Dear Sarah

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Sunday, June 29th, 1997

“Do you, Michael Dean Aaronson, take Julie Ann Geneser to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish: from this day forward until death do you part?”

Listening to the words, Theo’s hand holding hers so tight, Sarah had felt happy, yet bittersweet, tears coursing down her cheeks. Her son, so tall, so handsome, stood with his back straight and said his vows proudly, his voice carrying in the crowded sanctuary.

And Julie, her lithesome figure flattered by the beautiful wedding gown, had uttered her vows with a clear voice, her eyes steady on Michael.

A month after her dad’s funeral, a letter came in the mail. It was postmarked with a New York address and addressed in Scotty Abernathy’s sharp scrawl. She loved the old coot, but Sarah had set it aside. She would read it when she had a moment to cry and feel sorry for herself.

There had been a wedding to prepare for, after all. She had lost a mother and a father, but she was also gaining a daughter-in-law. I need to focus on the living right now, she had told herself.

The house was quiet, all of the excitement, all of the preparations and the flurry of people dashing about in those last harried moments were now just memories. Sarah sat down and stared at it before she slid a small knife under the flap of the envelope. Inside was a short note from Scotty along with a hand-written letter from her father. She recognized his penmanship instantly. Three pages of thick, rich paper. Her heart panged, missing him again, the loss of his steady presence was still a shock. She hesitated for a moment. What kind of answers would these letters hold? Had Betty received one as well?

Sarah -

I’ve held onto this letter longer than I should. I’ll admit, the enclosed letter from Dino was the first thing I thought of when you telephoned me that evening after your mother’s funeral with the news that your dad was gone. Coming back home, I can’t tell you how I felt hearing that message on the machine.

It all made sense, and yet, it didn’t at the same time. Your father lived, wrote and dreamed in a world of words. I just knew how to sell them, so my old brain can’t take all these damn twists and turns of fate.

That’s what his first novel was all about - fate and our never-ending struggles to change it. “A seminal work” the critics called it. And Schicksal Turnpike was amazing, I must have read it twenty times over the years.

Your dad asked me to send this to you, and only you, in the event of his death. I’ll admit it, I read it and thought he was crazier than a shithouse rat. I’ve known Dino a long time, and according to him, he’s known me eight years longer than that. Damn confusing, if you ask me.

I’ve lived a long time, girl. Long enough to know that sometimes, things don’t have to make sense. They don’t have to follow logic, but that doesn’t make them any less real. If this happened to your dad like he said it did, well, hell, it hurts my brain to think of. I know that in all the years I spent with him, he always had a tiny touch of the blues. You had to really look for it, you know? But it was there.

I got to wonder, if his books and his writing weren’t his gift to all of you, especially this Maggie he mentions, along with Theo and you.

In any case. End of an era. This old dog is packing up. I got no time for these foolish youngsters with visions of fame and fortune in their damn starry eyes. Your dad and the way he wrote, he ruined me forever. I’ll never accept less.

I’m retiring. Hell, maybe I’ll finally get around to marrying Gina and making an honest woman of her if she’ll have me.

You know where to find me.

Yours,

Scotty

Sarah stared at the note from Scotty Abernathy and at the other, far thicker letter in her hand. She felt as if she were standing on a precipice, the fall might not be far, but there would be no going back once she made the jump.

Maybe it would be the answer to everything. Or maybe it would just give her more questions.

She wasn’t sure, but she figured it was time to hear the rest of the story.

Dearest Sarah -

If you are reading this, well, you know how that line goes.

Know that I have loved you, your brother, may he rest in peace, and your sister. Most of all I’ve loved you, though. A father isn’t supposed to have favorites, but I am only human, and you were always my favorite. Perhaps it is because you were conceived in love, in both of my memories of you, and you have grown into an amazing woman in one of them.

When I woke up in the hospital the second time, I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. Losing Maggie, you and Teddy, it was too much. I nearly lost my mind, and I know June was inches from committing me.

Sarah stopped. “What is he talking about?”

“Is everything all right, dear?” Theo had come in, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Damned if a nap doesn’t solve all my ills. I can’t wait to take naps with those future grandkids, how ‘bout you?”

He nuzzled her neck, his cheeks rough, stubbly.

“I have the strangest note here from Scotty, Theo. And a letter from Dad. He’s talking about losing a woman he calls Maggie, Teddy and me in a crash. It sounds a lot like that crazy story Betty told me back at Dad’s funeral.”

