The manuscript ended in the middle of a sentence. Its author had died before the museum collected his cabin furniture, and everyone assumed the final pages had never been written. Nell, restoring his chair, noticed a narrow groove beneath the right armrest.
A wooden strip slid out to reveal a shallow compartment. It held four folded sheets, not the missing conclusion but a list of people he wanted to thank. Beside each name was a task: covered Christmas, brought soup, checked the line when I could not see.
Nell sent copies to the families she could trace. Several replied with their own versions of the same nights. The memoir's lone voice became a conversation, although its final sentence remained unfinished. The museum displayed the chair with the compartment open and the original sheets protected nearby.
On opening day, a visitor asked whether the hidden pages solved the mystery of the ending. Nell read the last line of the thank-you list instead: ask them what I have forgotten. It was an instruction she could still carry out, and a better ending than any she could supply herself.