A Bride Worth Waiting For

In truth, not just the soda would keep him awake tonight. A strange energy seemed to be singing through his veins.

He picked up his briefcase, moved to the table and snapped it open. Neat stacks of legal briefs stared back at him, the work of a man who didn’t drink cola at night because it might keep him awake.

Did she know he was a lawyer? She hadn’t asked. Would she ask tomorrow? Would she ask him why?

And would he tell her the truth?

He had contemplated his career long and hard before choosing. He had thought about becoming a doctor, just like her old man.

The thought, unfortunately, made him squeamish. He had always been able to hide his squeamish side from Tory and Mark, who seemed to think he was tough in every respect. And in some respects he had been. He had a high threshold for pain. He liked doing things that were thrilling. He was fearless, almost stupidly so, in the face of authority.

But the day he’d cut open the frog in high school biology he’d known a career that involved blood and body parts was out. He suspected he wouldn’t even be able to handle looking at slimy tonsils. Which meant dentistry, an extremely high paying profession, was unfortunately also out. Mark’s dad had been a vet. Since Adam had never so much as owned a goldfish, and could not even pretend an interest in the plump poodles that he had seen in Mark’s father’s outer office, he knew he wasn’t going to be doing that either.

Mark’s mother had been a psychologist, also a respectable profession, but the money was not as good, and probing the secrets of the human mind when his own was so largely baffling to him left him cold.

Accounting was too dull.

And that seemed to leave law. Nice clean work, for the most part. Though he had seen some slimy things that would put a pair of infected tonsils to shame. Still, he had a good mind for it. He excelled at it. Problem solving. Thinking on his feet. Keeping track of a multitude of different things at once. Butting heads. Maintaining his personal integrity when all about him others were losing theirs. He liked it. It was constantly changing and constantly challenging.

But somehow, even though the workings of his own mind baffled him, he knew becoming a lawyer had been about her.

She had picked Mark because they were from the same world. He had known intuitively that education was the passport to her world.

Education opened doors. Bought nice things. Bought respectability.

He had sworn the next time he was ready to ask a woman to spend her life with him, she would say yes.

The problem was that woman was supposed to be Kathleen. Twice as beautiful as Tory. Ten times as sophisticated.

Tory had already had her kick at this particular can. She’d lost her chance. Picked Mark.

But now Mark was dead.

And Mark had sent him back here.

He closed the briefcase and took the letter back out of his pocket. It was getting soft from so much handling.

He closed his eyes. He really didn’t have to read it again.

Mark’s last request of him. Make Tory laugh again.

Mark. Handsome. Athletic. Quiet. Stable. A good choice if you had to make one. A sensible choice.

That was what they had both been, Tory and Mark. Sensible. He bet they didn’t drink cola at half-past eleven at night.

He took a defiant swig, and suddenly felt so tired he thought he would collapse.

He set the letter on the table, stripped off his clothes and crawled between the soft sheets.

He slept almost instantly.

Chapter Two

Adam awoke in the morning feeling disoriented. Then it came back to him. Calgary. Tory. Mark. A mission.

He groaned, sat up, stretched. He saw the can of cola that he had taken precisely one swig from, and wondered how it was possible to feel like he had a hangover. The letter was beside the cola tin. He picked it up.

Don’t read it again, he ordered himself, and then read it again.

Dear Adam:

I asked my lawyer to wait a year before sending this on to you. Tory will need time. We married before we completed university, and she needs to know she can make it on her own.

But she needs to laugh, too.

I know how much you loved her.

And I know she loved you more than me. When she picked me, even though she loved you best, I began to believe in miracles.

You know, I’ve never stopped.

She was my angel. And now, if things work the way I think they do, I’m going to be hers.

This is my last request, Adam, and only you can do it. Go home. Go to her. Make her laugh. Teach her to have fun again. Rollerblade, and ride bikes with two seats, fly kites, sit out on lawn chairs at the lake and watch for the Big Dipper and Orion to come out.

She was always a little afraid of how you grabbed life with both hands. But she knows a little more about the nature of life, now. She won’t be afraid to take what it offers her.

You were my best friend, besides her. I know why you stayed away. She was mad at you, and probably still is, but I wasn’t. I’m watching out for you. I promise.

The letter was signed, simply, love, Mark.

Every single time he read that letter, Adam felt the same lump of emotion rise in his throat. The last paragraph in particular reminded him with such aching poignancy who Mark had been. Solid. Loyal. Loving. The fact that Mark’s handwriting was wobbly with pain, like the writing of a little old man, always seemed to increase that lump in his throat to damn near grapefruit size.

“This was not a good way to start the day,” Adam told himself, getting up and putting the letter down.

But the words stayed.

I know why you stayed away. Adam wished Mark would have said why. Because he didn’t know himself. A thousand times he had almost come home. A thousand times something had stopped him. And he did not know what that something was.

Pride. Hurt. Anger. Betrayal.

He shook his head. Mark seemed to think it was something else. But then Mark could be wrong. Look at that nonsense about Tory loving him, Adam, better.

When he’d first received the letter he’d known he absolutely could not go to Tory. He had several important trials coming up. Kathleen’s sister was getting married, and he was to be master of ceremonies. He had a 1964 Harley panhead in pieces in a friend’s garage.

He couldn’t just go traipsing across the country to go Rollerblading, for God’s sake!

And then he found he couldn’t not go.