by M. Leighton
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
This book is not a fairy-tale romance. Yet, it’s the most romantic story I’ve ever told. It’s a journey of pain and loss, of hope and happiness. It’s both achingly tragic and exquisitely beautiful. It’s a love story. A true love story about real love. The kind that sees you through the night and holds you when you cry. The kind that won't give up and never lets go. The kind we all dream about and few find. But it’s real. I promise you, it’s real. I’ve seen this kind of love, and I've seen this kind of heartbreak. I got to see it up close and personal, and quite honestly, I will never be the same. I hope it changes you as much as it changed me.
The Empty Jar
Three months touring Europe.
Romantic. Dazzling. Unforgettable.
The trip of a lifetime.
But some lifetimes are shorter…
We couldn’t have known it would work out this way. No one could. No one could’ve guessed that something so beautiful could be so tragic.
But it is tragic.
Yet so, so beautiful.
That’s what sacrifice is—beauty and tragedy.
It’s pain and suffering for something or someone you love.
And this is the ultimate sacrifice.
One stunning act of true love.
This is our story.
Our true love story.
Kindle Edition
Copyright 2016, M. Leighton
Cover photo by Fergregory
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http://www.mleightonbooks.com
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and storylines are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Dedication
To my wonderful father, TEM,
who used to catch lightning bugs with me when I was a little girl. The world is a lesser place without you in it. But my jar is no less full. You made sure of that while you were alive.
I love you, Dad. Always.
Until I see you again…
And to all of you who have lost someone you loved,
This is for you.
Death is not the opposite of life, but part of it—Haruki Murakami
Prologue
Save a Prayer
In the attic, one day in the future
The dusty box lies open at my feet. The scent of ancient memories and dampness wafts up to tickle my nose. I hold back a sneeze as I rifle through Dad’s things, looking for the old Mason jar. It’s at the very bottom beneath an old baseball mitt, a Barbie doll, and a red puffy vest I can remember wearing a thousand years ago during one of my first snows. Carefully, I pull out the container, the glass cold against my palm, and I twist the lid. At eighty-six, my strength isn’t what it once was, but it’s my gnarled, arthritic fingers that can’t budge the rusted metal. I give up and stare into the empty jar for several long minutes, imagining it full of lightning bugs, a colony of brightly-lit bellies that lulled me to sleep more nights than I can count.
I glance back down into the box, looking for the note that went with this jar, but I don’t see it anywhere. Not that I really need it. Even after all these years, I can still recall what it said. I still remember the promise of the empty jar.
When you look at this jar, don’t think of it as empty. It’s not. It’s full of promise, promise of all the bright and beautiful things that it will hold. Your life is the same way. It won’t ever be empty if you can see the beauty that will fill it. You are full of promise, baby. Just like this empty jar.
Just as I remember the words of that note, I know exactly what I’ll find when I turn the jar up on its end. A message from a lifetime ago, etched into the glass.
I love you, baby girl. More than I could ever tell you. Don’t go to bed with dirty feet or an empty jar. Say your prayers every night, and never stop chasing the lightning bugs.
One
Bed of Roses
Nate
“Welcome to the next three months,” I announce with a flourish as I walk through the door. From behind my back, I produce a pair of plane tickets in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. My jacket is unbuttoned, my tie loosened and I’ve worked on schooling my smile into “casually relaxed” since I turned onto our street five minutes ago.
I knew that’s what my wife would need.
Helena crosses the kitchen toward me, pulling her robe tighter around her waist. I recognize the gesture for what it is—insecurity about her weight gain. She is deeply bothered by it. But me? I’ve hardly noticed. I love her every curve whether she does or not.
Over the years, I’ve watched her transform from a young woman coming into her own into a real woman who knows exactly who she is and what she wants. The changes have been both emotional and physical. She hasn’t been as fond of the physical ones as I have. I’ve loved the rounding of her hips and breasts, and I’ve appreciated the graceful aging of her oval face. Lena is one of the few who is actually getting better with time. Its passage is only enhancing the incredible beauty she’s always had. Or at least that’s how I see it.
Her cheeks have slimmed as the fullness of youth gave way to the leanness of maturity. Her lips spread more readily into a smile as the shyness of her younger years waned. And now the smooth skin around her eyes is crinkled with the lines of a thousand laughs, a sure sign of the life she’s lived. She calls them “badges of courage”. She even laughs when she says it. I think every one of them make her even more beautiful.
“Nate, are you sure this is what you want? We don’t have to…”
As she approaches, I see the uncertainty etched on her features. It’s there in the concerned pleat of her brow, the worried redness of her lips and the woeful brown of her eyes. My gorgeous wife is troubled.
