And now, the very last chapter - the Epilogue.
I must admit, the contents of it were decided in February. Last year.
I've written 1500 words of it on the 27th of February 2018. All this time, the story had been going in this direction and was going to end in this way. The exact contents of it changed, the wording changed, the order of conversations and other details changed, but the events in it stayed the same for almost a year.

At the start, the story was an one-shot of less than a thousand of words. In December 2017 it was 11 thousand and was barely a skeleton of a story. Now, 14 months since I picked it up again and nearly 5 years since I wrote that little one-shot, it's 323 thousands words and had developed in unexpected directions.

Thank you for following this for that year (and change) and I hope you will be satisfied with the way the story concludes.
There will be additional scenes posted to this story, added as part of a series on AO3.

You know where to find me :)

The evening was slowly coming to an end. The auction had been a smashing success (she still couldn't believe that William was right about the final price offered for her quilt) and the social gathering aspect of it seemed to be satisfactory to most of those present.

The catering service people were slowly removing the remnants of the sweets and collecting their serving dishes. The Stricklands had left (at the last moment, Teddy had bravely suggested an outing to the cinema, including Rose in that invitation, and William solemnly promised him to seriously think about it), Mary was upstairs checking on Jimmy, Richard and Evan were on their way to Matlock and Charles was in the library, discussing something with one of the investors. The sofa in the corner was temptingly soft and Elizabeth finally gave in to its siren call.

Ah. Bliss.

"Mrs Darcy?"

Ugh.

The voice was not one of the trembling, elderly ones, and not one of the overblown regal elderly ones. Still, the wrinkly hand that patted her shoulder belonged to a representative of the 'grandma' generation.

"Lady Turney" Elizabeth smiled at one of the nicest guests they had - she had both donated something for the auction and bid on one of the smaller items, as she said, just for the fun of it. "How are you doing? Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No, no, Mrs Darcy. You rest your feet, I just..." the aged face twisted into an uncertain grimace.

"Please, call me Elizabeth. It's easier on everyone and I don't have to think about my husband's mother every time someone addresses me. Several of the... well, older guests, tend to go on about her so."

"Very well, very well. I promise I won't do that. But I have a question to you, my dear" Lady Turney sat on the sofa next to her and clasped her hands over her phone. "I saw that pretty pink quilt that was displayed in the dining room, you see. Can you tell me something about it? You've made it, is this correct?"

"Yes, I made it several years ago, for my daughter. What about it?"

"I saw the label, yes, but I wanted... That's the thing, dear girl. The description says it is your own original design...?"

Elizabeth snorted softly.

"William was the one who ordered the labels. He was determined to caption everything that I made from my own sketches as my "original design". This one is more of a transformative work - I copied the general look of a floor mosaic from a church in Italy and added some variation on the borders to make it more three-dimensional. It took me some time to collect appropriate pieces to get the shading accurate for the illusion."

"I see... And it says you had to do some calculation to get it correct?"

Elizabeth groaned and covered her face.

"I'll hit him for putting all this info up. Yes, I had to calculate the angles for the corners to make sure that when you look at it, the illusion is consistent, so the diamonds on the top of the pattern are slightly different from the ones at the bottom. Makes it look more natural - or at least it was supposed to."

"And this is your original work? I mean, you told me it was based on church mosaic, and I understand, but the calculation and other details...?"

Well, this was a bit worrying, but Elizabeth was way too tired to work out what the older woman was trying to say.

"Yes, I probably still have the file with the calculations somewhere on my computer. I even made a digital draft of where the patches should go before I sewed it."

"Ah. I understand this is something that could be verified if you had to present it as a proof?"

Elizabeth looked at her in confusion.

"Why would I have to prove anything? What should I prove?"

"Now, I'm not saying anything" Lady Turney tapped at her phone screen a few times. "But one of my dear friends, well, the best probably, she has this little weakness. She loves charity shops. Buys the most outrageously disgusting china figurines, painted fans and cross-stitch alphabet samplers. But she also finds absolute marvels, and one day she showed me a quilt she had found. Very similar to yours, but done in sea and teal hues."

