A last gift, p.1
A Last Gift, page 1
A Last Gift
Beca Lewis
Perception Publishing
Copyright ©2021 by Beca Lewis
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictional. However, as a writer, I have made some of the book’s characters composites of people I have met or known.
ISBN-13: 978-1-7357843-5-9
Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
11. Eleven
12. Twelve
13. Thirteen
14. Fourteen
15. Fifteen
16. Sixteen
17. Seventeen
18. Eighteen
19. Nineteen
20. Twenty
21. Twenty-One
22. Twenty-Two
23. Twenty-Three
24. Twenty-Four
25. Twenty-Five
26. Twenty-Six
27. Twenty-Seven
28. Twenty-Eight
29. Twenty-Nine
30. Thirty
31. Thirty-One
32. Thirty-Two
33. Thirty-Three
34. Thirty-Four
35. Thirty-Five
36. Thirty-Six
37. Thirty-Seven
38. Thirty-Eight
39. Thirty-Nine
40. Forty
41. Forty-One
42. Forty-Two
43. Forty-Three
44. Forty-Four
45. Forty-Five
46. Forty-Six
47. Forty-Seven
48. Forty-Eight
49. Forty-Nine
50. Fifty
51. Fifty-One
52. Fifty-Two
53. Fifty-Three
54. Fifty-Four
55. Fifty-Five
56. Fifty-Six
57. Fifty-Seven
58. Fifty-Eight
59. Fifty-Nine
60. Sixty
Author's Notes
Acknowledgments
Also By Beca
About Beca
One
It came in the mail. How long it had sat in the mailbox Rhoberta Bree Mann—known as Bree—didn’t know. It had been at least a month since she had put a foot outside her door, let alone checked her mail.
She only got the letter because the mailman, frustrated with the filled-to-overflowing mailbox, had dumped all her mail into a box, pounded on the door, and rang the doorbell before stomping away. Anger still poured out of him as he stepped into his truck. Bree was sure he would have slammed the truck door if it had one.
Before driving away, the mailman looked back at the house, and when he glimpsed Bree’s face peeking from behind the curtain, pointed at the door, looking as stern as she had ever seen him. But after pulling away, he stopped and looked back at the house. He sighed, his lined face drooping. Bree almost felt sorry for him. He had been their mailman for many years, and he knew why she had not collected the mail.
Bree tried to find the energy to at least lift a finger to wave, but she couldn’t. Instead, as he drove silently away, heading to the next house almost a quarter of a mile away, Bree gathered all the energy she had, opened the door, and slid the box inside. She turned and shut the door with her back, allowing herself to slide to the floor and stare at the box in front of her.
It was dusty and falling apart at the seams. Did he find the box by the side of the road and decide it was a good way to get rid of the mail that had been collecting in her mailbox? The box looked like she felt. Old and abandoned.
How was she to know that inside the box of mail was her husband’s last gift to her? Would it have made any difference? Days later, holding his letter in her hand, she would force herself to open it, dreading what it meant.
But that day, she closed her eyes, rolled over on her side, and lay on the floor. She could feel the draft on her back, the opening under the door that Paul had promised to fix but never got around to doing.
The memory of how frustrated she had been with him for not fixing it, how she had decided to do it herself but never had the chance, started the now-familiar wave of grief and guilt that fell on her like a blanket, and Bree wept again. Not caring that she was on the floor. Not caring that her nose was running, that she could smell herself, that her hair was full of tangles, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had showered.
Not caring about anything at all. Except now, there was a box in front of her that demanded her attention. Bree knew that once she dealt with the box, it would open the door to living again. And that’s not what she wanted.
Bree wanted her heart to stop beating. She wanted to join her husband wherever he was because she was sure he was waiting. He had promised. Long ago, on the day they married, he had promised that it wasn’t just until death. It was forever.
But she couldn’t even decide how to kill herself, let alone gather the courage to pull it off. The thought that someone would find her and have to deal with the mess added to her inability to leave this life.
She, who lived with everything in a neat order, everything in its place, could not force that terrible disorder on someone else. Drowning herself was an option. But that would mean driving to the lake and then finding a way to make herself stay underwater. Too hard to do.
That day, laying on the floor in her own mess, Bree didn’t even have the courage to open her eyes, knowing that all she would see was disorder. A neglected house.
Under the table by the door, dirt screamed at her to get up. The unwashed dishes added their voice to the cacophony of voices in her head that told her she was a useless piece of work, had never deserved Paul, and it was her fault he had died.
But the box. The box was different. The voice of the box was both demanding and soothing. It was reminding Bree that, like it, she was still useful. The box aroused her curiosity, and that pissed her off. Because Bree knew that once she was curious, her time of mourning would come to a close. Life would move on. She would have to pretend to live instead of wanting to die.
