Four Of A Kind

Chapter 118: [3.20] The Shoebox

I thought about that honestly.

I thought about Cassidy writing in her color-coded boxes, catching her own sign error and not bothering to hide how surprised she was at herself. Harlow explaining the difference between satin weights like she was sharing state secrets. Vivienne’s ears going faintly pink when I said her hair looked good down. Sabrina falling asleep on my shoulder in the library and trusting my shoulder to hold the weight like it was nothing.

“Yeah,” I said. “I actually do.”

Iris nodded like that confirmed something she’d already known.

The manor gates swung open when the guard recognized the Lexus. He still checked my face through the window, but the process was faster now. Three weeks of daily visits had moved me from intensive scrutiny to a slightly friendlier version of suspicion.

Progress.

Harlow was already waiting at the front door when I pulled up, which meant she’d been watching from a window. She had her twin tails secured with star-shaped clips, and she was wearing her school uniform still, minus the jacket, her tie loosened to a cartoon-like degree.

She waved at the car with her whole arm.

Iris watched her. “She really does bounce.”

“Told you.”

I parked and we got out, and Harlow descended the steps with the contained energy of someone who very much wanted to sprint but was maintaining dignity.

“Iris! You stayed!” She looked genuinely thrilled. “Come in, I made strawberry Pocky towers while I waited, which took twelve minutes and I’m very proud of them.”

Iris blinked. “You made… towers?”

“Architectural Pocky towers. Structural integrity testing through snack design. Isaiah thinks it’s silly but I’ve learned a lot about load-bearing principles.”

I watched my sister’s expression recalibrate. The skepticism was still there, but something else had appeared next to it. Interest.

“That’s actually kind of smart,” Iris said.

“Right?” Harlow beamed. “Come on, I’ll show you. I also have like forty volumes of manga in my room if you want to look, and my cosplay workshop is on the third floor and Cassidy says it smells like hot glue but she’s wrong, it smells like creativity.”

Iris glanced back at me over her shoulder as Harlow pulled her toward the entrance. I read her face easily.

This is a lot.

I mouthed back: I know.

She mouthed: I like her though.

I felt something loosen in my chest that I hadn’t realized was tight.

“Harlow.” I stopped them at the door. “Don’t let her out of your sight, don’t let Cassidy near her without supervision, and if Vivienne appears, just text me.”

Harlow snapped a small, precise salute. “Iris Angelo will be safe, fed, and mildly over-entertained on my watch, Assistant-kun.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. I take snack hospitality very seriously.” She tugged Iris through the door. “Also, Iris, you should know my room has thirty-four plushies and they all have names and backstories, and you don’t have to learn them all tonight but I’ll give you the highlight reel—”

The door swung shut behind them.

I stood in the driveway for a moment.

Iris was fine. Harlow was, whatever her other qualities, genuinely kind and genuinely good at making people feel welcomed. She wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

My phone buzzed.

Sabrina: Where are you.

I typed back: Front driveway.

East wing. Room’s unlocked.

I took a breath and walked inside.

The manor was quiet in the mid-afternoon way it got when staff finished the main cleaning rounds and the sisters were dispersed across their separate corners. My footsteps were the only sound down the east hallway. The portrait ancestors watched me with their usual disapproval. I’d started ignoring them around week two.

Sabrina’s door was indeed unlocked.

I knocked anyway, because I had boundaries, and then pushed it open.

The room was its usual organized chaos, books stacked in towers that somehow didn’t fall, teacups forming their windowsill civilization, curtains pulled against the daylight. Normal Sabrina territory.

But Sabrina herself was sitting on the floor.

Not on the bed. Not in the window nook. On the actual floor, back against the side of her mattress, knees pulled up, with what looked like a worn shoebox open beside her.

She looked up when I came in. Her face was unreadable as always, but something around her eyes was off. Not red. Not wet. Something quieter and worse than either of those things.

“You came fast,” she said.

“You said emergency.”

“I did.” She looked back down at the box. “Close the door.”

I did.

She didn’t say anything else. I crossed the room carefully, navigating the book towers, and sat down on the floor a few feet away from her. Close enough to be present. Far enough to give her room.

The box was full of letters. Old ones, by the look of the paper, some of them folded into precise thirds, some just tucked in loosely. On the top of the pile, I could see handwriting that wasn’t Sabrina’s.

I didn’t ask. I waited.

That was the thing I’d learned about Sabrina in three weeks. She wasn’t slow. She wasn’t avoiding. She was the kind of person who needed to locate the words before she said them, and interrupting that process just meant starting over from the beginning.

The room was quiet. Somewhere outside, a bird was making a sound in the Japanese garden. Faint. Easy to miss.

“He left me letters,” Sabrina said finally. “My father.”

I kept my face still and waited.

“One for each of us. I found them six months ago in his study, in a book he knew I’d eventually read.” The corner of her mouth moved slightly. “He hid them where he was sure only I would look.”

“Did you tell your sisters?”

“No.”

The word landed flat.

“I read mine. Once.” She looked at the box. “I haven’t been able to since.”

“What happened today?”

Sabrina was quiet for another moment. “Vivienne asked me this morning if father ever said anything specific to me before he died. About the inheritance. About the company.” She paused. “She doesn’t know about the letters.”

“She suspects something?”

“She’s always suspected. Vivienne suspects everything she can’t quantify.” A small exhale. “I told her I didn’t remember specifics.”

“But you do.”

“I remember everything.”

She said it without weight, just fact. I believed her completely.

“The letters,” she continued, “contain things each of us specifically needs to know. About each other. About our mother. About what comes next.” Her fingers rested on the edge of the box without touching the contents. “I’ve been deciding for six months whether to give them their letters.”

“And today?”

“Today I took the box out again.” She looked at me directly. “I don’t know why I texted you.”

I thought about that honestly.

“Yes you do,” I said.

Her expression shifted. A fraction. The way a frame moves when something behind it changes.

“You needed someone to sit with you while you figured out what to do next,” I said. “Someone who doesn’t have a stake in the answer.”

Sabrina looked at me for a long moment with those purple eyes that missed nothing.

“You’re very annoying,” she said quietly.

“So I’ve been told.”

“You’re also right.”