Clay glanced at his watch to see it was one o’clock as he, Noah, Tara, and the harpist waited in the clearing. Then, per the plan, the lighthouse door opened, and Onyx stepped out. Everyone turned toward the lighthouse as the harpist—who was seated behind Clay—began to play “Here Comes the Bride.”
“Wow,” Clay said under his breath.
“I know,” Noah said.
Onyx walked down the lighthouse steps, the train of her wedding dress trailing behind, and then walked across the grass and joined Noah, the two of them standing side by side in front of Clay. Then Tara took her position slightly behind Onyx and off to her right.
Clay cleared his throat, put his shoulders back, and pulled on his belt buckle, which seemed to help him stand a little straighter somehow. Then he opened the Bible in his hands to a marked page, which held his script.
Clay had performed several ceremonies over the years in the cove and had gotten pretty good, if he did say so himself. One time he’d even gotten a sixty-dollar tip from the father of a bride he’d just married. That was in addition to the free steak dinner served at the reception. They were one of the few wealthy families in the cove, so it was a good gig overall.
Generally, Clay was invited to the reception and usually went unless he got a call on the police radio. Since he didn’t charge for his services, the free meal and couple of cocktails seemed like a reasonable trade.
“We are gathered together today to celebrate the love of two people, Onyx and Noah,” Clay began. “Yes, today is a celebration. An important day in the lives of the bride and groom.”
Clay paused for just a second and thought about his choice of the word lives. It wasn’t a faux pas exactly, but he hoped he didn’t have any more about life in his script. He hadn’t thought to study it before the ceremony.
“A wedding is one of life’s greatest moments, the joining of two hearts. For this couple, out of the routine of ordinary life, the extraordinary happened. They met each other, fell in love, and are finalizing it with their marriage today.”
More comments about life.
Onyx didn’t appear to notice—or at least she didn’t seem bothered by it.
“Now it’s time for your vows. You each have something you’ve written for the other?”
Noah and Onyx both nodded.
“Very good. Before we move to that step, remember today you enter as individuals, but you will leave here as husband and wife, embarking upon the grandest adventure of human interaction. The story of your life together is still yours to write. Those of us here to witness and celebrate your love and commitment on this day are eager to see how your story unfolds. And may your love never end.”
Onyx glanced at Noah.
“Now, will you please turn and face one another and join hands,” Clay continued.
Noah and Onyx turned to each other, and Noah took Onyx’s hands in his.
“Okay Noah, you go first,” Clay said.
Noah let go of Onyx’s hands and reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of cream-colored notepaper. As Noah unfolded it, Onyx could detect a slight shaking of his hands.
Noah looked down and began to read:
“Onyx, today I get to become your husband. You become my wife. I will strive to give you the very best of myself, while accepting you—exactly as you are.
I promise to keep myself open to you, to let you in to my innermost fears and feelings, secrets and dreams. I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face change as we both change, keeping our relationship alive and exciting.
I don’t know what the future holds, Onyx, but I know my future is with you. I will be with you in good times and in bad, with all I have to offer and all that I am in the only way I know how—completely and forever—as long as I shall live.”
Immediately after Noah finished, Tara blew her nose. Onyx turned, and Tara waved her on to continue.
Onyx turned back to Noah. She paused. Noah glanced nervously at Clay.
“Onyx?” Clay said. “Are you missing your notes?”
“I’m sorry. Was I supposed to—no, I have no notes.”
“Okay then.” Clay gestured for Onyx to speak.
Onyx looked at Noah.
“Because of you, I have dared to live again,” Onyx began.
“I do not take this decision lightly. Finding you feels like a miracle. I think about the events that transpired for us to meet. Was it coincidence? Or some grand plan? I don’t know the answers to those questions. I suppose that is what makes it a miracle.”
Onyx paused before continuing.
“Noah, I have been alone on my path for so long. I marry you knowing that we have chosen to follow a new path together, hand in hand. Whatever lies ahead, good or bad, we will face it together. Times may try us. And trust me, they will. Through it all, I pledge to honor, encourage, and support you through our walk together. When our path is difficult, I will stand by you and through our bond we will accomplish more than we could alone. When you’re sad, I’ll comfort you. When you are happy, I’ll share your joy. From sunrise to sunset and every darkened hour, I will love you. Through all the days of your life.”
Noah took a deep breath and smiled at Onyx.
“Very nice, both of you. Okeydokey, time to exchange rings,” Clay said.
Noah pulled out Onyx’s ring from his front pocket, and Onyx raised her hand.
“Repeat after me,” Clay said. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
“With this ring, I thee wed,” Noah said, sliding the ring onto Onyx’s finger. Then Onyx turned to Tara. Tara handed Onyx Noah’s ring, and she turned back to face him. Onyx took Noah’s hand. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
Clay cleared his throat, and Tara blew her nose one more time.
“Through the exchange of these rings, you each accept each other as husband and wife now and for all time. The ring has no beginning and no ending, which symbolizes that the love between you will never cease. And now, by the power vested in me by the State of Oregon, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife. Noah, you may now kiss your bride.”
