The Things We Leave Unfinished

by Yarros, Rebecca

  My gaze whipped over to his.

  “—and she still asked Accounting to wire that entire advance to her mother’s account,” he finished with a smirk.

  “Okay, now I feel like a jackass.” I ran my hands down my face. She wasn’t even getting paid for this deal.

  “Excellent. How about one more? Follow me.” He walked us inside the office building. The foyer was vaulted to at least the second floor, and escalators lined the edges before the elevator banks began, leaving the center open to display a massive vertical glass sculpture.

  It started deep blue on bottom, reaching out in wisps of waves that bubbled at the edges as though breaking on an unseen beach. Rising higher, the blue morphed into aqua before the edges lost their rough, foam-like texture. Then aqua became dozens of shades of green as the glass reached out with swirls—branches, narrowing as the sculpture grew taller, until it peaked at twice my height.

  “What do you think?” Adam asked with a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “It’s spectacular. The lighting is ingenious, too. Shows off the color and artistry.” I glanced sideways at him, knowing this little detour had to mean something.

  “Look at the placard.” That grin was still going strong.

  I moved forward and read the tag, my eyes widening. “Georgia Stan— What the hell?” Georgia did this? I looked up at it with fresh eyes, and even I could admit my jaw dropped a little.

  “Just because she’s not a writer doesn’t mean she’s not creative. Humbled? Just a little?” Adam moved to stand at my side.

  “Just a little,” I said slowly. “Maybe a lot.” My attention dropped to the placard again, noting the date. Six years ago. Coincidence or pattern?

  “Good. My work here is done.”

  She hadn’t just gone to art school. She was an artist. “She won’t listen to me, Adam. She’s hung up on me both times I’ve called. I’m trying to get this thing plotted out so I can dig into it, but the second I start in about the ending, it’s dead on the other end. She doesn’t want to collaborate; she just wants it her way.”

  “Sounds like someone else I know. How much listening have you done?” he challenged. “It’s not just your book this time, buddy; it’s hers, too, and for someone who loves primary sources, you’re ignoring the one right in front of your face. She’s your resident expert on all things Scarlett Stanton.”

  ”Good point.”

  “Come on, Noah. I’ve never known you to shy away from a challenge. Hell, you seek them out. Pick up the phone and use that legendary charm to get your foot in the proverbial door. Then get to listening, buddy. Now, I have to shower before a meeting.” He headed toward the revolving door.

  “I’ve already tried the charm!” And it got me exactly nowhere, which was professionally annoying and personally…well, frustrating, especially considering the way I was still drawn to her from more than a thousand miles away.

  “Not if you’ve only called twice, you haven’t.”

  “How did you even know this was here?” I called across the foyer.

  “Google!” He gave me a two-fingered salute and disappeared out of the building, leaving me with the proof that I hadn’t been the only creative genius in Scarlett’s office that day.

  Then I started my research—not on the Battle of Britain but on Georgia Stanton.

  …

  I glanced between my phone—which lay harmlessly in the middle of my desk—and the phone number I’d scrawled on the notepad beside it. I was a week closer to my deadline, and though I’d plotted out what I felt was the right path for the characters, I hadn’t started writing. There was no point if Georgia was just going to demand that I change it all.

  Use that legendary charm…

  I dialed the number, then turned to stand at the massive windows lining my home office, looking down at Manhattan as the phone rang. Was she going to answer? That particular worry was a first for me when calling a woman, not because picking up was a given but because I’d never really cared.

  Ask about her grandmother. Ask about her. Stop yelling in her general direction and start treating her like a partner. Just pretend she’s one of your college friends and not someone from work or someone you’re interested in. That had been Adrienne’s advice, followed by a sarcastic quip that I’d never had a partner in my life because I was a control freak.

  I hated when she was right.

  “Noah, to what do I owe the honor?” Georgia answered.

  “I saw your sculpture.” Way to ease into it.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The one of the tree rising out of the ocean. I saw it. It’s stunning.” My grip tightened on my phone. According to the internet, it was also the last one she’d done.

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t know you were a sculptor.”

  “Uh…yeah. I was. A long time ago. Was being the operative word there.” She forced a laugh. “Now I spend my days in Gran’s office, sorting through a mountain of paperwork.”

  Subject closed. Noted. I resisted the urge to dig—for now.

  “Ah, paperwork. My favorite way to spend the evening,” I joked.

  “Well, you’d be in heaven, because it’s a hot mess. There’s. So. Much. Paperwork,” she groaned.

  “Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty to me.” Fuck. I winced and mentally calculated how much I was about to pay in a sexual harassment lawsuit. What the hell was wrong with me? “Shit. Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.” So much for treating her like a friend from college.

  “It’s okay.” She laughed, and the sound hit me like a freight train to the chest. Her laugh was beautiful and left me smiling for the first time in days. “Well, now that I know what turns you on,” she teased, and I heard a creak in the background that I recognized. She’d leaned back in the chair. “Honestly, it’s fine, I promise,” she managed as her laughter simmered. “But really, did you need something? Because the minute you say the words happy ending, I’m going back to my paperwork.”

