The Things We Leave Unfinished

by Yarros, Rebecca

  “Isn’t he your friend, Aunt Georgia?” Oliver argued.

  Lord save me from small towns. The kids hadn’t ever met a stranger.

  “Yeah, Aunt Georgia, are you saying we’re not friends?” Noah challenged with mockingly wide eyes. I rolled mine as he set the kids on their feet and offered his hand out to Hazel. “Hi. Noah Morelli. I’m guessing the cute kids are yours.” He laid the charm on thick, and it worked, given Hazel’s grin.

  He gave her his real name.

  “Hi, Noah. I’m Hazel, Georgia’s best friend.” She shook his hand and let go. “You’re good with kids.” Her eyebrows lifted.

  “Only thanks to my sister. Best friend, huh?” He shot me a devious smile. “The one with the articles?”

  Kill me right now.

  “Guilty.” Her grin only widened.

  “So, can you give me tips on getting a word in edgewise with that one?” He motioned toward me.

  “Oh sure! You just have to let her—” She caught my glare and straightened her spine. “Sorry, no-points Noah, I’m team Georgia. Kids, we have to go right now.” Sorry, she mouthed at me as she hurried to the kids in the breakfast room.

  “Don’t worry about the mess,” I said over my shoulder. She had enough on her plate without picking up my house. It wasn’t like I had much else to do today, and she needed the break. “Besides, don’t you have to open the center?”

  “I hate to— Oh my God, I’m going to be so late!” She scooped a kid into each arm, then nearly skidded by, stopping to kiss my cheek. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Have a good day at work, dear,” I sang, dropping a banana in her oversize purse.

  “It was nice to meet you, Noah!” she yelled back as she raced out the door.

  “You too!”

  The door shut with an audible wham.

  “A banana?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

  “She always remembers to feed her kids breakfast, but she gets too busy to eat for herself,” I answered with a shrug as my phone buzzed.

  Hazel: He gets about a dozen points for that maneuver with the kids.

  “Traitor,” I muttered, sticking my phone in my back pocket without responding.

  “So,” Noah said, tucking his hands into his front pockets.

  “So,” I responded. “I’ve never scheduled a fight before.” The air between us could have crackled with all the anticipatory electricity flying about.

  “Is that what you’d call this?” He smirked.

  “What would you call it?” I put the coffee mugs in the dishwasher.

  He gave it a moment’s thought. “A premeditated walk for the purpose of discovering a mutually beneficial path so we might navigate our personal and professional differences to attain a singular goal,” he mused. “If I had to call it something off the cuff.”

  “Writers,” I muttered. “Then let’s walk ourselves back to the office.”

  His eyes flared with delight. “I have a better idea. Let’s walk along the creek.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him.

  He put his hands up. “No climbing. I’m talking about the creek in your backyard—the one in the letters, right? I think better on my feet. Plus it takes breakable objects out of the equation if you want to throw something at me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll get my shoes.”

  By the time I got back to the kitchen, now wearing hiking boots and a much more sensible T-shirt, he’d cleaned up the mess Hazel’s kids had left, and even I had to reluctantly admit he was scoring points.

  Broody writer? Check.

  Hot as hell? Check.

  Good with kids? Double check.

  My chest went all tight on me. This was so not good.

  “You didn’t have to, but thank you,” I told him as we headed out the kitchen door and onto the patio.

  “I didn’t mind—whoa.” He came up short, staring at the expanse of garden that Gran had loved.

  “It’s an English-style garden, naturally,” I explained as we started down the path between the trimmed hedges. Fall had set in, bringing out the oranges and golds everywhere but the greenhouse.

  “Naturally,” he said, taking it all in, his attention darting to one plant, then another.

  “Are you memorizing it?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gran used to tell me that she was memorizing a place. The way it looked and smelled, the sounds she heard, the smaller details she could drop into a story that would make the reader feel like they were there. Is that what you do?”

  “I never thought about it that way, but yeah.” He nodded. “This is beautiful.”

  “Thank you. She loved it, even when she was complaining that she couldn’t get some of her favorite plants to live at altitude.” We reached the back gate, where an evergreen hedge separated us from the Colorado wilderness. I turned the wrought iron handle and walked us through. “She said it made her feel closer to her sister.”

  “Constance taught her, right?”

  “Yep.” It was weird, but comforting that someone else had read Gran’s manuscript, knew that part of her life as intimately as I did.

  “Well, damn. This is beautiful, too,” he said toward the aspens ahead of us.

  “It’s home.” I took a deep breath, feeling my soul settle the way it always did at this particular view. We were nestled in a valley of the Elks, which rose up high before us, their crowns already tipped with the first snow.

  The meadow behind Gran’s house was colored in shades of burnished gold, both from the knee-high grass that had surrendered to the cycle of fall and the leaves of the aspen trees that flanked both sides.

  “This is my favorite time of year. Not that I don’t miss fall in New York, because I do. But here there’s no riot of color. No war between the trees as to whose leaves will be the brightest. Here, the mountains turn gold, as if they all agreed. It’s peaceful.” I walked us along the path that had been worn into the meadow long before I was born.

