Beyond the Storm (9780758276995) (23 page)

She nodded. “No more secrets.”

“Good. So let's just take the rest of this rare time-out and enjoy ourselves. I don't know about you, but I can wait for whatever morning brings. I'll take this night every night. I'll take tonight right now.” He paused to stare directly into her emerald eyes; he thought he could see his reflection in her irises. No, more than just his body, he thought he could see the elusive thing called a soul and it was staring back at him, letting him know how right the time was. “Let me take you upstairs. I want to be with you, fully, completely . . . it's time that we . . .”

She put a lone finger to his expressive lips, silencing them. “Time that we made love? That we truly shared ourselves, finally free from the past?”

“You read my mind.”

“You opened yourself to me. I get it, Adam. I get you.”

“You need to get us.”

He took her hand as he rose from his seat on the porch. With one easy motion he brought her close against his body. He felt the heat melt their bodies. He kissed her hard as he embraced her. All around them the night came alive, streaks of moonlight suddenly peeking from behind those persistent storm clouds, the chirping of crickets filling the air with their endless song, the wind answering back with its own swirling effects. They held each other as time stood still. The world was theirs and only theirs.

Adam began to lead her back inside when suddenly her arms enveloped herself.

“What's wrong?”

“I'm cold.”

“I'll keep you warm, that's a promise.”

“No, no, you don't understand. Adam, this chill, it's been with me all day. Even with the fireplace blazing and the hot shower, the fainting spell I experienced inside the cupola, our dash through the cornfields where I was nearly sweating, all of this warmth and still I haven't shaken the cold I've felt since the accident. Why? What's wrong with me?”

“I'm no doctor, but maybe it's a mild case of shock. Not just from the accident, but from all the secrets you've had bottled up inside you,” he said. “You've released them. So now come to bed, let the covers, let me . . . chase the cold night away. Together we'll find warmth before the morning sun provides it.”

“You're quite the romantic, Adam Blackburn.”

“You're quite the reason to be, Vanessa Massey.”

He opened the screen door, escorting her inside. They paused at the base of the stairs, looking upward. Like this was one final climb, one last obstacle.

“I feel weird. It's not our house, not our bedroom.”

Adam shook his head. “For tonight, this house is our home. Perhaps it's where we would have lived, you and me and Elizabeth Grace, had life worked out differently. We might have been happy here, instead of spending our entire lives running from truth, seeking out something we never ultimately wanted. And I'm not talking about regrets, because those are for fools. Our lives have happened as they have because that's how it was meant to be. Our friend out there, Mr. Aidan Barton, I think he would approve. He's been very giving so far today, letting us use his house to finally realize the connection that exists between us.” He paused, his hand caressing her cheek. “Tonight is meant to be as well. So come upstairs—to our bed, where we'll exist on our own plane and in our own time.”

“Adam Blackburn?”

“Uh-oh, I sense hesitancy in your voice.”

She nodded. “Right now, as much as I'd follow you to the edge of the earth and probably beyond . . . I think we're forgetting one thing. But you have only yourself to blame, you brought him up and reminded me—about Aidan Barton. Remember when I said that you both shared the same initials? Well, I'm curious about something that until just now had eluded me.”

“What's that?”

“The name Venture.”

“The name on the letters.”

“Venture. Vanessa. Don't you get it? She had the same first initial as me,” she said. “So it's got me thinking. What's Venture's last name?”

The crackle of wood from the fire lit orange sparks against the walls, illuminating their faces upon the walls. The illusion was powerful, as though they were no longer two but four, the shadows having moved in to be with the people inside the house.

“The letters,” Vanessa said. “We forgot all about the letters.”

Adam looked at her and she stared right back.

They were on the same page, and soon would be reading the same pages.

And the race was back on, this time the two of them chasing each other up to the cupola. The shadows followed, curious also to learn the decades-old secrets awaiting to be unsealed.

Feeling already like intruders inside this house, what they were about to do seemed like an even deeper betrayal, a violation of an implied trust. They had eaten the food and drank the wine, they'd showered, worn their clothes. All because it was available to them and fed their needs. But now, just because they had stumbled upon the old trunk filled with unread letters, did that give them permission to open them? The contents of the unread letters were none of their business, so why then was Vanessa sitting on the edge of the top step of the cupola, watching with anticipation as Adam approached the letters with nothing short of determination. He lifted the lid of the old trunk, a discernable squeak filling the space of the small room.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I'm not sure.”

He looked at her, a knowing look on his face. He felt it too. The sense that they were overstepping their bounds. But he then looked back at the letters as momentary indecision hung in the thick air. “You give the word and I can seal this old trunk up again, and we can return downstairs and forget we ever found it. We can let Aidan's secrets stay buried for another day, for another person to find them.”

That was the practical thing to do. But nothing about this day fit that description. They had gone with a flow as natural as that found on the lake, questioning their predicament but not understanding it. And so it was with the trunk, the letters. They had to go for it, there was no turning back now. “No, I think we're supposed to read them.”

Adam nodded. “I agree. Okay, so no more delays.”

From inside the trunk he withdrew a bundle of letters and handed them over to Vanessa. They were from the top of the pile, the most recent.

“Go ahead, you first,” he said.

