Josephine laughed and cried and nodded. “Yes.”
His mouth crashed into hers like a wave greeting the shore. He kissed her over and over, and she kissed him. Her fingers combed across his scalp, resting at the base of his hairline. They were no longer two kids dancing around a bonfire, swapping books, or building forts in his study. They were more, everything, a culmination of all time spent waiting.
Her kiss tasted like . . . finally.
SEVENTEEN
JOSIE
From: Josie De Clare <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 1:28 PM
To: Faith Moretti <[email protected]>
Subject: Being Honest with You
Faith, no amount of chocolate and Earl Grey can fix me. I know because I ate a whole bag of mini candy bars and guzzled enough tea to worry an alcoholic. Whenever I look at Elias’s letters, his unfinished manuscript, I think about how I’m here and he’s there.
I’m lonely for him. I’m lonely because I know who I’m missing.
Try to understand—you look for the right person in coffee shops, at parties. You start thinking no one could understand you, and you should just settle for second best to avoid being alone. Then you find someone who changes everything, someone who fits you like a puzzle piece, and you want that person more than you ever believed possible. But you can’t have that person. No, that person moves on like a ship passing in the night, and you’re on the shoreline, out of reach. You must watch that person live without you, and all you can do is wave as they cruise toward a better horizon. Can’t you relate with that? Sure, you don’t love a guy who lived two hundred years ago, but you know how it feels to love and lose.
Yes, I admit it. I’m falling for Elias.
Cadwallader Manor breathes his name with every creak and groan. I eat breakfast alone, and he’s at the table with me. I dance to music in the gallery, and my heart flutters because, for a moment, as I spin, I get the sense he’s holding me.
I must reach him. He seems close, like he’s standing just out of view. I wander the house as if I expect to find him, as if each draft that whispers down the halls could lead me into his arms. I visit his alcove and lie among the gorse. I sleep with his letters on my nightstand.
Time appears to lead us apart, but what if it’s a stitch pulling us together? I understand my theory goes against science and reason. I tell my heart not to grow too fond of someone who doesn’t exist. And yet I’m attached.
Elias wanted me to visit Cadwallader and find his manuscript. He knew this would happen somehow, and I have a gut feeling that if I figure out what happened to him, something will click like gears in a vault, and we’ll reach each other.
Our stories must collide in the end. That’s what he said.
Faith, you wish to find your place in this world, but I just want to grip hold of it. My future seems a dark abyss. But here, in this house, I feel my heart knitting itself back together. I have something good for the first time in a long time, and I need to keep it. I want to be Elias’s Josephine because she makes sense to me. His story makes sense. Maybe I’m pathetic for needing to be the girl he loved. Maybe I am detached and all that stuff you said.
This is me being honest with you.
No one else knows about my love for Elias. Oliver and I discuss the book and letters, but he thinks it’s all a fun mystery, not some fated encounter. I behave as though my life doesn’t hinge on whether a dead author wrote about me. I act normal on the outside—go to work and knitting club, de-wallpaper the servants’ quarters on the weekends—but I’m messed up inside.
Mum decided to spend the Christmas holiday in France without me. She doesn’t care whether I return to London, so maybe I’ll stay in Atteberry. Of course I want to attend uni and become a schoolteacher, but I’m tired of feeling dark.
Here books always leave a light on.
Please read the chapters I sent you. You don’t have to support my theories, but maybe you’ll understand why I feel this way. Oliver and I are still waiting to hear back from his friend. We requested information about Elias from the University of Edinburgh.
Josie
P.S. I visited the knitting club again. Stuart and Margery spent the whole hour debating how to best cook turnips. Lucille quizzed me about my love life. Really, I’m surprised I managed to knit twelve rows of my scarf. Everyone seemed to prefer chatting over crafting.
From: Josie De Clare <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, August 21, 8:57 AM
To: Faith Moretti <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Being Honest with You
Faith, what changed your mind? You said I’ll understand once I finish Elias’s book. I’m afraid to finish it, though. There’s an emptiness within me. My heart knows what it wants and my mind knows I can’t have it, but I keep looking for it anyway.
I’ll forever be without a piece of myself.
Cadwallader Manor proves time isn’t divided into past and present, rather here and there. I’m here. Elias is there. We’re separated by years and paper, a barrier thin like spider web. I try to break through that barrier by dreaming about him. I go
