Note: This story recounts the events of the year following Melanie's death, told through the eyes of Ashley, Scarlett, and Rhett respectively. Any and all feedback is solicited. All characters are the intellectual property of Margaret Mitchell.

2. Scarlett

I'll be in town on business tomorrow. I haven't forgotten our bargain. Rhett.

October 30, 1873, a Wednesday. I had received a telegram from Rhett.

I had come home from the store, then walked over to Ashley's to make sure that he was alright. The two of us sat in Ashley's small living room staring at each other. I asked Dilcey to start dinner and asked him if he wanted a drink. I got him a Scotch and gave it to him in the living room; he was reading in the chair by the fire. He always sat there, reading by the fire.

I think the book was called Great Expectations. A strange title for a novel, isn't it? What's so great about expectations, anyway? You expect that things will turn out a certain way, after all. And when they don't, where does that leave you? Do you break? Do you go on expecting something else, only to have that hope shattered as well?

I recall some old adage about not squandering time, for that is the stuff that life is made of. I'm guilty of that very thing. Squandering time. It's so easy to squander something that cannot be measured, is it not? But I must do better in the future.

I set the table in the dining room so that we could eat and still feel the warmth of the fireplace. For such a little house, it got surprisingly cold; no wonder Melly was worried about Ashley catching a chill. Aside from that, the fire was a nice reminder of both of our childhoods. The roaring blazes at Twelve Oaks and Tara were welcome memories. Mother would light all of the candles and Pa, dear Pa, he would get to drinking and relay in his booming voice a tale of Irish valor on the battlefield.

I lit the candles this night, forming a circle of flame around us. We sat down and I poured him another drink. My attention was on the fireplace.

Ashley was talking, then he wasn't.

At one point in the seconds or minute before he stopped talking, he asked me if I thought that Melly knew about us. I said no, I've already told you this, Ashley. We were blessed. She had no idea.

"Good," he had said. "I don't know why, but I still think she knew." The next minute passed and he began to ramble about the book in front of him, about how much of a gentleman Mr. Dickens was.

I have no idea what he was saying at the instant he stopped talking again, holding his face in his hands.

"I remember looking up," he said. "She was slumped down in the bed. Motionless. At first, I thought she was making a joke, an attempt to mock the difficulty of my day, to remind me how much she…"

I remember saying, "Don't do this, Ashley."

"When she didn't respond," he went on, "I remember lifting her from the bed. I remember the feel of her body against me as she fell forward, first on the bed and then on the floor. Then I saw it. She was bleeding all over the floor."

I watched his face as he relived it. I remembered that blood. I had spent the day after the funeral scrubbing it off the floor. After I had done it, I realized that I had just erased all tangible trace of Melly from the room. Of course, her things were still there, just as she had left them. But they could have been anyone's things. That they were hers was only so because I knew that she arranged things a certain way.

I remember that telegram from Rhett. Mrs. Wilkes dying, come home immediately. The distance between Marietta and Atlanta is about an hour by train. I have no memory of that train ride. I could not remember the features of the person sitting next to me if my life depended on it. When I arrived at the depot, I was hurried into the carriage by Rhett. They were waiting at Melly and Ashley's. Doctor Meade and Aunt Pitty and Uncle Henry and all the rest of them.

Everyone else was wearing black, except for me and Rhett. Doctor Meade turned to me, "She wants to see you, Scarlett," he said. I suppose that was the moment that I knew.

After I said goodbye to her for the last time, I ran home. Something about enduring great loss somehow entitles one to reevaluate the state of one's life. I realized how important Rhett was to me, how I desperately wanted him to love me again. And I, in my arrogant expectation of his devotion winning out, was left to rot in our big empty house.

I remember thinking that I needed to discuss this with Melly. Because there really was nothing I did not discuss with Melly.

I could ask her questions about anything, and she always had the right answer. Since we were sixteen and seventeen, our days had been filled with the sound of one another's voices.

I did not always think she was the universal authority, no, I admit freely that I often thought her a sentimental little fool. But we were each the person the other trusted.

What I remember most about the night that Melly died and Rhett left was its silence. But perhaps the greatest mystery was the fact that at that moment, I would have been happy to never lay eyes on Rhett again if I could see Melly just one more time.

When I saw her the next morning laid out in her parlor, I noticed a cut on her lip and a faint bruise on her face. Ashley had said something about her falling. I shut down all responses within my body, save my command to India to remove Beau from the house immediately. My children did not see Bonnie laying out in the parlor, and I'd be damned if Beau's last memory of his mother was her pale, bruised, lifeless body laid out in her own parlor.

There is no set measure for grief, I've found. I've been widowed twice, and felt nothing even remotely close to mourning. I felt sad, lonely, an abandoned child. But this had no distance. Melly was still there. I just couldn't see her. Weakly, blindly, flailing in the dark, I sought her and couldn't see her. When Pa and Mother died, I felt lost, but I kept going. Always, always, I kept going. When I think back on it, I wonder if I went on because of Melly. I've always thought of myself as particularly resilient and strong, but Melly was what drove me to be so.

I remember Doctor Meade coming over to my house and his wife offering to stay the night with me. Someone must have seen Rhett's carriage leaving and presumably the whole town knew that he was gone for the time being.

I have little memory of my conversation with the Meades, but I reassured them that I would be fine. And I was, until the night. I was alone in bed with that sinking feeling in my stomach. Had Rhett meant it when he said that he didn't care that I loved him? Love doesn't just stop, does it? You can't be in love with someone and then not be, can you?

That treacherous little whisper inside my head whispers, you can be and then cease to be-one breath-that's all that separates life and death-what's so special about love, Scarlett O'Hara?

The night after the funeral was another sleepless one, and the night after that, and after that. But having the children made it a little more tolerable. Listening to them play through their sadness made my own problems seem a little less important. And I would go through an entire day without thinking of Rhett or Melly.

But then I would go to sleep, and then I'd wake up and remember. That first night was the last night I spent alone, of course. Wade and Ella were with me, Beau too, for a time. And Mammy even returned from Tara. I needed that first night alone. I needed to feel absolutely alone and helpless, utterly humble. Only then would he ever come back to me.

Thus begins my account of the year after her death, my year of shattered expectations, and learning to find joy in the most unexpected places.