Page 73 of Authentically, Izzy
Date: April10
Subject: Re: Clarification
Brodie,
Thank you for clarifying your intentions. I appreciate your honesty, so I will return in kind.
I’ve never connected with anyone so quickly as I have with you. I don’t know if it’s because of the mode in which we’re communicating and the protection of hiding behind a computer, but I don’t think so. I believe there has to be more to it.
I consider you my friend and make a timid admission that I’m curious if there can be more and how on earth that “more” could work.
As you learned from the email where I thought you were Josie (and I lay my heart bare), my romantic history hasn’t been a sweet one. I am cautious, but that doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful. In fact, that hopefulness has a lot to do with you.
So can we plan to meet as the friends we’ve become with the openness of becoming something... more? I look forward to the possibilities.
Authentically,
Isabelle
PS: C. S. Lewis captures my thoughts rather perfectly in this quote: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
Part2
Of Shakespeare, Kisses & Shark Hats
Chapter13
From: Anders Sutherland
To: Brodie Sutherland
Date: May1
Subject: What on earth are you thinking?!
I just returned from dinner with Mother and I see now why you left two weeks early for the convention in New York!
A woman! And one you met online?
I know that parliament encouraged islanders to bring people into the country by various means to restore some of our population losses, but a girlfriend!! Hire a foreign assistant! That should suffice! You have neither the disposition to engage strangers easily nor the lack of sense such an endeavor would inspire. And though the financial stipend from bringing a foreigner to our island would certainly benefit our bookshop and allow Fiona’s surgery at an earlier date, you have no notion that this woman would quit her life to move to Skymar! This is madness, brother.
I would have stopped you at the airport if I’d known in time. I’m a single man, not a year older than you, and I have no plans to dabble in some online dating site for awife. Oh no! I’ll look closer at hand, like in England or Scotland, even Denmark would be a better option than America. Despite the extreme differences in cultures, the woman would be nearly fivethousand miles away from her family. What do you expect her to do upon meeting you? Pack up her life and come across the ocean to be with you? Think, brother! Clearly you have been reading too many romances. It is time to turn your mind to the nonfiction section. Our father found it suitable to bring an English bride to the islands and she acclimated beautifully. But anAmerican?
I still can’t believe it, and wouldn’t have, if Mother hadn’t been the one telling me. Brodie, this is not like you at all.
I do hope you get whatever ridiculousness out of your head and return to Skern a wiser man. If you want to settle down, I’ll help you on the hunt from somewhere within a more predictable realm than America.
Anders
PS: I know Sutherland’s could use the extra money, but there’s no reason for you to go on this wild-goose chase around the world. Really, Brodie. It’s unfathomable.
From: Ellen Sutherland
To: Brodie Sutherland
Date: May1
Subject: Anders
