The Things We Leave Unfinished by Yarros, Rebecca (best free e reader .TXT) 📗

her expression mirrored those around her. There were a few children huddled in the corner, playing a game—for the younger ones, this had become routine, just another fact of life.

The adults passed around reassuring smiles that were anything but. The air raids had picked up in the last week, the Germans bombing city after city in retaliation for the bombings in Cologne. Though the raids had never ceased completely, Scarlett had grown complacent over the last few months, and though this wasn’t the first time she found herself in a shelter, waiting to survive, or not, this was the first time William had.

She’d known fear before. Felt it in those moments the hangar had exploded back in Middle Wallop, or the times Jameson came home late, or not for days, while they escorted British bombers. But this fear, this terror clenching her throat with an icy fist was a new level, a new torture in this war. It was no longer only her life that hung in the balance, or even Jameson’s, but that of her son’s.

William would be six months old in a couple of days. Six months, and all he’d known was war.

“I’m sure they’ll give us the all clear in just a moment,” an older woman told her with a kind smile.

“Certainly,” Scarlett replied, adjusting William to her other hip and pressing a kiss to the top of his head through his hat.

Ipswich was a natural target, Scarlett knew that. But they’d been lucky so far.

The sirens stopped, and there was a hum of collective relief throughout the long tube that served as their shelter underground.

The ground hadn’t shaken, though that wasn’t always a sure way to tell if they’d been hit, only that they hadn’t been hit nearby.

“There aren’t as many children as I would have expected,” Scarlett said to the older woman, mostly to distract herself.

“They built shelters at the school,” she explained with a proud nod. “They can’t fit all the children, naturally, but they go to school in shifts now, taking only as many children as can fit at once. It’s thrown more than a few schedules into upheaval, but…” She trailed off.

“But the children are safer,” Scarlett assumed.

The older woman nodded, her gaze flickering to William’s cheek.

“I can appreciate that,” Scarlett said, holding William just a little tighter.

Six months ago, evacuating the children from London and other major targets had felt so logical to her. If the children were in danger, of course they should be evacuated to safer areas. But holding William in her arms, she couldn’t imagine the strength those other mothers must have had to put their children on a rail, not knowing exactly where they would be headed. She couldn’t get past her own gut check reaction that William was safest with her, but in her own need to stay close to Jameson, was she ultimately placing William in more danger?

The answer was unequivocally yes, and she couldn’t deny it, not seeing as she now held him in an underground air-raid station, hoping and praying for the best.

The all clear sounded through the station, and the crowd began to file out. The sun was still shining as she exited the air-raid station. What had felt like days had only been hours.

“Passed right by us,” she heard an older man say.

“Our boys must’ve frightened them off,” another added with pride.

Scarlett knew better, but she didn’t say so. Her time plotting the bomber raids taught her that fighters weren’t often a deterrent. They just hadn’t been the target. It was as plain as that.

She walked the half mile home, talking gibberish to William the entire time while keeping her eyes on the sky. Just because they were gone now didn’t mean they wouldn’t return.

“It might just be the two of us for tonight, little one,” she said to William as she opened the front door. With the increased raids, Jameson hadn’t been allowed to sleep off-station in over a week. Their house was only fifteen minutes away from Martlesham-Heath, but fifteen minutes was a lifetime when there were bombers approaching.

She fed William, bathed him, fed him again, and had him put down to bed before she thought about eating, herself.

She couldn’t stomach much, especially not knowing where Jameson was. It had been frightening to move his markers across the plotting board, to know when he engaged the enemy, to know when members of his squadron had fallen, but it was worse not knowing.

Scarlett sat at her typewriter, opened the smaller box that she had added to her collection in the past few months, then took out her latest page, and continued writing. This box was for their story—she couldn’t just lump it in with the other sketched-out summaries, partial chapters, and unfinished thoughts. If one story had to be kept up-to-date, it was this one, just in case it was all she’d have to give to William.

Perhaps she had romanticized a detail or two, but wasn’t that what love did anyway? It softened the sharper, uglier moments of life. She was already on chapter ten, which brought them nearly to William’s birth.

Once she finished that chapter, she dutifully put the last piece of paper back into the smaller box, then reached for a fresh sheet. She’d finally reached halfway, or at least what she thought was halfway, in an actual manuscript. She lost herself in that world, the clack of the typewriter keys filling the house.

She startled at the knock at the door, her fingers freezing over the keys as her head snapped toward the unwelcome sound.

He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead. She repeated the phrase in a hushed whisper as she stood, then took the agonizing walk past the dining room, to the front door.

“He’s not dead,” she whispered one last time as her hand reached for the doorknob. There were plenty of reasons someone might call at this hour… She simply couldn’t think of them at this moment.

She lifted her chin and yanked open the