Heart storms, p.31
Heart Storms, page 31
Richard sat and calmed down. “Can you forgive me? I won’t ever speak those kinds of words again. Do you understand it was coming from the deep pain of losing my father? Then feeling I was losing my mother, as well, to a stranger. My insides were tearing apart.”
She held him. “I understand you lashed out in pain. I forgive you and trust your behavior was a one-time thing, brought on with grief and shock, and won’t happen again.”
Richard kissed her cheek. “I won’t. But now what about this man? Frankly, even though he sounds like an upstanding guy, this seems so disrespectful to Dad and us. I don’t think Dad would approve or be happy about this, especially so soon after his death.”
“You’re wrong. Besides, it’s not for you to decide. And I’m not finished telling you how much you hurt me. You need to apologize for your insults. I’m not ‘shacking up’ with someone. I’m having a discreet relationship with a man I’ve known longer than I knew your father, not someone off the street. And I happen to love him.”
Looking about to blow apart, Richard stood and yelled. “You frickin love him? How could you? So soon! You still love Dad, don’t you?” Teary-eyed, he cried out, “Did you stop loving him because he died?” He paced, blowing off steam so he wouldn’t blow up at his mother. “Look, I’m sorry for my choice of words. They were insulting. I apologize, Mom. But, really, I can’t accept you’ve fallen in love with this guy so soon, even if he is an old friend. I can’t deal with it, and neither can the girls.”
“You don’t have to deal with it. And yes, I still love your father. I’ll always love him. But he’s not here anymore. You saw how I could barely get out of bed the first month without him. I didn’t even know how to live without him. You kids have your lives and work. I shared it with Dad, but he’s gone. This man I’ve reconnected with has helped me forget my sadness and given me reasons to enjoy life again.”
“Well, that’s good, but we can’t handle seeing you affectionate with him, hugging him, or God forbid, kissing him. And to think of you two being intimate. Aaagh, good God, Mom. How excruciating for us. Can’t you fathom what we’re going through?”
Jade would’ve liked to have told him the story of how Gabe had come into their lives and who he was and what he meant to her. But she wouldn’t lay another big, emotional story on her children in their time of grief. They wouldn’t hear it well, it would only be more trauma, and she didn’t want to inflict more pain on them. Instead, she asked Richard, “Will there ever be a time you could accept me with someone else, and have him in our lives if say, I remarried?”
He grabbed the sides of his head, his mouth agape. “Remarriage?! Oh, you’re really sending me off the deep end. How can you even mention the word! I can’t accept it now, or in the near future. I can’t even envision my life without Dad, without working with him every day. I’m running his business, and I feel like he’s looking over my shoulder all the time. I feel him here. But then I miss him so badly I could just die myself. Does that sound crazy?”
Jade thought of Leah’s spirit roaming around the inn, visiting Rick whenever he had to make an important decision. “It sounds saner than anything else you’ve said in the last ten minutes.” They laughed together, and she continued. “I don’t want this family to break apart over my seeing someone. I understand my children’s feelings. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful to your father, and I do love him still. But if it’s between this man and my family staying together, I choose my family. You don’t have to worry or agonize over my actions. You’ve got enough pain and grieving to deal with, along with the huge responsibility of running and growing the business. So, no worries, okay?”
Richard reached out to his mother and held her, his arms and love wrapping around her. “It’s more than okay. It’s the best thing I’ve heard since before Dad’s passing. Thank you, Mom. I know it’s a sacrifice for you, and maybe someday we’ll change our minds, someday when we don’t miss our father like we’ve lost our next breath. Thanks for understanding our struggle. We understand yours, too, and we want you to be happy.” He stood back, held her by her arms and smiled. “Just not with a guy, not yet. Can’t you take up painting or something like Grandma Maggie did?”
Jade giggled, visualizing her mother laughing with her at the thought. “I’ll figure something out. You kids are my life now. I won’t do anything to jeopardize our relationships.”
