Until Forever

by Luisa Cloutier

  “I missed you.”

  “Now? After all this time?”

  “No, not just now. I’ve missed you for a long, long time,” he said. He reached over and grasped my hands. “Luisa, I missed you even before we started living apart. It just took us being apart for me to realize how much I missed you, and how important you are to me.”

  “Is that why you sent me divorce papers?”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “You keep using that excuse. What is it that you want?”

  “The same thing I always wanted. You, by my side. What do you want?” he asked.

  I thought a moment, took a breath to calm myself and said, “The same thing.”

  . . . . .

  Two weeks before Christmas, Brandon told me, “Luisa, I want to come home. I want to be with you forever.”

  “I do too,” I said.

  The day he walked back into the house, it became a home again. We were so happy to be together that neither of us questioned the other, neither of us had any jealousy or doubts. We were meant to be together and never be apart again.

  CHAPTER 17

  The next summer Brandon and I flew to Santa Barbara, California, to attend a conference on starting your own personal training business. After three days there, Brandon was sure he could do it.

  We walked along the beach the last night before we left. The place was so beautiful. We both felt energized.

  “We’ll have to give up a lot of things,” Brandon told me, “in order to do this. It’s going to take a lot of money to get off the ground, but I know we can do it.”

  “Where do we get the money?” I asked.

  “I’ll figure that part out. But I think this is our time. We have to take this chance.”

  “I believe in you, Brandon. If you say you can do it, I’ll take the risk.”

  “I can do it. I promise.”

  I held me, and I felt safe and happy and confident.

  “Maybe someday we can retire here,” I said as we continued to walk. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “As long as I’m with you, anywhere is beautiful.”

  . . . . .

  Every week we would meet to discuss the business plan. Brandon worked out more and more of the details as time went on. He found a franchise that he said would be good for us to buy into. And he figured out where we would get the money.

  “We’ll sell the house,” he said. “The market has gone up a lot since we bought it three years ago. We can make over a hundred thousand dollars profit and with the money saved in the bank, that’s how we’ll pay for the business.”

  “Where will we live?”

  “We’ll get a smaller place. I know it’s going backward a little, but remember I said we would have to give up some things? This is one. But it’ll only be for a short time. Once the business takes off, I’ll buy you the house of your dreams.”

  . . . . .

  The realtor told Brandon that the price he wanted was too high. The market had gone up, but not that much. No one was going to pay that.

  “That’s my price,” Brandon told him. “Sell it at that price or I’ll find another realtor.”

  Less than a month later the realtor called to say he had an offer, at the price Brandon wanted.

  . . . . .

  Three months later, we opened our Fitness Together studio.

  Brandon had such a good reputation in the area that people came to us right away. We started doing excellent business. I wanted to be by Brandon’s side so I quit my job, got certified myself, and began working as a trainer. I loved it. Not only because I was near Brandon, but also because the work itself was satisfying.

  Instead of numbers and contracts and financial matters, I was helping individual people improve their lives. It truly was personal training. I developed close friendships with my clients as I helped them modify their bodies, improve their health and make their life better. With many I became like family. I worked the way Brandon had taught me, with a positive attitude and treating each person as though when I was training them, nothing else in the world mattered. I wasn’t talking with another trainer or another customer. I was as focused with my client at that moment as much as they were. And I got results. That was Brandon’s method. And it worked.

  Our business became successful quickly. Within a few months we became one of the top grossing franchises in the company. It felt good to have the stresses of money gone, but to be able to do that while spending all day, every day, with the man of my dreams was more than I had ever hoped for.

  Brandon found us a new home, as beautiful as he had promised. Much larger than the two of us needed, but Brandon said he wanted me to have the best. We’d both worked hard, sacrificed a lot. We deserved this house. To me it was a mansion, with two master bedrooms, plenty of guestrooms for both our families, a kitchen fit for a chef, more than three thousand square feet to make our new life together. I felt like a princess who had everything she ever wanted, and more.

  We were careful this time not to make the same mistake as before, not to let our work take over our lives and push us apart. We made time for each other. We were determined to keep our marriage strong. We dated. We paid attention to each other.

  We even managed to take a week off for Valentine’s Day and go to Jamaica. Getting away from the business was difficult, but we made it happen, and it turned out to be the most romantic week I had ever spent in my life. We laughed and danced and played on the beach, and we made love under the stars at night. We left the island feeling even closer than we’d ever felt before.

  On the flight home Brandon said, “We should get married again.”

  “You want to marry me again? You were crazy twice already.”

  “Then let’s be crazy three times.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  Looking into his eyes, I saw the love he had for me. All we had been through hadn’t dimmed it one bit. Nor had it lessened my love for him.

