Chapter 27
“There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I’ve been tossing and turning restlessly in bed for two hours unable to fall asleep. Being out here in the middle of nowhere is already a significant factor in me having way too much time to think, but now knowing that the supernatural exists, that a deity, in some form or another, exists…
Every time I’m alone in the stillness of the night, it’s impossible to think about anything else.
Do Heaven and Hell exist since a deity does?
I’m not single-minded enough to think that the Christian God is the only option, but I also can’t say He’s not.
Who the hell knows? But if that is the case, if there is an afterlife dependent on morality, where is the distinction between good and evil?
The pastor I just killed spent most of his life posing as a man of God, preaching while simultaneously manipulating the helpless to indulge his greed.
If there’s a Hell, he’s definitely going there, regardless of what he believed in.
But then, that begs the question of whether a soul’s admission to the afterlife is determined by faith, morality, or a mixture of both.
I’ve never been convinced of the nonsense about how simply believing in God and asking for forgiveness are enough to get you into Heaven—there are too many evil people in the world using God’s name to justify their prejudice and hatred for that to be the case.
But in the case of morality, everything gets even more complicated.
I don’t quite know what all the religious texts say about sin, but it would be ridiculous to believe that all sins are equal, right?
I guess, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter considering that if there is a Heaven and Hell, I’m certainly destined to burn for eternity.
I’m not sure what time it is when I go downstairs to make myself a mug of tea, hoping it’ll help me sleep so I can have a break from the thoughts looping in my mind. When I reach the bottom of the stairs and turn to head to the kitchen, Ambrose’s low voice sounding from the living room startles me.
“Can’t sleep?”
I spin to face him. He’s in his armchair with a book in his hand, the lamplight emanating a yellow glow that casts shadows across his sharp features.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“You don’t have to be so defensive. It was a simple question,” he teases.
I sigh. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m just going to make some tea.”
“Make me a cup?”
“Sure.”
I turn to continue my path to the kitchen and fill the kettle with water before putting it on the stove. While I wait for it to heat, I ready the mugs with the tea bags and re-organize the cabinet to give myself something to do.
Finally, the water is boiling and I finish making the tea. With one mug in each hand, I head to the living room and place them both on the coffee table.
When Ambrose looks up from his book to smile at me, all the air leaves my lungs. For as much as I resent him, he is devastatingly handsome with his onyx hair, sharp cheekbones, and dark eyes.
I pick up my mug and grip it between both palms, not trusting myself to hold it in only one hand with how unsteady I feel, before sinking into the spot on the couch closest to him. Grabbing the same blanket I always use, I curl up and revel in the heat of the fire warming my face.
I stare out the window that’s behind Ambrose, where the waning moon casts a soft glow across the trees, and I think of the line from the first poem he had read to me weeks ago. “Look for me by moonlight; come to me by moonlight.”
“Same book?” I ask him. I already know the answer, but it feels like the easiest way to break the silence.
“Yeah,” he answers. “It has a lot of my personal favorites in here.”
“Will you read me another poem?” I ask, sheepish after telling him how I hated poetry last time.
He smirks, clearly remembering the same thing I am, but his expression quickly shifts to one of approval.
“Any requests?”
I shake my head. “Just whatever you think I might like.” Anything to get my mind to stop spinning.
He absentmindedly scratches his short beard before seemingly coming to a decision. The rustle of his fingers flipping through the pages is the only sound in the room aside from the soft crackling of the fire.
“This is one you’ll probably know, but it’s one of my favorites,” he says. The seconds seem to stretch between us as he inhales and begins reading.
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.”
How is it that Ambrose’s voice has the power to make the words seem alive, to send them straight into the deepest parts of me? Even in the short phrases, I can feel the pain of the narrator, his words channeling that feeling within me I try so hard to suppress.
“But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
Fuck. The power of that one stanza squeezes my heart in my chest. It says so much about enduring, eternal love.
Ambrose continues reading, the cadence and gentleness of his voice hypnotic. The poem is short, but every rhythmic line seems to intensify the emotions building within me. The words wrap around my heart and shift something inside me.
The poem is over only a few lines later, and just like the last night he read to me, we sit in silence for a few moments as I let the heaviness of the words sink in. The ultimate tragedy of love.
For some reason, my eyes burn with tears, and I fight to keep them from falling. What the hell is wrong with me?
When he lifts his gaze after closing the book, though, I don’t look away. Because in his eyes, I see the same depth of emotion, and it makes me wonder what these words mean to him. There has to be a reason he chose this one, of all the poems he could have picked.
The words don’t hurt me in the same way they might pain someone else.
Though I can feel the despair resonating in every line, I realize that I have never loved in this way.
I’ve never felt the all-encompassing love that would rip my heart out to lose.
I think I loved Joel at one point, but it was never a love like that.
It was a spark of attraction coupled with my hope for a better future, and we followed the typical steps of a relationship until I realized he wasn’t what I’d wanted after it was too late.
I’ve hardly even thought about him since I’ve been here except for in passing and in worrying about him finding me. My heart is not any less whole after leaving him.
And if I’m being honest, I’ve always yearned for that type of all-consuming love, even if it ends in inevitable heartbreak. The type of love that leaves you breathless, that turns your world upside down and changes you entirely. A love that’s visceral in every sense of the word.
I’m just not entirely sure that sort of love exists in the real world. But looking at Ambrose right now makes me wonder…
“What does it mean to you?” I finally ask. The emotion in his eyes indicates that it means something to him.
He’s silent for a moment before he sighs and answers, “This poem encompasses the feeling of losing the person you love in such a beautiful, melancholy way. The fear and despair of losing them, and the bittersweetness of knowing they’ll always be in your heart long after they’re gone.”
He doesn’t meet my eyes, and it’s the first time I think I’ve seen this sort of raw vulnerability from him. It’s then that it hits me how much he’s probably lost. When you can live forever, there’s no end to the number of people you can love and lose.
“Who was she?” I ask. “The woman you think about when you read this?”
“She was my wife. I loved her so much,” he breathes. “But time takes its toll on everyone regardless of how much I wish I could stop it.”
His wife. He was married. Why hadn’t I ever considered that to be a possibility?
“How long ago did you lose her?”
“It’s been fifty years now, and I still think of her every single day.”
I watch his expression but stay silent, giving him the space to say more without pressure.
“We were in our twenties when we got married,” he continues, “and we were so damn happy. There was no warning on the night I died—well, almost died. I had been out chopping wood for the fireplace. One second I was fine, and the next, my heart was giving out. When I was given the choice to pass on or stay in this life for as long as I wanted to, I couldn’t give up the chance to live out the rest of my days with her.
She was a beacon of light in this world. ”
“It sounds like she had a full life with you, at least. That had to have been worth it.”
“It was,” he agrees. “She didn’t pass until she was in her nineties, and we lived a long and beautiful life together. Losing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. She’s buried out by the old church in the woods.”
My heart splinters with each additional word he speaks.
He’s so vulnerable and emotionally raw that I worry I’ll break the moment if I speak.
I nod, though, wanting him to know I’m listening, even if I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose someone you love so whole-heartedly.
It’s no wonder he keeps this house considering the memories it probably holds.
Then, it hits me. “She was the one in the picture by your bed.”
He nods. “Yes.”
I had wrongly assumed it was his grandma or mother when I first saw it, but it all makes sense now.