Elizabeth felt her heart skip a beat. Quite literally.

"Lady Turney..." she managed to whisper.

"Now, let me see, I had a photo of it somewhere in my gallery... She made it into a wall hanging, just like you did with this pink one here, because she said she couldn't bear it being actually used, it was so pretty. And it had the same mosaic pattern, just in green and blue... That's how I knew there was something similar between them - I saw them both on the wall like that..." she pressed some icons on her phone slowly. "I'm sure I had it here. Where did this go...? Oh, see. This one. It does seem to be remarkably similar, doesn't it? And it has the same kind of wavy border as yours..."

Elizabeth's hand shook as she took the phone and turned it her way.

"Dear God," she whispered. "William...!"

"Mom?" Rose's head showed over the bannister. "Dad is in the kitchens, someone broke a bottle of oil on the stairs, they are trying to get rid of it..."

"William," Elizabeth managed to repeat as her hand went limp.

"Daad!"

A pair of strong legs thumped down the corridor just as she dropped the phone into her lap.

#

"Lizzy? Lizzy, look at me. Elizabeth?"

She blinked, not exactly sure what was happening.

"Lizzy, you fainted. What happened?"

"Rose's quilt," she said slowly. "It was... Someone has it."

William frowned, sitting down next to her, pulling her closer.

"Impossible. Aunt Catherine has burnt it, together with all the other gifts."

"Lady Turney's friend has it. She bought it in a charity shop. I saw a photo."

"Dear boy, I'm so sorry..." the older woman sat next to them, looking at Elizabeth in worry. "What is this all about?"

"Lizzy made that other quilt," William provided succinctly. "But we thought it has been burnt. Apparently, it was somehow donated or... whatever happened. And your friend had bought it."

Mina appeared, pulling the tea cart behind her.

"Does this mean that all the other things that Mom made may also be there?" she asked, pouring half a cup of tea and adding milk. "Because if yes, then we must go there and get them back. It's not like they have any right to keep them. They were stolen."

"What things?" Lady Turney managed to interrupt. "What are you talking about?"

Mina sighed with an expression of long suffering.

"Mom made a lot of gifts for Rose when we were all separated. Every year, she made one for me and one for Rose, of everything. And she sent them here for Rose for her birthday and Christmas, and they were stolen, and we thought they had been burnt. But if Rose's quilt was sold at that shop, it means at least that quilt was somehow given away and not actually put on fire. So maybe there is some other stuff that Mom sent that may have been given away, too."

Lady Turney blinked, surprised.

"And what that would be?" she asked slowly.

"A... An afghan. I got the blue one, so Rose's was probably yellow. A quilted pillowcase, teal, like that spread. A hooked wool rug, a little one, just to put the slippers on. A set of curtains, printed in flowers. A silk scarf, dyed... green? Teal?"

"Cyan, ducky," Elizabeth provided quietly.

"A painted plate, a braided cotton rug," Mina frowned. "And a cup. Mine got broken by one of our little cousins, but I remember it was metallic blue and silver. And a lot and lot of other stuff."

"Rose's was green and copper," Elizabeth added, eyes closing, head leaning on her husband's shoulder. "And there were the older things..." she continued slowly. "A knit sweater, a pair of mittens..." she breathed with effort. "A lot of other things. Every birthday, every Christmas..." she sipped the tea. "We... if even part of it is found..."

William pressed a kiss to her hair, holding her close.

And she had one more appointment to be added to her already busy schedule. First time on Monday morning, if it was possible. Before they'd even set out to visit the charity shop.

