Lost Love Letters

by Cheryl Shireman

  I’d love to do Facetime with you now. I bet you’d look exactly the same, only older, a few more lines and probably less hair – although I don’t imagine you as having gone bald. It would be a minor tragedy for you to have lost that thick, black wavy hair.

  I still dream about you sometimes, but in my dream you’ve just been away somewhere, or you pretended you were dead and I’m furious, but either way you’re still young and healthy and passionate, never middle-aged and paunchy.

  Would you still fancy me, I wonder? There was such a spark between us. I can still recall the feel of your hot, dry hand in mine. You were my first real love, and one of only two men in my life that I’ve ever felt truly passionate about. Heart-jumping, adrenalin-rushing, sleep-depriving infatuation. But it was a very stormy, on-off relationship, wasn’t it? You are one of very few boyfriends I’ve had that I used to fight with – big, dramatic gestures and storming out, only to make up later with sweet words and lingering kisses. You strangled me once, do you remember? It was for a bet, though, nothing sinister. Stupid sixteen-year olds messing around, laughing, and you pulled the scarf tighter and tighter around my neck ‘to see what would happen.’ I was sitting on a stool in my parents’ kitchen, the yellow vinyl-covered barstool with the small rip in the top that brown spongy stuffing leaked out of. You kept pulling. I was giggling and trying to act tough. I said I’d slap you round the face as hard as I could later – I can’t remember why, perhaps it was something to do with the strangulation. Suddenly everything went black and little dancing stars dazzled behind my eyelids. I slipped sideways off the stool and you caught me. I felt sick, and for a moment neither of us spoke. You held me. We’d stopped laughing. Normality resumed a few moments later, but I hadn’t forgotten my threat to slap you. As you were leaving, after a fond kiss goodbye, I whacked you across the face so hard that you were literally speechless, clutching your cheek and staring at me. I felt terrible. I have never slapped anyone since, in jest or anger!

  But that was the only day we were violent with one another. My other memories are of many ‘firsts’ with you. The closest I’d yet come to full sex. The first time I ever ate spaghetti bolognaise, cooked by your Italian mother. It was a disaster, and you laughed at my attempts to get the meal from plate to mouth – I was mortified! The first – and last – fur coat I ever owned was given to me by you as a Christmas present, a huge old beaver lamb that you bought off your big sister. I loved it. I used to wear it to parties so I had something warm to sleep in when we all crashed out. Arguing, then making up. Splitting up, then getting back together again. We always used to say that we’d get married, then get divorced – and then re-marry. Jealousy strangled me even harder than you’d done, when you dated other girls in our ‘in between’ times.

  In the summer of 1983, after several months apart, we had a brief reunion. You had just finished your ‘A’ levels and left school, being a year ahead of me. Our reunion only lasted a couple of weeks, because there was someone else on the scene for you, a girl called Ali in our circle of friends who had let it be known that she was absolutely crazy about you. So was I, but I played it too cool that time, and you couldn’t resist being adored. I remember you saying ‘I’ll always love you, but Ali’s just so mad about me... I just want to see where it will go,’ as if you had no choice... We agreed to cool it, just for a while, in the acknowledged but mistaken assumption that it was only a matter of time before we would soon get back together. We thought we had all the time in the world.

  I never saw you again.

  Two weeks later I was at home in the bath, listening to Radio One on my transistor radio, up to my neck in bubbles. It was about 8pm, a balmy summer’s night. There was a knock at the front door, and my mother answered it. Things were not great at home at that time, as my dad had been diagnosed with liver cancer just a couple of months earlier.

  ‘It’s for you,’ Mum called up the stairs. ‘It’s Rob.’

  Rob, your best mate. He had never called round to visit me before, not on his own. I was puzzled, but not alarmed.

  ‘I’m in the bath!’ I yelled back. I heard a brief muttered conversation, then footsteps on the staircase.