  I cringed, then swiped my glasses from my face and started to spin them by the handle. “Uh. We can get to that later,” I offered. “I was just trying to add some personal details, and I was wondering if your gran had a favorite flower?” My eyes shut tightly. You are the dorkiest of the dorks, Morelli.

  “Oh.” Her voice softened. “Yeah, she loved roses. She has a massive garden out behind the house full of English tea roses. Well, I guess she had a garden. Sorry, still getting used to that.”

  “It takes a while.” I stopped spinning the glasses and set them on the desk. “Took me about a year when my dad died, and honestly, it creeps out from time to time when I forget he’s gone. Besides, the garden is still there; it’s just yours now.” I glanced at the photo of Dad and me standing beside the 1965 Jaguar we’d spent a year restoring: it would always be Dad’s, even if it was now in my name.

  “True. I didn’t know your dad died; I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” I cleared my throat and turned my attention back to the skyline. “It was a few years ago, and I did my best to keep it from becoming a thing in the press. Everyone’s always digging up my backstory to see if there’s a reason all my stories have…” Don’t say it. “Poignant endings.”

  “And is there a reason?” she asked quietly.

  I’d been asked the question at least a hundred times over the years, and I usually responded with something like I think books should reflect real life, but this time I took a second.

  “No tragedy, if that’s what you’re asking.” A smile tugged at my lips. “Typical middle-class family. Dad was a mechanic. Mom still is a teacher. Grew up with barbecues, Mets games, and an annoying sister I’ve grown to appreciate. Disappointed?” Most people were. They figured I had to have been orphaned or something else equally horrific.

  “Not at all. Sounds p
retty perfect, actually.” Her voice dropped off.

  “With the writing, I step into a story and the first thing I see about a character is their flaw. The second thing I see is how that flaw will lead to redemption…or destruction. I can’t help it. The story plays out in my head, and that’s what goes down on the page.” I moved back and leaned against the edge of my desk. “Tragic, heartwarming, poignant…it just is what it is.”

  “Hmm.” I could almost see her considering my statement with that little tilt of her head. Her eyes would narrow slightly, and then she’d nod if she’d accepted my thought. “Gran used to say she saw the characters as fully fleshed-out people with complicated pasts, set on a collision course. She saw their flaws as something to overcome.”

  I nodded like she could see me. “Right. She usually used whatever their flaw was to humble them while proving their devotion in the most unexpected way possible. God, she was the best at that.” It was a skill I had yet to master—the successful grovel. The grand gesture. My stories always came just shy of it before the chance was yanked away by the bitch we called fate.

  “She was. She loved…love.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Right, which is why this story needs to preserve that,” I blurted, then grimaced. A breath passed, then two. “Georgia? Are you still there?” The click was coming any second now.

  “It does,” she said. There was no anger in her tone, but no flexibility, either. “This story is about love at the heart of it, but it’s not a romance. That’s the whole reason I gave it to you, Noah. You don’t write romance, remember?”

  I blinked, finally seeing how big the divide between us was. “But I told you I would write this as a romance.”

  “No, you told me Gran was better than you at writing romance,” she countered. “You promised you would get it right. I knew it needed a poignant ending, so I agreed that you were the man for the job. I thought you’d come the closest to capturing what she really went through after the war.”

  “Holy shit.” This wasn’t Everest, this was the moon, and the whole situation was caused by crossed wires. Our goals had never been the same.

  “Noah, don’t you think if I wanted this book to be a romance, I would have told Christopher to find me one of his romance writers?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that in Colorado?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  “I did!” she snapped defensively. “In my foyer, I told you that the one thing you couldn’t do was give them a happy ending, and you didn’t listen. You just tossed back a cocky ‘watch me’ comment and walked out.”

  “Because I thought you were challenging me!”

  “Well, I wasn’t!”

  “I know that now!” I pinched the bridge of my nose, searching for a way forward when it looked like we were at an impasse. “Do you honestly want your gran’s story to be sad and mournful?”

  “She wasn’t sad. And this isn’t a romance!”

  “It should be. We can give it the ending she deserves.”

  “With what, Noah? You want to end her real-life story with some happy piece of fiction where they’re running toward each other in an empty field with their arms outstretched?”

  “Not exactly.” Here we go. This was my chance. “Picture her walking a long, winding dirt road lined with pine trees, calling back to the way they met, and the second he sees her—” I saw it all play out in my head.

  “Holy mother of all that’s cliché.”

  “Cliché?” I nearly choked on the word. Even being thought of as an asshole was better than cliché. “I know what I’m doing. Just let me do it!”

  “Do you know why I keep hanging up on you?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Because nothing I say matters to you, and it keeps us both from wasting our time.”

  Click.

  “Damn it!” I snapped, carefully setting down my phone so I didn’t throw it.

  It did matter what she said. I was just doing a piss-poor job of letting her go first, which, again, was a problem I only seemed to have with this particular woman.