Theo looked curious, “My mother was called Maggie, and when I was small, everyone called me Teddy. Man that was hard to outgrow. Can you see me heading into college with the nickname Teddy Bear?” He nuzzled her neck again, hand sliding under her arm and traveling up her ribcage.

“Stop it that tickles!” Sarah smiled at him, then turned back to the letter in her hand. “Now seriously, Theo, read this with me, because I see your name mentioned later on.”

“Okay, okay,” Theo focused on the letter and stopped teasing his wife. They moved to the couch and began to read.

Dearest Sarah -

If you are reading this, well, you know how that line goes.

But I knew you were REAL, Sarah. And Teddy, sorry, Theo, was as well. When you were born the second time, with your perfect little face, those lips that looked like a rosebud, and the small birthmark on your right cheek, I knew that somehow, everything I remembered, everything I knew to have happened, WAS real.

I remembered him then, the man I saw in my coma. The one who spoke to Maggie. Really he wasn’t much more than a boy. He said that he had messed it all up, that he was sorry. He promised to fix it as best as he could. I won’t pretend to understand the conversation. Perhaps he was Conor Saronica, Teddy’s father, but I can’t be sure. I only know that he kept his promise. He saved June and Danny and Betty, and he saved you too, Sarah. I think that, in a way, he brought you back to me.

In truth, it was Scotty who returned first. When he called me on the phone, I recognized his voice immediately. I knew then that I hadn’t hallucinated or dreamed it. He was real. Call me crazy if you like, but I knew who he was because I had known him for eight years.

Sometimes forewarned is forearmed, because I managed to negotiate a hell of a better deal the second time around!

As I moved through life, that second time around, through the years of 1953 through 1962, I knew things I couldn’t have known. Some carefully placed bets on who would win the World Series netted us some extra change, something your mother June never even knew about. I knew Eisenhower would be re-elected, despite many folks disagreeing, and I knew John F. Kennedy would be a shoe-in. All of that prescience stopped after May 13th, 1962, however. After that, it was a blank slate. The future was unfinished, malleable.

Not everything was the same. My books weren’t. Perhaps because I was the variable in all of it. My heart, my mind, they remained independent of the different lives.

I searched for Maggie. For years. It wasn’t until you brought Theo home that I understood. There he was, little Teddy, grown up, turned into a man. I was so proud of him, so full of joy. I wanted to know everything about him! He had been my son for eight years and losing him was as devastating to me as losing Maggie and you.

Learning too that his mother, Magdalene, my beautiful Maggie, had died in a car crash on May 13th, 1962, was something I had suspected. My deepest fears come true.

Of all the emotions or fears this letter might stir in you, reading that Theo is, in my memories, both your brother and your husband might be disturbing to you. Believe me, it took me by surprise, and yet it also made absolute sense. It felt as if the world was put right again in some way by Theo’s return to our lives. Perhaps your souls sought each other out, reuniting that which had been lost.

Sarah, if you are reading this and think that I didn’t love your mother June, you couldn’t be more wrong. It took time for me to let go of Maggie’s memory enough to fall back in love with your mother. But I did. I loved her for every minute thereafter, and I will until the day she dies. Which will be soon. The doctors have given her a month, maybe two.

How can a man love two women? I wish I had the answer to that. I don’t. I weave my words, dream in prose, and long for answers that will never come.

Theo, if you are reading this, and I imagine you are, you have always been a son to me. I was proud to adopt you after I married your mother. I loved you as my son then and as my son-in-law now.

I imagine you as you were the moment I first met you. You will not remember it, but I do. You were four, full of energy, curiosity, and joy. I sat with your mother at that little house on 27th Terrace, near Hospital Hill, and we watched you catch fireflies in an old mayonnaise jar.

When you returned to me that Christmas in 1973, I asked a few questions. Just enough to understand how I had missed you, and your mother, all those years ago.

What would I have done differently? If I had seen Maggie and you there at that house? If I had known that you were just inside, playing with your cousins who were visiting?

I suppose that life turned out just as it was supposed to. You may have grown up without a father for those first few years, and lost your mother in 1962, but you had money, relatives who cared for you, and a decent home. You are a fine man, a good husband, and you have in turn raised a son you can be proud of.

As for me? I fell back in love with my wife, raised three wonderful children, two of whom have survived me, and I have lived a rich and full life.

