The Question (The Waiting Heart, #3)

Claire Hartman has finished Owen's final journal. She's read his last words, written just two days before pneumonia took him in April 1926 at age twenty-four. She knows how his story ends now-with hope, with longing, with the belief that somehow, across any distance, his words would reach the person he'd been waiting for. But knowing how his story ends doesn't tell Claire what to do with her own. Her family and friends stage an intervention. They present the evidence: Claire isolated, obsessed, talking to Owen's photograph. Her sister Beth says the words out loud: "You're in love with a dead man." And Claire can't deny it anymore. She is. She's fallen completely, impossibly in love with someone who's been gone for ninety-eight years. Dr. Sarah Bennett, a therapist Claire reluctantly agrees to see, tells her it's not psychosis-it's complicated grief mixed with romantic projection. She's using Owen as a shield against rejection from anyone living. Using his beautiful words as permission to hide from real connection. The whole town of Willowbrook has noticed Claire fading. The librarian asks if she's okay. The coffee shop barista says she hasn't seen Claire smile in weeks. Even strangers comment on how distant she seems. Claire is drifting through her life, present only with Owen's memory. When Claire looks in the mirror, she barely recognizes herself. Pale. Exhausted. Hollow. And she hears Owen's voice-not literally, but in her memory of his words: "Choose life." Because that's what he'd written. That's what he would have wanted for her. But choosing life means letting Owen go. Means boxing up his journals and saying goodbye at his grave. Means grieving someone she never met but loves completely. Means accepting that this profound connection, this meeting of souls across a century, has to end so her own life can begin again. The question that haunts her: What was this for? Why did she find Owen's journals? Why did she fall in love with someone she could never have? What is she supposed to do with this impossible love? The Question is a raw, emotional story about grief that doesn't make sense, love that transcends time, and the courage it takes to let go of something beautiful so you can hold something real. Perfect for readers who understand that sometimes the hardest person to say goodbye to is the one who understood you best. Book Three of The Waiting Heart Series-where Claire must finally choose between the past and the present, between safety and risk, between Owen's memory and her own future.