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Fiona could barely contain herself. Two hours had passed since Michael had left the flat, flowers in his hand, and he still wasn’t back. Nick had taken Seamie home, Ian and Alec had gone upstairs to their own flat, and she’d stayed behind to look after Nell.

She sat in Michael’s living room now, flipping through the pages of a magazine, too agitated to read any of the articles, waiting for him.

As she did, she thought about her aunt’s letter, awed by the courage it had taken the dying woman to write it.

Molly had not thought about herself in her final hours, only her husband and child.

Her greatest fears had been for them, and she had wanted only one thing as her life ebbed away: to know that they would be loved.

Molly had known what love is. She’d known it isn’t the grand, show-boating gesture; the soaring aria; the duel fought at dawn.

It’s something else, something quiet and faithful and steadfast. It’s someone up early, cooking you eggs.

It’s a bunch of wildflowers when there’s no money for roses.

A jacket carefully mended. It’s someone to help figure out who to pay first—the landlord or the coal man.

The sound of the flat’s door opening got Fiona to her feet. She tossed her magazine onto a table, started toward the hallway, then stopped. Better not pounce on him , she cautioned herself, and sat down.

Her uncle’s footsteps sounded in the hallway. They were heavy and slow. The instant he entered the room, she jumped up again.

“You were gone so long,” she said, anxiously noting the slump in his shoulders, his knotted hands.

“Aye, I went to the cemetery,” Michael said, avoiding her eyes. “I needed to talk to Molly before I talked to Mary.”

Fiona nodded; she understood. Michael had gone to his wife’s grave out of love and respect. He’d gone to say thank you. And goodbye. An ember of hope, small but bright, glowed inside her. “And did you talk to Mary, too?” she asked gently, determined not to spook him. “What did she say?”

Michael, his head lowered, looked up at her. “She said yes.”

Fiona’s eyes lit up. She clapped her hands; she couldn’t help it. “She did? She said yes ?”

“Aye, Fiona, she did…to Milton Duffery.”

Fiona’s hands fell slowly to her sides. “I-I don’t understand,” she said, the fragile ember fading.

“When I got back from the cemetery, just as I was about to step inside, I heard voices in the entryway. Two of them. And then I saw Milton Duffery ask Mary to be his wife.”

“No. No ,” Fiona said, shaking her head. “I don’t believe you. You’re wrong, you must be.”

“He was down on his knee, giving her a bloody ring!” said Michael, his voice rising. “And she took it. And said yes. Do you believe me now? I almost embarrassed the shite out of me’self. Only just managed to back out of the doorway in time.”

Fiona felt as if her legs had been taken out from under her. “I-I can’t believe he proposed to her already,” she said woodenly. “Nick saw him buy the ring, but I thought…I thought he would wait for a little while. A month, a few weeks. It happened so fast.”

Fiona’s worst fear had just come true: Mary would wed Milton Duffery and move out of her uncle’s building—and out of his life.

Michael was stubborn, gruff, and contrary, but a good man, and he loved Mary and had finally worked up the courage to tell her so.

He’d readied himself to take a chance at a new love, a new life, and just as he reached for it, it was snatched away.

Fiona looked at him now. He seemed smaller. Hollowed out. “I’m sorry, Uncle Michael,” she said, hurting deeply for him.

“So am I. But it’s over and done with now,” he said, “and it’s time you let it be. Time you let me be. And Fiona…”

“Yes?”

“Do not say a word about this to Mary or Ian or Alec until they say something to you. It’s Mary’s news to share when she sees fit.”

Fiona assured him that she would not.

“Good,” he said, then he started down the hallway that led to the flat’s bedrooms. “I didn’t give Nell her goodnight kiss. I’ll do that, then I’ll get you a cab.”

“There’s no need. I can walk.”

“Not alone. Not at night,” Michael said, in a tone that brooked no further argument .

As Fiona waited for her uncle, her eyes fell on the framed photograph of Molly that still stood on a small round table. She picked it up. Her aunt was dressed in her wedding gown, holding a bouquet of roses. Her beautiful face was radiant, but her expression was serious, her gaze hauntingly direct.

Nick’s words came back to Fiona as she met that compelling gaze. I believe in love, Fiona…Everything else be damned …

“I want to believe, too, Aunt Molly,” she whispered, “but it’s so hard. Love is supposed to make you whole, but sometimes it rips you apart instead and scatters the pieces.”

Love had torn away pieces of Fiona’s heart.

One lay in a London cemetery with her parents and sister.

Another floated on the Thames, where her brother Charlie had drowned.

And on the north bank of that broad river, at the bottom of a set of old stone steps, another piece was buried in the mud where it had fallen the day Joe left her.

Fiona wanted to believe that love didn’t end.

She wanted to believe that the love her parents had felt for her and for Seamie endured.

That the love Molly held in her heart for Michael and Nell outlasted death as well.

She wanted to believe that love stayed, visible in the lines of a lost letter or the stitches of an old quilt, echoing in the notes of a lullaby, alive forever in the memory of a smile.

“But does it?” she asked her aunt. “Or is that just a pretty tale that fools tell themselves?”

Sighing, she put the photograph down and walked into the kitchen to fetch her purse. Mrs. Beeton was where she’d left it, lying on the table, Molly’s letter folded next to it. She tucked the letter inside the book, then put the book back on the shelf.

It would stay there now, its pages unturned, its recipes unused, the letter inside just a sad prologue to one more love story that would never be written.