  ‘I think you’d better get out,’ Rob said from the landing. I still wasn’t overly concerned, although I thought it was odd that he’d come upstairs. I hauled myself out of the bath and wrapped a towel around my body. Unlocking the bathroom door, I came face to face with Rob. He looked as unwell as I have ever seen another living person. His face was greyish-green, sunken, eyes red-rimmed and puffy.

  ‘What?’ I asked, alarmed now. ‘What’s happened?’

  He reached out a shaky hand to me, looking thirty years older than someone who’d recently turned eighteen.

  ‘It’s John,’ he said, his lips wobbling. Tears jumped into both our eyes. ‘He’s dead. He died in a car-crash on his way to work this morning.’

  You idiot. You arrogant, stupid, boy-racer in the Lancia you were so proud of. Six in the morning and you assumed there would be no cars on the road as you screeched along the country lanes to your summer job in the supermarket. The one car you came up behind, you decided it was a good idea to overtake - on a blind bend.

  Obviously you hadn’t expected there to be a motorhome coming the other way. It was a head-on collision. In one split second you killed yourself, and orphaned two small children whose parents were driving the motorhome. Your beloved Lancia exploded in a ball of flames, and you had to be identified by your blackened wristwatch. Apparently the firemen were vomiting by the side of the road as they cut your charred body from the wreckage.

  I gaped wordlessly at Rob when he told me, tears now pouring down my face. I remember the feel of the bubbles from my bath sliding in tandem down my legs. I had to sit down because I was worried I was going to faint, and my towel would drop. Even in the middle of the crisis, I was aware that I didn’t want Rob to see me naked. We hugged, awkwardly, desperately, and I clung on to my towel with my free hand.

  I don’t remember him leaving. I just remember that nothing was ever really the same again. I remember your funeral, the raw pain of it, and that I didn’t know that everyone was going back to your house for the wake afterwards. So I missed out on getting drunk and crying with all our friends - but perhaps it was for the best. I heard that Ali was there, in bits, and that she got presented with a montage of photos of you and her (even though you’d only been dating her for two weeks, she was part of our circle of friends, and had loved you for a long time before you ever acknowledged her). If I’d been there, that would have snapped the final pieces of my heart into brittle fragments. I only have three photos of you, and not a single one of us together.

  Dad died the following May, and it was a double blow that took me at least twenty years to fully get over. It’s entirely possible that you and I would never have drifted back together again, especially if you had joined the Army. I certainly can’t imagine myself as a military wife. Maybe you and Ali would have married instead? Who knows.

  I still think you’re a prat. But I do miss you, even now after all these years. And I’m glad we had our funny little teenage on-off relationship for those couple of years, because you showed me how love can be – exciting, strong, hot-headed and passionate. I’m sure it would have subsided to something more manageable had we had the chance to get back together. That, or petered away into nothing. We’ll never know. But thank you, John, for being such a vivid and enduring part of my life.

  With love, Louise xxx

  Louise Voss

  I started writing as a hobby while living and working in the music business in New York in 1995. TO BE SOMEONE was first published back in 2000, the first novel to come with its own CD soundtrack (on Virgin Records). Then came ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, LIFESAVER and GAMES PEOPLE PLAY.

  I now have a new lease of my writing life, publishing thrillers with Mark Edwards. In Feb 2011, we self-published our first co-written novel, KILLING CUPID, a stalker thriller that reached No.2 on Amazon.co.
uk. In May 2011, we published our second, CATCH YOUR DEATH, which became the first ever fully-independent British book to reach No.1 on Amazon. It stayed at No.1 for a month. We sold almost 100,000 copies of the two titles.

  Both novels are now being published in new editions by HarperCollins. Publishing on Kindle has changed our lives and we are hugely grateful to everyone who has bought either of our books.

  Find Louise online at vossandedwards.com

  Christine Nolfi

  Dear Dad,

  Your death changed my life.

  On a Sunday night in 1992, as you graded papers from your students at Kent State, you suffered the first sharp jabs of a heart attack. You would die on December 6th, St. Nicholas Day.

