The morning her mother died, the sky was bright. That felt like the first betrayal.
The kettle clicked off. Lena didn’t move.
The mug sat waiting, steam curling into the air like a breath she couldn’t release. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked, impossibly loud. Time was still moving — the world was still turning — and yet, everything inside her had stopped.
They said it was suicide. Quietly, gently, as if the softness of the word would blunt the blade of it. But nothing softened that truth. No kind tone. No measured words. Not even the polite lie: “She’s at peace now.”
Lena didn’t cry. Not yet. She just sat at the kitchen table, fingers curled tightly around the pale green mug her mother always used. It was chipped on the rim, just a little. Maggie had always refused to throw it out.
“You don’t throw something away just because it’s a little broken,” she used to say. “That’s when it needs holding onto the most.”
The irony made Lena’s throat ache.
It took two months before she spoke out loud in the group.
The first few sessions, Lena sat in the corner, hands in her lap, listening to strangers spill the worst parts of their lives like coins onto a table. A man cried about his brother’s overdose. A woman with bright red lipstick talked about her miscarriage in a whisper so hoarse it made Lena shiver.
And then there was Theo.
He was quiet too. Not shy — just… still. Like someone who had spent so long inside his own grief, he’d made a home there. Lena noticed him because he noticed her. Not in a staring way, not obviously. Just… a glance when she looked up. A nod when someone said something difficult. A quiet understanding.
They spoke for the first time after the fourth session.
“You don’t say much,” he said, with a soft smile.
“Neither do you,” she replied.
He chuckled. “Touché.”
She learned that he’d lost his sister. Car accident. Drunk driver. He didn’t talk about it much, but the pain was there, stitched into every word he didn’t say.
Lena didn’t know why she trusted him. Maybe it was because he didn’t try to fix her. He just sat beside her on the community centre steps, sipping coffee that had gone lukewarm, and didn’t say it’ll get better.
Instead, he said, “Sometimes I think grief is like water. You hold your breath, thinking you can swim through it. But eventually, you just have to learn to move with the current.”
Lena nodded. She felt like she’d been drowning for weeks.
They met at a quiet café near the quay. Theo drank black coffee. Lena didn’t remember what she ordered. He made her laugh once. She didn’t remember how.
She didn’t know why she let him walk her home, but she did. Maybe it was the way he didn’t push. Maybe it was the way he looked at her like she wasn’t broken.
Inside, she offered him a tea. He asked for peppermint. She only had Earl Grey.
While she rummaged through cupboards, he glanced at the photos on her fridge. A picture of her mother Maggie from the 80s, all windblown curls and sunburnt cheeks.
He asked about her. Lena told him a little. A memory. A song she used to hum.
It was a small thing. A birthday card.
Lena found it tucked into the back of a drawer while searching for batteries. Maggie’s handwriting danced across the page, neat but warm.
To my darling girl,
I love you more than the stars,
Mum x
She traced the letters with her thumb, trying to feel something other than the hollow ache in her chest.
That night, Theo came over. They’d started seeing each other more often — coffees after group, walks that turned into late-night talks, one dinner where he insisted on cooking and burnt the pasta. Lena wasn’t sure if it was friendship, or something else, or if she even had space in her for anything more.
He noticed the card on her kitchen table.
“Your mum’s?” he asked.
Lena nodded, a small smile pulling at her lips. “She used to say that. That she loved me more than the stars.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said, gently picking it up.
It came in the post, tucked between a council tax bill and a takeaway menu.
Lena didn’t notice it at first. She was halfway through tossing the envelope pile into the bin when her eyes caught on the writing. The loop of the ‘L’, the flourish at the end of her name.
She froze.
The handwriting… it was hers.
Her mother’s.
Her heart stuttered.
She stared at it, not daring to breathe. A soft cream envelope. No stamp. No return address. Just Lena Stevenson written in familiar blue ink, the same way her mother Maggie had signed school permission slips and lunchbox notes.