####

"We kind of guessed there was something wrong with them things," the charity shop minder agreed. "They were dumped in the donation bins, most of them together, three years ago or so, just after summer vacation. We thought first that this was someone moving, like, for a college, and getting rid of unnecessary things, but first one of the girls noticed there were kids things in it - a pair of mittens, a jumper, socks - and she thought it was weird, because usually people give this stuff to younger relatives and if someone kept this kind of memento that long and was moving to a college, well, they wouldn't be throwing that out - and then we found the letters inside. No address anywhere and it looked so weird we... we put it all in a crate and kind of hid it away. We fully expected to have time to think about it and maybe investigate, but you know how these things go - free time never comes and then... Ever since that first drop we've been looking through the bins to see if something similar shows up, and for the next two years, in autumn, there was something matching... But there was never any kind of address or anything that would give us a hint where they came from," he sighed. "If you don't mind me asking, what is this all about?"

"They are mine," Rose stated from where she stood, pressed into William's left side. "Mom made them for me and our aunt stole them. Can we have them back?"

The man looked at her in surprise.

"Can you prove they are yours? How do you know?"

"Will it be enough if my wife shows you photos of them being made...?" William offered. "She is in the car, trying to gather her courage, so..."

The shop bell jingled and Mina joined them, hugging him on the other side.

"Also, we have a whole set... well, not full, but still, of matching objects. Only the cup is missing, ducky?"

"And the little clothes," Mina added helpfully. "They went to aunt Jane's kids and I think their old dog ate the mittens. But there are photos of me wearing them."

Jingle.

"If you have some evidence of them being made by your wife, that would be a good start, yes. Especially as they seemed to have been dumped together with private correspondence..."

"Letters?" Lizzy's voice caught for a moment. "My letters are..."

"Madame?"

"Are you saying there were letters, with our things?"

"Yes, well. That was one of the reasons we kept them all. Seemed too weird. But before I hand these over, can we verify whether these are in fact your things?"

The shop minder hauled a large box up onto the counter and took a long look at the list that Elizabeth had prepared, with photographs of each item in various stages of completion and detailed descriptions of each.

"Considering your list matches most of the objects in this crate, I'm guessing that you are the owners. And may I say, ma'am, this is beautiful work. I made photos of all items and considered uploading them to some social network site to search for the author, but never got around to doing it. I thought some people could come and say they were owners if we provided too many details. Someone might have used the photos to lay claim to them… So in the end, we did nothing."

"Well, we were directed here through the old-fashioned network of little old ladies" William smiled, still holding Elizabeth's hand tightly. "Is there any chance we could find out who dropped these items off?"

"No, that side isn't monitored. Anyone can just drop any item. We trust the locals not to do nasty stuff there, and so far it works. Sometimes we find things that are obviously stolen, like jewellery, and this we turn in to the police for checking. But common objects, household items... Unless it looks rare or valuable, it's priced and put in the shop and nobody bothers."

"But they were definitely dropped off around the beginning of the school year?"

"That's what got us thinking they were someone leaving for university, so it had to be close to mid-September. And, well, a lot of big houses hire cleaning crews for summer, when the owners are away, and then we usually have some influx of very weird stuff. Just this one was... weirder than normal weird."

"So, if you are sure we are the rightful owners, could I have my letters...?" Elizabeth began, but the man was already rising with a thick package in his hand. "Oh, God. Oh. William."

Her hands were trembling as she pulled out a sheet after sheet of paper.

"We put these sticky notes on the ones we found wrapped inside the things. We didn't read them - just checked if there was anything on the outside, you know. Looking for an address or something."

"I wrapped everything in normal brown paper, and that had the address labels on it. I suppose she got rid of that…" Elizabeth frowned at the loose pieces of paper in her hands. "And it seems she must have just thrown away the first letter I've sent."

"The one where you asked Dad to come for your thesis presentation?"

"Yes, my viva. But she apparently never read it, because she would have sent it back immediately..."

Her hands shook as she shuffled through the letters slowly.

"After a while, I stopped writing the letters, as such," she said so softly he had to lean closer to her. "I just made a postcard and wrote greetings."