So she lay there for another hour, finally sitting up, back still against the door, and stared at the box that called her to start living again. Sighing so hard it hurt her chest, she grabbed the box and dumped the mail onto the floor. Years of practice managing chaos and putting things in order kept her moving forward without thinking.
She made piles of junk mail, bills, the local papers, and the catalogs that she could never stop from arriving. She slid into a pile the cards she knew contained words of sympathy that would never change anything. She didn’t want to see them.
But one letter stood out. Of course, Paul meant it to. Did he know she would be tempted to throw all the cards in the trash without opening them? Of course, he did.
Paul had taken no chances that she would ignore his letter. Stickers covered the envelope. Hearts, flowers, and tree stickers made the stamp barely visible in the corner.
Bree stared at the envelope addressed to her in handwriting as familiar as her own, and holding it close to her heart, she lay back down on the floor and asked the gods once more to “please, please, please, let me die.”
Hours later, still alive and knowing death was not coming for her, she let herself drift back in time. Fingering the gold necklace with a tiny ruby in the center that he had given her as a wedding present, she remembered the moment she had first seen him, and turned to her friend and said, “I’m going to marry him.”
Two
Thirty-one years in the past …
Bree felt as if a hand had reached into her chest, squeezed her heart, and the words, “I’m going to marry him,” came out of her mouth with no thinking on her part.
But once she said them, she knew they were true. A lifetime with this stranger stretched out before her, and she couldn’t stop herself from laughing at the pure joy of that vision.
Almost as if he had heard her, the stranger she knew she would marry looked away from the group of people surrounding him, tilted his head, smiled at her, and then returned to the conversation.
The friend standing beside her laughed and said, “Yea, right. How’s that going to happen? He’s the most popular teacher here, and you’re a lowly student.”
“He teaches here?”
“What, you don’t know who he is?”
“No.”
“Then how do you expect to marry him?”
Tossing her head, causing her dark curls to bounce wildly, Bree answered, “I don’t know. But I will. Wait and see.”
Her friend laughed again. “Okay. But if you do—not saying that you will—I want to be your bridesmaid, since I was here when you first saw the love of your life.”
“Deal, but only if you tell me everything you know about him.”
“Are you serious?”
Bree turned to her friend. She had known Cindy Lee Jones since they were both six years old. Bree had turned from where she was hiding in the cloakroom on the first day of first grade, afraid to face the class, and saw a girl crouched behind the umbrella stand.
For a minute they stared at each
The girl, her blond hair streaming down her back, blue eyes brimming with tears, nodded yes.
“Me too. But if we’re friends, we could go out together. I’m Bree.”
It took a minute, but eventually, the girl answered, “Cindy.”
Bree reached out her hand, Cindy stood, and they walked out together. The teacher took one look at the two of them, and to their great relief, put them side by side in the classroom. They had been side by side ever since.
Bree locked her hazel eyes into Cindy’s blue ones and gave her a look. That look said it all. Cindy learned long ago that Bree didn’t say things she didn’t mean, and if she wanted something, she’d figure out a way to get it.
“Not here. At the coffee shop at the HUB.”
Cindy looped her arm through Bree’s, pulling her away, but Bree couldn’t help herself. She stole one last look over her shoulder.
Although still talking to the gaggle of students, the man had moved so that he was watching her walk away. Bree turned around and smiled to herself. She knew he’d be watching.
Bree and Cindy spent the next hour huddled together at the campus coffee shop tucked inside a food court and recreation space called the HUB.
It was a good name for it. It was noisy with people coming and going, bright colors on the walls, and a tile floor that echoed sound mingled with the smell of coffee and food. But there were quiet corners if you wanted privacy.
Cindy found one of those corners, away from the hustle and bustle, while Bree paid for the drinks, figuring it was as good a bribe as any.
Once they settled in, Bree said she was ready to learn it all. Cindy laughed and told her everything she knew about the handsome and popular professor. It wasn’t much. Mostly rumors about who he was and where he had come from. No one really knew. All Cindy knew for sure was that Paul Mann taught statistics, and even people who didn’t like numbers tried to get into his class.
It wasn’t just his tall Adonis good looks. It was the way he taught. The way he gathered people into interesting discussions. That’s what Cindy had heard about him. But no matter how cool the statistics teacher was, Cindy wasn’t interested. She was an artist. To her way of thinking, those two things didn’t go together at all.
“Are you sure you want a man who thinks numbers are interesting?” Cindy asked her friend and waited for how Bree would rationalize this one.
