The apartment I rented was on the second floor of an old Victorian house in what was once the fashionable side of town. I loved the turret and the windows looking out onto the street. My bedroom was small and the living room was probably once a sitting room. In it was a built in secretary desk, with pigeon holes for correspondences and decorative half columns separating sections. It had been painted several times over the years.

I obtained permission from the landlady to refurbish the place to my liking and I decided that rather than the slightly peeling yellow paint, the secretary would be more attractive in wood finish. And so I spent a long weekend applying chemical stripper and carefully scraping off the paint with a small putty knife.

Some of the paint had flowed into a seam between one of the half column appliqués and the pigeon holes. I scraped away at it, trying to get the last bit of paint, when the column popped out to reveal a hidden drawer.

I opened the drawer and found a letter inside.