"One of the reasons we thought it was weird. People don't just dump letters and greeting cards like that - and handmade as well! Again, it's one fine craftsmanship, Mrs..."

"Darcy," she said mechanically. "Elizabeth Darcy. Thank you for keeping these for us. It is… We were convinced they had been stolen and destroyed."

He pulled her closer and peeked over her shoulder at the letters she was holding.

"I wonder what happened to the ones that Dad had sent. Because she didn't know what was inside, so she never opened them. But if she never opened them, then they'd still have the addresses on the outside, right?"

Mina's sudden question startled them a bit.

"Well, right now we know where these are and I really, really would like to see them" Rose sighed. "Can I have a look the actual things? And take them and go home? Please?"

The shopkeeper popped the padlock open and pushed the lid up, turning the box to face them.

"Unfortunately, one item, a quilt, was taken out, as the new kids were helping with the Christmas re-decoration and it was gone before I could stop them from selling it. I didn't even find out who bought it..."

Elizabeth sniffed, but didn't comment. They already knew who had the quilt and William had been in contact with that very kind lady, negotiating the possibility of purchasing it from her. Finally, Lizzy sighed, reached into the box and pulled out a tiny toddler sweater.

"I made this for their fourth Christmas," she said softly. "And the mittens for the second birthday. And," she reached deeper "this is the braided rug. I don't see anything else, but, Will..."

He grabbed the next item he could reach and then simply moved the box to a lower bench to make it easier for all of them to look.

"Afghan. Still wrapped in tissue," he noted with surprise.

"We re-wrapped it after we took the photos."

"The woolly rug, Mom?" Rose's quick grab brought out two things and she was now tearing the paper off one of them. "And the cup! Mom, it's absolutely beautiful!"

The cup was an almost see-through affair, painted with swirls of copper and metallic greens and teals, looking like tiny galaxies.

"And you had a blue one, just like this?" William hugged Mina to his side.

"Mhm. And Jackie broke it, completely. I mean, if she had managed to just knock the handle off... but it was smashed into in twenty pieces."

"My poor darling. We'll have to feed Jackie Brussels sprouts the next time she comes to visit."

"Dad, that is cruel."

As Elizabeth's documentation was right in front of them, sorting of the objects went quickly and the shopkeeper helped them to bag everything that was identified as theirs. There were a few items in the crate that Elizabeth didn't recognise (although they were handmade, and of good quality, too), and there was an obvious absence of the big quilt - which they had already known of.

"And the last year gifts are missing," Mina said sadly. "Maybe someone bought them, too."

"You mean the year before last," Rose corrected.

"You may be fifteen minutes older, but you aren't that much funnier because of it."

"There was nothing similar this last autumn," the man confirmed. "At least nothing we could identify… but what would it be?"

Elizabeth leaned into William's embrace.

"A painted plate and a set of suncatchers," she provided, turning the pages in her documentation file. "All blue. Like here, this photo."

"Nothing like this in any of the bins," the minder shook his head. "Let me remove these - if you say they aren't yours, well, then we can sell them at last," he dropped the few items left into the box. "It is nice to finally know the truth, you know? We've had these for so long I gave up on ever getting the answer. Wait a moment, I will give you some paper and bubbles for the cup and these frames."

They packed the more delicate objects carefully in layers of bubble wrap and tissue, putting the cup in Elizabeth's handbag, along with the letters, and went quietly back to the car. Rose ended up hugging the biggest bag to her chest, her face resting in the folds of the afghan and Mina had two smaller bags by her feet and another in her arms, while the lampshade rested on the seat between them.

"Dad?" Rose mumbled into the thick wool. "If they were all dumped in September and it looked like someone moving away or like a house cleaning, maybe it actually was a house cleaning? I mean..."

"That would be my guess too, kitten. I've already texted Derek," William tapped his phone. "He will check who was on the crew at the time and ask them if they remember anything."