***
Jade saw no other way to save her family and their quality of life together other than to stop seeing Gabriel. The next day she called him to explain what had happened.
She first told Gabe her children didn’t know the circumstances of their parents’ wedding—how Gabe had been there, and she married Rick. They didn’t know she’d been engaged to him before their father. This was information she didn’t want to reveal at this point in life. It would only make the situation worse with them feeling betrayed and would tear them apart, knowing the secrets they’d kept. Jade and Rick had agreed not to tell them because it was none of their business. Jade had always thought as the kids grew up, they might hear the story from people who’d been at the wedding. But so far, no one had told them anything and Jade assumed her guests loved and respected her and Rick enough not to divulge the story to their children.
It surprised Gabe they’d never told their kids their own history but understood why.
Jade next told him about the scene with her kids, sparing him the sordid details, but explained how horrifying and painful the confrontation had been. She said she deserved comfort and love at this point in life and didn’t need her children agonizing over her love life or the fact she had one. If she continued seeing Gabe, though, their relationship would get more and more serious and he agreed. But with her children never accepting him, where would she be? She’d have a divided life between her children and this man who brought her love and enjoyment of life.
Gabe said he would eventually want to marry her; he wouldn’t let her go for anything this time.
But for Jade, it meant she’d never be able to share holidays, special occasions, social time, and big life events with her kids and Gabe together. She couldn’t include Gabe at her kids’ weddings. And once she had grandchildren, she’d never be able to bring him in as part of the family. Maybe this is our payback—Gabe’s for hurting me, and mine for hurting Rick at first, and then for hurting Gabe. With that realization, she cried as she spoke into the phone. “I can’t see you anymore. It’s best if we make a clean break now before we get more deeply involved. Believe me, I’m hurting as much or more than you. I don’t know what the force is in this world or universe that always keeps us apart. How can something so hurtful come from something so good?”
Gabe sat at his desk, shattered and defeated. “I recall you saying something similar when I cast you out of my life. And it’s something I’ve asked myself many times over the years. I guess it’s not in the cards for us to be together.” In a quivering voice trying to hold back tears, he added, “I can’t believe this is happening again. We deserve to be together.”
“If we’re being kept apart, maybe we’re not supposed to be together.” Jade told him what Rick had said shortly before he died, about having reached his quota of happiness in this life. “Now maybe I’ve had my quota of happiness, too.”
“No way! I can’t think about you not in the world anymore. You deserve a great life for a long time. Jade, what are we going to do?”
She sniffled while composing herself. “The only thing we can—stop seeing each other and pick up our lives where they were before we reunited. You must focus on the wonderful career you have in Charleston. You’re a handsome, intelligent, wonderful, loving man. You need to find yourself a good woman to love, one who doesn’t have the horrible baggage we have together, with so much heartache from the past still clinging to our present. I don’t think we’ll ever get over our past. We have to move on, Gabriel.”
Gabe covered his eyes with his hands and choked back sobs. “I can’t let you go again. I can’t lose you.”
“You have to. There’s no other choice. In this stage of life, I want peace and tranquility in my world, which is my family and the inn. I won’t leave my whole life I’ve built for decades to run away with you to start over and never see my family again. I don’t have another complete reboot of life in me, a whole new start for the third time and I don’t think you do either. What good is love if the rest of our lives are destroyed?”
Gabe sighed deeply and looked up, looking for divine intervention. “I wish you weren’t right. You’re the one with the most to lose. My family would be overjoyed if we were together. So once again, I respect your decision for what’s best for you. I couldn’t live with the guilt of knowing our selfish choice would ruin your world and your children would suffer. If you need to end this, then we must. But I’m devastated. I guess this is payback for me after what I did to you so long ago.”
“No, this is not a payback, it’s what we need to do right now. You can have a great life with a woman if you open yourself to meeting and loving someone new. Promise me you’ll try.”
