Farraway Mist ?A Wattpad featured story?

Chapter 1: Scout Arrives

This was desolate country, which suited Scout just fine.

When she'd started looking for a job, she'd wanted something as far off the beaten path as possible. She'd never dreamed she'd find something in England, in Cornwall. It was so Agatha Christie, so evocative of another time. The green hills rolled to meet the dark blue sky, and she could see the grass waving in the strong wind which whipped it everywhere.

Every once in a while she'd see her reflection in the window of the hired car; her pale blue eyes, the smattering of freckles, the shaggy, overgrown brown bob. She found it ironic that now, at the age of twenty-four, she probably looked as much like her namesake from the 1962 movie as she ever had in her life.

She'd been born with the very feminine name of Clarissa Marie Lawson, and her baby pictures showed a little girl covered in lace and bows, the more pink the better. Just as soon as she'd been able, though, Clarissa had taken the scissors to her curls, and had begun dressing in overalls and shorts. It was her older sister, Susan, who'd noticed her resemblance to the character in To Kill A Mockingbird, and begun calling her Scout, and the nickname had simply stuck. Her poor mother had simply ceded to the inevitable and thrown away her hair ribbons and barrettes, and replaced her ballet slippers with roller blades.

Scout had sailed through life in Connecticut as a happy tomboy and attended Yale, where she'd gotten an MFA in Library Science and Antiquities. She loved books, and could think of nothing better than a life spent among them.

While at Yale, she'd dated a little, but hadn't really had much success or interest in boys until she'd met an assistant professor named Will Frye, who had twinkling brown eyes and a beard, and was smart and loved books as much as she did. He'd told her she was beautiful, and that he loved her. Scout thought she loved him, and she'd slept with him, and spent a year sharing his life and his bed, planning a future with him and being deliriously happy.

Then, after Will got his doctorate, he told Scout that, wonderful as she was, she was also, unfortunately, the wrong religion and they would, sadly, have to part ways.

"Besides," he said on the sunny morning that he gave her the news, "you're too skinny, anyway, you're built all wrong, you'd have all kinds of trouble." He pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked at her.

"What?" Scout stared at him and wiped her eyes, not sure she'd heard him correctly.

He gestured at her body.

"You hardly have any breasts at all, I doubt you could produce any milk," he clarified. "And your hips are so narrow. You might have to have a Caesarean section," he said.

"Are you talking about childbirth?" Scout asked incredulously.

"Of course," he said as if surprised she had to ask.

"Look, Scout," he said gently, putting his hands on her shoulders, "you have a lot going for you, and I'm sure you'll find someone. But I have to think in terms of a family, a Jewish family, you understand?" He smiled at her, a smile which she used to find mesmerizing, but now just found vapid.

Scout shook her head.

How could she have been so stupid?

So she collected her Master's degree, looked around for a job, and found one, as far away as she could.

In Cornwall, England. Organizing and restoring a library for some musician named George Wilder. Apparently, this guy, George, had been married to some supermodel, Tessa Richardson-Wilder, and they'd been this wildly successful and beautiful super-couple together, traveling the world, partying and buying diamonds or whatever it was that people like that did. Then she'd died in some terribly tragic way, some fall, right there in his house, and he'd just holed up there, not seeing anyone, grieving for her. He'd turned into some kind of recluse or something, which suited Scout just fine. She didn't care if she never saw anyone again.