After the ceremony, the group went inside the lighthouse for the reception. It was perfect timing. Immediately after Onyx and Noah kissed it started to drizzle, moving into a pouring rain. The harpist was invited but she left, explaining that she had to get home to her three children.
Tara had decorated the inside of the lighthouse with white crepe paper streamers and had even gotten a small wedding cake from the local bakery. When Tara had asked for the smallest cake they had, the baker told Tara she’d give her the top tier that would be on most multi-tiered wedding cakes, complete with the little bride and groom plastic figurines on the top.
Once they were settled inside, Clay popped open a bottle of champagne and poured four glasses.
Noah handed a glass to Onyx as Clay poured a glass for Tara.
“A toast!” Clay shouted. “To the bride and groom!”
Everyone raised their champagne flutes to their lips and drank the golden bubbly liquid.
Everyone but Onyx.
Onyx stood and looked across the clearing at her father’s grave and thought about how much he’d have enjoyed being there for the wedding had he still been alive. How long had it been since he passed? Onyx thought. Fifty-seven years now. She used to bake a cake every year on his birthday but stopped several years earlier. Once Noah had come into her life. She knew she needed to work more on staying in the present, not spend so much time in the past—dwelling on things that were behind her.
When was it that she stopped looking forward and begun only looking back? When she died? Of course. Then, for sure. But to a degree, she’d stopped looking forward even when she was still alive—with Ulrich. Even then she’d known the best years were behind her. Yes, it was Ulrich who drained the life from Onyx—even before she died—robbing her of the things that mattered most to a person.
Love.
Hope.
And optimism.
<
br /> But now she had Noah, and the sense of hope and optimism that had been missing for so long had returned.
Onyx had stopped looking back at her mistakes.
She’d put the past behind her.
At last.
She was finally looking forward again.
“Every choice, large or small, matters more than you’ll ever know. In the end, your life will have been nothing more than a collection of your choices.”
The 2731 Immutable Matters
of Life & Death
Episode 30
Run, Stan Lee, Run
MAYVILLE, WISCONSIN
JANUARY 16, 2011
STAN LEE FELT a weird sensation as he exited Highway 41 and headed west on Route 33 toward Mayville—a place that was filled with so many memories, most of them painful.
How long had it been? He’d left Mayville on his birthday, December 2, 1976. Stan Lee did the math in his head. God, was it really thirty-four years? That was a long time to have been away from the farm, never once bothering to find out what had become of his grandfather and grandmother. Was that normal? Stan Lee wondered. To pick up and leave the way he had, without even bothering to leave a note? He’d left Oma and Opa some money. That should have been good enough. Right?
Stan Lee tried to recall how much money he’d left in the account but had trouble coming up with the amount.
“You left $117,000 and change,” Kara said from the passenger seat of the 2006 pale blue Honda Pilot.
Stan Lee shot Kara a look. “What?”
“That’s how much you left the old geezers,” Kara said. “Exactly $117,322.87. Way more than I would have left, but you were feeling all generous.”
“They raised me,” Stan Lee said.
“Whatever.”
Stan Lee turned his gaze back on the road, doing his best to ignore Kara.
“Get off up there at the gas station,” Kara said, pointing at the AM/PM Mini Market on the left side of the road.
“Why?”
“Because I want cigarettes,” Kara said.
“You don’t smoke,” Stan Lee said.
“Oh, yeah. Says who? You?” Kara said.
Stan Lee shook his head and directed the car into the parking lot. “What kind?”
“Virginia Slims, menthol lights,” Kara said. “And get a lighter.”
Twenty minutes later, Stan Lee drove past Oma and Opa’s farm—or what used to be the farm. The farm, as he knew it, was gone, replaced by a corporate conglomerate that had swallowed everything for miles. The farmhouses and barns that once dotted the landscape were gone, as if a nuclear weapon had been dropped and leveled every inch of the landscape for as far as the eye could see. It didn’t help that the entire area was covered in snow, not soy.
Were it not for a single house, Stan Lee wouldn’t have known he was even in the right place. It was the one next to Oma and Opa’s farm—the house belonging to the lawyer who represented him in court and won the multi-million-dollar settlement.
Judd Coker.
Stan Lee continued toward Judd Coker’s property and slowed as he passed the house, which was empty—a for sale sign posted in the front yard.
“What are you doing?” Kara asked as Stan Lee turned the car into the driveway of the house. “You know there probably won’t be any heat or electricity, right?”
“Don’t worry. We’re not staying,” Stan Lee said. “I just want to look around.”
As expected, Stan Lee found the house was locked. That had never stopped him before, and it wasn’t going to stop him now.
Stan Lee walked to the rear of the house and climbed the steps to the kitchen door and hit the window with his elbow— the glass breaking and dropping to the floor inside. Then he reached in and found the knob and unlocked it.
Stan Lee stepped inside and closed the door behind him, the bottom of his prosthetics crunching on the glass.
