Since I’m a day late, I thought I’d post a few lines about missed opportunities. This could be a meeting that didn’t happen, or words that were not said that could have saved a misunderstanding, or an action not taken, or anything else that could have meant the story’s happy ending came much sooner (bad for the characters, but great for the readers!)
Here’s mine. I needed two bits, from different chapters and different POVs. (And the incident they both refer to was last weekend’s Teatime Tattler post.)
As always, I look forward to reading your pieces. Please post in the comments, and share.
First Prue:
She would be calm; professional; indifferent. She would never let Shadow know how much she longed for him; how often she replayed that final scene between them, searching for the words that would lead to a different outcome. Perhaps if she had stayed… No. He had made his opinion of her quite clear, and she could not trust a man who did not trust her.
Then David:
He’d gone upstairs looking forward to seeing her again more than eagerly than he wished to examine. The guarded look on her face, the stiff way she held herself, stopped him in his tracks.
And her voice. Calm. Devoid of emotion. As if that passionate night had never existed. Or as if it meant nothing to her…
Perhaps, while David had spent five months longing for her, she had moved on, and his presence was an embarrassment.
Love both of these, ladies! I will make myself a note to share something when I get home. I think I have something that could fit 🙃
Mahahaha, my not-quite-WIP’s all about missed opportunities. 😉 Not necessarily from a romantic point of view, though: as I’ve said before, the central tension isn’t a love story, but the miscommunication between John and his brother William.
Hoping against hope that this will post, this is the moment from “The Long Shadow” that John realises he’s completely lost the intimacy he used to have with his younger brother, and that he has no more right than a stranger to stop him drinking himself into an early grave.
_______
Silence fell. The others dropped their gazes. A bitterness rose in John’s throat. None of them was strong enough to warn William off his path of self-destruction. The servant could not; Mr Rose would not; even Farquhar dared not, for all he called himself William’s personal physician. It was slowly dawning on John that he could not do it, either.
*Will, you’re drinking too much.* John willed the words out of his mouth. He trembled with the effort of saying them, he strained till it hurt, but he could not get them out. He had no right to preach, or to judge. Rose had been right; it was not his place, not any more.
In that moment he felt it slipping out of his hands, running through his fingers as finely as silk thread blown away by the wind. He could not stay here any longer, sitting on this terrace watching his brother drink.
Wahey! It posted! 😀
Oh, dear. The pain in that is palpable, Jacqui. Brilliantly done,