11
Four years after Eleanor first received that mysterious letter, she sat by the window of their small house on the outskirts of London. They'd moved there a year ago, to a village where the air was cleaner and the rent cheaper, and where Julian could write without the noise of the city.
But this window was different from the one in her father's house. It was open. Fresh air flowed in, carrying the scent of growing things.
Julian wrote at his wooden desk nearby, his papers less scattered now but still abundant. His new novel—published under his own name this time—sat on the nearby shelf. It wasn't a bestseller, but it was respected. Slowly, steadily, he was building a reputation based on talent rather than scandal.
Eleanor had her own desk now, by the opposite window. Her essays on women's education had been collected into a small book, published by a progressive press. It would never make them rich, but it had found its readers—women who wrote to thank her, who said her words had given them courage.
The cost of their choices was still real. They would never be wealthy. They would never be welcomed in the drawing rooms of fashionable society. Eleanor's father visited once a year, and their relationship remained cordial but distant. Some losses, she'd learned, couldn't be fully recovered.
But she had things her former friends did not: work that mattered to her, partnership built on honesty, and the freedom to be fully herself.
Julian looked up from his writing. A few strands of grey had appeared in his dark hair—they were both older now, no longer the young people who'd met in a library over stolen glances.
"Do you regret it?" he asked. It was a question he'd asked before, in their hardest moments.
She smiled. "The only regret… is that I didn't write you the first letter."
He laughed, rose from his seat, and came to sit beside her. He took her hand—no longer cold now, never cold when he held It—and said:
"Then let's write the rest together."
Outside the open window, life continued its messy, complicated, beautiful progress. They could hear children playing in the lane, a cart rattling past, birds beginning their evening songs.
It wasn't the life Eleanor had been raised to expect. But it was the life she had chosen, with all its challenges and rewards.
And that, she had learned, made all the difference.