Chapter 1

1

I handed in the divorce papers the day Jenny came back to base.

Last time around, she'd died and left a will asking to be buried with the man she loved but could never be with �C her commanding officer.

The newspapers had romanticized their tragic love story as a testament to free love.

Even my son, the one I'd raised, told me to step aside.

All so they could be together in death, since they couldn't be in life.

So this time, when Jenny asked to adopt a child, I said no without a second thought.

She frowned. "Peter, you're so cold. You sit around all day and you won't even help an orphan?"

I smiled, but didn't answer.

She didn't know I was leaving for Arizona in a month.

......

Last time, I stood over Jenny's body, a cigarette dangling from my lips, my heart a hollow ache.

The faint starlight illuminated her pale face.

Just moments before, while sorting through her things, a hidden letter had disintegrated fifty years of love.

Every year, she'd written to someone in Arizona.

The letters overflowed with affection, each one signed on the first day of autumn �C the day she met Rick.

I could picture her, eyes full of love, carefully crafting each word.

For fifty years, I'd been a fool. She'd been saving herself for another man.

Every rejection in our bed, a devotion to someone else.

I remembered her in her white dress when we met, shy and blushing.

So young, so innocent. Now, just a painful memory.

The ultimate humiliation: her will, demanding to be buried with her first love.

She'd written: "Rick and I, though we couldn't share a life, we will share a grave."

Friends and family offered empty condolences.

My adopted son, Steven, and I exchanged uneasy glances.

The pity in his eyes felt like mockery, a slow torture.

Jenny had found Steven abandoned in the snow.

She claimed she'd fallen through the ice as a child and could never have children, so why not adopt?

We could enjoy grandchildren in our old age.

I, ever the devoted husband, agreed, raising Steven as my own.

Jenny couldn't handle childcare, so it fell to me.

I loved him, cherished him, like a true son.

Steven approached me hesitantly. "Uncle Rick's here. You should honor Mom's wishes and let him have her."

I stared at him, silent, until he started to sweat. "I'm doing this for Mom. It's her dying wish. How can you be so selfish?"

Give her body to Rick? It would be an admission to the world that they were the true love story, and I was just an obstacle.

I threw my teacup at him.

He stumbled back, blood trickling down his forehead. He glared at me. "You say you loved her, but you won't even grant her final wish. You're a pathetic, bitter man!"

"A loser! You sit at home all day, a parasite on society!"

"You're not fit to be a husband, not fit to be a father!"

He stormed out, leaving me alone.