I know every subtle nuance of her thoughts and her moods. They shine on the landscape of her face like a movie projected onto a blank white canvas.
I know that face.
I know it and all its hundreds of expressions like I know the vein work on the back of my hand. She’s never been able to hide what she was thinking or feeling.
Not from me.
I set the tickets and the champagne onto the corner of the spotless black granite island and take Lena gently by the shoulders.
“I swear it,” I pronounce firmly before she can rehash her million reasons why this isn’t a good idea. “They’ll be the best three months of our lives.”
“Well, maybe not yours,” she clarifies.
“Yes. Of mine, too. Promise me you’ll stop worrying about this.”
Lena drops her eyes and turns her expressive face to the side, no doubt in hopes she can hide the lie from me. Which she can’t. “Okay.”
With a curved finger hooked under her chin, I urge her face back toward mine and I lean in until we are forehead to forehead, nose to nose. “Liar,” I whisper, brushing her lips with my own.
I know my battle is just beginning. It will take time and a lot of distraction to convince my wife not to fret about our trip. I’m determi
ned to make it the best it can possibly be, though, even if it means wearing myself out reminding her that this is what I want. In the end, it’ll be worth it. There is no question of that. If I can give her nothing else, I will give her this.
“My heart,” I murmur, rubbing the tip of my nose back and forth over hers, wishing I could make things right, make things better. Change them.
But knowing I can’t.
“For yours,” she replies, as she has since the night I proposed to her just over sixteen years ago. One of the best nights of my life, and they’ve only gotten better with time.
Time.
I squelch the thought that erupts like an acidic volcano, spewing destructive lava through my mind. There are some things I won’t allow myself to dwell on. Not until I absolutely have to.
“We’ll celebrate our anniversary on the banks of the River Thames and we’ll celebrate every day after that someplace new. The French Riviera, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Belgium. Everywhere we’ve ever wanted to go, we’ll go.”
“What if the only place I’ve ever really wanted to be was in your arms?”
My chest tightens painfully as the still-new fear wraps its cold, black fingers around my heart. Quickly, before Lena can notice, I wrestle it into the background, just like I used to wrestle our skis into the hall closet every spring. I’d press them in with one hand, in among the other various debris of our life together, and then I’d close the door as fast as I could before they fell out. Both Lena and I both know to open that door with caution. We joke about it often and use it as our go-to analogy for awful situations.
We both know that one could easily be hurt by what rests behind it.
Summoning a smile, I reply, “That’s the one place that will always be available to you. They’re open twenty-four seven. Day or night. Rain or shine. As long as we both shall live.”
“As long as we both shall live?”
“As long as I live,” I explain.
I feel the slight shake of her head before she buries her face in the curve of my neck, trying unsuccessfully to hide her emotion from me. She does it often—tries to hide what she’s feeling. At least she does these days. And I let her. I know she needs to feel as though she’s somehow sparing me from her devastation.
But she isn’t.
I know. I always know. I am actually sparing her by pretending that I don’t.
They say ignorance is bliss. I think I might just have to agree. There are many, many things I wish I didn’t know because once you know, you can’t unknow.
I’m aware of the moment that she rallies, the moment when she, too, stuffs the skis back into the closet to be taken out only when they must. Or when the latch gives way and the door flies open unexpectedly, dumping those damn skis out onto the floor. I’m aware because she runs her hands up my arms, over my shoulders and then laces her fingers behind my neck, leaning into me in that way she’s always done when she wants more than just a kiss.
If I weren’t trying so hard to guard the closet door and those damn skis, I’d probably growl.
“Then let’s get this party started the right way.”
When our lips meet again, there is hunger. And desperation. And sadness. It rings like an inaudible bell in every touch, every whisper, every one of her soft moans. Within seconds, our tongues tangle in a sweetly familiar dance that is followed closely by sure fingers that undo buttons, tease skin and incite nerves.
She excites me.
She always has.
It isn’t until I sweep my wife into my arms and carry her, naked, to our bed that our lovemaking slows to the careful memorization of body and movement and moment. Even in the throes of our shared passion, the truth—and the future—is there.
It’s always there.
In the background.
In the closet.
With the skis.
Waiting…
Two
Bitter Wine
Lena
“Mimosas for breakfast? Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”
I smile at Nissa, my neighbor. She and her husband, Mark, are our only really close friends. Since neither Nate nor I have many living relatives, and none that are actually close to us (emotionally or geographically), our neighbors are like family.
