Twenty-seven years married, thirty years away from her birth town, Joanne was surprised at how young Jonathan looked. Her first serious boyfriend, the first she gave all too, and the one she detested her parents for pulling her away from. Jonathan, still gorgeous and the first person that recognised her since her return.
Still single, still his cheery, charming self. And still single!
“Why?”
“I just never found that same love that I felt for you.”
The fire reignited. Never extinguished but damped and hidden away in the secluded forest.
“I married to defy my father and make my mother feel the pain I felt, when she took me away from you.”
The criminal ‘Bones’ Jones gave her a good life. Evading justice the whole of their marriage, shot leaving the bank of their latest heist. Joanne headed back to Stone Meadows before the police had any chance of grabbing her.
Jonathan. Jonathan. His name rolled around her as if she were in a cavern. Constant, defiling, and all-consuming, instantly curing her from her grief. Just as he had done when she was young.
Such a gentleman he talked with her, never made a move on her, and yet she knew. She could see in his eyes the adoration he still had for her. “I have to kiss you,” she told him. She had prompted their first kiss, knowing he felt insecure to make the first move.
Her story regurgitated, and he reciprocated his truncated tale of life without her. His emphasis always about him missing her. Her laugh, her fun, her beauty. The dreams they told each other, their dreams about her.
And she felt guilty for not holding on the same way. Yet she had. It was just her own way. Her revenge.
The hours convoluted as if it they were months till she felt she had to sate the fire or she would surely just die.
As if he could read her like a tacky, racy, novel he asked if she would like to see his place.
She would. Of course she would. But what was wrong with her place?
The burning needed little persuasion to agree.
With the staff extinguishing the lights in the bar they took the hint and slipped through the doors just before the manager locked up. “I live in that house at the top of the graveyard,” he told her. “It is not up to much, but it is mine.”
The quickest way from the bar was through the place of the dead. A heavily clouded night. Away from the entrance the darkness was thick.
He held her hand, lovingly guiding her along the tree lined pathway.
“Oh Jonno,” she said using his ‘school’ name, “I have dreamt of you being with me for so many years.”
“I too,” he replied. “I want to show you something. I need to show you before we are together.”
“Anything,” she oozed, sounding like an ancient bottle of wine finally poured into a glass.
“After, we will be together for eternity.”
“Till the day we die,” she added.
“Beyond,” he whispered.
Leaving the pathway, he pulled her between the gravestones. They weaved, up the gentle slope. The route stepping through the stones, always careful not to step on any of the final resting places.
Jonathan stopped. He turned to face her, taking both her hands in his. His thumb rubbing her hand with a deft touch.
“Do you know how much I missed you? Your parents took my heart with you.”
In the darkness all she could see were his teeth as his lips moved. The love in his eyes held her memory infatuated.
“I rarely ate. I could only eat when I received your letters.”
“Then I should have written every day. You stopped replying. I thought you had moved on,” she told him.
“My parents noticed how I was wilting. That I was wasting away. They tried everything to lift me. But nothing could.”
“I was distraught too. I hated my parents.”
He put his finger to his lips. “Let me tell you.”
She nodded.
“Sometimes I stopped breathing. I stopped thinking of any thoughts not about you. No words could lift me. No deeds made me feel anything. Everyone tried to help, the medical doctors, the doctors of the head. Even a priest. But nothing revived me. Six months after they took you from me. I found myself asleep here.”
She looked. The darkness concealed the wording.
He ordered her, “Read it.”
A light glowed enough for her to read. The heavy cloud clearing.
Taken from us at 17. His heart and body broken. Our loving son who loved too much. Jonathan Reece Gove. 17th October 1944 – 14th May 1960.
She read it four times.
Looking at him, she said, “How did you get a grave?”
“The usual way. I died.”
“But…. but….”
“I died, my love. You killed me leaving me. And three days later I stood where you are looking at this mound of earth.”
“But I can touch you. We kissed. You do not feel like a ghost. You are warm.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t understand. You can see me. You can touch me. All these years and no one has seen or touched me. It must be our love shining from the past.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. I have been waiting for you. I could feel you. For so many years the signal was feint. I looked but never found you. Last week it became a constant hum. It grew and became pain. I felt that same pain long ago. As I walked it would wane or get stronger. It became obvious I had to go towards the pain. To face whatever was before me. When I saw you, it disappeared.”
“What do we do now. I will never leave you again. But what happens when I die? Will I be like you?”
“We could find out?”
“Are you suggesting I die now?”
“The last few hours have been bliss, and I want it to go on forever. But I watched both my parents die. And disappear. You could last decades, but it would be horrific if you disappeared. How could I cope?”
“If I died now, what if I disappeared too?”
“I know that. I fear being without you. Yet years together and then you disappear I would want to die again. Only this time I will have an eternity of pain without an escape. “
She asked, “But don’t you have that if I disappear?”
“Our love, I believe, will keep you here. I am willing to take a chance on our love. For me, the odds are good. But were we to wait for your end, I would lack total bliss. I would always be wondering if this was our last day.”
Thinking for a moment. Joanne studied his face in the darkness. “I agree with you. Kill me now.” An unsettled emotion travelled through her. A weight pressing down on her skull. Something was not right. She was missing something. She had forgotten something.
Jonathan had a knife. Gripping her wrist tight he pulled. His other hand ran the blade down the vein line. Her flesh parted with ease, but no blood burst forward. She felt no pain. As his blade reached her hand, the flesh had resealed, returning to normal. “I don’t understand,” he said.
She remembered. Joanne leaving the bank, backwards covering the guards, the bystanders, the staff. Bones shouting fuuuuuuuck. Turning, seeing the flashing blue lights on the panda cars. The guns pointing at them. Bones Jones raised his, he recoiled against the steps. She aimed for the man who shot him. The intense pain as three bullets entered her from different angles.
She said,
“I am already dead. We can be forever.”
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