Miraculous Interception | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Miraculous Interception | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
02/23/16
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The long-deserted pathway lay nestled at the edge of the foothills, the little dilapidated house a relic from my childhood and youth. I close my eyes to its peeling paint, broken picket fence, and overgrown shrubs and weeds bordering the neglected yard, conjuring up from my fickle memory what it had been like decades ago.

A trembling smile tugs at the corners of my frowning mouth as I recall the happy sounds and smells of long ago. Before my parents split up, before life destroyed happiness and grief overshadowed joy. When my brother and I, oblivious to the impending signs of doom, played and laughed and fought and made up again. Like a tangled yo-yo string, our lives became a complicated maze of broken promises, abandonment, and severed relationships as we grew older.

The one constant, though, the life preserver of my existence, was my boyfriend, Johnny. Strong and handsome and faithful Johnny, my knight in shining armor, who was ever ready to fight my dragons. Like the Garden of Eden’s forbidden fruit, our blossoming romance was damned by both sets of parents, making it all the more alluring.

I walk slowly now, to our trysting spot under the mammoth maple tree at the edge of the property, memories of those stolen kisses sweeter than anything in my life—before or since. I stroke the trunk’s bark, my arthritic fingers even knobbier than its surface, reaching up into the secret compartment we had hollowed out for our love letters and notes. We had learned from bitter experience that postal service mailed communications were intercepted and destroyed, so this secret hole became our personal mailbox of cherished thoughts, endearments and unfulfilled dreams. Even now, my heart races and aches for what might have been, if only John had stayed. . .I heard he had gone on to an Ivy League college and found another to love.

“Oh, Johnny, Johnny, why did you leave me?” even now the words ripped from my anguished heart like a fresh scab torn from flesh.

Absently, I scoop out the dead leaves from the hole, crumbling between my fingers like dried ashes. Maybe, if I try hard enough, I can smell his lingering scent among them and I dig deeper into the cavity. My pinky ring spears something beyond the hoarded squirrels’ nuts.

“What in the world?” a crumpled parchment peels across my hand, and I gingerly un-wad the stained and yellowed missive, unbelieving, as Johnny’s familiar scrawl appears between the wrinkles and creases:

“Dear Emma, my sweet and only love,

We have been found out and this will be the last mail I can send you. My dad says you are moving away so we can never see each other again. My heart is breaking. I love you, I will always love you—I want you to hold on to that and treasure it always.

Come away with me tonight, my darling! Meet me here at midnight and we will run away together. . .

If you do not receive this note in time, I want you to know, regardless of what others tell you, that I am not going away. Cling to the promises we have read here together from the Bible. And, please God, we will be together again someday—in heaven, if not here on earth.

Yours Forever,
Johnny”

I gasp for breath between my sobs, pressing his precious words to my breast.

“Oh, God; oh, God, why?” fumbling in my pocket for the aged letter I had penned to Johnny those many years ago on that very night.

I had never been able to mail it, my father watching my every move like a rabid bird dog. I had come here to place it in our secret hiding place, a last resort to let go of the wretched past. Wrapping it in my lacy handkerchief, a present from my first love, I push it down into the empty hole.

A rustling behind me interrupts my purpose, hauntingly familiar, but slower and more labored. A gnarled cane separates some vines as an elderly man’s bent body emerges, a stamped “sealed with a kiss” envelope in his outstretched hand.

My heart flip-flops when I recognize Johnny’s twinkling eyes in the old man’s face. And, I am in his arms once more—and forevermore.

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