She sat down slowly, the world narrowing to just her and the envelope. Her hands shook as she opened it.
Inside was a single sheet of lined paper, folded carefully.
She unfolded it like it might shatter.
My darling girl,
I saw the way you cried for me. I wish I had been braver. I wish I had stayed.
I never stopped loving you. Even when I couldn’t find the light.
With all my love,
Mum.
Lena read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, her lips forming the words silently.
She pressed the paper to her nose.
It smelled faintly of lavender and something warmer — her mother’s old perfume. A scent Lena hadn’t smelled in months. Her throat closed.
How was this possible?
The date written at the top?
Last Thursday.
Lena’s mind spun. Her therapist had warned her about “grief hallucinations,” the mind’s cruel ways of conjuring comfort. But this wasn’t a hallucination. It was physical. Tactile. In her hands.
She stood up abruptly, knocking her chair into the table leg. The sound startled her, grounding her for just a moment.
She clutched the letter like a lifeline and, for the first time in weeks, picked up her phone and texted Theo.
I need to see you. Now.
He replied almost immediately.
I’m nearby. Want me to come over?
She hesitated, thumb hovering. Then:
Yes.
He arrived twenty minutes later, holding two takeaway coffees even though she hadn’t asked.
She didn’t say hello. Just handed him the letter without a word.
Theo read it slowly, his brow furrowed in concern. When he looked up, Lena was watching him like someone waiting for a verdict.
“Well?” she whispered.
He didn’t speak for a moment. Then:
“It’s her handwriting,” he said softly. “Isn’t it?”
Lena nodded, suddenly uncertain. “I… I think so. But how could it be? She’s—she’s gone. She’s gone, Theo.”
He sat down on the edge of her sofa. “Where did it come from?”
“No stamp. Just… in the post.” Her voice was a thin thread.
He glanced at the letter again. “Do you have anything else she wrote? To compare?”
Lena blinked. Then reached for the birthday card — still on the side table.
Theo held the two pages side by side. “It’s close. Really close.”
Lena dropped into the chair opposite him. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But maybe… maybe someone’s trying to help you. Give you closure. Or…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Or what?”
He met her eyes. “Or maybe it really is from her.”
Lena laughed, but there was no humour in it. “Ghost post?”
“I’m serious,” Theo said gently. “I don’t think I believe in ghosts. But I believe in grief. And grief does strange things to people. It makes us open. Makes us hope.”
Lena looked at the letter again.
“I don’t know what to believe.”
He leaned forward. “Then let’s find out. Together.”
The second letter came three days later.
This time it was slid through her door, no postmark, no envelope. Just a folded piece of lined paper with her name written delicately on the front.
Lena found it on the floor when she returned from a walk — the first she’d taken in weeks that hadn’t been to the corner shop or the grief circle. She stood in the hallway, the letter at her feet like a spirit waiting to be picked up.
Her pulse beat loud in her ears.
She opened it carefully, hands trembling.
You don’t need to look for me. I never left you.
I’m in the wind you hear at night. The music you play when you can’t sleep.
You don’t have to be alone, darling girl. I am with you, always.
Love, Mum.
Lena sank to the floor.
Tears pricked her eyes, uninvited. This one didn’t smell like perfume. It smelled like paper and dust and the faintest trace of something she couldn’t place — ink, maybe. Or guilt.
She pressed her back against the wall and read the letter again and again until the words started to blur.
Theo came over that evening.
He brought soup, claiming he’d made too much. Lena didn’t ask if that was true.
She showed him the letter and tried to keep her voice from shaking.
“They’re getting more… intimate,” she said quietly. “More specific.”
Theo read it in silence. Then placed it carefully on the table like it might fall apart.
“I know this sounds crazy,” she said, “but I feel like she’s watching me. Like she’s here.”
“Do you want her to be?” he asked softly.
Lena looked up at him, startled. “What?”
“Do you want it to be her?”
