.
I offered to make the first call myself.
A strange lawyer calling out of nowhere felt like the kind of thing that triggers immediate suspicion.
Especially for someone who’d already been quietly hurt by this same family once before.
I practiced what I’d say for almost an hour beforehand, pacing my small dorm room.
Rehearsing different openings that all sounded wrong the moment I said them out loud.
In the end, I abandoned every rehearsed line entirely, deciding honesty, however clumsy, would serve better than anything carefully scripted.
Worried an unfamiliar lawyer’s number might frighten her away before she understood what any of this actually meant.
My hands shook dialing the number, uncertain how to even begin explaining a situation this complicated.
To a complete stranger who had every reason not to trust anyone connected to her family.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m looking for Isla. This might sound strange, but I used to visit your grandfather every Sunday.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
“My grandfather died?” she finally asked, voice tight with an emotion I couldn’t fully identify yet.
“About six weeks ago,” I said gently. “I’m so sorry. I think there are things you deserve to know.”
I explained everything as carefully as I could, the letters, the footlocker, the investigation Mr. Ashworth had specifically requested before he passed.
Isla was quiet for a long moment after I finished, her breathing audible even through the phone.
“I wrote him every month for eleven years,” she finally said. “I thought he just didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
“He never received a single one,” I told her. “He found them three weeks before he died.”
She started crying then, quietly at first, then harder, eleven years of assumed rejection apparently collapsing all at once.
I stayed on the line the entire time, unsure what to say.
Letting her cry without rushing to fill the silence with anything that might feel hollow.
“Why would Aunt Renata do that,” she said, though it sounded more like a question for herself than for me.
I didn’t have a good answer for her, though I promised to help however I could as this entire situation continued unfolding.
Isla flew out the following week, meeting with Mr. Castellan directly to review everything he’d uncovered so far.
She arrived carrying a small overnight bag, uncertain how long any of this might actually take, her eyes red from crying somewhere during the flight.
Her husband stayed home with their young daughter, though he called twice that first day just to check how she was holding up.
I met her in person for the first time at his office, recognizing something familiar in her expression.
The same careful warmth I’d seen in her grandfather.
Something in the set of her jaw, the particular way she tilted her head while listening carefully.
“Thank you,” she said immediately, pulling me into an unexpected hug. “For visiting him. For finding me. For all of it.”
“He asked me to,” I told her honestly. “In the letter. He wanted you found no matter what.”
We sat together afterward, going through copies of the intercepted letters Mr. Castellan had provided.
Each envelope had originally been addressed carefully, Isla’s handwriting growing slightly more confident with each passing year represented in the stack.
The earliest ones, written when she was barely a teenager, read simply and sweetly.
Updates about school, about a new puppy, about missing her grandfather’s terrible jokes.
Later letters grew more detailed, describing college, her wedding, eventually her own daughter’s birth, each milestone sent faithfully into what she’d believed was simply silence.
