I carefully go down on my knees, one knee at a time, and they come in contact with the dusty floor of the attic. I reach for a box which is the most precious box I own not because of its value or its appearance, but for its content. In the box are letters which I have received from my lover in France. Every letter is handwritten and they each carry a lot of love, and deep passion. His neat cursive handwriting tells me that he writes these letters so delicately and thoughtfully. The faint smell of his cologne on the paper makes me feel as though he is right beside me, holding me, kissing me, whispering the beautiful words of his letters into my ears in his thick French accent. 'Ma chéri,' I imagine him calling me in a sultry tune that will drive me crazy.

I put in the code to the box and lift it open. The letters are neatly stacked atop each other in no particular order. I close my eyes and pick one from the middle, I want to be surprised when I read it, I want to feel like I am reading it for the first time. I keep my eyes closed and I slide my fingers into the envelope and pull out the piece of paper. I open my eyes and I smile as soon as I see what letter I have chosen. Ah, it is the letter he sent me on my birthday five months ago, I know this because every single letter has a date on it. I always think about this particular letter. I'll gladly read it again.

Ma chéri,

It is with great pleasure and sadness that I write you this letter. Pleasure because I am elated to contact you once again, and sadness because I am unable to be there with you on such a special day. Oh, I so badly want to see you, to kiss your beautiful lips and to stare into those beautiful eyes that I always dream about. I wish I knew you before you got married, our story would have been much more different. The child in your belly would have been mine. I am sitting at my desk as I write you this letter and I am unable to perform my duties at work because the thought of your beautiful face is all that fills my mind. I hope you have a wonderful birthday ma amour, I want you to smile, drink a lot of that red wine that you love (or not, due to your pregnancy) and spend the night eating chocolate and watching those telenovelas that you love so much (although I think they are absolutely appalling.) And as I always say, you're beautiful, and you're special in every way. Everything about you is special, my goodness, you turn me into a madman! I cannot wait until the day I finally meet you, my love. I want to hold you in my arms and whisper sweet nothings in your ears. Bon Anniversaire, ma chéri. Bon Anniversaire!

From your love- Maxime.

I let out a sigh as soon as I'm done reading his letter. His words make me swoon like I am a sixteen-year-old girl again in love with an older boy. I feel so silly, but I love feeling this way. I love feeling a child-like giddiness, it keeps me young, it keeps me alive! I trace my fingers over his beautiful cursive writing and I make sure my fingers go over each bent line of his writing. I put my face close to the paper and I take in the smell of his cologne. I gently fold the paper and I put it back into the envelope. I place it on top of the pile and I am about to close the box, but then something catches my eyes. At the bottom of the box is a white envelope, but I know it is not one of Maxime's letters because it does not have a hand-drawn heart shape at the top right corner of the envelope. Maxime never forgets to draw a heart on the exact spot on all the envelopes. I always tease him for doing so, I say to him ' you're such a child,' but he knows that deep down I love his child-like side, so he never fails to draw it. Also, the colour of this envelope is different, it looks like it was once white but the passage of time has made it turn into a duller, less attractive colour.

I carefully pull out the envelope making sure not to cause the others to fall. Even the texture of the envelope is wrong. It is made with thinner paper than that of the envelope Maxime uses. I lift the flap of the envelope and pull out a brown paper which much like the envelope, has accumulated a lot of dirt. I lift the paper which is folded in half and then I straighten it and fix the bent edges. In it is a note in a handwriting I do not recognize, and can hardly comprehend. The slapdash writing looks as though the writer wrote the note in a hurry, or maybe even panic. It starts off quite neatly and halfway through the end of the letter the writing gets sloppy. I get an unsettling feeling deep within my chest as I start to read the letter.