“I—” she started, but stopped. She didn’t know how to answer. Wasn’t that the truth? That she wanted it to be her more than she wanted air?
“I don’t know what I want to believe,” she whispered.
Theo reached out, gently brushing her hand with his fingers. “Then let’s keep reading. Let’s see where this leads.”
They started a small ritual after that. Every time a letter came — sometimes through the door, sometimes in the post — they read it together.
Some were short. Others were pages long.
They spoke of memories: Lena’s first school recital, the beach trip when she was seven, the book Maggie used to read her every night for a year.
Details no one else could know.
That was what scared her the most.
“How could someone else know this?” she asked one evening.
Theo shrugged. “Maybe someone who knew your mum. A friend? Someone she confided in?”
Lena shook her head. “She didn’t have friends. Not anymore.”
Theo hesitated, then said, “Then maybe… maybe it really is her, somehow.”
Lena wanted to believe that.
She really did.
One night, after Theo left, Lena walked around her flat with the letters spread out across the kitchen table.
She read each one again, laying them in order, trying to find a pattern.
They weren’t threatening. They weren’t cruel.
But something about them didn’t sit right.
They felt too perfect. Too… calculated. Like someone trying very hard to sound like her mother.
And suddenly, a thought pierced through the fog.
She went to the drawer.
The one where she kept the birthday card.
The one Theo had picked up that first evening.
It was gone.
Lena tore the drawer apart.
Receipts. Old chargers. An unopened pack of batteries. But no card.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she sifted through every sheet of paper, every envelope, every photo she hadn’t looked at in months.
Gone.
The birthday card — her card — was gone.
She sat on the floor, dizzy with something between panic and disbelief. Had she moved it? Misplaced it? Thrown it away in one of those foggy, grief-blurred days?
Or had someone taken it?
Her mind offered a name she didn’t want.
Theo.
No. That was ridiculous.
Wasn’t it?
He’d been nothing but kind. Patient. He’d listened when she ranted. Held her when she cried. Read every letter with her, never mocking, never doubting.
But he’d seen the card.
He’d touched it.
And now…
Now each letter that arrived seemed to echo something familiar. Not just memories — but phrasing. Tone. Her mother had a very particular way of speaking. A warmth stitched into her sentences. These letters mimicked that tone perfectly.
Too perfectly.
Lena sat back against the cupboard and closed her eyes.
“Stop it,” she whispered to herself. “You’re spiralling.”
But the unease wouldn’t let go.
The next time she saw Theo, she said nothing.
She let him talk. About his week. His job. The book he was reading. He made them tea — peppermint, now a shared habit — and asked if she wanted to go for a walk.
Lena nodded.
They walked to the pier. The wind was sharp, salty. Theo offered her his scarf, and she let him wrap it around her neck, watching his hands move, gentle and practised.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, forcing her voice steady. “About the letters.”
He glanced at her. “Yeah?”
“I’m wondering who else might’ve had access to her writing. Like… old friends. Maybe someone at the school she used to teach at.”
Theo was quiet for a beat too long.
“Maybe,” he said finally. “Do you want to look into that?”
“Maybe.”
She didn’t trust herself to say more.
That night, Lena couldn’t sleep.
She sat at her kitchen table, a half-finished mug of tea going cold in her hands, and stared at the letters.
She took one and held it up beside a new sheet of paper.
Then, slowly, she picked up a pen.
She tried to copy it. The curve of the ‘L’. The gentle slope of the ‘y’. The spacing between the lines.
It was harder than it looked.
Her hand cramped after a few lines. The result was clumsy. Imitation. Not replication.
She set the pen down and stared at her attempt.
Then she pulled out her phone and typed:
“Can someone fake handwriting?”
The results spilled in.
Articles. Tutorials. Videos. Tools. Devices. Handwriting mimicking techniques.
One link caught her eye: “How to forge handwriting: The psychological art of deception.”
Lena didn’t click it.
She just stared.
The next morning, a new letter arrived.
This one was different.
It wasn’t loving. It wasn’t warm.
