She continued her routine—fetching water, cooking simple meals, repairing what she could around the house—but her mind was somewhere else entirely.
She counted the coins again.
Read the letter over and over.
Studied the small portrait inside the medallion, that calm, distant face that now felt strangely close.
Until finally… she made her decision.
She wouldn’t sell anything.
Not yet.
First… she would find the truth.
The journey to the village was long and exhausting. The sun was relentless, and each step felt heavier than the last, but she kept going.
When she arrived, she went straight to the records office.
The clerk looked up at her, surprised.
“I thought you would’ve left that place by now,” he said.
“I’m still there,” Clara replied quietly. “But I need information.”
Hours passed.
Names surfaced.
Fragments of a story began to take shape.
The woman from the letter had been real.
She had children.
But at some point, their names had disappeared from the records.
“They probably moved far away,” the clerk said with a shrug. “A lot of people did back then.”
It wasn’t much.
But it was something.
And Clara refused to give up.