The fact that you are reading this letter means that something has happened to me, something terrible. I cannot explain now but I want you to be careful, I want you to be very careful. Those people, those people who we let into our home, they're evil. They're dangerous, they are after our money and they will do anything to get it. Ungrateful bastards! That is what they are and I wan

Helena Helena my dear you must find proof you must show the world who they are oyou must show your father who they are I gave someone the proof he is in london he does not know who you are so you will need to contact him look in my purse the one I love so much there is a diary in it is his adress find him! find charles nelson ask hm for the proof and most importantly find me. Find me befor they kill me

I fold the paper and let out a breath I did not realize I was holding in. Who is Helena, I start to wonder. "Who wrote this note?'' I also wonder. Was the person in trouble or was this just some sort of prank, or maybe it was a part of a story that someone scribbled down. But then I read the end of the letter again and something about the way the ink of the pen is darkened on the last phrase 'before they kill me,' tells me that this is no joke. I can tell that there is a lot of desperation in the way this letter was written, from the change in handwriting to the lack of punctuation, proper grammar, or spelling, it is evident that this is something to take seriously. I wonder how this letter got into my box, maybe I accidentally put it in there the few times that the content of my box has spilled onto the attic floor, and if that is the case, I wonder how the letter got into my attic.

I have lived in this house for five years with my husband Eric, and not once have we come across such a letter. My hands begin to shake and I decide it is best I leave the attic to get some fresh air, for the sake of the baby growing in my stomach. I put the note back in the envelope and carry it with me out of the attic.

"Eric!" I call out to my husband who is downstairs packing some of our things into big boxes. I gently go down the steps although I want to run to show the letter to him, but being seven months into my first pregnancy has made me scared to move in certain ways for fear of falling and harming the baby.

"Yes, dear!" he says in a dull, uninterested tone. I hear a lot of noise coming from the living room, and when I get there I meet him organizing our CDs into a box.

"Do you know where this came from?" I ask as I stretch the envelope to him.

"Doesn't look familiar," he says and pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

"I need you to read it," I say in a commanding tone which I adopted ever since I hit my second trimester.

He takes the envelope from me and reads what's written on the paper inside. I watch as his face goes from being expressionless to contorting into a facial expression that tells me he is bewildered. "I-I don't understand," he shakes his head. "What is this? Where did you find this?"

"In the attic, just now."

"I never store anything there so it must have gotten into this house through you."

I shake my head. "No, I can assure you that this letter did not come from me. Before I moved into this house five years ago I carefully looked through all my things and this was not in there, which leads me to believe that this letter has been in this house all along."

"And we're just seeing it? That's quite impossible don't you think?"

"I don't understand it myself,' I say and my mind drifts away for a moment. "Who lived here before us? Maybe it belonged to them."

"The last time this house was occupied was thirty years ago, the owners did not want to let go of the house, but they finally did and I was the first person to move here since they sold it. The owner sold me this house for very cheap, I was very shocked, I thought I was being cheated, but it turned out the person just wanted to let go of this house, she said it held too many bad memories."

"What memories?"

"I didn't ask, she didn't seem like she wanted to be asked any questions.''

"And this woman, the one that sold you the house, do you still have her contact? You've only lived here for seven years, so you must still have it."

"No, I never had it. She was very private. To be honest I only met her once when I was moving in and she was moving the last of her things out."

"And how did you find out about the house in the first place?" I interrogate him like an office interrogating a witness.

"There was a sign in front of the house, I actually saw as the sign was being put up," he chuckles. "I asked how much the house was out of curiosity, next thing I know I was being encouraged to buy it. I was shocked when I found out how cheap it was. I was a twenty-five-year-old man at that time so I didn't ask all the important questions." He shrugs.

I pace about the house with my chin resting on my knuckle. "This note seems very important, if it was left here by the person who last lived here, then it probably means that the person never knew the letter even existed."

"Darling, we don't even know that this letter means anything, just continue packing and don't think about it too much."

"But the thing is I can't,'' I say in an outburst. "Now that I think about it, no one writes anything down just because. To put pen to paper-- to construct a note means that the message on that paper is of importance. This was directed to someone—to Helena, whoever that may be, and this Helena most likely never even got it. I would go mad if someone wrote me a letter and I never received it.''

I would go mad if a month passes and I don't receive one of Maxime's letters.

"We have to find this Helena person, and if we search and don't find her then we can conclude that it was nothing serious- just random words put together on a paper, but for now, let's take ourselves as messengers in search of this Helena. Let's help her find whoever wrote this letter. Let's solve a mystery," I say, fervently.