Gabe wiped the tears from his cheeks. “My heart’s not in it.”
“Put your heart in it. Keep your promise. There are so many women who would love to be with you, who’ll treat you well and help you have a happy, fulfilling life.”
“Except they’re not you. I’ve been with many women over the years. After you, nobody stuck. They were fine, good people, but my heart never flipped over anyone the way it did for you.”
Even though his feelings about his own life were sad, Jade took solace in how much he cared for her, and for so long. “You can change your mind, but it’ll take effort on your part.”
“If you say so.” But he thought, Changing my mind is easy. Changing my heart is impossible. I already found my perfect woman. Gabe wanted to know if they could see each other one last time. She said ‘no’ because only heartache would come from it.
“So this is it, then, breaking up over the phone?”
Jade’s heart broke, too. “Yes, I’m sorry, sorrier than you know. Let’s email occasionally. I don’t want to lose touch with you. Tell me when you’ve found a great woman.”
“Truthfully, my beautiful Jade, I don’t want to hear if you meet a great man. I want you to have a good life but I don’t need to know with whom. Not again.”
“Okay. But there’s no need for concern. I’m not even open to meeting someone with how my kids reacted. I guess they think I have to suffer as a widow for ten years before I can go for coffee with a man.”
“Don’t let them push you around. It’s your life. You want them to be happy, and they should want it for you. Take your happiness, Jade, grab it with both hands.”
“I will. You, too. I love you, Gabriel.”
“I’ll always love you. There’s been no one for me but you. Screw this world that won’t let us be together.”
“Yeah, screw ‘em.” They laughed, then had to say goodbye. Jade promised to email, and he did, too. It was something to hold on to.
Before he let her go for good, Gabe had one last question he’d been planning to ask much later in their renewed relationship, but now with no future, he needed her answer. “Jade, why did you choose Rick at the church? I know you loved me. I felt it in our kiss, saw it in your eyes and heard you speak the words. I thought I’d be leaving with you, as bad as I’d have felt for Rick. I was inches away from walking out the door with you. Why did you choose him?”
Jade gazed out the window onto the sea, refreshing her memory, choosing her words carefully. “I looked at you and saw the love of my life. Then I looked at Rick and realized he was my life, and he’d saved my life. He saved me when I lost you and he’d continue to save me forever. I wanted this kind of man to spend the rest of my life with—someone who would never throw me out or put me on the next plane, uncaring of my feelings.” She knew those words would cut Gabe’s heart like a knife, but she owed him the brutal truth.
“I’m sorry if my words hurt you, Gabe. I guess the loss of you ran deeper than what I could endure back then, standing between the two of you. I had always been truthful with Rick and told him I might never get over you. And apparently, I hadn’t. He understood and loved me anyway. Losing you, even on my wedding day was still painful. I felt torn in half. You being there also made me relive the devastation when you let me go, reminding me of the Devlin fairytale turned nightmare. After losing you, my heart and life were near death and I needed to survive. Rick was survival. It was the only choice I could make. Rick and I made a wonderful life together with no regrets. I loved him as deeply as I did you, only in a different way. Do you understand?”
Heartbroken, as if handed a fair conviction for his crime, Gabe said, “I do.”
“Can you forgive me for not choosing you?”
“Of course, I forgive you, in the same way you forgave me for the unforgiveable way I treated you.”
“We’ve both learned and matured. We’ve both paid for our mistakes and made the best of our lives. Let’s leave it at that. I love you, Gabriel Montoro.”
“I love you, too, mi amour. I will love you until death and beyond.”
They blew kisses over the phone, then hung up.
Gabe knew he just hung up on the rest of his life, all hope obliterated with the click of a button, ‘End call’… ‘End of life.’
Gabe’s final words to Jade were oddly reassuring—to speak of love and death in the same sentence with such ardor. Jade felt profound comfort knowing someone would love her until she left this life and beyond it. Rick would never have expressed anything even close. But Gabe did. It’s who he was—romantic, passionate, chivalrous and loving even through the great beyond. She pulled up her email and wrote the same words to him, I’ll love you, too, for the rest of my life and beyond.
