I FOUND AN ABANDONED CABIN IN THE WOODS—UNDER THE FLOOR WAS A ROOM THAT HELD A 27-YEAR SECRET.
I was lost.
My phone had 11% battery, no signal, and darkness was closing in.
Then I found a cabin.
It looked abandoned, but the dust and half-melted candle told me someone had recently been there.
I locked the door and tried to sleep.
Around 3 a.m., I slipped on the floor and heard a loud crack.
A hidden hatch was underneath me.
I opened it.
A staircase led underground.
At the bottom was a child’s bedroom that looked frozen in time.
A stuffed rabbit.
Old drawings.
Height marks on the wall.
And a box filled with letters.
Every letter was addressed to Daphne.
Some were written when she was eight.
Others when she was twelve.
The last ones were written when she was an adult.
Then a woman appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Her name was Daphne.
She told me her father had disappeared when she was seven.
She had spent years writing letters to him, believing he had forgotten her.
Then we discovered a hidden compartment.
Inside were dozens of letters from her father.
He hadn’t forgotten her.
Someone had been hiding his letters from her for decades.