"That would mean that Aunt Catherine got them to get rid of the stuff, right? That she never actually did anything with it herself? Why was she so... so sure that they got burned?"

Elizabeth turned in her seat and patted Mina's knee.

"She was probably sure the 'servants' followed her orders."

"Ooh," that was Rose. And she stayed silent after that, annoyingly.

"Kitten?"

"Wasn't it three years ago that Aunt Catherine did that idiotic thing and tried to order someone from the crew around, calling them servants?"

William blinked.

"So, you think she tried pushing them around and have them burn the things...?"

"And when they noticed it was something that didn't look like trash, they dumped it at the charity shop instead. Why didn't they come to tell us...?"

"And then next year, the same thing," Elizabeth provided. "And again, a year ago..."

"But not this year," Mina pointed out suddenly. "Because everything got delayed and stuff and so the actual proper big cleaning was only when Dad had kicked them out already."

"So...?" Rose sounded suddenly hopeful.

"So if she did the same thing and kept the gifts somewhere in the house until the cleaning, she kept them in her room, and so... unless she took them with her when she left, everything should be in the attic," Mina pointed out happily. "Because she and Anne never asked for the stuff from their rooms and then they got arrested and just left it like that, so they only took what they managed to pack in these suitcases they had. And then the crew cleaned their rooms and packed everything and put it in the attic. So maybe, just maybe... we can find your suncatchers and the plate there."

"And we'll be able to put them all around the room!"

"It will be like a fairyland!"

Rose's soft sigh was the only reaction.

He glanced at Elizabeth, but she was holding her handbag in a tight grasp - and the bubble-wrapped copper-green cup was stuck on top of the papers.

"How are you feeling, love?"

She shook her head.

"I'm not sure. I'm still... processing."

#

The attic was huge and dusty and covered with boxes upon boxes upon boxes of stuff. There were boxes marked "Rose's old toys" and boxes marked "Old manuscripts" and boxes marked "House renovation plans". There were also boxes marked "Cleaning 2017" and these were the ones they, with the help of Brian and two of his men, hauled out and brought downstairs to one of the now-empty rooms, where Elizabeth was already waiting with a box knife and a roll of tape for re-taping the ones that would be going back upstairs.

"Derek called and told me that there were a few people three years ago who remember some stuff 'that old witch' gave them to be burned, and they thought she was crazy, because who would be burning an afghan or a pillowcase. Also, they knew that there was no way they could do it on the property, as our main furnace for the central heating works with gas. And the girls decided that if they are supposed to get rid of this, they will at least allow someone else to make use of all the things, so they drove up to that charity shop and left it there. They never checked inside so they didn't know about the letters."

"So, we have confirmation how it happened. Did Derek say why they never told you?"

William cringed. And blushed. And...

"Because of aunt Catherine and the very fact that I allowed her to stay in the house. They thought I was fine with whatever she told them to do, unless it was very stupid. In this case, they thought she was just getting rid of some items she no longer liked..."

"Good girls," Elizabeth interrupted authoritatively. "If they told her they wouldn't do it, she might have for once tried to do something herself, or order Anne to do it, and then all would have been lost. As it is, I'd wager she probably never really unpacked some of it, or she would have smashed the cup to pieces."

"Mom!"

They turned to where Mina was kneeling by a large box filled with crumpled paper.

"I think this may be it," she brought out the reinforced package that Elizabeth recognised immediately. "It looks like she didn't open it. The address stickers are still on!"

"That's your plate, kitten," she prodded Rose. "Come on, you should be the one to unpack it."

The plate was as pretty as on the day she sent it to Pemberley - milky white crockery covered with metallic copper and golden net filled with green and royal blue. A matching pair to Mina's silver, orange and pink one.

"But the rest is just the ugly figurines that aunt Catherine collected," Rose reported. "No suncatchers here."

"Well, there are more boxes," Mina sneezed. "Many, many more boxes."

"Good thing we have this week off. We can look for them..." Rose stabbed the next box with the blade and cut through the tape. "Weird."

