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A quote: “Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.” ~~ Franz Schubert
I’ll start with a story …
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He gently brushed his lips on her forehead and her mouth turned up at the corners.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, dear.”
“I wasn’t asleep … just resting my eyes. Did you find it?”
He has given her gifts of jewelry and books and children. But this is what she wanted, this envelope yellowed with age. The first valentine he had ever written to her. She sighs, contented.
He remembers that as he gently brushes his lips against her now cold forehead, tucks the envelope under her crossed hands, whispering his goodbyes before the lid closes.
“Wait for me.”
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Now, it’s your turn.
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.featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: The couple leaned against each other and looked at the gathered family members. It was loud but they enjoyed it.
“Never knew it would get this way,” the woman said.
“Especially after our rough start,” the man agreed.
“You were arrogant.”
“It was a reaction to your behavior.” They laughed at the shared joke.
“Do any of them have the Methuselah gene?” she asked.
He nodded. “The boy over there. I let one of the others know about him.” He kissed her fondly.
“You gave me the best three centuries I could ask for.”
“I love you too,” she answered.
Darleen Click says: Oooo! A Howard family reference? Great dialogue, bravo!
Cameron says: Not sure who the Howard Family so it’s an accidental reference. I just liked the idea of two people with a mutation that makes them live a long time near the end of their lives and watching their descendants. -:-)
Cameron says: Quick web search Cool! Heinlein is awesome.
Lisa had been uneasy about returning to her old apartment, even to retrieve irreplaceable belongings. Sure, her California driver’s license had her home address up at the family winery — but the UC Berkeley Admissions office would have her local address, so she had to assume that the Feds would know where she lived.
But Klim had reassured her that it was safe, that the apartment had remained untouched. In fact, the hardest thing was getting the door unlocked, given that her keychain had been among the possessions the Altamont city cops had taken in the process of booking her. But the supposedly more secure digital lock actually proved an advantage — now that she had better control over her psi, it wasn’t that hard to persuade the electronics to unlock. In and out, grab the things that couldn’t be replaced and lock the door behind them.
Now they were back in Klim’s apartment halfway across town, leafing through an old photo album. Not the digital ones in her laptop, but an actual ring binder filled with sheets of photographs.
“That’s Grandma and Grandpa Tarrant, Mom’s parents. It’s a long story.” Right now Lisa didn’t feel up to delving into her uncle’s lifelong struggles or his fatal accident. Better to be glad her grandparents had embraced their son-in-law as heir to the family winery. “But that’s one of the last pictures of them, celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary, up at the Senior Center in Napa. It was Valentine’s Day, so they were all dressed up in red and white.”
No point in getting into how their actual anniversary was three days earlier. They’d been married in a difficult era, amidst an unpopular war. Grandpa’s number had come up, so they’d wanted to tie the knot before he headed off to Basic. Sheer luck had sent him to the Fulda Gap to keep an eye on the Soviets, rather than off to to the jungles to fight the NVA — but she wasn’t going to talk about that with Klim, even if the Soviet Union had been a dead letter for almost three decades.
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