Pebbles: A Collection of Short Stories

Find Me

As the movie flickered around us, he reached for my hand. His touch was so careful, but still stole one of my dwindling breaths. I let myself sink further into the pillows and settled my gaze on him versus the screen.

"She was so beautiful," I sighed to myself as Grace Kelly swirled through the screen, stealing the scene from Jimmy Stewart so effortlessly.

"Never as beautiful as you." He smiled as he met my gaze, only slightly startled by my focus on him.

"I was foolish enough to believe I'd never get old." My words came on the crest of a laugh.

"That was always part of your charm. The surprises were expected, and the expected were surprises." As he spoke, he lifted my hand to his lips.

"You were always too good to me, Ollie." He was far too good of a man for me to have earned his attention.

"Not too good; you kept me on my toes." The twinkle of his youth slipped into his mossy green eyes. For a flicker, it chased away the thinly veiled mourning settling within them.

"All those starts and stops for us. I suppose I always knew you'd be the one to find me in the end." My voice creaked like an old tree weathering its last storm.

"Ada, you know I was searching for you with my every breath."

"We could've been something if I had..." I let my words drop out. If I had let us settle in, if I had settled in, we would have had a life. But I was the one that was always searching.

"Were you happy, Ada?"

"I read a quote by Grace Kelly once." I nodded to her forever frozen in her youth on the screen. "I've had happy moments in my life, but I don't think that happiness, being happy, is a perpetual state that anyone can be in. Life isn't that easy."

Oliver smiled at me, the easy, forgiving smile he always gave me so willingly, even when I was unwilling to give him an easy answer.

"I always loved you, Ollie. I know it didn't seem it with all the running away, but it was never the love that was missing." As I spoke, I mustered my energy to squeeze his hand.

"What was it, Ada? What made you run all those times?" The anger from the countless times I had broken his heart drained from him; only the fondness remained.

"I was searching." I tried to give his hand another pinch, but my strength failed me. Ollie complied with a squeeze of his own.

"What were you looking for?"

"Me," I admitted.

"And did you find what you were looking for?"

"I did." I finally understood life as the last few beats of my heart allowed me a few more minutes with Oliver. That's how life works; you don't understand any of it until your last sun is setting.

Ollie continued to look over me, as he always had. From afar, I knew he'd come, and when he was next to me, I knew he was protecting me. He was the man that I didn't deserve.

"Will you be happy, Ollie?"

"Without you? No, I don't suppose so, but I had my share of happiness; more than most and more than I deserve."

"That's not true. You deserved all the happiness."

"Well, you brought me my fair share, even when you ran away from me. Even when I was brokenhearted, you were always my girl. Probably why I have three ex-wives," he teased.

It was the tease that pulled my last tear. It slipped from the creases of my eyes and rolled into my gray hair.

"I always liked to think of life as a string of pearls." My hand twitched as I thought of my beloved single string of pearls. "Some parts of life are the pearls, and some parts are the knots. But if you didn't have the knots, then the pearls would dull."

Ollie dipped his face, but I could see the folds of a smile crossing his face.

"You were the pearls, my love," I added. "Everything else was the knots that protected you from chipping."

He lifted his face to mine again. I had broken his heart many times, but this was the worst. This parting was the one that depleted him. He lifted my hand to his lips once again.

"Let's get you into your pearls, shall we?" He smiled.

He rose and crossed to my jewelry box, the simple wooden jewelry box that traveled with me on all my solo adventures as I searched for myself. Ollie made the sturdy, dependable box with his own two hands and could never comprehend how much I cherished it on the lonely nights when he was a universe away from me. The nights I spent drifting to sleep with tears in my eyes, wishing I could stay with him, but even as I'd want for that dream, my legs would twitch to remind me I wasn't a wife.

His touch was gentle as he shifted me and clasped my pearls around my neck.

"This dreadful hospital gown does no justice to them," I complained as he settled back into his chair and retook my hand.

"You even make that gown look beautiful." His sincerity was painful.

"What will you do without me to rile you up?" I tried to raise my inflection, but my voice was as tired as my bones.

"Oh, I'll see after things here. Make sure you have your pearls, of course. Then I suppose I'll do what I do best; find my best girl."

"Do you think there'll be someplace to find me?"

"Ada, if there's one thing I know, it's that wherever you go, I'll find you."

"I love you, Ollie; I always have."

"I know, Ada. I love you, too."

I didn't even notice my last breath escape me. All I felt was my hand raise to his lips one last time.

"I'll be along," he murmured, as I slipped away from him one last time.