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The way she said “for you” convicted Scarlet. He’d been out in the cold creating something special for her, and she barely thanked him. “Right, well, I didn’t ask him to do that.” Her argument sounded weaker by the minute.
“You didn’t have to, but it doesn’t matter because you need to go and never return.”
Scarlet’s mouth dropped open, but she recovered, straightening her shirt. “Right. Like you don’t want me to come home for holidays,” she snickered.
“I don’t.” Aunt Laura’s eye didn’t even twitch. Her serious, tight expression sent a warning zap through Scarlet.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I’ll come visit you in Atlanta if you want, but you never need to return to Cherry Creek because it’s not fair.”
Scarlet let out a nervous chuckle. For the first time, she found herself imagining holidays in Atlanta, and she no longer wanted to be away from home hiding away in a big city. She wanted to sit at her bistro table, watching the mountains, waiting to hear the backfiring of Duke’s truck entering town. “You hate Atlanta. I know you want what’s best for me, but I said I’d come home for the holidays, so I will.”
“You don’t get it. I don’t want you here for the holidays.” Laura stepped forward and dropped the book onto Scarlet’s bed. “I don’t ever want you to return.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Because I just saw something I never thought I’d see. That man—who loves you more than himself, who did everything for you since the day you met, who managed to never take a sip of drink despite four generations of drunks—just flinched when I mentioned alcohol. In that moment, I knew one thing.”
“Alcohol? He’d never.” Scarlet dropped her sweater to the floor; her head rushed with a thousand thoughts at once until she couldn’t make any but one out. “What did you know?”
“That if you hurt him again, it’ll be too late to repair the damage. And I’m not going to peel his butt off a bar stool because you broke him.” She shook her head, lips tight. “I’ve never seen you act more like your mother than today, and that boy deserves better than you.” Aunt Laura’s words erupted inside Scarlet like a dry pine tree going up in flames.
“I’m nothing like her.” Anger, resentment, defiance rammed each other at once.
Aunt Laura pulled a stack of letters from her pocket in Scarlet’s handwriting in a progression from childhood scrawls to mature teenage script, all of them stamped withreturn to sender. “I tried to protect you from her, but I guess I should’ve let you know the truth. She never read one of your notes. Never wanted to face her failures in life. I think she loved you in the only way she knew how, just like you love Duke in the only way you know how.”
Scarlet’s stomach knotted. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” Laura dropped the letters on top of the book. “Like mother, like daughter.” She about-faced and walked out the door.
Her words percolated and soured in Scarlet’s belly. She collapsed onto the bed and eyed the dozens of unopened letters in her childlike handwriting. Every year after Christmas, she’d send a note to her mother. She didn’t need to open one because she knew what each of them said. It would always start out angry and hateful, then turn to pleading and promising to be a good girl.
Conviction cut deep. Aunt Laura’s words sizzled in her mind. Her face heated at the sight ofAll Creatures Great and Small. She owed it to Duke to at least read his note. A note from someone who wanted to tell her how he felt, the way she’d tried to tell her mother.
She swallowed a decade of regrets and tugged the book closer. The worn cover made it look unassuming, but she knew better. Whatever he’d written inside could change everything. That’s why she never wanted to read it. Because if she did, she’d have to truly face her own feelings. Emotions she’d buried for so long she didn’t want to remember them, ever.
Scarlet cleared her throat and eyed her suitcase. “I won’t be you, mother, but this won’t change anything,” she whispered to a ghost. That’s all her mother had been, a ghost with an occasional postcard.
She flipped to the front and saw a paragraph in Duke’s handwriting. Her pulse tip-tapped at her neck.
She took a long, deep breath and read.
My Dearest Scar,
I don’t know if this will shock you or if you’ve always known, I’ve always wanted more than friendship from you. You’re the most beautiful, kind, loving, and breathtakingly generous person I know, and I’m in love with you.
I’ve been holding back, so I feel like I’ll explode if I don’t tell you the truth. Every night we could meet, I raced to our spot, waited for you to appear, and savored every second with you. But it was torture not to cross a line. A line that would bring you down to my level, but now I have a shot better than I dreamed. I can earn the right to have your love.
I’m taking the scholarship for University of Georgia instead of Stanford. I can’t move that far from home and from you.
Meet me at our spot tonight at midnight so I can tell you in person how much I love you. How much I ache to hold you and kiss you.
How much I want to spend the rest of my life with you if you’ll consider giving me a chance to earn your love.
Forever Yours,
Duke
