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)
I told him the love of my life had been taken by the war—that was the truth.
He told me Jameson would want me to be happy—that was true, too.
Every year Brian asked. Every year I said no.
Georgia, there exists within me a gray, shadowy place where I am both the girl I was…and the woman I became that day, both Constance and Scarlett. And in that gray place, I was still married to Henry Wadsworth—though he had remarried and moved his new family onto the land I’d ruined myself to protect. The land where he’d buried my sister in his one and only romantic gesture. And perhaps the girl who had been so egregiously abused took a perverse pleasure that she could bring his life toppling down by simply admitting that she was alive.
The woman I was refused to allow the shadow to dim Brian’s light—refused to bring him into a marriage that would ultimately be as fraudulent as I was—but I could never tell him the truth—that would have made him complicit in my crimes. He stopped asking in 1968.
The day I read that Henry Wadsworth had died of a massive stroke, I raced to the veterinary clinic where Brian worked and begged him to ask me again. Only after William had given his blessing did I tell the lawyers to start the paperwork for Jameson.
I married Brian seventeen years after we met, and the decade we were married was the happiest of my life. I found my happily-ever-after. Never doubt that. William and Hannah had tried so long for a child, and Ava was the apple of their eye—and mine. I wish you had known her before the accident, Georgia. Tragedy has a way of breaking gentle things and soldering the shattered pieces together in ways we can’t control. Some, it remakes into stronger, more resilient creatures. In others, the pieces fuse before they heal, leaving only razor-sharp edges. I can offer you no other explanation or excuse for the way she’s cut you over the years.
You, my sweet girl, were the light of my very long life.
You were my reason to slow down, to live with more intention, less fear.
You, Georgia, who remind me so very much of my sister.
You have her indomitable will, her strong heart, her fierce spirit, and her eyes—my eyes.
I pray that this package finds you happy and madly in love with the man you’ve deemed worthy of your heart. I also hope you’ve realized by now that man isn’t Damian—not unless he’s had an epiphany between what is now your sixth year of marriage, and when you open this on your seventh anniversary. And yes, I get to say that because I’m dead. When I was alive, you were determined, and heaven help the soul who tries to change your stubborn little mind. Some lessons we simply have to learn for ourselves.
So why tell you, now that I’m gone? Why lay this truth at your feet when I trusted no one else? Because you, more than any other Stanton, need to know that it is love that brought you here. I’ve never seen another love like Scarlett and Jameson’s. It was one of those fated lightning strikes, miraculous to see up close, to feel the energy between the two when they were in the same room. That is the love that lives in your veins.
I’ve never seen another love like I had for Edward—we were twin flames.
But I’ve also never seen another love like I had for Brian—deep and calm and true.
Or another love like William’s for Hannah—achingly sweet.
But I have seen the same love that I had for William the day I stepped onto that plane. It lives in you. You are the culmination of every lightning strike and twist of fate.
Do not settle for the love that hones your edges and turns you brittle and cold, Georgia. Not when there are so many other kinds of love waiting for you. And don’t wait like I did, wasting seventeen years because I’d left one bitter foot in my past.
We’re all entitled to our mistakes. When you recognize them for what they are, don’t live there. Life is too short to miss the lightning strike and too long to live it alone. This is where my story ends. I’ll be watching over you to see where yours leads.
All my love,
Gran
Tears dripped down my face as I finished the last page, and they weren’t the pretty, silent ones. Oh no, I was a snotty mess.
She’d lived seventy-eight years of her life as Scarlett, never being called by her own name. Never letting someone else help carry the burden of what she’d done. She’d borne the deaths of Edward, Jameson, Scarlett, Brian…then William and Hannah, yet hadn’t hardened under the grief.
I left the letter on the steps, then clutched my phone and stumbled to the office. Snatching the framed picture of Scarlett and Jameson from the desk, I hit my knees in front of the bookshelf cabinets and dug through the contents to find the same albums I’d shown to Noah months ago.