Stan Lee looked around and took in the scene. The furniture was older than he remembered, as was the refrigerator. Otherwise, everything was the same, right down to the wallpaper.
The very first time Stan Lee had been in Judd Coker’s house, it was the night of the moon landing—July 1969—the same night Judd had shot and killed the nun in the upstairs hallway.
The nun with the knife.
Most people would think shooting a nun with a twelve-gauge shotgun, just because she broke into a house, was overkill—even if she was carrying a knife. Not Stan Lee. Stan Lee thought it was cool.
Judd was a stud.
Judd had bagged himself a nun.
More importantly, Judd had killed a nun who’d come to Mayville to kill Stan Lee but had accidently turned up the wrong drive.
“You ever figure out why the nun wanted to kill you?” Kara asked from the kitchen chair.
Stan Lee nodded. “Yeah, because of the three girls I killed at the school that night—the three blind mice.”
There was no doubt about it, Stan Lee knew. The nun had come for him, as evidenced by the nun’s to-do list that he’d found on the kitchen floor that night.
Find Stan Lee’s address (Wisconsin)
Good walking boots
Leather gloves
Bring the knife
Bus ticket to Wisconsin
Money for food and cabs
Pack
Store bag in locker at bus depot
Mail letter to Onyx
Kill Stan Lee
Scrawled across the bottom of the napkin was Opa and Oma’s address. Fortunately, Stan Lee found the note and destroyed it before the police saw it, keeping him out of things.
“I didn’t think nuns did that kind of thing,” Kara said. “Kill people, I mean.”
“Yeah, well this nun was different,” Stan Lee said.
Stan Lee reached the top of the stairs and gazed down the hall, the events of that night flooding his memory—including two details he either hadn’t recalled, or simply hadn’t put together—until that moment.
The first detail was the envelope the sheriff had pulled from the pocket of the nun’s habit.
“Did you check her pockets for ID?” the sheriff asked.
Judd shook his head. “I most certainly did not.”
The sheriff bent down, slid his hand in the pocket of the nun’s habit, and pulled out an envelope with an address written on the front. “Any of you know someone named Onyx Webb?” the sheriff asked.
None of them did.
The name Onyx Webb was meaningless to Stan Lee at the time—but not anymore.
On the newspaper article on the wall in the kill room…
At the Onyx Webb Film Festival…
Her signature on the painting he’d stolen from Mika Flagler’s living room…
It felt like Onyx Webb was everywhere.
But it was the other thing that had him reeling.
It was the knife.
The nun had come with a knife—the same knife he’d used to stab Declan Mulvaney.
Stan Lee stood in the window, smoking an unfiltered Marlboro cigarette and gazing out at the snow-covered landscape.
“Did you get my cigarettes?” Kara asked from across the room.
He did, but she could wait.
“It’s all just coincidence,” Kara said. “You know that, right?”
Stan Lee didn’t think so. He could tell himself it was a coincidence all he wanted, but he knew better. So many events a mere coincidence? Hardly. There was something else going on, but he had no idea what it was.
“There’s no reason to be scared,” Kara said, as if reading his mind. “You’re the big bad wolf, Stan—not some old hag in a lighthouse.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Stan Lee finished his Marlboro and dropped it to the floor, and then stepped on it. Then he fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out Kara’s Virginia Slims and lit one for her.
Kara took a deep drag off her cigarette and exhaled the smoke.
“Why?” Stan Lee asked.
“Why what?” Kara asked.
“You know what I’m asking,” Stan Lee said.
“What? Why did I jump out in front of the reaper that day?” Kara asked.
Stan Lee nodded.
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Stan Lee said. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”
Kara took another drag from her cigarette and dropped it to the floor and stubbed it out with her toe. “I wanted to get your attention. Why else?”
Stan Lee snorted and shook his head. “Yeah, well, there were better ways, you know—ways that wouldn’t have ended with me having my legs ripped off.”
Kara shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“Explain.”
“Okay. Do you remember being at the asylum? We spent every minute together. You needed me. Needed me. And then what happens? You got rescued and started ignoring me, pushing me away. You and that stupid psychiatrist. One minute I was your BFF, and the next I was persona non-grata.”
“That’s not true,” Stan Lee said.
“Yes, it is,” Kara said.
“So you decided to jump in front of the reaper?”
“No, you decided to have me jump in front of the reaper,” Kara said. “It was all you. Everything is you.”
Stan Lee looked away and gazed out the window again.
He didn’t like the idea that Kara was imaginary. It made him feel alone. Scared.
Stan Lee turned back and found the room was empty.
Kara was gone.
CRIMSON COVE, OREGON
JANUARY 21, 2011
SIX DAYS WAS not a long time to be married, but it was long enough for Onyx to know she’d made a terrible mistake.
The mistake wasn’t because she didn’t love Noah.
She was.
The mistake had nothing to do with the wedding itself. The wedding was perfect. It was small, just as her wedding to Ulrich had been—but very different, of course. So very different. There was nothing about her wedding with Noah that felt forced. Or rushed.
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