Chapter Fourteen
Betrayals
Eva sat at the small desk in her room, Margaret’s wooden box open before her like Pandora’s box itself, its contents spread across the worn wood. The diary’s leather cover was cracked with age, but the pages inside were surprisingly intact, as if grief itself had acted as a preservative.
Beside the diary lay a photograph of a handsome American soldier in uniform, a bundle of letters that had been tied up with ribbon, and what appeared to be some kind of diagram or map, carefully folded.
The Mansion House has made for such a strange hospital—its ballroom now filled with iron beds where dancing couples once waltzed, crystal chandeliers casting light on bandages instead of ball gowns.
Sometimes I forget this was ever anything but a place of healing, though Sister Matthews says we’ll all be displaced once the war ends and York’s grand buildings are returned to their proper purposes.
Where will all these broken men go then, I wonder?
January 15, 1945—He left another! This time in ‘Wuthering Heights’—‘Heathcliff had nothing on Yorkshire weather.’ Made me laugh despite everything. I may have left a reply in ‘Jane Eyre’ …
February 14, 1945—Valentine’s Day, though we’re not supposed to take note of such things in wartime.
But Walter noticed. Left a paper heart on my desk at the nurses’ station, made from a letter from home.
‘My heart’s already across the ocean,’ he said when I found him watching.
‘Might as well make it official.’ Our library book courtship is becoming something more and I don’t know what to do.
Or maybe the problem is that I do, but I just can’t bring myself to pull away.
I should walk away. Should remember that I am engaged to Thomas, a good Yorkshire man who is waiting ever so patiently for the war to end.
But Walter’s smile lights a fire within me and is rapidly undoing all of my careful plans.
Eva’s phone rang, jarring her from 1945 back to the present. She almost ignored it—probably her mother again—but something made her check the screen.
Richard.
Her blocked Richard. Calling from what must be his office line.
She stared at the phone, letting it ring. Then, on the fourth ring, she answered.
“Eva, thank God.” Richard’s voice was different—less polished, more human. “I know you blocked me, and I deserve that, but I had to talk to you.”
“How did you even—”
“Listen, I know I have no right to call, but I’ve been thinking—”
“Richard—”
“I made a mistake, Eva. A huge mistake. I’ve been miserable since that night at Kayne Prime. I miss you. I miss us.”
Eva sank onto the bed, Margaret’s diary still in her hand. “There was no ‘us’, Richard. There was you and who you wanted me to be.”
“That’s not true. We were good together.”
“We were convenient together. There’s a difference.”
“Eva, please. I realise now what I threw away. I want another chance. I’ll do better, be better—”
“Richard.” She surprised herself with how steady her voice was. “You’re not a bad person. You’re just not my person.”
“What does that even mean?”
Eva thought of Charlie in the rain, singing country music in a Yorkshire pub. Charlie handing her a green journal because he believed she had stories worth telling. Charlie’s walls and wounds and the way he looked at her like she might be worth letting them down for.
“It means I’ve found something here. Something real.”
“In England? Eva, you barely know anyone there—”
“I’m not talking about someone else. I know myself here. For the first time in years, I feel as though I’m not acting like someone the world has told me to be, I’m just living. I know what I want here.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m sorry Richard, but it’s not you and not us.” The words came out gentle but final. “Not the life we were building. I want messy and complicated and real. I want someone who sees me, not just the version that fits someone’s ideals, or what they’ve imagined for themselves”
Richard was quiet for a long moment. “This is about someone else, isn’t it? You’ve met someone.”
“This is about me, Richard. But in the spirit of being completely honest and authentic with myself, yes, there’s someone.
Someone who drives me crazy because he’s so stubborn, but makes me laugh because he isn’t afraid to be silly and he looks at me like I’m worth knowing.
The real me, not the sanitised version.”
“I could be that person—”
“No, you couldn’t. And that’s okay. You’ll find someone who fits your vision perfectly. Someone who wants the same things you want. But that’s not me. It never was.”
“Eva—”
“Goodbye, Richard. I mean it this time. Please don’t call me again.”
