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)
Though she may have been on the outs with her parents since marrying Jameson against their wishes, they’d apparently kept the rift private, since Scarlett and Constance’s request to transfer to North Weald had been approved.
They’d been here for a month, and though Scarlett rented a house off-station for the nights Jameson could get a Sleeping Out pass, Constance had chosen to billet with the other WAAFs in the huts on the station.
For the first time in her life, there had been an entire week of Scarlett’s life where she’d lived completely, utterly alone. No parents. No sister. No WAAFs. No Jameson. He was over an hour away at Martlesham-Heath but came…home—if that’s what this was—whenever he could get a pass. Between her worry over Constance and her fear that something would happen to Jameson, she lived in a constant state of nausea.
“You really don’t need to do this,” Scarlett told her sister as they knelt on ground only recently thawed by spring. “It still might be a bit early.”
“If it dies, it dies.” Constance shrugged, then continued digging with the small trowel, readying the space for a small rosebush she’d taken from their parents’ garden while on leave that weekend. “It’s better to try, right? Who knows how long we’ll be at this station? Maybe Jameson gets reposted. Maybe we do. Maybe just I do. If I keep waiting for life to give me the most opportune circumstances to live it, I never will. So fine, if it freezes and dies, then at least we tried.”
“Can I help?” Scarlett asked.
“No, I’m just about done. You’ll have to remember to water it regularly, but not too much.” She finished tilling the soil at the edge of the patio. “The plant will tell you. Just watch the leaves and cover her up if it gets too cold at night.”
“You’re so much better at this than I am.”
“You’re better at telling stories than I am,” she noted. “Gardening is learned, just like mathematics or history.”
“You write perfectly well,” Scarlett argued. They’d always received similar marks in school.
“Grammar and essays, sure.” She shrugged. “But story lines? Plots? You are far more talented. Now, if you truly want to help, you sit there and tell me one of your tales while I put this girl in.” She formed a mound of dirt at the bottom of the hole, then placed the crown of roots over the mound, measuring the distance to the surface.
“Well, I guess that’s easy enough.” Scarlett sat back and crossed her ankles in front of her. “Which story and where were we?”
Constance paused in thought. “The one about the diplomat’s daughter and the prince. I think she’d just discovered—”
“The note,” Scarlett jumped in. “Right. The one where she thinks he’s sending her father away.” Her mind slipped back into that little world, the characters as real to her as Constance was sitting beside her.
Eventually, the two sisters lay on their backs, staring up at the clouds as Scarlett did her best to weave a story worthy of distracting Constance, if only for a few moments.
“Why wouldn’t he simply tell her he’s sorry and move on?” Constance asked, rolling to her side so she could face Scarlett. “Wouldn’t that be the most straightforward answer?”
“It would,” Scarlett agreed. “But then our heroine won’t see his growth, can’t really find him worthy of that second chance. The key to bringing them the ending they deserve is to pick at their flaws until they bleed, then make them conquer that flaw, that fear, in order to prove themselves to the one they love. Otherwise it’s really just a story about falling in love.” Scarlett laced her fingers behind her head. “Without the potential for disaster, would we ever really know what we have?”
“I didn’t,” Constance whispered.
Scarlett locked eyes with her sister. “You did. I know you loved Edward. He knew it, too.”
“I should have married him the way you did Jameson,” she said softly. “At least we would have had that before…” She drifted off, her eyes lifting toward the trees above them.
Before he died.
“I wish I could take your pain.” It wasn’t fair that Constance was in such misery while Scarlett counted the hours between Jameson’s days off.
Constance swallowed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” Scarlett sat up. “It matters.”
Constance mirrored her but didn’t meet her eyes. “It really doesn’t. The other girls who move on, who see love affairs as temporary—I understand. I really do. Nothing here is guaranteed. Planes go down every day. Bombing raids happen. There’s no point holding your heart back when there’s a good chance you’ll die tomorrow anyway. May as well live while you can.” She glanced over the small garden. “But I know I’ll never love anyone the way I did Edward—the way I still do. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a heart to give. Seems safer to read about love in novels than it is to honestly experience it.”