Chapter 37
The elegant, rustic villa nestled into the lush hillside as if carved from it. The villa sat high on a bluff overlooking a tranquil sea, the place reminiscent of Italy or France, Portugal, or Spain. She had traveled to those countries and this place was not any of them. This land, engulfed in an ethereal splendor with colors deeper than vivid, and light beyond brilliant overflowed with balmy air and fertile land, every particle charged with life.
From the nearby hilltop where she stood, she saw the villa placed at the entrance to a compound of cottages built behind it in a huge square. Inside the square was a communal courtyard filled with verdant lawns, gardens, trees, and tables and chairs. Each cottage opened onto the courtyard with stone patios and wood pergolas climbing with flowers, vines and fruit. The scents of blossoms and the sea filled the air. The courtyard appeared to be a sanctuary where residents gathered every day to tend the gardens, socialize and share meals in the evening when the entire space washed over in golden light as it was now. Tables were set with starched white cloths and huge pottery bowls overflowed with flowers, fruit, and nuts. Large urns held dark, rich wine made from grapes most likely grown in the vineyards she saw in the distance.
Guitars hummed in perfect unison with voices singing words of love. The setting sun turned the sky iridescent, its wild colors gradually shifting into the indigo night which then showed off billions of lights sparkling like tiny diamonds. Torches glowed at the edges of the courtyard. Tall, elegant tapers in shimmering silver holders were lit, lining the centers of the long dining tables, casting warm shadows onto every face. Who were these people gathered here? Their spirits appeared linked by a loving, joyful energy moving through them as they dined, danced, talked and laughed, everyone growing intoxicated from the richness of their simple life. At first glance they were strangers, yet they looked familiar, and she was drawn to them. But would she, an outsider, be allowed in? She’d received no invitation, only the call of her heart.
Her journey had been long and arduous through a great storm, but she had persevered, trusting her intuition that the storm would clear and she’d know how to continue her journey. Cautious to take a first step, she wondered, Is this my intended destination? Or is it a resting spot in the middle of my journey? Suddenly it didn’t matter because there was no mistake in finding this place. As she ventured slowly down the hill, all kinds of thoughts, emotions and fears tumbled through her mind preparing her for anything—for the middle of the road or its end. But as a man waved for her to join the party, she smiled and knew that even if this was the end of her journey, it might just be the beginning of her story.
As she got closer, he urged her on. “Come, welcome to our ancestral home. My name is Jonathan, and yours?”
“Jade.”
“Lovely to meet you, Jade,” he said and took her hand. “I have business to attend to, but please,” he said as he nodded and opened his arm toward the entrance, “walk through the villa, get comfortable and relax, then join us on the other side in the courtyard.”
Before she could ask a question, he disappeared into the night and she walked into the villa as instructed. The interior was three stories tall with marble floors and pillars, a grand staircase, and a crystal chandelier appearing to be lit from within. As she stood beneath it, a golden light wrapped around her, putting her at ease. Ahead, a gentle waterfall fell onto an entire wall and drew her to step inside its pool where she shed her clothing and basked in the warm, glittering water. As she smoothed it over her skin, the water felt like silk, luxurious and cleansing, making her feel light as air. A skylight gave her a show of a billion dots of shining light. As she gazed at them, memories flooded back of all those she loved, and her heart filled to overflowing. Feeling as a new person, she stepped out of the pool. A sign on a dressing room door pointed to a dress hanging there and said, “You’re welcome to wear this.” After toweling off, she stepped into the Grecian-style gown with a deep V-neck and luscious folds of soft, flowing, silver gossamer fabric. With such an ethereal quality, Jade thought it could be the dress of an angel. It hugged her body like a second skin, and she became radiant walking through the arched passageway into the courtyard.
