Free The Love Letter by Brenna Aubrey Page B

exams. Jumping up and waving to Eric, I tapped the back of my wrist and pointed in the direction of the hospital.
    ***
    I tossed the library book and my medical tome into my locker and changed into my greens. Pulmonology boards were in four weeks. In addition, I’d be giving up precious study time to fly across the country to Rhode Island tomorrow for Thanksgiving at my sister’s. Was I actually contemplating making time to read a novel? No. This was why the Internet was invented. The search engine gods would guide me on my path to clues.
    My smug resolve faded when I was faced with my last patient of the day.
    “Hello, Mrs. Kellerman! I see the roses have returned to your cheeks. How are you feeling today?”
    Her mouth twisted in her wrinkled face; gray hair splayed out around her head against a bleached white pillow.
    “Rotten. What else is new?”
    I consulted her chart. “Well, the good news is that the results of your lung plethysmography were normal.” Proceeding to the next test, I wheeled over the spirometer. Mrs. Kellerman eyed the machine as if it were a vicious dog about to rip off her arm.
    I helped her to a sitting position. “Mrs. Kellerman, you were an English teacher before you retired, weren’t you?”
    “I was a professor at the community college, why?” She gave me a wary look that suggested she’d picked up on my tactic of distracting the patient during an unpleasant procedure.
    “I have an honest question, actually.” I took the mouthpiece of the spirometer from its resting place. “I was just loaned a novel called Persuasion . Have you ever heard of it?”
    She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Of course. Jane Austen. One of my favorites.”
    “Really? She wrote a lot of novels, then?”
    She frowned. “Just six. She only lived forty-one years.”
    “I see. So. Can you tell me what the novel is about?”
    “You should read it.”
    “I’ll get to it eventually. I was wondering—”
    Her cold stare pinned me down. I had no doubt that in her day she had been formidable professor.
    “Young man, if I can sit here all day with this blasted mask on my face, take every prodding, finger prick and blow-in-the-tube test that you order up, then you can damn well read a masterpiece of a novel.”
    I twitched my eyebrows in surprise but let the subject drop. “You know the drill, ma’am. Take a deep breath.” When she was ready, I pressed the tube to her lips.
    ***
    Instead of returning to the library, I grabbed a quick bite at home. I opened the book again with determination—and the image of Mrs. Kellerman’s stony gaze at the back of my mind.
    Hours later, I glanced up at the clock and was shocked at how much time had passed. The feeling was like coming up for air after swimming underwater—like I’d been breathing in another world. With reluctance, I remembered I had physical needs to see to. I had to pee.
    At two a.m., I stopped reading again, this time due to fatigue. I was nearly finished and I wanted—no, I needed —to know the ending. Only a few chapters into the story, I had begun to see myself in Captain Wentworth. In Anne, I read Justine .
    Unfinished, I closed the book and rolled over, my eyes closing on the porous ceiling tiles. Memories overwhelmed me like a strong current at high tide…
    ***
    Until the past summer, I hadn’t seen Justine in six years. And at that time, seeing her was the last thing I’d wanted. After six years, the sting of her rejection still cut deep.
    It was only once I had arrived at my sister’s house for a short stay that she informed me that Justine was staying with her brother. Across the street. In their parents’ old house, where she had lived when the two of us were undergraduates together at Brown University.
    For the next two weeks, we would be neighbors again. I shrugged it off. It didn’t matter to me. I kept busy, playing with my nephews and helping my brother-in-law with home improvement projects.
    But I ran the neighborhood