  “I can see why you’d want to come back,” Noah admitted. “I’m a sucker for autumn in New York, though.”

  “And yet, here you are, living just down the road.” We reached the creek that ran through Gran’s property—my property now. It wasn’t much by East Coast standards. Maybe ten feet wide and two feet deep at the most, but water was different in the Rockies. It didn’t flow steadily, and it wasn’t smooth or predictable. Here, it could slow to a trickle, and when you least expected it, send a wall of water in a flash flood that would destroy everything in its path. It was like everything else in the mountains—dangerously beautiful.

  “I did what I had to.” He shrugged, and we turned to walk along the creek. “Do you miss New York?”

  “No.”

  “Quick answer.”

  “Easy question.” I tucked my thumbs into my back pockets. “I guess this is when we start the book fight?”

  “I’m not the one saying it has to be a fight. Let’s start out easy. Ask me a personal question. Anything you want.” He pushed up his sleeves as we walked, revealing a line of ink down one forearm that looked like the tip of a sword. “I’ll answer one if you do.”

  That seemed easy enough.

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  “What’s the story behind that tattoo?” I motioned toward his forearm.

  He followed my line of sight. “Ah, that one was actually my first.” He pushed up his sleeve as far as the material would let him go, revealing the blade of a sword that served as the needle for a compass. I’d seen enough pictures to know it covered his shoulder, though I could only see the base of it right now. “I got it the week before Avalon Waning published. I wove a King Arthur parable into this guy’s search for—”

  “His lost love. I’ve read it.” I nearly tripped as he g
ave me a slow smile, and I jerked my gaze back to the path. “Do you have tattoos for all your books?”

  “One, that’s two questions, and yes, but the other ones are smaller. When Avalon published, I thought it might be my only book. My turn.”

  “It’s only fair.” Here comes the question about the last affair…

  “Why did you quit sculpting?”

  What? My pace slowed, but he matched it. “Damian asked me to put it on pause and help him get Ellsworth Productions off the ground, which made sense. We were newlyweds and I thought I was helping to build our future. It was still art, just his form of art, right?” I shrugged at the naive thoughts of a twenty-two-year-old girl. “And then pause became more of a stop, and that part of me just…” The right words had always failed me in this topic. “…dimmed. It went out like a fire I’d forgotten to tend. The flames dwindled so slowly that I didn’t notice until they were nothing but embers, and by that time it was the rest of my life that had gone up in flames. There’s not a lot of room for creativity when you’re focused on breathing.” I could feel his stare, but I couldn’t meet it. Instead, I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I think it’s coming back, though. Little by little.” I thought about Mr. Navarro’s shop, then the cost of actually doing something about it. “Anyway, that’s one question, and I owe you another, so ask away.”

  “Why don’t you trust me with the story?”

  My spine straightened. “I don’t trust anyone with it, and neither did Gran. It’s not easy, knowing someone is about to fictionalize what actually happened to your family. It’s not just some story to me.”

  “Then why sell it at all? Just to make your mother happy?” His dark brows lowered. “Is that really the only reason you agreed?”

  Was it? I watched the creek rush past, giving his question some thought. He earned another point by not prodding for an answer. “It was fifty-fifty,” I finally said. “I wanted to make my mother happy. I wanted to be able to give her something she wanted, since…it doesn’t happen often.”

  He shot me a quizzical look.

  “We have a complicated relationship. Let’s just say that while you eat with your family once a month, Mom and I have dinner maybe once a year.” That was putting it lightly, but this wasn’t a therapy session. “The other part of me watched Gran work on that book off and on up to the winter I got married.”

  “Did she stop then?”

  “I’m not sure, since I moved to New York, but I came home every couple of months, and I never caught her working on it again.” I shook my head. “William—my grandfather—was the only person she ever let read it, and that was back in the sixties before she wrote the last few chapters. After he died—car accident,” I said in quick explanation, “she didn’t touch it for a decade. But it was important to her, so eventually she took it out again. She wanted to get it right.”

  “Let me get it right.” His voice lowered as we neared the bend in the creek.

  “I hoped you would, but then you started spewing all the happily-ever-after—”

  “Because that’s her brand!” His posture stiffened beside me. “Authors have a contract with their readers once they get to the point your gran was at. She wrote seventy-three novels that gave her readers that joyful payoff of a happy ending. You honestly think she was going to flip the script for this one?”

  “Yes.” I nodded emphatically. “I think the truth of what happened was too painful for her to write, and the fantasy you want to create was even more so, because it only reminded her of what she couldn’t have. Even the years she spent married to Grandpa Brian weren’t…well, you’ve read what she had with Grandpa Jameson. It was rare. So rare that it comes around maybe what? Once a generation?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted softly. “That’s the kind of love that stories are written about, Georgia. The kind that makes people believe it has to be out there for them, too.”

  “Then you ask Grandpa Jameson how it ends. She said only he would know, and he’s kind of hard to get ahold of.” I looked back toward the path. The creek began its gentle curve, following the geography of my backyard. “Have you thought about where it would be shelved?” I asked, trying a different avenue to bring him to my point of view.