Having grown up together, she knew Bree as well as anyone could. Bree shared, but only so much. On the other hand, Cindy was always spilling out her secrets to Bree. But to Bree’s credit, she had used none of them against her or shared them with others.
However, Bree didn’t realize that Cindy knew all of Bree’s secrets. All of them. Even the ones Bree had kept from everyone. Cindy had made it her business to know them. It was a way to always protect her friend, even if Bree thought she didn’t need it.
So as Bree asked about the man Bree said was her future husband, Cindy worried. Paul Stanford Mann looked a great deal like the boy who had broken Bree’s heart. Not that Bree told her it was broken or even acted sad, but Cindy was sure it was there, buried under Bree’s compulsion to get things done.
Cindy knew that Bree’s heart was held together with her steely determination. Even though it had been Bree who had stretched out her hand in the coat closet, it was Cindy who kept the two of them together.
It was Cindy who made sure that Bree knew she always had a friend, even when Bree acted as if she didn’t need one. Not believing her, Cindy had encouraged her to add more girls into their two-girl group until there were five of them. All different, but with one thing in common: to be more than their small town expected them to be.
They helped each other through school, supported each other’s dreams, and when it was time to choose a college, all five of them decided to go together. So, even though a few of them planned to leave town as soon as they could, they went to the small community college in town instead, because that was the only place all of them got into. It meant two more years together before they went their separate ways.
And although Cindy knew they would all branch out into the world, they would stay in touch forever. They had made a pact in grade school and they would honor it. So even if Bree married Mr. Hunky professor, it wouldn’t change anything.
Cindy was wrong, of course, but she believed it to be true that day in the coffee shop. So when two more members of their group wandered into the HUB looking for food, Cindy called them over, not fully appreciating how much everything would be different from then on.
Three
Judith Zoe took one look at Bree’s face and then asked Cindy, “What’s going on?”
“Bree just saw the man she’s going to marry.”
“Seriously?” April May Zane shrieked, plopping herself into a chair. She propped her chin on her hands and stared at the two of them, waiting for answers.
April’s short curly light brown hair, deep brown eyes, and tiny body, combined with her happy-go-lucky nature, always reminded Cindy of a chipmunk. Especially when she was quivering with excitement, as she was at that moment.
Cindy shushed them both, saying, “Keep it down,” and then laughed at their crestfallen looks.
April and Judith were so different that most people would never expect them to be friends, but it was their differences that kept them friends long after their last names brought them together.
Judith and April were the only two people in school whose last name started with a Z, so they were either always first or last in line in school. Usually, they were last in line, which gave them plenty of time to get to know each other.
They had met in second grade when April’s family moved to town so her dad could teach at the community college.
Until then, Judith had stood alone in lines, wishing she had a friend. She was so lonely she thought she would die. Not that no one knew her, it was that everyone did, and then made fun of her. Not only because her last name started with a Z, but she was so much taller than everyone else.
Everywhere she went, she towered above all the other children. Only a few kids in sixth grade were taller than her. All the kids in elementary school saw her as a freak. Her flaming red hair didn’t help. She was hard to miss. But no one wanted to be seen with her, which meant she was always alone.
Only Judith’s size kept the kids from physically picking on her. And her temper. She had pushed one kid who kept taunting her, and that was enough to stop that kind of abuse. But it increased the unkind words and taunting, and she had been called into the principal’s office to explain why she had done it. The unfairness of it all ate away at Judith’s soul, and every day she felt more lonely and tortured.
And then, one day, there was someone else at the back of the line with her, someone who smiled at her and introduced herself as April May Zane. Judith had stared, not knowing what to say, having had no practice with friendly banter. She stuttered her name in return and then asked the obvious question before realizing it might be a sensitive one, and she may have ruined the friendship before it got started.
Instead, April had laughed and explained that her mother didn’t know if she would be born in April or May. She just knew she’d be a girl. Felt it in her bones. But not knowing which month, she named her baby both April and May. It turned out she was born on May 2nd, but her parents had already decided that they liked the name April better.
“April showers bring May flowers,” they would say when people asked about her two-month name. No one really understood what they meant, and April assumed they really didn’t know either, but being parents in the seventies, fresh from living in a commune, it felt right to them.
Like her mother, April had a carefree, joyous nature, which balanced perfectly with Judith’s solid common sense.
“Where’s Marsha?” Bree asked, as April and Judith took seats across the table. “I don’t feel like repeating this over and over again.”
“Who knows?” Judith huffed.
Marsha Melinda Martin sometimes made Judith want to shake her, even though she secretly envied Marsha’s ability to make her own decisions. Marsha was the one who was often missing, pursuing her personal agenda, never letting them know where she was, showing up when she felt like it.
