'Letter from a Seventh Wife' by Kathryn Kulpa

Maybe you’ll find this, dear successor. You, who’ll come after. Eight to my seven. Perhaps you won’t know that. You’ll be a languishing provincial virgin, youngest daughter of a merchant exhausted of fortune. You’ll be innocent. Ignorant, as I was. You won’t know me, just as I didn’t know the others until I stole that key. Until I found that room. Until I opened that door. But if he didn’t want me to find the key why didn’t he keep it close to him, on a silver chain around his neck? He kept nothing close to him. No one. He was always going away, locking himself away, locking me away. He wanted to keep me in a box like a treasure but I only wanted to see and now I’m waiting at my window, staring down the road, saying I’m here, saying hurry, saying: Find me.