Wildfire by Toni Draper

Author:Toni Draper [Draper, Toni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Interlude Press
Published: 2021-06-14T21:30:24+00:00

Chapter 11

Aroused from a deep sleep by the stirring of her human, Jenny looked up as Sydney lowered her left leg before removing her glasses with one hand and stretching to place the book she’d been reading on the side table with the other.

“C’mon, girl, let’s go stretch our bones.”

Careful not to drop the bundle she’d picked up, Sydney lifted herself out of the leather chair’s comfortable and cooling embrace, forcing the dog from her lap. Outside, a steady drizzle of rain fell for the third straight day. The grass was a vivid green and the hedges, she took note, were badly in need of pruning and shaping. A soaked squirrel, its tail beat nearly as thin as a rat’s by the rhythmic fall of the pounding drops, scurried across the deck by the patio door, stopping long enough to unearth the buried treasure of a walnut. With his cheeks stretched to their limits by the spoils of his scavenger hunt, he scampered off contentedly.

Sydney pulled a patio chair toward her on the covered deck and sat near the light on the wall. With a trembling hand, she untied the ribbon with which she’d long ago bound the letters she now held, a lifeline to her past. Turning the top envelope around, she opened the flap and pulled out its contents. Mena had been relentless with her correspondence; she’d written every day, sometimes more. Most were from before they lived together. A few were after their breakup.

The first was a card that read:

You are the person I fall in love with more each day. You are everything I imagined, everything I dreamed of, and all that I need. You are my first thought when I wake up in the morning and my last before sleep comes each night. You are my fantasy and my reality, and forever the love of my life.

Below it, Mena had written:

Why, Syd? What happened? I don’t understand. I wish you’d just…please, talk to me.

Sydney hadn’t noticed before that the sturdy stock was crinkled, and some of the writing had been smudged. She looked down at the words that had reached out to her. She would forever be haunted by the pain she’d caused.

Can you imagine how I felt? How it hurt me when I found you that day? And to hear what you had to say? I had given up so much. I believed in you. I believed in us.

Mena had written and written, pouring the contents of her suffering soul onto her pages, hoping to make the Sydney she knew and loved come back to her, to no avail. Eventually, the unanswered letters and calls stopped.

Sydney carefully refolded the pages and slid them back into the envelopes from which they’d come, feeling her own eyes begin to tear up.

“Here’s what I’d like for you to do,” Liz said in her ongoing effort to get Sydney to consider views other than her own, to make her see and understand the give and take of relationships and the shades of grays that existed between the extremes of black and white.

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