“Maybe it was fate poking you in the right direction.”
Eleanor stood and walked to the window, gazing out at Jonah’s garden. “I’ve always wondered what happened to Vera, you know. All these years, I pictured her living out her life lonely, all alone.” She turned back to face Jonah. “The Whitmores didn’t speak of her much, if ever. There was always this… shadow over her memory. This sense that she’d done something inappropriate by falling in love with Lawrence.”
“Times were different then,” Jonah said gently.
“Yes, they were. The family thought she’d tarnished the Whitmore name with all those rumors about her and Lawrence. But no matter how the family insisted she marry one of the so-called proper men her father paraded before her, she refused.”
“She sounds like a strong, determined woman.”
“I admire her so much. I wish…” She turned to Jonah. “I wish I’d been as strong as she was. That I would have chosen you.”
“Ah, Ellie, we can’t change the past.”
“No, we can’t. But I wish I could change what my family did to her. Sending her away. I never saw her again. But now…” A smile tugged at her lips. “Now I know she and Lawrence found each other again. Despite everything, despite everyone who tried to keep them apart.”
Jonah rose and joined her by the window, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “And she lived happily ever after with her prince,” he quipped with a grin.
She leaned into him, feeling his warmth against her. “Yes, she did. In a castle, no less.”
Jonah turned her around to face him. “You know, I think people should always believe in what their heart is telling them. Like I think we should, Ellie. We’ve gotten to know each other better with you staying here in my home since the hurricane. We’ve gotten to know the people we’ve become. And… I don’t want to live without you, Ellie. Without seeing you first thing every morning and last thing every night.”
Her heart seemed to freeze in her chest as his words sank in. She stared at him, her mind spinning with a thousand thoughts as he lowered himself to one knee before her. He looked up at her with such openness, such vulnerability.
“Will you marry me, Ellie?”
The world around her seemed to go silent. Even Winston lifted his head from his bed in the corner, watching them with curious eyes. Her hand fluttered to her chest.
Marriage. At her age. It seemed almost absurd—and yet, looking down at Jonah, his eyes filled with hope and love, it felt utterly right.
“I…” she began, her voice catching. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Jonah, are you certain? We’re hardly young anymore.”
His smile widened. “Which means we don’t have time to waste, do we now?”
She couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped her lips. “I suppose that’s true.”
“We’ve already wasted decades, Ellie,” he said, his voice soft but steady. “I don’t want to waste a single day more.”
She felt an unexpected prickling of tears in her eyes. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to be truly vulnerable with someone. With Theodore, there had been walls she’d maintained, standards she’d felt compelled to uphold as a Whitmore.
“But at our age? What will people say?” she murmured, but the question lacked conviction even to her own ears.
He reached up and took her hand in his. “Since when does Eleanor Griffin care what people say?”
“Eleanor Griffin has always cared what people say,” she admitted, surprising herself with her candor. “Perhaps too much.”
She glanced toward the window again, thinking of Vera—of her bravery, her determination to follow her heart despite what her family thought, despite what society expected. All these years, Eleanor had believed that Vera had paid a price for that courage. But now she knew the truth. Vera hadn’t paid a price at all—she’d claimed a reward.
“You know,” she said softly, turning back to Jonah, “when I first heard what Dale discovered about Vera and Lawrence—that they had reunited and spent their lives together—I felt something I hadn’t expected.”
“What was that?”
“Envy,” she admitted. “All these years, I thought I was the sensible one. The proper Whitmore woman who did what was expected of her. Who married well and upheld the family name. But Vera… Vera was the brave one.”
Jonah squeezed her hand gently. “It’s not too late for us to be brave, Ellie.”
She looked down at their joined hands, at the age spots and wrinkles that marked decades of lived experiences. Decades spent apart when they might have been together.
“If Vera could be brave enough to chase after her dreams,” she said slowly, “then so can I. We Whitmore women are strong women, after all.”