She ended the call and put her phone face down, a finality to the motion that felt good. Then she sat in the silence of her room, waiting to feel … something. Regret, maybe. Or doubt.
Instead, she felt free. And suddenly, crystal clear about her feelings for Charlie.
This was in fact crazy. She hadn’t known Charlie for long.
But sometimes the length of time didn’t matter.
Sometimes you met someone and every conversation felt like continuing one you started years ago.
Sometimes a few weeks of real connection meant more than years of going through the motions.
She thought of Margaret and Walter—three months that changed a lifetime.
Time wasn’t the measure of love; truth was.
She picked up her phone again and typed a message to the man she could feel herself unravelling for:
Eva: We need to talk about the key and about your grandmother. I’ve found another notebook and there are things in here that I think you should know.
The message showed as delivered but not read. After some anxious tapping, she tried again:
Eva: Charlie, please. This is important. The inn needs us to work together.
Nothing.
Eva: I’m sorry about this morning. You were right—some stories are private. But Florence gave me this for a reason.
Still nothing. He was clearly still upset about their argument this morning, about her suggesting they share Margaret’s story in an attempt to save the inn. Time was running out, she’d had to open the box no matter what could be inside—its secrets might be the only thing that could help them now.
Eva turned back to Margaret’s diary, her heart heavy. The entries from March 1945 were increasingly desperate:
March 20, 1945—Walter grows stronger every day.
He’s nineteen, barely older than I am. Yesterday he managed to walk the length of the ward without assistance.
The doctor says he’ll be discharged soon, sent back to his unit or perhaps home.
The thought terrifies me. How did this happen?
How did I let myself fall so completely for someone I cannot have?
Thomas writes faithfully every week, planning our future.
A cottage near the cathedral, children, Sunday roasts with his parents.
A good life. The right life. But when Walter looks at me, I see a different future—one across an ocean, full of uncertainty and adventure and a love that makes my chest ache.
I’m a terrible person. I know this. But I cannot seem to stop.
The next entry made Eva’s throat tight:
March 28, 1945—Walter has asked me the unthinkable.
I’m not sure if it’s due to his injuries or the fear of what may come next with the war, but he has asked me to come with him.
After the war, he said. To Pennsylvania, where his family own a farm.
‘Marry me, Maggie,’ he said in a stolen moment when the ward was at its quietest. (No one else has ever called me Maggie, only him.) ‘I know it’s crazy and too fast and all wrong, but I love you.
I’ll make you happy, I swear it.’ I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but cry.
Because I want to say yes with every fibre of my being.
But Thomas. My parents. My duty. My life here.
How can I throw it all away for a man I’ve known three months? How can I not?
Eva turned the page, but the next entry was dated two weeks later:
April 12, 1945—He’s gone. I arrived at the hospital this morning to find his bed empty, stripped bare.
Like a ghost, my Walter has left me. Discharged in the night, Sister Matthews said.
Immediate deployment. No warning, no goodbye, no chance to give him an answer.
Perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps this is God’s way of keeping me from making a terrible mistake.
There’s a bitterness within me at my choice being taken.
I know Thomas’s mother has begun planning our wedding for after the war.
Last week she told me the story of finding her own dress.
Still, I sit and smile and nod. Polite, well-mannered Margaret always doing the right thing.
If only they could read the notes Walter and I had passed to each other in the secrecy of the dark.
Today, I feel as though I’m drowning in broad daylight.
I’ll never see Walter again, my heart bleeds.
But this is for the best. This is for the best. This is for the best. (If I write it enough times, perhaps I’ll believe it.)
Eva had to stop reading, tears blurring her vision.
She understood now why Charlie was so protective of his grandmother’s memory.
This wasn’t the story of a noble woman who chose duty—this was the story of a woman who’d had love ripped away before she could choose at all.
The diary made it seem like Walter had abandoned her, but what if there was more to the story?
What if Charlie had grown up believing his grandmother had been callously left behind when that wasn’t quite the case?
Eva was a hopeless romantic at heart and she needed to know the truth behind this secret love affair.