  Your passing would devastate all of us who loved you. Yet the bittersweet timing of your death with the day set aside to celebrate the patron saint of Christmas seemed a special grace awarded for an exemplary life. I grew up thinking you were Good St. Nick.

  At Higbee’s Department Store, you were in charge of many areas including The Santa Shop memorialized in the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story. If you were alive today, you’d be amused to learn the movie still airs every holiday season. I can’t watch the scenes depicting Higbee’s without remembering you striding beneath the massive chandeliers that decorated Cleveland’s premier department store. You seemed in constant motion across those marble floors, chatting with the salespeople in your employ and snapping commands at the managers following on your heels. You were loud, expressive, commanding, a dynamo in a blue suit and a red power tie. You were also irrepressibly kind, honorable and damn funny when you cut loose.

  Several years ago, in January 2010, a blizzard socked in all the airports east of the Mississippi. I was stranded in Las Vegas. The check-in clerk at Bally’s Casino, noticing my name, asked, “Are you related to the late Mario Nolfi?” It turned out he was one of your former employees. While the line of stranded travelers grew behind me at the counter, he regaled me with stories of how well you had managed the Higbee’s staff. When he’d finished, he gave me a penthouse suite for a bargain basement price.

  But to return to the first, sharp stabs of pain you felt as you sat grading papers: It was late on Sunday night, past 10 P.M. By the time Mom realized you were seriously ill, she was too frightened to think straight. She called Tom. He was your oldest child and only son, and lived a mile away. Tom immediately called 911. Right before he sprinted out the door for the short drive to the hospital, he called his sisters.

  I’ve never asked, but I suspect Tom called us in order of age: Laurie, me, Stacy and Leslie. I’ve always assumed he didn’t call Trish, the baby in our family, because, unlike the rest of us, she lived out of state.

  At dawn on St. Nick’s day, it would fall on Tom and I to call Trish together.

  But I digress. As Tom grabbed his coat and scrambled for his car keys, he wasn’t able to reach Laurie, Stacy or Leslie. They’d already gone to bed and would sleep uninterrupted until Monday’s dawn brought the most unbearable news. He did reach me.

  Scott and I were still awake, embroiled in our usual argument about when we’d finally adopt children. Four years into marriage, with my mid-30s bearing down, I’d begun to give up hope of getting my husband excited about the prospect of becoming parents. His payroll company was expanding and my PR firm was finally off the ground. Before marriage we’d agreed to adopt children but now, the climb to financial stability was enough for Scott—more, perhaps, than he’d ever dreamed. Raising children no longer factored in.

  So there we stood in the kitchen, tossing verbal cannonballs, when the phone rang.

  Like Tom, I dashed to the hospital and arrived within moments of the ambulance.

  As I write this in 2013, the ironies of that night fill me with a surprising peace. Watching you die was a horror I wouldn’t wish on any adult child. Watching Mom crumble to the ground—no, I can’t find comfort in those moments. But the rest of it? Yes.

  Yes, I do.

  As the gurney clattered down the hospital corridor, it was clear you were in agony. Tom steered Mom and I into the room. It was pandemonium as doctors shouted orders and nurses scrambled to obey. You were awake, and I clasped your hand and shouted the only thing that came to mind, the life lesson you’d taught us since childhood:

  Do you want to be a follower or a leader?

  You’d always asked the question whenever we were unsure of the correct path to travel or the best decision required by the situation. It was a question about ethics, about leading an honorable life. Some decisions are hard; they take courage, especially if the choice means standing up for the greater good or putting one’s own needs behind the needs of a group. The finest choices demand sacrifice. They prove one’s mettle—or fashion it with the heat of conscience.

  And so, as it became clear you were losing the good fight, I shouted the question back at you: “Dad, you have to fight! Do you want to be a follower or a leader?”

  As the life ebbed from your veins, you offered a father’s smile and said, “Always a leader.”

  A man’s last words are sacred. They stand as a final gift, a summation. Always a leader. Your words changed me profoundly.

