The Things We Leave Unfinished Yarros, Rebecca (reading like a writer .TXT) 📖

decline of my health, it’s your seventh. That seventh was a big one for your Grandpa Brian and me. He had just been diagnosed, everything went sideways, and it was all we could do to hold on to each other.

I hope your seventh goes smoother.

But just in case it doesn’t, I thought it was time you truly understand the depth of love that created you. You, my dearest one, are the product of generations of love, not just the infatuations that some experience but true, deep, soul-mending loves that even time cannot separate.

I hope by now you’ve cleaned out my closet—no, not that one. The other one. Yes, that one, where all the shirts have been replaced by pages courtesy of that little typewriter that has been my constant companion through the joy and the heartache. I hope you’ve found the little alcove in the back of the second shelf. If not, go look—I’ll wait right here.

Found it? Good. This was the work I could never bring myself to truly end. The work that was started for my darling William. I’m sorry I never let you read it while I was with you. My excuses are endless, but the truth is I was afraid you’d see straight through me.

You’ll find that it ends on what had been up until then—the hardest day of my life. The day I lost my sister, my best friend, while still reeling from the loss of the love of my life. That day has only since been eclipsed by the snowy evening that stole William and Hannah. Our family has never been without our share of tragedy, has it?

The story is yours to read now, Georgia. Take your time. I’ve dabbled with it over the years, adding bits and pieces from memory, then setting it aside. Once you reach the end, once you’re there with me on that war-torn street in Ipswich, covered in dust, I want you to read through the letters bundled at the top of the manuscript.

These are the true testament to the love that created you, the fact behind the moments of embellished fiction. Once you feel that love, taste the acrid smoke of the last air raid on your tongue, and are ready for what happened next, open the next envelope in this package. You’ll realize you’ve always known the ending…it’s the middle that was muddled.

When you’re done, I hope you’ll read the third—and last—envelope in this package.

Please forgive me for the lie.

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