Thom was in high spirits. He generally was, these days, when he was home. Some ventures on the international stage had kept him traveling quite frequently over the past few months, which made the time he spent back in England feel almost like a vacation in some ways. Quick stops with the children, brief honeymoon periods with his wife, a few hasty business meetings and then he'd be off again. It suited him just fine, particularly since Britain wasn't busy this time of year anyway. He'd been planning on rearranging his schedule to spend more time domestically once the season started up, and today's news had him even more inclined to stay home. Another World Cup! It was like Christmas had come early — and the last time he'd been home had been Christmas, so this was just a very good season all around.

Maybe he'd plan something celebratory for tonight, or at the very least break out a nice cigar. At the moment, though, it was still too early for anything of the sort. He'd just finished breakfast, and was planning to regulate himself to the study for an hour or two dealing with the stack of mail that had accumulated since he'd last been around to sort through it. The stack wasn't so large, since his assistant would have handled anything that was addressed to the business office unless it required his direct attention, and most of the miscellaneous social things would have gone through Hannah, not him. He sat down at his desk, whistling to himself as he went through the first few letters, dashing out quite responses or throwing them away as he deemed appropriate. A servant arrived with tea, and he helped himself to a cup. The handwriting on the next envelope, however, had him pausing before he could actually start drinking it. His eyes drifted to the return address. The Blacks.

It was probably just an invitation to a party. Ursula might not have thought to send it to Hannah instead — she could be thoughtless, sometimes — and his established friendship with her husband would make that seem not entirely inappropriate. He likely wouldn't have to deal with it at all; either the event would already be over, and he could discard it, or it would be for something upcoming and he could just redirect it to his wife.

It was not a party invitation, he discovered quite quickly. The date confused him, because if it was written when it claimed to be he should have seen it already. The lock of hair, wrapped in a bit of fabric that tumbled out onto his desk as he opened it, confused him even further. He hadn't even talked to Ursula in months, but it was unmistakably her handwriting and her familiar tone.

If you are reading this then you may or may not already know that I am dead. A chill settled on him as he read the first paragraph, but it didn't replace the confusion. Ursula was not dead; that simply couldn't be. He may have been out of the country for the better part of a month, but surely that sort of news would have reached him. Even if he was no longer close enough to the Black family to be informed of such a thing right away, there were enough people who knew his history with Ursula that her death could not possibly have gone unremarked upon. August would have written him, at the very least.

Reading her letter was a turbulent experience. Her second paragraph had him softening, remembering happier days, but her third left a bad taste in his mouth. Hearing about her previous affairs, particularly in this gruesome deathbed confessional style, was not an experience he wanted to have. Still, he couldn't keep himself from continuing to read, as though he were witnessing a train crash. Two affairs confessed to, and two illegitimate children as a result — was that Sirius and Phineas both? He wasn't sure of the timeline based on her letter, and he didn't recall the exact ages of her children, aside from Belvina, but was it possible that Phineas didn't have any legitimate children?

Whose child had she been pregnant with for the past several months, then, he wondered? Certainly not his.

For a long moment after finishing the letter, he did nothing but sit and look at the paper. He wasn't even really thinking about what he had read so much, because he didn't even know where to start processing it all. A part of him wished he hadn't read it (what on earth had possessed her to send it?) but a part of him did pity her the way that she so clearly wanted him to in the pleading at the end of her letter.

She wanted to reconcile. She thought she was dying. She was not, as far as he knew, dead. Should he reach out to her in case she was on death's door? This letter had been written so long ago, though, that she was more than likely recovered by now, and she might now regret having sent it. She might even deny that she'd done so at all, though the contents of her letter — if true — would give him plenty of leverage to force her to admit the truth, if he wanted to. But for what? So that he could get back into her good graces, back into her life? Did he want that?

Carefully, Thom wrapped the lock of hair back in the fabric and replaced it in the inside fold of the letter, then tucked the entire thing back into the envelope. He moved it to the top drawer of his desk and placed it face-down — no need to advertise its presence to anyone who might come in to clean — then sat back in his chair, still thinking.

No. He didn't want her back. Not before she'd sent the letter, and not now that she'd confessed, as it were, all of her sins to him on parchment. He was happy here, with his wife and his children and the impending Quidditch Cup, and the last thing he needed was to complicate things with her.

No longer in the mood to sort through mail, Thom rose (tea still quite forgotten) and wandered off to find his wife. Maybe they could go somewhere, do something — something spontaneous and romantic and expensive. That was what he wanted.