It said:
I know you’ve been doubting.
I wish you wouldn’t.
I don’t want to be angry.
But you’re making it hard to stay close.
With love,
Mum.
Lena stared at it.
Her blood ran cold.
Lena didn’t sleep that night either.
The letter sat on the kitchen table, face up, like a warning. The words pulsed in her mind:
I don’t want to be angry.
Maggie never wrote like that. Even at her worst — even when they fought — she never threatened, never guilted. Her love had been constant, quiet, unconditional.
This letter wasn’t her.
It was someone playing her.
Lena’s stomach twisted.
She knew what she had to do.
The next day, she told Theo she was going to see her therapist and needed some time alone.
He didn’t question it. Didn’t offer to come. Just nodded, kissed her forehead, and said, “Let me know if you need me.”
As soon as the door shut behind him, Lena moved.
She knew she had a short window. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, before he doubled back for something he “forgot.” He’d done it before. She hadn’t noticed the pattern until now.
She grabbed her keys, threw on a coat, and walked — fast — the four blocks to Theo’s flat.
He’d given her the spare key weeks ago, during what she now suspected was a carefully staged moment of “trust.”
She hesitated only a second at the door before unlocking it.
Theo’s flat was clean.
Too clean.
No dishes. No clutter. The kind of tidy that felt curated. Like a showroom dressed to resemble a life.
She moved quickly. She didn’t know what she was looking for — just that she had to find something.
Top drawer in the desk: empty folders, notebooks, receipts.
Bottom drawer: envelopes. All the same kind as the ones her letters came in.
She froze.
She picked one up — same cream colour, same paper weight.
Her hands started shaking.
Behind the envelopes, she found a notebook.
Her mother’s name was written on the cover.
Maggie Stevenson.
Lena opened it.
Inside: practice handwriting. Pages and pages of Maggie’s phrases, copied again and again. Some shaky, some almost perfect.
I love you more than the stars.
My darling girl.
You don’t have to be alone.
And then:
I don’t want to be angry.
Lena’s breath hitched.
At the back of the notebook was the birthday card.
Her birthday card.
The one Theo had touched.
She clutched it like a wound.
A noise at the door.
Footsteps.
Lena snapped the notebook shut and dropped it back into the drawer. Too late.
The key turned in the lock.
Lena froze.
The door creaked open behind her.
“Lena?” Theo’s voice, quiet — but not surprised.
She turned.
The drawer was still open. The notebook lay exposed. Her mother’s card trembled in her hand.
Theo stepped into the doorway, and for the first time since they’d met, he didn’t smile upon seeing her.
He didn’t ask what she was doing.
He didn’t pretend not to know.
He just stared — silent, still — like a wolf deciding whether to lunge or lie.
Lena’s heart pounded so loud it nearly drowned out her voice. “How long?”
Theo’s jaw clenched. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Her throat was bone-dry. “How long have you been lying to me?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
He stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind him with a soft click that echoed like a gunshot.
Lena backed away from the desk, bumping into the chair.
“You lied to me,” she said.
Theo didn’t move closer — not yet. Just watched her like a puzzle that had stopped being fun.
“You broke into my flat,” he said softly. “That’s not very trusting, Lena.”
She almost laughed. “You manipulated me. You forged letters from my dead mum. You watched me fall apart and made it worse.”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, like she was being unreasonable. “I didn’t fake caring. That part was real.”
She flinched as he took a step forward. One pace. Deliberate.
“It wasn’t meant to go this far,” he said, his voice getting louder. “But I saw you. God, Lena, you were shattered. I gave you something to hold onto.”
“You gave me delusion,” she snapped, tears welling. “You pretended to be my mother.”
He tilted his head, eyes sharp. “I didn’t pretend to be her. I gave you her voice. I gave you comfort.”
“No,” she whispered. “You gave yourself control.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. A glint of frustration. The truth catching its breath.
“You really think I just happened to walk into that grief circle?” he said. “I read her obituary. I knew her name. I chose you.”
