The notification came through the registry system at eleven in the morning, using the channel reserved for administrative updates. She recognized the format before she finished the first sentence. A deposit made in her name eleven years ago had been converted to permanent status, effective three days prior, following the depositor's death. The letter remained accessible at her discretion. No expiration date would apply.
She had been watching the public renewal log without calling it watching. Twice a year she looked, in February and in August, a timing she had arrived at without planning. The deposit record showed each renewal as a separate entry, listed by date: March 2015, March 2016, onward through the most recent year. Eleven consecutive renewals. He had filed each one himself, which meant he had decided each year that the letter should remain available, that what he had written still applied or at least still deserved a chance of being read.
The estrangement was seventeen years old. Caen had deposited the letter when it was six years in, which she had not known at the time. She had found the entry two years after that, checking the registry for something else and searching her own name from habit. She had not known what to do with it. She had done nothing with it.
The registry sealed the content. What was public was only the existence of the deposit: depositor, recipient, date, status. She could see that the letter existed. She could not see what it said without accessing it, which she could do at any time through the public portal, with a registered account and a waiting period of one business day.
She had never opened an account.
What she knew was this: Caen had written something, and he had kept renewing the deposit every year for eleven years, which meant he had continued to believe the thing he had written should be available to her if she wanted it. She did not know what it said. She did not know who had told her he died, because no one had. She had found out through a registry notice. She did not know how that happened, or if there was more information somewhere that she hadn't received.
She closed the notification without opening the registry.