Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 145574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
All my love,
Gran
Gran never lied. What was she talking about? My fingers shook as I opened the thickest envelope. I’d already read the manuscript and the letters, wept with gut-wrenching sobs when Scarlett had been notified that Jameson had gone missing, and again when she realized Constance had been killed.
I slipped the stack of papers free and skimmed my fingers over the familiar, hard strikes of Gran’s typewriter.
Then I read.
Chapter Thirty-Four
June 1942
Ipswich, England
Scarlett wasn’t cold anymore. The chill had gradually faded to blessed numbness as she stared at her lifeless sister.
Was this the price for William’s life? For hers? Had God taken Jameson and Constance as some sort of divine payment?
“Shh,” she whispered in William’s ear over the ringing in her own, trying to soothe him. There was no one left in the world who could soothe her. Everyone she loved besides William was gone.
He raised a sticky hand to her face, and Scarlett blinked at the blood on his palm, her heart stopping. Using the hem of her dress, she swiped at his skin, then sobbed in relief. The blood wasn’t his.
This wasn’t happening. Not really. It couldn’t be. She refused to accept it.
She gripped Constance’s shoulder and shook furiously, willing her sister back to life. “Wake up!” she demanded, shrieking like a banshee. “Constance!” she wailed. “You can’t be dead! I won’t allow it!”
To her shock, Constance woke with a heaving cough, gasping for air. She wasn’t dead; she’d merely been knocked unconscious.
“Constance!” she cried, her chest heaving as she sobbed in relief, leaning over her sister and balancing William carefully. “Can you move?”
Constance looked up at her with glazed, confused eyes. “I think so,” she answered, her voice croaking like a frog.
“Slowly,” Scarlett ordered as she helped her sister upright. Constance’s face was battered, blood seeping from a gash above her left eye, and her nose was clearly broken. “I thought you were dead,” she cried, pulling her sister into the hardest hug of her life.
Constance lifted her hand to Scarlett’s back, reaching around William to hold them both. “I’m okay,” she assured her sister. “Is William…”
“He seems okay,” Scarlett replied, her gaze sweeping over William and Constance. The cold had returned, and her head swam as though she were underwater.
“Is it over?” Constance asked, glancing at the destruction surrounding them.
“I think so,” Scarlett answered, noting the lack of sirens.
“Thank God.” Constance hugged her sister once more before drawing back, stricken. The look in her eyes raised the hairs on the back of Scarlett’s neck.
“What is it?” she asked as Constance gawked at her blood-soaked hand. Moving William along her hip, Scarlett wiped at the blood with a somewhat clean patch of her dress. Air gushed from her lungs in relief. Lucky. They’d been so lucky today. “It’s all right,” she assured her sister with a shaky smile. “It’s not yours.”
Constance’s eyes flared as her gaze swept down Scarlett’s torso. “It’s yours,” she whispered.
As if Constance’s words triggered Scarlett’s body, shattering the rallying defenses of shock, agony ripped through her back, and searing pain exploded in her ribs. Scarlett gasped as it overtook her, her eyes sweeping down the spreading bloodstain across her blue plaid dress—the same one she’d worn for that first date with Jameson.
It all made sense—the cold, the pain, the lightheadedness. She was losing blood. Her balance gave way, and she collapsed on her side, barely managing to shelter William’s head from hitting the pavement.
“Scarlett!” Constance yelled, but the sound struggled to cut through the fog in her head.
Instead, she focused on her son.
“I love you more than all the stars in the sky,” she whispered to William, who had stopped crying and lay on her arm, staring at her with eyes the same shade as her own. “My William.”
In that moment of chaos and shrieking sirens, it all became so clear, as if she could see the threads of fate that had woven this tapestry. Leaving home. Serving beside her sister. Meeting Jameson on that dusty road. Falling head over heels in love. It wasn’t their path in jeopardy—that was already set. Only William’s was undecided.
“It was all for you, William,” she whispered, her throat clogging, forcing a gurgle. “You are so loved. Never doubt that.”
Constance hovered above them, her mouth agape as she studied Scarlett’s back. Her lower lip trembled as she kneeled closer. “You have to get up. We have to get you to hospital!”
“I’m all right.” Scarlett smiled as the pain faded once more. “You have to go,” she managed to say through wet, gasping breaths.
“I’m not going anywhere!” The panic on Constance’s face tore at Scarlett’s heart like nothing else could. This was something she couldn’t save Constance from. She couldn’t even save herself.
“Yes, you are.” She shifted her gaze back to William. “He needs to learn to camp,” she said without looking away from his face—Jameson’s face. “And to fish, and to fly.” That was what Jameson had wanted. For their son to grow up safe from the bombs that had brought this exact moment.