She is my best and only close friend and has been since Nate and I moved in next door to her. We bought this place two years after we got married, when Nate landed his first job as a financial analyst at a big bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. On our third night in the house, Nissa came to the back door, like we’d known each other all our lives, carrying an armload of casserole dishes containing every Southern-fried family recipe she could make. She was as different from me as night from day and we took to one another like bees to honey. Or like flies to shit, as Nissa is fond of saying. She never specifies who the shit is, though.
“What? A girl can celebrate, can’t she?”
“Of course,” she responds, enthusiastically draining most of her flute in one long gulp. “I’d just like to know what we’re celebrating. Since it includes champagne, I know you didn’t bring me here to tell me that you finally got pregnant. Although, as weird as you’ve been acting for the last few weeks, I wouldn’t have been surprised.” I swallow the lump in my throat, making sure to maintain my placid expression as I watch my friend. “So, what’s going on? Spill.”
I hold Nissa’s blue eyes with my own light brown ones, committing to memory the way this feels—to be sitting in my kitchen on a quiet morning, chatting with my friend as effortlessly as leaves fall from the trees in autumn.
It would be so easy to tell her. We’ve always shared that type of relationship—open honesty, no holds barred—but this is different. I won’t give my sweet friend this burden to bear. Because it is a burden and I love Nissa too much to hurt her.
I’ve spent the majority of my life protecting others from pain in any way I can. Some things never change. Not even when I’ve so desperately needed someone else to help carry the load.
“Nate brought it home last night so we could celebrate. We just didn’t drink much of it.”
Memories of our lovemaking drift through my head, easing the tension in my mouth and turning my smile into a genuine curve of the lips.
“Celebrate what?”
“He left the bank,” I say carefully, my eyes darting nervously from Nissa’s sharp periwinkle eyes down to my untouched mimosa and back again.
I knew Nissa would have a thousand questions—she knows Nate and me too well not to—and I thought I was prepared to field them all. I only have a couple of days before we leave and I thought surely I could keep the truth from Nissa for that long.
Maybe I was wrong.
I’ve always been a terrible liar. But this is so important…
“Left? Left like quit-his-job left? Or left like I’m-taking-a-long-lunch left?”
I chuckle. Three months would be a very long lunch. “Left like quit. Left like left left. Permanently left.”
“Why?” Nissa asks, seconds before her eyes widen in understanding. “Oh God, he’s not sick again, is he?”
I gulp down the wave of nausea that swells behind my tonsils and I shake my head. “No. He’s taking me to Europe. For three months.”
Nissa’s mouth catches up with her rounded eyes and she squeals. The sound is so loud enough it sets Mr. Johnson’s dog, Radley, barking.
“Shhhh,” I chastise lightly, unable to stop my grin. “You’ll wake the neighborhood.”
To understand Nissa, you have to know that she’s vivacious, outspoken, and Southern to the bone. And loud. Very loud. She’s the type of person who is of the opinion that if she is awake, everyone else should be, too. Although normally she keeps her decibel level in check so as not to disturb her children, there are times when she simply can’t contain her exuberance. Right now—when an impending extended dream trip abroad has just been announced—constitutes one of those times.
“I don’t give a damn!
” she exclaims. “If we have to be up, everybody should have to be up.”
I laugh outright. As I suspected.
That’s Nissa for you. But I love her like family.
Nissa and I have suffered from insomnia for years. We have this routine where we watch for the other’s kitchen light to come on. It’s a silent invitation to come on over and enjoy not sleeping together. We alternate houses and today was my turn. And just as well. I’d hesitated in turning on my light at all. If it had been up to me to go to Nissa’s, I’d probably have chickened out altogether. But I’d done it. I’d turned on my light and forged bravely ahead because it’s not my nature to take the easy way out. I’ve always been a fighter. A quiet, steady, reliable fighter.
“We leave on Friday.”
“Friday, as in the day after tomorrow?”
“Well, this is Wednesday,” I say, counting on my fingers, “tomorrow is Thursday, which means the next day must be Friday. One, two, three…” I tease.
I’m not surprised when Nissa slaps my fingers playfully. “Don’t be a smart ass,” she says gruffly. Her smile doesn’t fade, though. If anything, it broadens in excitement.
My best friend and I have always lived vicariously through each other’s life. Since high school, Nissa has wanted a career and a life of travel, but an early pregnancy shattered her dreams, and she’s never quite been able to pick up the pieces. I, on the other hand, have enjoyed just such a life. I graduated from college with a master’s degree in nursing and have become one of the most experienced nurse practitioners at Franklin Osborne Cancer Center, something I’m incredibly proud of. Considering my home life, it wasn’t easy to make anything of myself, and the fact that I did what I set out to do makes me feel more than just accomplished. It makes me feel whole.