  His eyebrows lifted. “What do you mean?”

  “Is it going under your name or hers?” I stopped walking, and he turned to face me. The sunlight caught in his hair, making it shine in places.

  “Both, like you said. Do you want to know the marketing budget, too?” he teased.

  I shot him a glare. “Are you really willing to forsake general fiction and be shelved in the—gasp—romance section? Because the guy I met in the bookstore last month definitely wasn’t.”

  He blinked, drawing back slightly.

  “Hmm. Hadn’t made it past the new release table in your mind, had you?”

  “Does it matter?” he countered, rubbing his hands down his stubble in obvious frustration.

  “Yes. What I’m asking you to do keeps you in the section that isn’t for—” I cocked my head to the side. “What was it you said again? Sex and unrealistic expectations?”

  A muttered curse slipped from his lips. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?” He turned away, looking into the trees, then muttered something that sounded like unsatisfying.

  “Nope. Want to keep telling me all about that romance ending? Because that’s where they’ll shelve you if you write it. Her name overpowers yours. You might be hot shit, but you’re no Scarlett Stanton.”

  “I don’t give a shit where the book gets shelved.” Our eyes locked for a tense moment.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He lowered his head. “You don’t know me.”

  My cheeks heated, my heart rate spiked, and more than anything, I wanted to have this argument over the phone so I could end it and stomp out the infuriating flickers of emotion Noah never failed to ignite within me.

  I liked it numb. Numb was safe.

  Noah was a lot of things, but safe wasn’t one of them.

  I ripped my eyes away from his.

  “What is that?” He leaned slightly, his eyes narrowing.

  I followed his line of sight. “The gazebo.” The breeze whipped by, and I tucked my hair behind my ears as I marched past Noah, heading into the aspen grove. Space. I needed space.

  The crunching footsteps behind me implied that he followed, so I kept going. About fifty feet in, dead center in the grove, was a gazebo fashioned entirely from the trunks of aspen trees. I walked up the steps, trailing my fingers lovingly over the railings, which had been sanded smooth and replaced over the years, just like the floor and roof. But the supports were the originals.

  Noah came up beside me, turning slowly so he could see all of the space. It was roughly the size of our dining room but shaped in a circle. I watched him carefully, preparing myself for what would no doubt be a judgment of the rustic little space I’d favored as a kid.

  “This is phenomenal.” His voice dropped as he walked to one of the railings and looked over the edge. “How long has it been here?”

  “Gran built it in the forties with Grandpa Jameson’s dad and uncle. They finished it before VE day.” I leaned back against one of the trunks. “Every summer Gran would have a desk brought out so she could write here, and I’d play while she worked.” I smiled at the memory.

  When he turned toward me, his expression had softened, sadness filling his eyes. “This is where she waited for him.”

  I wrapped my arms around my middle and nodded. “I used to think their love was built into it. That’s why she always had it repaired, never rebuilt.”

  “You don’t anymore?” He moved close enough to my side that I felt the heat of him against my shoulder.

  “No. I think she built her sorrow, her longing into it. Which makes sense now that I’m older. Love doesn’t
last, not like this place.” My gaze slid from trunk to trunk to trunk as a million memories played through my mind. “It’s too delicate, too fragile.”

  “Then it’s infatuation, not love.” His voice lowered, and yet another flicker of emotion—longing this time—flared into a flame that centered in my chest.

  “Whatever it is, it never quite measures up to the ideal, does it? We just pretend it does, lapping up the sand when we come across the mirage. But this place? It’s sturdy. Solid. The sorrow, the longing, the ache that eats you up after the missed chance…those make fine supports. Those are the emotions that last the test of time.”

  I felt his stare again but still couldn’t meet it, not with all the word vomit I’d just spewed all over him.

  “I’m sorry he didn’t love you the way you deserve.”

  I flinched. “Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids.”

  “I don’t read tabloids. I know what wedding vows mean, and I’ve learned enough about you to know that you took them seriously.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I tucked my hair again before I could stop my hands, his gaze warming my skin like a physical touch.

  “Did you know that our brains are biologically programmed to remember painful memories better?” he asked.

  I shook my head as a shiver of cold swept over me now that we were shaded. Noah closed the inches between us, giving me his heat. The man was a furnace, if his arm was any indication.

  “It’s true,” he continued. “It’s our way of protecting ourselves, to remember something painful so we don’t repeat the same mistake.”

  “A defense mechanism,” I mused.

  “Exactly.” He turned his head to look at me. “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do whatever it was again. Just means we have to push past the pain our brains won’t let go of.”

  “What do they say about the definition of insanity?” I asked, tilting my face so I could meet his eyes. “Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome?”

  “It’s never the same. There are a million variations of any situation. No two people are alike. The tiniest change to any encounter could leave us with very different results. I like to think of the possibilities as a tree. Maybe you start with the one path—” He tapped the nearest trunk. “But fate throws all the branches out and what seems like a tiny choice, left or right, becomes another and another, until the possibilities of what could have been are endless.”