Lena’s stomach dropped like a stone in water.
“You found me,” she said, numb.
“I studied you,” he corrected. “Everything about you. I knew you’d be receptive. I understood you.”
“You stalked me.”
He took another step. “I saved you.”
Lena backed into the table. “You infected me.”
Theo’s face twisted — pain, pride, something darker.
“I gave you someone to believe in.”
Lena’s hand dipped into her coat pocket. Her fingers wrapped around her phone.
Theo’s gaze followed the motion. “What are you doing?”
She pulled it out and hit record. “I’m recording this.”
For a second, he looked stunned.
Then he smiled. Not kindly. Not even human.
“Oh, Lena,” he said, voice syrup-thick with mock concern. “You’re not well.”
She stared him down, tears now flowing freely. “Don’t.”
He took a slow step forward. “You don’t know what’s real anymore. That’s what grief does, remember? It distorts things. Makes people paranoid.”
“I know what’s real,” she sobbed. “And I know what you are.”
He didn’t blink. “I was the only one who stayed.”
“You stayed,” she spat, “because you built the cage.”
Theo’s mask cracked. Just slightly.
“You’re going to destroy everything we shared,” he said, voice tight.
“There was nothing real to destroy.”
The room was heavy with it — the final, breathless silence.
Then Theo stepped back.
Straightened his coat.
Turned toward the door.
And walked out without another word.
He didn’t slam it.
He didn’t say goodbye.
He just disappeared.
Later That Night
Lena sat on her bathroom floor, all the letters piled in a bin beside her. Her phone lay face-up next to her, the voice recording still open.
She didn’t delete it.
Not yet.
She needed to remember what manipulation sounded like.
The police report was filed that night. She didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. She half-expected the door to creak open at 3 a.m., for Theo to be standing there in the dark, holding a new letter.
But the night passed.
And the next one.
And the next.
The police took her seriously.
To Lena’s surprise, they didn’t ask if she was exaggerating, or confused, or grieving too much to think clearly. The moment she played the recording, everything shifted.
Theo Holloway — if that was even his real name — had no fixed employment, no next of kin, and a long trail of aliases. No criminal record, but restraining orders. Three. None recent. Two expired. One still active in Devon. All women who had lost someone close to them.
They searched his flat and took the notebook. The letters. The envelopes. The birthday card.
“We may not be able to charge him,” the officer warned, “but he won’t come near you again. Not legally.”
Still, Lena changed the locks the next day.
The flat felt different now.
She cleared out her letters. Burned them in a cheap metal bin on the balcony. She watched the flames eat the pages slowly, curling each ‘darling girl’ into ash.
It didn’t make her feel better.
But it made her feel done.
She bought new tea. Rearranged the living room. Finally opened the care package her friend had sent after Maggie’s death — the one with the bath salts and calming teas.
She drank one that night. Lavender and camomile.
She realised it was the first time she’d felt peaceful in weeks.
Three weeks passed.
Theo didn’t return.
No letters. No knocks. No shadows on the stairwell.
She went back to the grief circle. The chair he used to sit in was empty.
She didn’t take it.
She spoke that night. For the first time in months, she spoke freely.
“I don’t think grief ends,” she said. “I think it changes shape. It goes from being everything, to being something you carry.”
The group nodded. No one interrupted. That was the thing about grief circles. Everyone understood the language.
Afterward, the woman with the red lipstick squeezed her hand. “Your mother would be proud,” she said.
Lena smiled.
This time, the words didn’t hurt.
Six Months Later
The sea was calm.
Lena stood at the same cliff where they’d scattered her mother’s ashes. She hadn’t been back since that day. The day everything changed.
She held a new letter in her hand — one she wrote herself.
It wasn’t long. Just enough.
She weighed it with a stone and tossed it into the wind.
It fluttered for a moment, then vanished over the edge.
She whispered something into the salt air.
And for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel alone.
The Written Mirror 
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