  Writing was so much easier than dealing with actual people. Maybe people didn’t finish my books—hung up on me in a literature sense—but I never knew if someone stopped reading before they got the point, because I’d already had the chance to make it. Even if they slammed it shut in disgust, it wasn’t in person.

  I raked my hands over my face and let out a hiss of pure irritation. I’d finally met someone with bigger control issues than I had.

  “Any advice, Jameson?” I asked the pages of the manuscript and correspondence I’d printed out. “Sure, you somehow managed to keep communicating through a war zone, but you sure as hell didn’t have to knock down Scarlett’s walls over the telephone, did you?”

  I gave myself a moment to fall into the story, to really theorize what Georgia was asking of me, but picturing Scarlett learning to let go and move on, fictionally condemning her to what had to have been a half-life felt too heavy, even for me.

  Three months. That was all I had to not only convince Georgia that Scarlett and Jameson needed to end this story blissfully together but write the damned thing in another author’s style and voice. Then I glanced at the calendar and realized it was actually less than three months and cursed. Loudly.

  I had to change tactics or there was a very real possibility that I was going to blow a deadline for the first time in my career.

  Chapter Eight

  August 1940

  Middle Wallop, England

  Heat blasted Jameson’s face as hanger two went up in flames. The explosion tossed them backward like they were nothing more than paper, but he managed to keep his arms around Scarlett. His back took the brunt of the impact, forcing the air from his lungs as Scarlett landed on top of him.

  He rolled, trying to shelter her with his body as much as he could as bomb after bomb fell in the span of a few thunderous heartbeats. He’d seen at least two dozen pilots go down in the last few months, their deaths nothing more than another photo pinned on the wall.

  Not Scarlett. Not Scarlett.

  He cursed. The war had finally done the very thing he’d traveled all the way to Europe to stop—it had come for someone he cared about. He’d never wanted to shoot down an enemy aircraft more in his entire life.

  His ears rang as he propped himself up on his elbows and searched the crystal-blue eyes beneath him as what he hoped was the last of the bombs fell in the not-so-far-off distance. “Are you okay?”

  There was a good chance they’d try another pass, especially since both hangers one and three still stood.

  She blinked and nodded. “You have to go!”

  Now he was the one nodding.

  “Then go!” she urged.

  He could do far more to protect her in the air than acting as her shield on the ground, so he scrambled to his feet, then pulled her to hers. A shape moved off to the left, and relief flooded his system as Howard rose to his knees, then stood.

  The man still had his hat on.

  “Get to hanger one!” Jameson shouted.

  Howard nodded and took off at a run.

  Jameson cradled Scarlett’s face in his hands. There was so much to say and no time to say it.

  “Be careful, Jameson!” Scarlett demanded, the plea echoing in her eyes.

  He pressed his lips to her forehead in a fierce kiss, squeezing his eyes shut. Then he glanced over her head to make sure the car hadn’t been hit and breathed another ounce easier as he saw Constance behind the wheel, Christine at her side.

  “You be careful,” he ordered Scarlett, looking into her eyes one last time before tearing himself away and running for hanger one before he could question her safety.

  …

  Scarlett’s knees trembled as she watched Jameson sprint past the fire that used to be hanger two. Her fear for his saf
ety outweighed the concern for her own but rivaled that for her sister. Oh God, Constance.

  Scarlett turned and sprinted for the car, nearly losing her footing once or twice on the scattered debris.

  Constance beckoned her forward, motioning wildly with her hands while glancing toward the sky. She was alive. Jameson was alive.

  That was all she could rely on for right now.

  Scarlett yanked the door open and threw herself into the back seat, shutting the door quickly behind her.

  Constance didn’t need any instructions; she already had the car in reverse. “Tell me you’re okay!” she shouted over her shoulder as she whipped the car around, then threw it into drive.

  “I’m fine. You two?” Scarlett asked as her hands began to shake. She gripped her knees, then hissed. Her palms came away bloody.

  “We’re steady as can be!” Christine answered with a trembling smile.

  “Good,” Scarlett answered. Seeing that the bottom of her skirt already bore bloodstains, Scarlett muttered a curse and wiped her hands clean on the fabric of her uniform. “Drive faster, Constance. Jameson’s going to be on the board.”

  …

  Scarlett wasn’t tired after one watch, so she took a second, replacing another filter officer who hadn’t come in. Constance refused to leave her side, but her exhaustion was palpable, so Scarlett set her up on a cot in the break room so she could rest. In four hours, they’d both be on again.

  Then she headed back to the board.

  Their board was covered in markers tracking the raids currently assaulting RAF airfields all over Britain, including the one that had taken place at their own. The hectic, quick movements of the plotters happened in silence while the control officers overhead in the galley made movement decisions, relayed orders, and talked to pilots directly.

  For hours, she listened to the voice in her headset, plotting the markers.

  Code number.

  Estimated size of raid.

  Height.

  Coordinates.

  Arrow.

  Every five minutes, the locations were updated and a new arrow marked the direction of the raid, changing with the color designation on the clock.