  “You’re not sure?” he asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then let’s do it. We’ll get married in Jamaica. On the beach. This time both families will be there. It’ll be the best one of all. Until the fourth time…”

  Life was beautiful. Even my dreams hadn’t been this good. I thanked God for our happiness and I committed never to let it slip away from us again. Experience made us live wiser. Having been through that pain would now assure us a time of joy.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 18

  SUMMER 2013

  Boylston, Massachusetts

  I awoke in the middle of the night, terrified that my father was going to die.

  Not having seen him in years, I couldn’t be sure about his health. I talked to Angela on the phone often, and she would have told me if he wasn’t doing well. If she knew. But sometimes you can’t tell.

  I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, the vague image of a man clutching his heart swimming in my head. As if he were having a heart attack. Or maybe the dream was telling me that my father’s heart was broken from not seeing me in such a long time. I had been away from Italy too long. I needed to go back. My father was getting older. I needed to pay attention to the premonition.

  I didn’t sleep any more that night. I sat up, awake, thinking about my father and listening to Brandon breathing beside me. I got strength from his proximity. I thought about waking him up, but decided to let him sleep. He had been exhausted when he went to bed, as he was most nights. Besides, what could he do? He would
say it’s only a dream, everything is going to be all right.

  As well as he knew me, and as much as he loved me, he couldn’t truly understand the things that were normal and unquestioned to me, to the culture I came from. Dreams and premonitions were things we listened to. We prayed to a God that no one saw, and believed that it meant something. Premonitions were just as real.

  I looked at the red digits of the glowing clock beside the bed. 3:22. In Italy it was six hours later, 9:22, so my father had been up for a couple hours. Thinking it might calm my nerves a bit, I went downstairs to the kitchen and tried to call him. He didn’t answer at his apartment. I tried his cell phone. No answer there either. Instead of putting me at ease, the calls only made me worry more.

  Brandon woke up at 5:00 to get to the gym for his early appointments. When he came downstairs, I told him about the feeling I had and said, “I need to go visit him.”

  “Definitely. If you want to go, I’ll make it happen. If I could get away, I would go with you, but I need to stay and run the business.”

  Going to Jamaica and leaving the business closed had been problematic enough. Brandon said we couldn’t do that again yet. There was too much going on. We had begun grooming one of the trainers we’d hired to be able to take some management responsibilities. Some day he would know enough to step in and take care of things while we went away, but he wasn’t there yet. So one of us had to stay.

  “I really think I need to go,” I said.

  “I agree. Call him, work things out, we’ll make the reservation.”

  “I called him. I can’t reach him.”

  He tried to call with me a few more times before he had to leave for work. Finally my father answered his cell phone. He said he was doing all right. I didn’t tell him about my premonition. I called Angela next, and she said there was nothing wrong with him, but she agreed that he was getting older and that I should come to visit. Bit by bit, my fear subsided. From what he and Angela were saying, he wasn’t in immediate danger. I felt relieved. I made plans to visit in a couple months and jumped back into my work.

  . . . . .

  Brandon and I worked hard on building the business and on keeping our relationship solid and loving. We made it a point to go out to dinner often. It wasn’t the healthiest way to eat, and we were living as healthy a lifestyle as possible, since that’s what we were advocating to our clients and that was what we both believed in. But breaking the meal plan we usually had was worth it if it meant Brandon and I would remain close and in love.

  Brandon was too generous with me, continuously buying me gifts that I didn’t ask for or even need. When I objected to his giving me more and more, he would always say that he did it because he wanted to give to me. It made him feel good. And I deserved it.

  “You’re crazy,” I’d always say.

  He’d always laugh and say, “Crazy in love with you.”

  One night, as we were about to go out to dinner, he told me to hang on a second. He took out a jewelry box and handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Open it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Open it,” he insisted.

  “Why do you keep buying me gifts? I don’t need anything. I have everything.”

  “It makes me happy to do it,” he said. “Please. Open it, okay?”

  I opened the box and was shocked to see the shimmering diamond bracelet. “Oh, my God, this is beautiful. But it must have cost a fortune?”

  “Put it on.”

  He took it out of the box. I watched his large, strong hands gently put it on my wrist.

  “You like it?” he said.

  “It’s incredible.”

  “It’s ten carats!”

  I was stunned. “You’re crazy!”

  “Crazy for you.”

  “No, really, Brandon. This is too much. I can’t take this.” I started to take it off. “It’s too expensive.”

  He put his hand over mine and stopped me. “My love, compared to how much you’re worth to me, the bracelet cost nothing.”

