Page 87 of Not Your Girl
I glance over at Amelia, wondering if maybe I shouldn’t have said her last name, but she just gives Bonnie a friendly smile and nods. “Sure am. He’s my brother.”
“Well, you tell that brother of yours that I don’t like the swipe up feature on the new version of the Redwood one little bit. I liked the button. There should always be a button.”
Amelia grins and reaches out, shaking Jane’s hand. Everything about Amelia right now is open and friendly, like she has decided to like these women at first sight. “Bonnie, it’s great to meet you. I told Gabe that exact thing when he showed me the designs for the new phone, but he was all,it’s so sleek this way. What can I tell you? It’s a man thing.”
Both women laugh at that, and Bonnie gestures for us to come inside. “There is very little in this world that is made better by the involvement of a man. They mostly just fuck it all up.”
Amelia snorts out a laugh and links her arm though mine as we make our way through the cozy, open concept first floor. “You are so right about that, but this guy here isn’t so bad. He’s one of the good ones.”
Bonnie waves at a two-seater sofa, and Amelia and I sit, Bonnie and Jane taking seats on the sofa across from us. Bonnie’s gaze bounces between us and settles on me. “I could tell he was one of the good ones the second we started talking on the phone. Thank you for making the trip all the way up here. I’m sorry we were a little cryptic on the phone, but we thought it would be better to talk in person. I assume since you’re both here, Amelia knows everything you know?”
I nod, taking Amelia’s hand and lacing our fingers together. “She does. She’s the one who found you.”
Jane’s eyes light up with interest. “How did you do that?”
Amelia shrugs. “My brother isn’t the only tech savvy Sullivan.”
I bump my shoulder with hers. “She’s underselling it massively. She coded a program that combed through the letters your father sent to my great-grandmother, looking for clues to his identity. It put them all together and found him. Then once we had his name, she set it to look for any family he may have had, and she found you. She’s brilliant.”
“Definitely one of the good ones.” Bonnie murmurs. “Like dad. He was one of the good ones too.”
I nod at her. “I know he would have been. You can tell by the postcards he sent. By how much his love for my great-grandmother pours out of his words. I brought them with us in case you wanted to see them.”
“Thank you,” Jane says. “We would really like to read his words. But we don’t need to see the postcards to know how much he loved Clara. We saw it all the time.”
Amelia takes a sharp breath and whips her head around to look at me before turning back to the sisters. My heart thuds with anticipation, and suddenly I know for sure that this day is not going to go at all the way I thought it would. “What do you mean you saw it all the time?”
Jane glances at her sister, and Bonnie nods. Jane looks back at us, soft smile on her face.
“Elliot, honey, Clara and my father may have been long-lost loves at first, but they didn’t stay that way. They found each other again later in their lives and were together for close to thirty years. They were deeply in love for every single minute of those years, right up until the day she died.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ELLIOT
They found each other.
I open my mouth and then close it again, trying to absorb the enormity of Jane’s words. My thoughts are racing, every emotion coursing through me. I’m unable to pinpoint a single one of them as that one thought keeps pinging around in my brain, over and over again.
And I don’t know why, but something about it warms me straight through, makes every part of me feel light and buoyant, even as I try to comprehend the ramifications of this discovery. I realize suddenly that I’ve been sitting here for who knows how long, saying absolutely nothing. But then Amelia takes my free hand in hers, lacing our fingers together and squeezing, looking at Jane and Bonnie. “Tell us everything.”
Bonnie leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Sorry to just spring this on you. This is why we thought it was better if we talked in person. It was clear on the phone that you didn’t know about any of this. And, well, their story is kind of epic. It deserves an in-person telling.”
“I’ll say,” I mutter, and everyone laughs. It breaks the tension, and for a second it feels like the entire room takes a deep breath and a long exhale. Jane goes to the kitchen, coming back with a tray of breakfast pastries and a pot of coffee, and we all dig in. I hand Amelia a cinnamon roll and wink at her, loving the way she grins back at me and the flush that blooms on her cheeks.
“Want me to go get a Diet Pepsi from the car?” I murmur, tucking her hair behind her ear.
She shakes her head, gesturing to the glass of orange juice in front of her then leaning over to kiss my cheek. “I’m all good.”
“You two are beautiful together,” Jane says, looking back and forth between Amelia and me. “You remind me a lot of how Clara and my father used to be, actually. They were always drawn together when they were in the same room. Always turned toward each other, touching in some way. It was so clear that they were made for each other. That they belonged together. I hope you don’t mind me saying that I see that in you too.”
I’m reeling a little from the reminder that she knew Clara and Henry together. That she saw them. Witnessed their great love. But then Amelia glances at me at the same time I turn my head to look at her and I settle because, when our eyes connect, I understand exactly what Jane is talking about. The connection between us that is both undeniable and entirely unbreakable. We were made for each other. I’ve never been more sure of anything.
I wrap an arm around Amelia, and she tucks herself into me as I look back at Jane. “Can you tell us their story? All we know is what we could piece together from Henry’s postcards. We assumed they fell in love in London, and then she moved to Boston and left him behind. My grandmother Cece—Clara’s daughter—had never even heard Henry’s name before.”
“Of course I can. It’s your story too. Clara and Henry met in London. He was a soldier. The way they told it to us, Clara and her sister snuck out of the house late one night and went to a dance in London’s West End. Henry was there with a group of soldiers, and he asked Clara to dance. He told me he knew the second he laid eyes on her that she was the one. That they danced for hours and then walked around London hand in hand until the sun rose. For weeks afterward, they were inseparable. They fell in love over a summer in London, spending every free moment they had together, all while hiding their relationship from Clara’s parents. Clara said they never would have approved, and she was right. When they eventually found out, they were furious. According to Henry, they hated that their daughter was dating a soldier—they wanted her to marry someone of a higher class. Their anger and disapproval of the relationship was strong enough that they sent Clara to America all alone, to live with relatives. All Henry had left of her was the Boston address she gave him before she left, so he did the only thing he could do. He wrote to her, as often as he could, for as long as he could.”
“Did she ever write back?” Amelia’s voice is laced with emotion, and I tighten my arm around her shoulders, as much to comfort as to remind myself that she’s here and I’m here. We’re together. We found each other again, and nothing will ever break us apart. I won’t allow it.
