Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
I was impatient to take the next step, to say the hell with it, find myself a beautiful dress, and throw my own wedding at Heartstone Manor. It was certainly a grand location, and I knew I could make it beautiful. It didn’t hurt that all my favorite people were already allowed on the estate. But I thought I wanted more than that, and we weren’t in a rush.
We went back to normal life, a new normal, one we’d never had before. I worked for Quinn, handling the office and helping her organize clients for hiking or fishing trips. Then, as soon as they were on their way and it was quiet again, I’d pull out my laptop and get back to my coding classes. I emailed Emmett when I had questions, especially once I started the cybersecurity unit, and found I had a million of them, every answer leading to more questions. It was fascinating.
One night, I asked Forrest what we would do if I actually got a job at Sinclair Security. He just kissed me and said we’d figure it out. “There are hotels in Atlanta. It’s all an adventure as long as I’m with you.”
Everything would have been perfect except for my dreams. They started not long after Forrest slid his mother’s ring on my finger. Near nightly, I had dreams of sitting in Emily’s bedroom watching her peel back the endpapers on the book of Rumi’s love poems. Dreams of the letter Forrest’s father had written him. I didn’t understand what I was so focused on.
The letter was a beautiful, heartfelt message of hope and love to his family, but why was it haunting me? Was I captured by the idea of a father loving his wife and child that much? Maybe. It had made an impression on me, but one worthy of repeated dreams? The last time I dreamed of something like this, it had been the Vitellius invading my sleep night after night until I remembered the secret panel.
I woke one morning, a little over a month after we got engaged, unable to shake my dream from the night before. It had been particularly vivid. Maybe because we’d spent a good part of the day packing up things of Forrest’s, dividing them into belongings he was bringing to Heartstone and things he’d put into storage. We didn’t want to be apart, and I couldn’t leave the Manor, so he was going to keep his house and rent it out. He loved it, and so did I, so once the terms of the will were up, we could move in together there. But for now, it wasn’t hard to find good tenants in our area. Plenty of people wanted to move to our idyllic town and were looking for rentals before they bought something.
We’d gone through a box packed with things of his father’s. Random items like binoculars and an old fountain pen; the kind of things a young boy would have held on to, to remember his father. In my dream, I’d been sitting on the bed next to Emily, the binoculars pressed to my forehead. Allen Buckley’s handwriting had been undulating in my vision, words popping off the page to disappear and reappear.
It bugged me all through breakfast until, finally, I turned to Forrest and said, “Do you have the letter? The letter your dad left?”
“I do,” he said. “My mom gave it to me. She thought I should have it.”
“Can I see it?” I asked. “I keep dreaming about it.” I shook my head and made a twirly motion with my pointer finger at my brain.
Forrest went still, his eyes narrowing. “What are you dreaming?” Before I could answer, he said, “Let’s go look at it.”
We left the breakfast table to head straight up to my room.
Forrest took it from his briefcase and handed it to me, separating out the itinerary of the trip that had been folded with it.
I sat at my desk, aiming the lamp at the page. “Do we have your magnifying glass?” I asked.
“Yeah. Hold on. I think I know what box it’s in.” Forrest found it after a minute and handed it to me.
I held it over the letter, moving it in and out, making the words change in size from small to huge as they had in my dream. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. This was probably a waste of my time, but the picture in my head wouldn’t go away, like a puzzle that needed to be solved.
I spent another minute or so and sighed to myself. There was no puzzle here. There was only Allen Buckley’s handwriting. His words were a combination of print and cursive, all of it angular, the strokes of his pen bold and strong.
Then, something caught my eye. I leaned in until my nose was almost touching the page, squinting at the letters.