Time heals all wounds; well, what else had Alfred expected, asking an author for advice?

As poetic as it sounded, he had his doubts. Alfred was the man who had spent five years in the wilderness pining for a girl that, it turned out, he hadn't even really known all that well. It had taken returning to England and meeting her again for him to realize how different they'd both become from the children they had been when he'd made naive promises to marry her. And Jo was different. The ache in his chest that he felt when he thought about her might grow duller over time, but he wasn't convinced it would ever go away.

Worse than the missing her, though, was the guilt. Even if he eventually learned to live without her in his life, how could he ever shake the feeling that her absence was entirely his fault? If he had just been thinking clearly — if he had said something to make her stay — if he had said anything, instead of having that impulse and fighting it off and then just walking out of the room.

"Yeah, maybe," he said, obviously unconvinced. "But I'll always wonder if I could've done something differently."