Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Unfinished Business Part 2
He stared down at the book she handed to him, almost disbelieving. Somehow this diary had survived all the intervening years, safe in the dusty basement room, next to the briarwood pipe and the delicate tea cup. These few precious mementos of his parents were all that he had left of them: a pipe, a tea cup, a photo, and a book chock full of his mother's words. It was so much more than he had ever hoped to have.
He tried to read the letter his mother had left for him, but he had a lump the size of his heart in his throat. He didn't want to read it silently; he wanted to experience it for the first time with Amanda.
He stopped trying to read, and handed her the book instead.
"Amanda, would you?" he asked, and he heard the note of longing and hope that his voice held.
"Are you sure?" she asked him in her turn, taking the book.
He nodded, his eyes clouding over a little with unshed tears. He was very sure.
Every time he read that letter in the future, he wanted to hear Amanda's voice reading it. It was the only way he could think of for him to tell her, quietly but unmistakably, that he already considered her his family, and that he fully intended to have her in his life forever, if she would have him. And, because she knew him like no one else ever had, he read her understanding shining in her eyes.
She smiled at him, warmly and encouragingly, and he settled back to listen to her reading words he had never expected to hear from the first woman he had ever loved.
