A Promise of Fireflies

by Susan Haught

  “Do you think it was easy for me to admit how foolish I’ve been?” His thumb stroked her palm. “I’ve had a long time to think about what’s important. I miss you,” he said and pulled her against him. “I miss us.”

  Ryleigh slipped into his arms with familiar ease, nothing between them but the air they breathed. A tendril of hair had fallen across his eye, his face unshaven. She’d begged him to let his hair grow and allow a few days scruff between shaves, but he never had. Until now.

  His breathing quickened. This couldn’t be happening. Not after she’d made the decision to move on and after what had happened over the past few days and weeks. Renewed tears stung her eyes, and she ground the bitter rancor between her teeth. He had defiled their marriage and the hurt and humiliation had gradually subsided. Revisiting what she’d put behind her would resurrect the pain and peel away the fragile layer that had begun to form over the wound. She’d been down that road and the experience wasn’t high on her list of things she ever wished to repeat.

  His voice softened. “Ryleigh, something happened in New York.” Chandler took her face in his hands and stroked her cheek. “Tell me.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “I know you better than anyone. Give me a chance.”

  She dug her teeth solidly into her lip. “You had your chance.”

  “I need you, Ryleigh Collins.” He traced the hollow of her back. “Let me be a part of your life again.”

  She straightened and thrust her fists to his chest. “You gave up that right the moment the male part of your anatomy led you into another woman’s bed.”

  An emotional air pocket bloated the space between them. Wads of his shirt twisted in her hands. “Say something, you bastard!”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant and I meant what I said.” His sincerity was unwavering. “You’re the girl I fell in love with, the one I want to be with. That hasn’t changed.”

  The years had been kind to him; he was more handsome now, etched with the fine lines of age, than when they were kids, and with an instant’s hesitation, she allowed the words to momentarily penetrate a thin bubble of restraint. Her fingers formed around the hard line of his chin and then briefly touched his cheek. The strong features were but a façade to the man inside, and she’d slipped easily into the role of commander in chief. Was it so selfish to want someone to take care of her for a change? She drew a cleansing breath. “You’re right again. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed.”

  His eyes danced back and forth between hers. “I want to come home.”

  “God, Chandler, you aren’t listening—”

  He placed a finger to her lips. “Let me finish what I’ve wanted to say for a long time.” He swallowed hard, the tiny muscles in his jaw tensing. “We belong together and I’ll wait as long as it takes to be a part of your life again. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  Chandler lifted her chin. Hesitantly, he leaned into her and kissed her tenderly, the familiar feel of him natural and easy. He pulled her close and the taste of his lips and the warmth of his tongue were shadow-memories of a dream, one she didn’t know how to pull away from. He held her with an intensity she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  He cradled the back of her neck with one hand, the rough stubble of his face newly stimulating against her skin, his touch ingrained. She responded, a feverish excitement as their tongues met and the past disappeared.

  They broke apart but she remained pressed against him, his heart thumping against her cheek, the rhythm mercifully conciliate, yet her heart and her head hopped frantically between two different playing fields.

  “Let me make love to you.”

  Desperately wanting to relinquish and give in, she grasped his shirt and pulled it loose, her hands beneath the soft cloth tracing the outline of muscle, the feel of his skin and his sigh a momentary relapse into the familiar. She breathed deeply. How many nights had she waited for the obnoxious sound of the diesel truck in the late night stillness? Even before Della, was he truly pounding nails and raising walls in the dark? Or was he raising himself and pounding someone else on the nights he’d left her alone? She forced the ugly thought to disintegrate. Her hands fell silent to her side, her forehead against his chest, and she stopped herself before the ridiculous idea that things could ever be the same took root and grew to something unstoppable.

  Gently, he lifted her chin and leaned in to take possession of what dwindling resolve she had left.

  Ryleigh’s fingers blocked his advance. “This is a mistake, Chandler.”

  “Please,” he murmured, “let me show you we can start over, be who we used to be.”

  What was it Ambrose had said? You cannot expect the truth not to exist simply by ignoring it. “Too much has happened.” She shook her head. “Della may not be carrying your child, but it doesn’t miraculously change the fact you slept with her. You lived with her for a year. An entire year.” She squeezed her eyes to expel the pictures that trespassed across her mind. Paramount to the sickening image was the fact he had betrayed what they once shared as sacred.

  Turmoil played across his paled face. “How can I convince you I would never hurt you again?”

  A whisper of disquiet seeped into her heart, one she wished she could dispel—one she knew she couldn’t. The truth settled over her in the soft clicking of a closing door inside her mind: the past and all its intrinsic threads had rewoven her path. The path to her future.

  She raised her eyes to his and absorbed the grief hidden behind his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said and stepped away from what could have been a consequential mistake.

  Before she could slip away, he traced her arms tenderly, ending at her fingertips. Holding both her hands in his, he squeezed lightly. “Marry me.”

  Every ounce of assurance she’d built faded with each of Chandler’s footsteps as he left the house. Coupled with the sequence of events of the past few months, her scrambled emotions were a towering course of bricks, one nudge from toppling. Though utterly confused by his words, the memories and hurt, she savored how easy it had been within his arms.