  I found that building my PR firm was no longer enough. Despite Scott’s disinterest, I began searching for a sibling group in Ohio’s foster archives. One disappointment led to another, and soon I was contacting social workers in Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee—I was determined to find a sibling group of children who might never leave the foster care system if I didn’t intercede.

  Here’s the part you’ll love, Dad: One day at work, I missed a deadline for a manufacturer in Willoughby, Ohio. Horrified, I rushed the news release over to the company president’s home. His wife opened the door, and out spilled a tumble of adopted children, seven in all.

  Was this divine intervention? Dad, you were a devout Catholic, which indicates where you’d stand on the subject. And where I stand as well: The company president’s wife gave me the name of a social worker in Seattle, Washington who handled overseas adoptions. I called her the next day. The social worker, in turn, had returned an hour earlier from her latest trip to the Philippines. Right before she had boarded the plane, a missionary she’d met that day stopped her in the airport—he’d just been faxed paperwork on a sibling group that had entered his children’s shelter in Cebu a few minutes earlier. Thanking him, the social worker stuffed the information about the four siblings into her briefcase and boarded the jet for Seattle.

  The next day—the day I called—the case studies on those four kids went out in the packet the social worker sent to me.

  She’d sent about twenty case studies on various sibling groups, but I was immediately caught by the story of those four kids. They’d been abandoned in the jungle; somehow, the oldest girl, age seven, kept her younger brother and two younger sisters alive. The kids were severely malnourished, with a host of physical ailments I knew would take years to heal. And they’d been dumped like garbage in a jungle—how many years of counseling with a first-rate child psychologist would they need?

  Reading the pages, I thought, Four kids? Can I handle four? Unsure, I photocopied the information and dropped it off at Mom’s house. I needed a second opinion because my heart had already taken my common sense hostage.

  A few hours later, Mom called me back. It was clear she’d been crying.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  The deep breath she took carried something sweet across the phone line. “Christine,” she said, “Look at the oldest girl’s birthday.”

  The girl, Christian, was born on December 6—your death date, Dad. Mom and I both took it as a sign I’d finally found my children.

  And it was.

  Dad, those four grandchildren you never lived long enough to meet are now happy, busy twenty-somethings. I’m happily remarried to a man who raised his two kids and helped me finish raising mine. We no longer live in Ohio—two years ago, we escaped the snow and moved to Charleston, South C
arolina. As I write this in the sun and salt air, waves crash into the Isle of Palm beach in a soothing rhythm.

  In my home, ten minutes from the beach, my cozy office is a spacious room above the garage. I begin most days with your question on my lips. Do you want to be a follower or a leader? I lead, Dad. Young writers, whenever I have the opportunity to help them learn the ropes in publishing. More importantly, I’ve been leading my children ever since I led them out of the jungle and planted them in a new life in America. They’ve grown up hearing the story of how your death date signaled that I’d found the children I’d call my own. We celebrate the story every December 6th as we light the birthday candles on Christian’s cake.

  Each day, as I power down my Mac after many hours of writing, I take a moment to talk to you. Your photograph hangs on my office wall for inspiration. I try to live up to your example. Were you a follower or a leader?

  A leader, always.

  Me too.

  Christine Nolfi

  Award-winning author Christine Nolfi provides readers with heartwarming and inspiring fiction. Midwest Book Review lists Treasure Me, Second Chance Grill and The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge as “highly recommended.” Her latest contemporary fiction release is The Dream You Make. She has also written the manual for writers Reviews Sell Books. Look for her next fiction release in autumn, 2013.

  Find Christine online at christinenolfi.com

  Shanon Grey

  Dear Mom,

  Strange—I don’t even know if you would have wanted to be called Mom. Would you have thought it irreverent, as my stepmother did? Would you have liked Mommy or Mother better? I’ll choose Mom, not because of any derision, but because I know I love it when my daughter, your granddaughter, calls me that—unless she’s ill or upset, then she reverts to Mommy or Momma. Funny how those simple names evoke such feelings inside of me. I wonder how it made you feel.