Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (spicy books to read .txt) 📕

but all I could do was hold her tight, weeping with her while she clung to me. My mind returned to the day at the beach when a smiling, eager David had offered Hannah his arm to walk her home, and my heart broke. My dear, beautiful friend was a widow at twenty-seven. Her three young children had lost their father. Nothing would ever be the same.

“He’s gone, Molly,” she cried, her shoulders heaving with grief. “How can he be gone?”

I barely felt the cold when I finally left her house. In a fog, I walked through the door of my own, my head pounding, all my limbs weighted by cement. I took off my coat and boots and started toward the stairs, needing to be alone.

But then I heard a strangled sound coming from the living room, and I stopped on the stairs. Dread pooled in my stomach as I peeked into the room.

“Mum?”

She was wrapped in Dad’s arms, and both of them were weeping. He held out a trembling hand, his fingers practically crushing a small telegram. I willed myself to reach for that piece of paper, and fresh tears sprang to my eyes as I skimmed the lines.

WE REGRET TO INFORM THAT YOUR SON, CORPORAL RICHARD CAOLAN RYAN, DIED OF WOUNDS ON THE 25TH OF DECEMBER 1941 AT ST. STEPHEN’S HOSPITAL, ON HONG KONG ISLAND.

seventeen MOLLY

Richie was gone. David was gone. No one had heard anything about Max. I tried to convince myself he was safe someplace, just stuck in a POW camp. For me, it was easier to think of him living behind bars than to imagine a world where he no longer existed. But I had no proof.

For weeks afterward, I tried to visit Hannah every day, to sit with her for a few hours at least. Sometimes I stayed overnight. Being together helped us both.

“Thank you, Molly,” she said quietly when I arrived one day in May. She hurried over to relieve me of my bag of rationed groceries. I’d picked them up for her on my way over from the Red Cross, where I’d been volunteering on Saturdays to help assemble parcels for the POWs. “I just put the kids down for a nap, so I have a quiet hour to spend with you.”

I filled her kettle. With only two ounces of tea rationed per person in a week, we’d gotten used to just drinking hot water, sometimes with a little dried fruit thrown in for taste.

“I thought Clara was coming over,” I said as Hannah unpacked the food, waiting for the water to boil.

Clara’s husband, Arnie, had been on the list of POWs that had finally come back from the Red Cross, and I’d wanted to talk with her. Ever since Christmas, I had researched all I could about the camps, including the ones in Canada.

Hannah bit her lip and folded the empty grocery bag. “She’s not coming,” she said, looking at me through eyes that had aged years in a few months. “She got another telegram yesterday. Arnie got sick, apparently. He died.”

I felt a stab of pain for Clara. Arnie and I hadn’t been overly close, but he still made up part of my memories of that wonderful summer of 1933, teaching me about newspapers, teasing David about all his talk of shoes, and I knew he and Max had been close.

“What did he die of?” I asked.

“They called it an ‘unspecified illness.’ ” She busied herself, pouring the water and bringing cups to the kitchen table.

“Do you think Max was with him?” The words were out before I could stop them.

Hannah shook her head but didn’t say anything. We rarely spoke of Max anymore. We knew nothing of where or how he was, but I got the impression that Hannah and her parents didn’t hold out much hope.

“How’s Ian?” she asked.

I shrugged. “He’s fine, I guess. I haven’t had much time for him lately. You know, with work, and Dad, and volunteering.”

“And me.”

“You’re one of my top priorities,” I assured her with a smile. “You and Dinah, Jacob, and Aaron.”

“But you and Ian got along great, didn’t you? I remember being so shocked when you actually started dating. In the old days, you couldn’t even stomach a second date with other boys.”

“He’s a good man,” I said, sipping the hot water, sweetened with a bit of apple peel. She would have made the rest of the fruit into something mushy for little Aaron, I imagined. “Very thoughtful.”

“What’s he like?” Hannah asked, sitting back. “Is he smart?”

“He is,” I told her. “And funny. Everyone likes him.”

“Including you?”

“Yes,” I admitted coyly. “Even me.”

She paused. “You can’t wait forever, you know,” she said gently.

“What are you talking about?”

Her shoulders slumped a little. “Max. You can’t wait for him, Molly. He’s gone.”

I braced out of habit, prepared to argue. Anything to help me believe.

“You know,” she said slowly, “I was so mad at you back then.”

Heat rose up my neck, reminded of that night. After the one blunt conversation Hannah and I’d had in her doorway, we had never spoken of it again. I’d thought we’d left it behind. I’d hoped we had. But deep down I knew that moment would haunt us until we exposed it.

“I thought I hated you,” she went on, and a fresh wave of pain rippled through me. “I wanted to. The idea that you might truly love my brother in that way had never occurred to me until that night. The way we were raised, it didn’t seem possible. Sure, I knew you had a crush on him. We all knew you did, I think. But looking back, I guess anyone could see it was more than that. The way he looked at you, the way you were always asking about him… Molly, it took me a long time, but I understand now. You really did love Max. I guess you can’t choose who you love, can you?”

I looked away, suffocating