  His words echoed inside her head. Her heartbeat had taken up residence behind her eyes, and she couldn’t shake the insidious feeling of free falling—spinning out of control—the ripcord jammed. The parachute wasn’t going to open.

  Part of her remained in the comfortable security of his embrace, and part of her flipped to the pages of the past. Taking him back would be the easy thing to do—a relapse into an addictive habit—easier to give in than try to break. Chandler would provide for her and give her a good life. This needed no contemplation. It was easy. And when life presented itself as a stormy battlefield, she preferred to run for shelter until the thunder passed and the clouds dissipated on their own.

  Ryleigh took the journal from her suitcase pocket and retreated to her study. Kingsley followed eagerly, leaped into the chair and curled up nose to tail beside her. With Ryan’s journal in one hand, she stroked the cat with the other, the tomcat’s purr motor in high gear.

  She traced the watermarked smudges and skimmed her finger over the ‘R’ at the bottom of the page, the same way she had a few hours ago at her brother’s gravesite and again at The Wall. It seemed an eternity. Surreal. With the story ingrained in her mind, she wondered whether the smudges were raindrops dripping from leaves in the jungles of Vietnam, or the silent tears of a soldier lost in the heady bubble of love halfway across the world.

  Sinking into the comfort of the old blue chair, she escaped into the one world she was sure of. Words. She preferred their company, their comforting embrace. Words were constant. Solid. Dependable.

  At random, she flipped the pages, holding to the words her father had written, the ones her daddy had read to her as a small child. “Rhythm of the Jungle” fell open, and in a whisper, she began to read aloud to drown the voices inside her head.

 
“‘Quiet swells her voice to a thick vicious roar

  and bellows heartbeats of cavernous fright—

  Bombs echo their thunder beyond the next rise

  and tracers splinter the black cover of night.

  Fire-lights flicker across boggy vine-laden trails

  and hushed boots trample a muddy virgin path—

  Spectral silence prowls through the murky haze

  and echoes the call of death’s lonesome wrath.

  Mist’s mournful shroud blankets dawn’s early light

  and eyes ever watchful nurse bitter anguish unbled—

  Choirs of prayers croon the jungle’s cruel lullaby

  and sing reverent melodies of unspoken dread.

  The rhythm of the jungle purrs poisoned rain

  and taps her lonely cadence, the drumbeat of fear—

  Days swallow dreams drowned in milky mists

  and imprison illusions in the cocoon of desire.

  Shadows embrace ghosts of fallen Eagles, my friends

  and pierce private dreams, memories held deep—

  ’Till a whisper of wind holds hands with my dream

  and your voice brushes my lips—a prelude to sleep.’”

  ~R~’67

  Shadows of a soldier’s fears littered the pages, and she read of the metaphor of jungle rain her father had used to describe the pelting of machine-gun rounds and of the impending rendezvous with destiny he sensed would take his life. As a child, she loved the drama and color of the words. Now she understood and loved them for what they were—love (fear/destiny/anger/loneliness/death) letters to her mother—written by a young man on a battlefield twelve thousand miles from home.

  Closing the journal gently to preserve its integrity—for her lifetime and beyond—she closed her eyes and held the blood-stained leather next to her heart, as close an embrace as her father would ever give. Unlike the man who’d died a soldier’s death, she wouldn’t allow his words to die too.

  Curled next to Kingsley, fatigue swallowed her and the words of an eccentric, white-haired old man swirled in her head.

  ‘…you must learn to live with your past. Do not ignore it. Embrace it…You are your mother’s daughter and of your father’s loins…Ryan’s gift flows from you as it did him. Use it. Do not let another so gifted with words remain silent...there will always be storms, Miss Ryleigh…you must learn to dance in the rain.’

  Kingsley rolled from his back and glared at her, his eyes severe slits. Just to annoy him, she kissed him squarely between his golden eyes. The cat pulled away to avoid the intrusive contact and bounced off the chair. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” Ignoring the trite apology, he sauntered off.

  Ryleigh got up and searched through every desk drawer until her fingers closed on a spiral notebook. Months ago (years now?) she’d purchased the notebook in anticipation of starting another novel, a place for notes and ideas. The pages were unspoiled, nothing hidden in the pockets. But this wasn’t a new story. This was the ending to an old one. Her past had taken a twist, and so had the ending to the unfinished manuscript Evan had mercilessly stolen.

  Curled again into the blue chair, she forced herself to purge troubled thoughts of Chandler from her mind, and the only sound in the makeshift study was the scratching of graphite across paper as the words spilled from her heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CHRISTMAS HAD COME and gone in a whisper, overshadowed by the looming prospect of Evan’s internship in California and the final dissolution of a marriage. A few days after officially relinquishing her marital status, Ryleigh would lose her son again, this time to the quagmire of not just a big city, a monster city. Los Angeles wasn’t Phoenix, and the air lying gray and motionless across the horizon wasn’t the only thing she considered polluted. But she had to trust him and her instincts and let him go. His dreams and his future began with a small magazine publisher in California where he’d begin his dream of becoming an editor.

