“You what?”
“I think we found it last week, and by think, I mean I’m pretty damned sure, but there are official channels and a lot of red tape flying around. The Eagles didn’t transfer to the American military until September, and he went down in June, so he was still RAF but an American citizen. No one quite agrees who has jurisdiction.” He turned the envelope over in his fingers.
“But you think you found him?” I asked quietly.
“Yes…and no.” He winced. “It’s a Spitfire, but the identifying markers on the tail have worn off and the wreckage was scattered.”
“Where?”
“Off the coast of the Netherlands. It’s…” He sighed. “It’s too deep to recover the entire wreck, but we sent an ROV down.” He walked slowly toward me. “We found an aluminum panel of the fuselage and what we think was the cockpit, but no…remains.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. To come so close, and yet still not know. “Then why do you think—”
Noah took my hand, palm up, and tipped the envelope into it. A gold ring slid from the paper and into my hand. It was still warm from Noah’s pocket. “Read the inscription.”
“J With love, S.” My throat tightened. “It’s his,” I whispered.
“I think so, too,” Noah agreed, his voice going rough. “And I’ll put it back if you want me to. We were looking for anything that might identify it, and it was right there…like it was waiting to be found, engraving and all. The team I hired said they’d never seen anything like it.”
My fingers closed over the band. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure you’re getting a call this week. American. British. I’m not sure who at this point.” He swallowed. “That wasn’t the only reason I went to England. I know this might piss you off, and I don’t have any proof, but I don’t think…” He shook his head, then took a deep breath and started again. “I think the book—our book—was written by two separate people.”
“That’s because it was.” I smiled slowly, feeling the heavy metal of the wedding band against my palm.
Noah’s eyes widened and his lips parted.
“The oldest pages—the unedited original ones, were written by Scarlett during the war.” I swallowed. “And the newer ones, the edits and additions…those were all made by—”
“Constance,” he guessed.
I nodded. “How did you know? I didn’t until about six weeks ago.” What had he seen that I hadn’t?
“The book tipped me off. I wouldn’t have figured it out if our book had been the last one she’d written…and not the first. Then, it was the marriage license. She told Damian it took her years to remarry because it didn’t feel like her first marriage was over, which was easily interpreted that she was still in love with Jameson…until I found the death certificate for Henry Wadsworth and the years matched up. It wasn’t enough—just a hunch, and I didn’t want to shatter your trust in her without having a damn good reason, but I decided to stop digging before anyone noticed.”
“Gran—Constance told me. She wrote it all down the year before she died and had it delivered. Once I read it, I called you, but you were already gone, so I called Adam.”
“And changed the end of the book.”
I nodded.
“Because you love me.” His eyes searched mine.
“Because I love you, Noah. And because Gran had her happy ending in real life. She fought for it. She didn’t need you to craft it for her—she’d already earned it, already lived it. You gave Scarlett and Jameson the story they deserved. The crash, the evasion, the Dutch Resistance—all of it. You finished a story that fate had wrongfully cut short. Gran…she couldn’t do that. She left it unfinished because she couldn’t let them go—couldn’t let Scarlett go. You set them free.”
He cradled my face in his hands. “I would have done it for you. Would have given you whatever you wanted no matter what anyone else thought.”
“I know,” I whispered. “Because you love me.”
“Because I love you, Georgia, and I’m done living without you. Please don’t make me.”
I wound my arms around his neck and arched to brush my lips across his. “Colorado or New York?”
“Autumn in New York. August and September, at least.” He smiled against my mouth. “Colorado winter, spring, and summer.”
“For the leaves?” I guessed, nipping his lower lip gently.
“For the Mets.”
“Deal.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
August 1944
Poplar Grove, Colorado
“Be careful around the steps, love,” Scarlett said to William as he toddled along the edge of the newly finished gazebo, his hands gripping the individual spokes of the railing as he went.
He grinned over his shoulder and kept going.
She abandoned the record she’d selected and rushed across the floor, scooping him into her arms just before he reached the stairs. “You’re going to be the death of me, William Stanton.”
William giggled, and she blew a kiss into his neck, then shifted him to her hip as she walked back to the phonograph. The fall breeze rippled her dress, and she tucked her hair to the side to keep it out of William’s grasp. The strands were longer now, falling midway down her back, her own personal calendar for how long it had been since she’d kissed Jameson goodbye in Ipswich.
Two years, and no word…but no remains, either, so she held on to hope and the spark of certainty that flared to life in her chest when she thought of him. He was alive. She knew it. She wasn’t sure where or how, but he was. He had to be.
“Which one should we listen to, poppet?” she asked their son, setting him down in front of the small collection of records on the table. He picked one at random, and she put it on. “Glenn Miller. Excellent choice.”
“Apples!”
“Right you are.” The sound of The Glenn Miller Orchestra filled the space as she led William to the blanket she’d spread out on the far end. They snacked on apples and cheese—she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to how much food was available here in the States, but she wasn’t complaining. They were lucky.
There were no air-raid sirens. No bombs. No boards to plot. No blackouts. They were safe. William was safe.
She prayed every night that both Jameson and Constance would be, too. Her fingers brushed over the small scar on her palm, thinking of its match in England. Had the cut above her sister’s eye scarred over, too? She’d been bleeding when she forced them onto the plane that day the bombs had blasted them out of the street in Ipswich, barely sparing the three of them.