Page 118 of A Literary Liaison
She watched Edgar go very still, recognition and horror dawning in his eyes as he realized the true cause of her pain.
“You want to know why I pull away?” The words came faster now, her composure beginning to crack. “Because you wrote to meabout how you would ‘fight for Lucia with every fiber of your being’ if you could turn back time. You said she was ‘loved, cherished, and worthy’ in a way that made my heart ache with longing. Then I readWhispers of the Heartand saw how she gave you wings, how colors seemed brighter and the air itself more alive because of her love.”
Tears began streaming down her cheeks, but she pressed on, her voice growing stronger even as it broke. “When you learned of her death, I felt every moment of your anguish. You wrote that you wanted to follow her into the grave, that food lost all taste, that music became noise, that you stopped truly living. And when you finally chose to breathe again—when you dragged yourself back from that abyss—you swore that part of your soul would always belong to her.”
She was sobbing now, months of insecurity pouring out. “How am I supposed to compete with that? I am flawed and mortal and utterly, hopelessly ordinary compared to her memory. How am I supposed to fight for your heart against a love so perfect, so pure, so complete that it survived death?”
Edgar started toward her, but she held up a trembling hand to stop him.
“I am flesh and blood,” she continued, her voice raw with pain. “I cannot possibly measure against a ghost.”
She wiped at her streaming eyes with the back of her hand, abandoning all pretense of composure. “I love you with everything I am, but I cannot bear to spend my life wondering if I’m enough, if you’re settling for second-best because she’s beyond your reach. I cannot marry you knowing that when you hold me, you might be wishing I were her.”
The words hung in the vast chasm between them. Edgar stared at her in stunned silence, finally understanding the depth of her pain, the true reason for her distance. His own tears began falling freely as he saw what his grief had cost them both.
“Oh, my darling,” he whispered, his voice broken. “You don’tunderstand—you couldn’t possibly understand what you mean to me.”
But Elisha turned away from him, unable to bear the pity she saw in his eyes.
As if he suddenly remembered, Edgar held out the book he’d been carrying—a first edition ofMy Heart’s True Northby Edmund C. A. “I want you to have this. It’s… it’s the story I wrote, inspired by you.”
Elisha’s fingers trembled as she accepted the book, her heart racing. She found comfort in the weight of the volume in her hands.
Edgar’s voice grew stronger, more desperate. “I bared my heart for you inMy Heart’s True North. Please, read it. You’ll see—you’ll understand that what I feel for you… it’s not an echo of what I felt for her. It’s something entirely different, entirely new.”
When she didn’t respond, he moved to the settee and sank into it heavily. “I’ll stay here until you’ve finished reading, whether that’s tonight or any other time you need. I won’t leave you alone with this pain.”
Elisha looked at him through her tears, seeing the exhaustion and anguish etched in every line of his face. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’ve lived without you for months, and it nearly destroyed me. I won’t walk away again, not when you’re hurting, not when there’s still hope that you might understand.” His voice was tender but resolute. “I’ll sleep here, I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to see that you’re not competing with anyone. You’re not second choice or a consolation prize. You’re everything, Elisha.”
The tenderness in his voice, the way he spoke her name, began to crack the protective walls around her heart. After a long moment, she nodded slowly, too emotionally spent to argue.
“I’ll get you a blanket,” she whispered.
She moved toward the stairs to her room above the office on unsteady legs, feeling as though her heart had been turned inside out. Behind her, she heard Edgar settling into the furniture with a soft sighthat spoke of months of exhaustion finally catching up with him.
*
Elisha approached thebook with trembling hands, her heart hammering against her ribs. Part of her was terrified to read his words—what if they confirmed her worst fears? What if she discovered that their love wasn’t enough to overcome what she might find within these pages? The possibility that she might close this book unable to accept him, unable to move past the shadow of his perfect love for Lucia, made her stomach clench with dread.
She opened to the first page with trepidation, her breathing shallow as she began to read. But as the night wore on, her initial terror began to give way to wonder. Edgar wrote of Lucia with reverence and fondness, acknowledging the profound impact she had made on his life. But when he wrote about Elisha, something entirely different emerged—not an echo of old love, but something blazing and new and transformative.
“She came into my life like dawn after the longest night, illuminating my very soul with her radiance. But this is not the gentle restoration of what was lost—this is rebirth. Where I once believed my heart would remain forever shrouded in darkness, she revealed that true love doesn’t merely heal old wounds. It creates something magnificent and unprecedented from the ashes of what came before.”
Her hands shook as she continued reading.
“What I felt for Alice was the tender love of youth—beautiful and pure but incomplete, like a song half-written. What I feel for Clara is the symphony of a man’s full heart—complex, layered, deeper than I ever imagined possible. She doesn’t fill the space Alice left behind because she occupies an entirely different realm of my soul, one that didn’t exist until she created it simply by being herself.”
Her heart thundered against her ribs as she recognized herself in his words, not as a replacement for Lucia, but as something entirely new and profound. She pressed her palm to her mouth to stifle the sob of joy threatening to escape.
As dawn approached, she reached the final page. There, in Edgar’s elegant handwriting, was a personal inscription:
“Elisha, my love, my heart’s true north. You are my guiding star, my transformation, my everything. I love you not despite my history, but because you’ve made me capable of a love I never knew existed.”
The words blurred through her tears as months of doubt and fear dissolved like morning mist.
She understood now.