  With Evan at his father’s and only days until his departure, Ryleigh paced the small den, the contents of the old cigar box drawing her like a magnet to iron. She’d sorted the letters by postmark, and then stacked and tied each bundle with a length of ribbon. They begged to reveal their secrets, but she’d chosen to read them gradually over time. They were few, and the fear of finishing the last one elicited a sadness she paralleled to finishing the end of a novel. And losing her family again.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the den, she removed the ribbons and turned a stack from front to back, careful not to damage the timeworn envelopes, and then placed each one in order in front of her, like tiles in an unfinished mosaic. The same familiar scrawl of the journal graced Ryan’s, the handwriting fluidly arched with a soft right slant, and at times barely legible—the similarities to her own remarkable. Her mother’s letters were written in a beautiful flowing slant, her signature with an exaggerated swirl on the curl of the first “E”. She lingered on it, mentally counting the years. Time had long passed from the girl who lived for these letters, to the woman who lay at rest. At the end, even her handwriting had been the victim of time.

  She opened an envelope addressed to her mother. Ryan’s letters were signed with a single ‘R’ and the year at the bottom of the page. She touched each word, the commas and watermarks, as if imprinting them on her skin, hesitating on the ‘R’ at the bottom. She shivered. The room was warm, but it wasn’t the temperature that had caused her skin to rise in gooseflesh—but the feeling their fingers had somehow crossed the boundaries of time.

  With her life in shambles and her son on the verge of leaving the state, she clung to the idea of family—embracing what she did have, and longing for what had been taken—and read the letters without intermission.

  Ambrose had been right—he was uncanny that way. The letters unraveled the threads of three tightly woven lives.

  Eleanor wrote of ordinary people oblivious to the war raging halfway across the planet, New York snowstorms, the pond, and a stray dog she had befriended and named Tareyton (“Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch.”) due to the perfect black spot over one eye. Summer nights in St. Louis watching the fireflies were at the heart of nearly every letter.

  Despite the appalling way her family treated her, Eleanor’s letters overflowed with happiness and her love for Ryan. Even at such a tender age it was evident theirs was the profound love few people experience. And her words filled the page with the overwhelming power of love she felt for the life growing inside her. Not once did she denounce her love for Ben. Though different, it rose from her words as insightful and as deep.

  But one of her mother’s letters proved more touching than all the others.

  On a cold St. Louis night, Eleanor and Ryan lay huddled under heavy blankets in a farmer’s old hayloft on the outskirts of the city. Surrounded by sweet alfalfa hay, cattle lowing, and the warmth and charm of a boy she adored, it was a Christmas Eve her mother would never forget. Although chastised for her actions, the consequence of a star-filled night had also given her the most precious gift anyone would ever give her. The gift of life.

  Ryleigh loved her mother. (God knows she did.) But after reading the letters, the connection grew deeper, the empathy and loss stronger than she believed possible. If not for Ambrose, she never would have come to know her mother’s immeasurable compassion, due in part, she assumed, to the losses her mother bore. Ryleigh knew her only as Mom, but in the span of a few short hours, she’d come to know her extraordinary courage—a woman who had sacrificed and lost more than most do in a lifetime. And if she could disconnect herself, it would be a poignant story—one worthy of telling the world.

  Ryan’s words were just as Ambrose had described. The jungle came alive—lush with palm trees, elephant grass and villagers farming acres of marshy rice paddies and then, like a chameleon, transformed. Hillsides drenched in blackened ash reeking of death and puddled with blood, decaying animals and corpses. Monkeys chattering, birds every color
of the rainbow, and idle whispers squelched by sniper fire raining down from the very trees that offered cover. The aftermath of an ambush.

  Ryleigh envisioned the place that took her father’s life with awe at its inherent beauty and revulsion for the horrors of war. The scenes reverberated in the journal, the darkness, fear, and indisputable happiness woven intricately between the lines. Words could never convey the force of emotion, but the passion and pain bruised her as deeply as if a bullet had torn her flesh. She grieved for the baby boy—her brother. Ryan’s son. Raw emotion overpowered her with an inexpressible emptiness for a family that had been stripped from her. Family she never knew she had. And she openly grieved for the family she’d been given, only to see it taken away.

  Entranced in a surreal world created decades ago and spelled out on aged, brittle sheets of paper, Ryleigh retied the string around the letters with a renewed insight into the two men she referred to as “father” and an unequivocal deepened love for the woman who had given her life. It was then, in spite of the secrets, she felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life.

  Ryleigh raised the ball chain that hung around her neck and rubbed a thumb across the raised metal letters of the dog tag. She held it against her heart and smiled, and then sifted through the old cigar box—her treasure chest.

  A ragged envelope addressed to her mother lay mostly hidden in the bottom. She peeled back the flap and inside were government bonds amounting to several thousand dollars in today’s market, her name neatly typed across the documents. Unable to absorb the reality, she set the certificates on her lap and removed another document, unfolding it with the same care she’d taken with the letters. Her original birth certificate trembled in her hands. She skimmed the information. Halfway through, she stopped on the space marked “twin.”