  “I don’t need this,” I said.

  “I need to give it to you. You like it, right?”

  “Yes. It’s beautiful.”

  “Never take it off, okay?”

  “Brandon…”

  “Promise me. I want you to have it and wear it always, and know that it is because I love you and because I’m so thankful for everything you’ve done for me.”

  “Everything I’ve done?”

  “Yes. You put up with a lot, for many years. And you worked hard, for the business, for our marriage, for me.”

  “I do only what any wife would do.”

  “No, my love. You’re something special.”

  “So are you, Brandon.”

  I grabbed his face and kissed him. He surrounded me in his strong arms, pulling me into his world of safety and love. I had made mistakes in my life, who hasn’t? But marrying Brandon, leaving home to follow him, was the most right thing I had ever done.

  I took a breath and said, “But please don’t keep spending so much money on me. Please.”

  “This is the last thing,” he said. “I promise.”

  He smiled at me, that loving smile of his, and I knew that this wouldn’t be the last thing. It was a promise he couldn’t keep.

  I shook my head and laughed. “Bugiardo,” I said, calling him a liar in Italian.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m so lucky to have you.”

  “Bugiardo, me too,” he said.

  CHAPTER 19

  Coming from the temperate climate of Naples, Italy, I found the winters in Massachusetts were most difficult for me. Brandon did well with the snow and wind and freezing temperatures, but I struggled and was happy to stay inside as much as possible. I did a lot of the computer work for our business, keeping the books, maintaining contact with clients and vendors. Brandon was happy to leave all that to me.

  On a morning in January, 2014, after having breakfast with Brandon, I was on the computer, the phone lodged between my shoulder and ear, and I was talking to Norton antivirus customer service department, trying to sort out an issue with our PC.

  Brandon came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder and kissed my neck. “I’m going to take a shower,” he whispered to me.

  I squeezed his hand then turned to face him. I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and told Brandon, “I’ll be up as soon as I finish this and clean the kitchen.”

  “Leave the kitchen,” he said. “We’ll do it later.” He looked beat. I’d never seen him so serious. And he had a funny look on his face, but I didn’t understand what it was.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Go on up. I’ll come soon,” I said.

  He headed upstairs. I resumed my conversation with the Norton Antivirus people. The woman on the other end of the line was telling me things to do, hit this key, click on that, scroll to the bottom of the page and hit OK. Meanwhile I could hear Brandon turn on the shower upstairs. I needed to find a way to do more for him. He was always doing for me, giving to me, worrying about me. He said I did a lot for him, made his live worth living, but I didn’t feel like I did enough. I was determined to change that.

  Straightening out the antivirus software took another fifteen minutes. When I hung up, I went into the kitchen to straighten up. I had no intention to leave it for Brandon to do. I worked for another ten minutes and was almost finished when I heard it. It made me stop what I was doing and just l
isten to make sure I really was hearing it.

  I stood motionless and alone, not making a sound, just listening.

  There it was. The faint hissing of the shower upstairs. Brandon was still showering. I glanced at the clock on the microwave. How much time had passed since he went upstairs? I’d resolved the matter with Norton and nearly cleaned the kitchen. It was close to a half hour. And he was still showering. I knew he liked to take long showers, but even for him this seemed longer than usual.

  I went back to cleaning, hurrying to finish. The hiss of the shower continued, gnawing at my conscience. I started to think that something wasn’t right.

  Leaving the kitchen unfinished, I went through the living room toward the stairs. I peered up at the hallway upstairs. The sound of the shower was louder here for some reason, as if asking me to hurry.

  I headed up the stairs, at first just with quick steps, but then leaping to the top. Upstairs, the sound was even louder. It felt almost as though it was yelling at me.

  I rushed up the hallway to the master bedroom, blew through the door and started to turn toward the bathroom door. Brandon was right there. On the bathroom floor, his body twisted in a surreal position, the shower running beside him, screeching and spitting steam.

  “Brandon!” I screamed and ran to him.

  The bathroom was like a steam room, the air so thick and heavy I could barely breathe. I dropped to my knees beside Brandon and began to shake him.

  “Brandon! Oh, God, what’s wrong?”

  His eyes remained closed, even when I shook him again.

  “Hold on, Brandon! Hold on, my love!”

  I knew how to do CPR because it was part of the personal trainer certification. I started to do chest compressions on him, but I realized I needed to call for an ambulance. I grabbed the cell phone from the pocket of my jeans. My hands trembling, I punched 9-1-1. As I waited for it to connect, I said out loud, “Please, God, don’t take him from me. Please. Please.”