William looked up from where he had been admiring the work on the painted plate.

"What is it, ducky?"

"Letters," their older daughter pulled out an envelope.

"What letters? They were supposed to bring all the documents to the study."

"They were in a second box, inside, and I cut through both of them by accident," Rose pointed to the place where the knife went too deep, opening the box inside to their view. "And this..." she looked at the other side of the big carton, "I think this is from Anne's room. We... MOM."

They both strode over to where Rose was now fairly shaking and William picked one of the envelopes, looking at it in astonishment.

"Mom, they are all for you. From Dad. All of them. These are Mina's presents. All of them. Right here."

Mina looked up from where she had just lifted another still-unopened package with the familiar sender address.

"What?"

Rose wordlessly waved one of the smaller envelopes at her and they exchanged their long-lost mail in stupefied silence. Elizabeth sank to her knees on the carpet next to them as William opened the newly uncovered box wider.

Anne's room.

I must say I had been an absolute idiot to never actually send them myself, but after I almost broke down when writing that first letter...

William turned one envelope over in his hands, tracing Elizabeth's London address with his fingertips, but his attention was drawn by a loud exhale produced by Mina, who had apparently regained the power of speech.

"This means they never actually burnt anything, they just... just told others to do it. Or at least aunt Catherine did, and Anne ignored the order," she said shakily, unpicking the flap of another envelope with trembling fingers. "If they hadn't been that lazy, they wouldn't have been such lousy villains. They didn't get rid of these properly... Not that I'm complaining! And they never even opened these! I think this is for you, Mom."

She lifted a piece of paper from the bubble wrap envelope and handed it to Elizabeth while fishing out a small flat box from among some more packing material.

William peeked over her shoulder to check the contents of that particular package.

"Oh, that's pretty!" she gasped as she pulled out a length of tiny, square shield-shaped links decorated with blue enamel.

"It's half of your grandmother's necklace. It was broken in the middle by accident and I had it remade into two bracelets," his voice broke as he fastened the blue piece around her wrist.

Elizabeth made a strangled sound and he turned to her, alarmed. But she was fine, she was fine, sitting on the floor, clutching the frail piece of cartoon house decorated paper in one hand, the other covering her mouth.

Bracelet. Tenth birthday. Ah.

My dearest, loveliest Elizabeth,

It has been ten years since that fateful night when you asked me in panic if it was past midnight and our only problem seemed to be the long-term perspective of having to organise two birthday parties each year.

As I watch Rose growing up, inch by inch, to be a girl I'm proud of and delighted with, I can only ask myself - how is Mina doing. Is she happy? Are you happy? Are you at least content? I would want you to be as content with your life as you can. One of us should be happy.

I'm not.

Because even though I get to see Rose become the fully-formed personality that I've helped to shape, I cannot shake the feeling that there is a girl out there in the world that I'm neglecting.

I hope that one day you will allow Mina to visit us and I'll be able to get to know her and that she and Rose will find a common language, despite all these years of separation.

Until this happens, Lizzy, be well,

Yours, forever,

William

He reached out to Elizabeth, who was still sitting on the floor of the room, hugging herself in silence, and helped her up.

"Now that we know that this is all in fact right here, in the house, maybe we could get some rest, love? I still hadn't had time to read any of your letters."

She nodded shakily and rose, holding his offered hand.

"This was... a very weird day," she said finally. "I mean... I'm glad all these things were found, I..."

He felt her lean on him heavily.

"It's good that they now have all their presents," she smiled up at him. "And that they agreed that it's enough for them to have these."

"That's very noble of them," he declared uncertainly. "But does this mean you will stop making the handmade gifts, completely?"

"Well..." she trailed off and smiled over her shoulder at the twins, who looked up at her from where they were cutting open the package - most probably the suncatchers. "No, I will just be making one of everything. Starting, I suppose, with a newborn-sized sleeping bag appropriate for September."