“I have met them, yes. Quite the pair. How you survived Milly’s childhood is beyond me.”
She lowered her head. “I have two living sisters. The third… never leaves me, no matter how I wish it. Milly is the youngest, Rose is the second youngest, I am the oldest, and Violet is the second oldest.”
“Violet?” he frowned. “No, I don’t think you have ever mentioned her before.”
“That honestly isn’t very surprising. I usually find her rather hard to talk about.”
“Why? What happened to her?”
Veronica drew in a shaky breath. “She drowned a few years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She let out a shaky breath. “I was there when it happened. I tried to save her, but I couldn’t swim, so all I could do was run for help. I moved as fast as I could, but I just wasn’t fast enough. By the time we made it back to her, it was too late.”
Christopher didn’t say anything, he just looked at her eyes filled with sympathy and understanding.
“It was hard to move on, to feel like I was allowed to be happy after what happened, but I realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“That after a point, I was just being selfish, I was using her death as something to torment myself with rather than honoring her life. Violet wouldn’t want me to live my life alone and miserable, so I did what I could to push myself out of that.”
“It isn’t the same,” he shook his head. “You were doing your best. I wasn’t.”
“I don’t think your friend would see it that way.”
“You can’t know that. You never even met him.”
“Perhaps not, but I know that if he was your friend, he would want you to be happy.”
“I can’t. I have too much to make up for.”
She took his hands, moving so he was forced to meet her eyes. “It isn’t selfish to be happy.”
“You don’t think it was selfish the way I raced into the church that day?”
She shook her head. “Maybe some part of you wanted happiness without knowing where to look.”
He scoffed. “Would you be saying that if you had been about to marry someone you chose?”
“If I had, how do we know you would have acted the way you did? The simple fact was, that wasn’t the situation so it doesn’t matter.”
Christopher just shook his head. “It isn’t that simple.”
“Why now? It feels that simple to me, and it can be that simple to you if you just let it.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That you want to try. That you think you can be happy with me.”
He looked away. “It has been so long, I don’t know if I remember how.”
“That’s all right. I can meet you where you are. I just need to know you want me there.”
Rather than say another word, instead, he leaned forward, bringing their lips together in a small, tentative kiss.
For a moment, Veronica was too stunned to respond, frozen in the moment.