If there is a heaven, or an afterlife, I hope that Maggie, June and Danny are in it. And God, I hope they all get along! I think they will. I have been so lucky, and so well-loved. I wish that for you, my daughter. I wish it for Theo, the man I will always think of as my son. For Michael too, may he find the love of his life and never let her go.

All of my love...in whatever life we live in next...

Dad

Theo and Sarah sat in silence. Finally, Theo spoke up, “Does this mean we are related?”

Sarah looked at him, “Really? That’s the question you ask first?”

Theo’s face fell, “I’m sorry, that was a poor attempt at humor.” He took the papers, paging through them again. “Sarah, seriously, how is this even possible?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like Scotty said, sometimes things don’t have to make sense. Maybe we can never understand it.”

“And who was this guy he talks about, Conor Saronica, who he thinks he saw during his coma?” Theo asked, pointing back to the spot in the letter. “That he could be my birth father? It’s all absolutely insane.”

“I have no idea. Whatever happened, it was real to him, and Dad wasn’t a head case, not at all. You know that about him, Theo, and he was always so good to you.” She tilted her head and assessed him, “More than that. I thought it was because he missed Danny so, but he sought you out so often. He took time to spend with you, just you.” She shook her head, “To think I was a little jealous of it, but now, the way he looked at you Theo, with such pride!”

“He was good to me, Sarah, he was.” Theo gnawed on his lip, “I remember thinking that very first day that we met that he was everything I wished I could have had in a dad. So many times it felt like he was my dad! But my god, this letter, I don’t know what to think!” He shook his head, “That he knew my mom that he was in love with her, married to her, and had you with her. Is that what you would have me believe?”

Sarah shrugged again, “Honestly, I have no idea. Who knows,” her lips curved up into a broad smile, “perhaps I need to write a book about it.”

Theo smiled in return and pulled her close. “Perhaps you should.”

Outside of the small, cozy house, two women stood. One was older, heavyset, and wearing a worn and faded house dress. Her hair was silver, just a few strands of black left.

Next to her was a younger woman, thin, with raven black hair and a hawkish nose. Both had bright green eyes. “The Fer Complir will receive a full and complete report on this, Martha.”

The older woman sighed, “Of that I have no doubt, Elizabeth. But as you can see, they are causing no trouble.”

Elizabeth Verndari’s lips thinned into a disapproving line and her brilliant green eyes flashed, “And if she does write a book?”

Martha couldn’t help but laugh, “What if she does? It’s known as fiction. Really Elizabeth, it’s over. Conor is dead, as are Edmonds and his two wives. Who is left, really, of any consequence at all?”

“Theodore.”

“You know as well as I do that pairings between our kind and humans produce normal offspring. He has no gifts, therefore he is the same as any other human. He is irrelevant.”

“The child in your house,” Elizabeth asked, swiftly changing subjects.

“Liv?”

“Yes.”

“What about her?”

“There have been questions.”

“Her mother was my niece. Her father is human. I care for her. But she knows nothing.” Martha answered.

“She was born on the solstice.”

Martha laughed, “Yes, I know. But her father was human. Humans are born on a solstice too, you know. It just doesn’t have the same consequences.”

The younger woman stared at Martha, “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Short of digging his parents up from their graves and interrogating them? Or watching him leap from his mother’s womb? Yes. Besides, the Arbre Genealogic already investigated Larry Parker’s family history shortly after Liv was born. You know this.”

Elizabeth sniffed, as if unconvinced. “And you will apprise us if anything changes?”

“Of course,” Martha sighed.

“As it should be.” Elizabeth noted, still staring at the house.

“Quod ut is mos persevero futurus,” Martha answered.

As one, the two women turned and walked away, disappearing into the night.

I hope you have enjoyed this book. You would make this author very happy if you could take a moment on Goodreads or other favorite place to learn about new books. Reviews help others decide whether to take a chance on a book and I want to share my writing with as many people as possible.

A Note from the Author

All of my fiction books occur within the same universe, known as the Kapalaran Universe. They transcend genre and they are interconnected, tracing family lines for decades in either direction.

The story you have just read is a stand-alone novel, however, as I’m sure you have noticed, there is another storyline here. Perhaps you have been left with questions? Answers to those questions, dear reader, will be explored further in my upcoming fantasy series, The Chronicles of Liv Rowan. Here is a chapter from Book 1 of The Chronicles of Liv Rowan. A sneak peek, just for you!

The Chronicles of Liv Rowan

Book One: The Glass Forrest