The noonday sun gleamed through the stained glass window, sending brilliantly colored patterns of light onto the sheet of paper that lay empty in front of Father Leonard. Although he hadn't taken a vow of poverty, as most nuns and clergymen did, he found that conserving energy and using the natural light from the many massive windows helped him to write the sermons he delivered every week at Saint John the Baptist Church outside San Francisco. Without the burning glow of the fluorescent light bulbs above his head, he was usually able to concoct beautiful words of wisdom and faith for the homilies, but that day his mind was far away from his body.

The priest wiped his hand through his blond hair, which desperately needed cutting, as he stared at the emptiness with contempt. He tapped his pen habitually on the sheet, making several small spots of ink appear on the page. Before he had even written the opening statement about the week's gospel, he had covered one corner with hundreds of black dots, the result of an hour of nervous energy that he could not dispel from his body. It was his anniversary; one year before he had been ordained into the priesthood, devoting his life to God above all. Only because he had lost the only thing he had ever loved.

            She had been his first and his last. His only, really. She had been all that he ever thought that he would ever need. Nothing could separate them, and nothing would, as far as he saw it. Even in death, she would always be with him, guiding him along the way, but there was always the great feeling of helplessness that swept over him whenever he thought of her. He hated her for leaving him, hated her for letting something happen when she had told him not to worry, hated her for writing the stupid letter. But he hated her the most for not giving it to him herself, before she died, but waiting to have it found by her parents after she was gone.

                                                                                                                        Sept. 24th, 2113

Dear Leonard,

            I'm sorry that I couldn't be with you when you read this, since I know that because you are reading it, I didn't survive. It was never meant to be this way, and I was going to give it all up for you. The power, the fights, even the little feeling of joy that filled me up when I saw the latest one fall into a thousand little pieces before my eyes. I never wanted it to end with you all alone. You deserved someone better, someone who would make you happy your entire life, and maybe I just wasn't the one to do it. Perhaps it was that I wasn't the type to settle down. It was all part of the job description. You knew what I did for a living and you didn't try to change it, and for that I'm glad. It's not everyday that you meet a guy who doesn't care that you hunt demons as a full time career. None of it mattered, though, because I needed you more than I needed the job. But it seems that I wasn't able to keep my end of the bargain. I loved you when I met you, I loved you when we kissed, I loved you when we were together, and even more when we were apart. So just think of this as me loving you so much that my heart is bursting for you.

            Remember to keep your chin up when you walk, and to put the toilet seat down, because you know that I hate it when you leave it up. But most of all remember that I love you forever, 'til death do us part. Bye baby.

                                                                                                            Always and Forever,

                                                                                                                        Phoebe

            The funeral had gone badly, though he didn't remember crying at all. Her mother fainted as they lowered the coffin into the ground, and by the time the reception afterward was over, her father was too drunk to realize that his son was missing in action. The worst part of it was that no one noticed him as he slipped out of the foyer and made his way silently up the stairs to her room. He sat on her bed, read her diary, held the ragged stuffed bear that she had left on her pillow. The box from the engagement ring that he had given her lay open on the bedside table, empty, as she was wearing it when she was placed in her grave. He ran his fingers over the soft felt lining and clamped it shut violently, then flung it down onto the quilt before taking the diary, placing it in his coat pocket, and dashing from the house without a word.

            The memories of the last day he saw her face flooded him as he strode through the massive church, walking between the pews and staring out the picture windows that depicted Jesus' great miracles. The fishes and loaves, water to wine, raising Lazarus, and finally his own resurrection from the grave. Father Leonard had studied each one individually, finding flaws with each and wondering why Jesus had not given the woman he loved the miracle that she had so deserved. None of these thoughts entered his mind as he passed through the aisles and out into the bright afternoon. The only thing he thought about was remembering what he had lost.

***

            The tombstone was nestled underneath a grove of trees at the back of the cemetery in the family's plot. It was a solid brick of limestone and granite engraved with script lettering and gold embossment. Her name glittered as the light from the setting sun ricocheted off the words. It had taken him four hours to reach the old city, and two more to find the grave. He carried her letter in one hand, and his rosary in the other while he passed through the knee-high grass in the field around the plot. Once the single stone was within his sight, he slowed his pace, fearing to see the weeds overrunning her beautiful resting place. But he kept on, knowing that he had enough guilt on his mind for ignoring her, and he didn't need even more on his conscience by leaving when he was so close.

            He swung open the rusting, cast iron fence and stepped into the penned area that stretched for a hundred yards in either direction. In the center he saw the stone, her stone, the only one that seemed to have been recently visited. A small plastic container of dead, dry carnations were stuck into the ground just a foot away from the stone, and he kicked it away as he knelt down and looked at the words for the first time in a long time.

            "In memory of Phoebe Warren," he read aloud to himself and the squirrel, which ran along the fence next to him. "Our beloved daughter, sister, and friend. May her soul find peace wherever she may go. 2089 – 2113." He put the tip of his finger over her last name, and with tedious care and effort, wrote his own last name over her own. "W-Y-A-T-T. The name should have been yours. You were supposed to be my wife… my wife…"

            The priest wiped away the tear that crept down his cheek and rested his forehead against the cold rock. Once his eyes were closed, he was swept away in what seemed to be a dream. But it could not have been a dream. He was not asleep, so it was a vision.

In the darkness behind his lids there came a light, not bright as though he were on the tunnel after death, but bright enough so he could make out the faces that had been masked by the black. There was a woman, beautiful and young, all dressed in white and surrounded by her family. He saw his love, Phoebe, in the background as the young woman walked with her father up to an altar. There, by the altar, he saw himself, sharp and handsome in a black tuxedo. He was smiling at the stranger in front of him, and he realized that he was marrying the beautiful woman. She was not the woman he had once loved, but someone close to her. Her friend, or even her sister, as they looked so much alike. This vision, he figured, as he saw the ceremony go on, was not a vision of the future or of the past. It wasn't a dream and it wasn't real, but somehow he felt that it had happened to him before. As though in another lifetime. But was it possible? In a life before this one he had not loved the woman he had loved in this life, but another. She had been his soul mate… right?