Swallowing hard, Vanessa ran a finger across the thick parchment of the envelope before pulling at the red ribbon that held them intact, releasing the letters to the floor in a fanlike display. Spread before her, she noticed they were all of the same quality of stationery, the same word . . . name . . . written across the middle in the same script.
Venture,
they stated, all with an underlined flourish. Vanessa looked up for confirmation from Adam that they were indeed going ahead with this. His eyes said it all, he was eager to know the contents, and she had to imagine that her eyes spoke the same language.

“Here goes,” she said.

She took hold of the top letter, turning it over to reveal flaps perfectly sealed. Sliding a nail underneath, she moved slowly across the length of the envelope, not wanting to tear it to shreds. A letter opener would have been easier. But at last the flap lifted, revealing two sheets of paper inside. She unfolded them to reveal the same flowing script that adorned the front of each envelope. Aidan had used some kind of quill pen, the ink jet-black, his handwriting strong and determined, yet with the natural flow of a true romantic. She cleared her throat, and began to read.

The letter took just minutes to read, and as the words filtered into the room, filling it, all of nature grew quiet, the reverence clear. Aidan's story to his “dearest” Venture was simple and profound, but his love for her was unmistakable, unmatched. He claimed this was his last letter to her, knowing the end was near for him. He spoke of the day in which the sea had claimed her, and how he had spent the remainder of his life devoted to her memory, never once forgetting her. He was confident of being reunited with her, if not today or tomorrow but someday.

“My God, Adam, he was so earnest. So certain.”

“That's love. That's faith.”

“To think, he spent years—his whole life—writing these letters to her, ending with this one where he believed they were to be reunited in death. How he must have felt, how his emotions must have overtaken him. Look at the date at the top of this final letter, August 18th. Written the day before he died. And the determination behind his words, he knew he was going to die, yet he remained unafraid.”

Silence descended upon them as Vanessa thought of what that day must have been like. The old man at his writing desk, his hand wobbly from age but somehow resilient when the time came to jot down his final thoughts to Venture. When she looked up, she noticed that Adam had gotten up from the floor and was now peering out the window. No doubt at Aidan's grave down below.

“Adam, what a privilege this is, finding these letters.”

She saw him nod gently toward Aidan's grave. A touch of respect, an acknowledgment that his stories, his dreams . . . they were safe in their hands. “If you don't mind, sir, we'd like to know more about you, and about Venture, and about what you meant to each other.”

The wind gave up no hint of objection to his request, and the single bulb illuminating the cupola remained lit. Nature was quiet, power on their side. Vanessa retrieved another letter from the pile, again gently opening its seal. She read silently this time before opening the next, again reading Aidan's expressive words to herself. Adam did not interrupt, waiting patiently for Vanessa. At last, after having read through seven letters, she set them down, a stack of loving remembrances. She gazed up.

“Every letter begins with the same greeting: ‘My dearest Venture . . .' But Adam, it's how Aidan signed off, his salutation. It's either a strange coincidence, or it's just . . . I don't know—freaky?”

“We've done freaky today. What's one more instance? What does it say?”

“Forever yours.”

Even after a day filled with strange moments and situations neither could explain, this had to be chief among the coincidences. She watched as visible surprise formed on his dry lips. Sitting down beside her, Adam picked up one letter, then another, not because he didn't believe her but because he had to see them for himself. She was right, each letter ended with the phrase “Forever Yours.”

“The prom,” he said.

“That was our theme. It was called the Forever Yours Senior Ball.”

“Well, it's not completely unlikely. It's not exactly an uncommon phrase . . .”

“Adam, you don't get it. The theme—that so-called common phrase? You know who came up with it? It was me. I was on the prom committee, and we all had to submit ideas for the theme. I remember the phrase coming to me in a dream the night after my friends and I spent the day up at the lake. The memory is strong—the water was fierce that day, with strong waves hitting the shore, and it got me thinking. Humans have only a limited time on this earth, but the water . . . the lake, nature, all that surrounds it, it's for forever. If only we could experience such a thing as forever, that's what I thought. Isn't what love is supposed to be, a connection that can't be broken? That's how the theme came about. I proposed it the next day and everyone agreed immediately that it was the ideal sentiment. And now here we are, twenty years later, two people who had no business together attending a prom called Forever Yours, reunited and discovering these letters . . .”

“Meant to be,” he said.

“Or maybe your silly theory isn't so silly.”

“What? That I'm really the living soul of Aidan Barton? And you're Venture . . .”

“Venture who? We still haven't learned her last name.”

“You think her last name begins with an
M?
”

“Don't you?” she asked.

“Yeah, at this point, I can't imagine the alphabet even having twenty-five other letters.”

“Speaking of more letters. I'm sure we'll find her name in the letter somewhere. But where do we start? There are hundreds of letters, Adam, he wrote one every week, and he lived for so much longer than Venture.”

“Easy solution,” he said. “The first one.”

The moment became a mad scramble with both Vanessa and Adam making their way back to the truth-baring trunk. Adam held the lid up against the wall while Vanessa systematically removed bundle after bundle, setting them on the floor in neat piles. At last she came to the bottom stack, the envelopes appearing to be surprisingly well preserved. They were nearly one hundred years old, they had to be, and yet they were perfectly kept inside the closed air of the trunk. Only the red ribbon wrapped around the stack had frayed, and it easily fell apart at her touch. She left most of the letters of that first stack in the trunk, only the one on the bottom interested her. Because, of course, it was the very first one Aidan wrote.