Dear Winifred, the letter started.
I want to preface this letter with the assertion that having you as my lab assistant has been a greater success than even I’d anticipated when I’d offered you the position. You have been an asset to this household and to my pursuit of science. I tell you this - which you surely already know - to make clear that my motivations were never to deceive you, and that your company here would be sorely missed should you ever decide to pursue employment elsewhere.
However, I have not been entirely truthful with you, and I find it difficult to admit this. The longer you stay under my employ, the more I fear my confession will feel backhanded. This is not my intention.
You told me things, caught up in the fever of the shadows in that wretched world, that you may not remember - things that I have shamefully neglected to confront you about for fear you would have rather me not known of your old life.
Despite your reluctance to talk about that time, I know about Salem, and your previous home there, and the witch hunt. I understand the time you’ve come from and the time you ended up in are very different. I assure you, Miss Winifred, that when I offered you the position, it was from a genuine place of wanting you to have some place to call home, even just for a transient period. I never meant to take advantage of your delirium for this long, and my offer was not made out of an obligation of pity.
Despite this transgression of mine, I must stress that you’ve achieved what I once thought impossible and impractical, and have become an essential fixture of the Higgsbury household. I would be immensely disconsolate if you should choose to leave due to these new circumstances.
He read over the letter one last time. That was really as good as it was going to get, wasn’t it, he thought miserably. He’d been holed up in the attic for hours, trying to pen a respectable letter that might manage to communicate the nuances of his absolutely crippling embarrassment. He’d let this go on for far too long, keeping secrets from her like this, and now that he’d finally decided to bite the bullet and tell her, he was finding it immensely difficult.
With a dissatisfied little grumble, Wilson crumpled up this newest draft of his letter, watching it patter innocently across his workbench as he tossed it down. It just sat there, mocking him.