Page 12 of Rescued Hearts

He scrolled down to tonight’s emails. Numbers 105, 106 and 107. It had taken him months to get here—three messages a night was all he could force out.

He had one thousand six hundred sixty-seven days of writing to go. At this rate, he’d be at this task for four and a half years.

Four and a half years of facing ghosts every day.

Personalized emails to the families of every person who died on that aircraft carrier when it was bombed. Some weren’t as easy to write as others. He tried to add an anecdote to each email, a personal story of an encounter he may have had with their deceased loved one. But with the ship carrying the population of a city, it was difficult to get personal. He didn’t know all those who perished.

Yet he did. He’d witnessed their last moments as the ship went up in flames and then sank to the bottom of the ocean.

Accidental ammunition detonation, the reports all said, which started a fire that went undetected until it was too late.

He yanked off his cowboy hat and tossed it onto the bed a few feet away. Staring at the screen, he tried to focus on the names on the spreadsheet rows. But he didn’t see the letters that formed those names…only black smoke and flames shooting into the air.

Writing a novel would have been easier.

He had to do this. The dead deserved it. Taking time to write emails every night was the least he could do since he couldn’t save them.

He’d failed to do anything to stop the destruction that killed the entire crew working on that ship. He should have gone down with them at the bottom of the sea.

The bleak path of his thoughts couldn’t rewrite an ending that fit.

Forcing himself to focus, he set his fingers to the keys and fixed his gaze on the photo on the spreadsheet that coordinated with the name of the young man who died. Brady Collins. Smiling, with a group of his buddies who worked in his unit gathered around him.

Gray never knew him personally.

But their lives intersected. A meal shared. Gray gave him shit for putting too much hot sauce on his eggs.

And now Collins was at the bottom of the ocean.

His hands trembled, but he forced them to steady.This is the least I can do.

With a deep breath, he began to type.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Collins…

Chapter Four

The late-morning sun streamed through the kitchen window and fell across the oak table that Honor set all her packages on. Her trip to Main Street to the smaller hole-in-the-wall art supply store there had been far more lucrative than she expected. They had a surprisingly good stock.

With a sigh, she rubbed her cramped fingers and stood back to survey her shopping haul.

The breeze whipped through the door she’d left hanging open, swirling the long skirt around her calves. She hurried to shut it and then returned to her packages. The small art store in town had a surprising amount of basic supplies from silk thread to nylon for beading and even the string elastic she used sometimes for bracelets.

When she woke up that morning and checked her online orders, she was shocked at the number that had come in overnight. And pleased too. It had taken her years to build her online store to the point where it generated any income at all, when in the past she relied on what she made at festivals.

The house was quiet. A little too quiet with her sister away at the bookstore for the day. Honor took a moment to open a playlist on her phone for company while she worked.

Between the online orders she needed to pack and the stock she had to create for the festival that was coming up far too quickly, she had a ton to do today.

First, she removed all the items from the bags and spread them out on the table to take inventory. Earlier she’d hauled in a couple crates of her supplies and left them in the corner ofthe kitchen. She moved to grab them now, placing them on the table too. In no time, she had everything spread out in what Felicity would consider to be a chaotic mess, but to Honor, it was controlled chaos.

She ran a critical eye over the trays of beads. A bright rainbow of color filled her with excitement and made her fingers itch to get to work. But first, she needed to pack those orders.

She paused, zeroing in on the bag of red gemstones. Didn’t she have more than a few? Maybe she’d left a bag or two behind when she moved out. She was in such a hurry, it wouldn’t surprise her if she missed something.

With tunes floating through the air, she sang along as she located the items purchased and wrapped them with care before placing them in small boxes. The stack of labels she’d already printed sat at her elbow, and she stuck one to the cardboard.

The wreath of hand-drawn flowers and gems around the name of her shop—Twine and Trinket—made her proud every time she saw it. Smiling to herself, she continued to work until all the orders were filled.

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