Fifty-Seven Stones
The sharp clatter of stone on stone disturbed the stillness of the biting autumn morning, but only one was there to hear it. A solitary figure stood in the middle of the churchyard staring down at the cold, carven headstone. He was bent with age; a thick woolen scarf and heavy jacket obscured his face from much study. He leaned against a walking stick, standing still as the specter of death before him.
If a bystander had been close enough to observe the scene, they might have wondered at the sight, especially the large pile of rocks surrounding the base of the monument. It was the addition of one of these stones that had caused the disrupting noise, sending the few birds nesting nearby into the air, cawing down their reprimand at their interrupted sleep.
The figure didn't notice his trespass, however. He rarely noticed anything anymore. His grand-nieces and nephews thought him more than a little insane, and it was all their parents could do to get them to behave civilly towards the old man. He had no wife, no children, no family except his sister's. He was regarded as a local oddity, harmless but crazy. It was natural to see him sitting in odd places from sun-up to sun-down. The police had once had to bring him home from his seat by the pier, afraid he would freeze to death in the cold. Things like temperature, his surroundings, taking care of himself never seemed to occur to the old man. Some thought he should do his relatives a favor and die, so they wouldn't have to worry about him anymore. He seemed to get no pleasure from life and never had, as far as those living could remember.
He hadn't always been this eccentric, of course. People still remembered his work for the ISA. It was this demented soul who had finally done what all before had failed to do. In legendary brilliance, he had taken down the DiMera empire, bit by bloody bit, until Salem was finally free of the black stain of the Phoenix. He had been a man possessed, pouring everything inside of him into this one goal. Once it was accomplished, he lost his focus, his drive, perhaps even his sanity. None lived who remembered him as he had been before then. The sister he so loved had died a decade earlier; her husband had not lasted long after that. Friends and family had one by one been slipping away, until only this solitary figure remained, this last guard of a once vibrant, impassioned generation.
If someone had looked into the haggard, wrinkled face that morning, they might have seen again some trace of the man he had once been. The blue eyes, lucid and clear as crystal, belied any assumption that his mind had gone. They were the same eyes that had once pierced the soul of an angel; they were the eyes that won the heart of a diva. Today, on the anniversary of so many things gone by, he returned—as he did every year—to pay tribute to that love, the one true love of his life.
He struggled to kneel before her, leaning heavily on the cane as he bent on the grass. His eyes caressed the time-worn epitaph on her tomb. The years of her life were far too short, the words marking it not nearly enough to show all she had once been. He alone bore witness to the power of her life. Soon, even he would be gone, and she would be forgotten, as all those who went before her.
It seemed appalling to him to think of her as being erased from the history of time. His own life meant next to nothing to him. He would rather be dead beside her. Yet he lingered on, somehow feeling he must keep the flame of her memory alive as long as possible. He tried to tell others about her, but they didn't want to listen. What cared the next generation for the sufferings of his own? What did it matter to them that some girl had died over fifty years ago? Death was depressing. The past was upsetting. Life was now.
He couldn't blame them, he supposed. They should live life while they had the chance. Wasn't that the lesson she had taught him? Their time together had been painfully short, yet each moment was to him as precious and fresh as if it were yesterday. It shouldn't have ended the way it did. He could still recall the horror, the impotent rage of seeing that car careening towards her and being too far away to stop it. It was payback, revenge for Tony DiMera's fate. It was the cruelest punishment they could inflict. His own death would have been sweet in comparison.
Instead, he had been forced to watch his beloved slip away. Things had been so perfect, too. She was finally cured of her cancer. They were going to start a life together. A ring box had been burning a hole in his pocket, just waiting for the perfect moment for his proposal. Then, all at once, she was lying in his arms; the life's blood flowing out of her while distant sirens proved they would be too late. He could still see the eyes looking up at him with such mingled love and pain; still feel the hand growing ever colder in his own.
He had gotten his revenge, some would say. But was there ever truly retribution for such a loss? He doubted it. If there was, he would have felt some sense of satisfaction and closure when he saw the bullet rip into that bastard's body. If there was, he would have been able to move on, to love again, to know joy. But there was no joy and never had been, not since she was gone.
He hadn't been alone to mourn her, not immediately. Nearly everyone in Salem had shown up to pay tribute to Chloe Lane Wesley on the day of her funeral. But time healed all wounds, so they said, and as the years went on, the others had moved on with their lives. Her parents, unable to face the reminders, had taken their new little girl—the one who would grow up knowing their love and care—and moved far away from the painful memories. That little one would never be forced to deal with the suffering and bitterness that had overwhelmed most of her sister's life. She would know only love and joy through the many years of her life. She would never be half the woman Chloe was.
Philip had returned to pay his respects. He could still remember looking across the freshly-dug grave and seeing Philip's tear-stained eyes. In that moment, he pitied the boy he had once hated. Their familial bond was renewed through the death of the one they had both loved in their different ways. He didn't remember crying at the funeral. He didn't remember crying at all. His had been a grief too deep for tears, too overwhelming to find relief in the release of emotions. An emptiness had taken root inside his soul, never to be filled again.
Belle had mourned her best friend's loss as deeply as a girl of her sensitivities could. Yet a strange—some would say destined—occurrence resulted from her sorrow. Always having been the closest of friends, she and Philip leaned on each other to get them through. Two years later, they surprised the whole town of Salem by announcing their engagement. But this unlikely couple proved the nay-sayers wrong and had a shockingly long and—from all appearances—happy marriage.
He didn't begrudge his sister's happiness. In fact, it pleased him to know that she had emerged from her turbulent adolescence to live a life of peace and comfort. He had even come to respect Philip and consider him worthy of Tinkerbelle—far worthier than Shawn who kept slipping further and further along a dark, destructive path. But for him, there was no one who could ease the heartbreak that haunted him most of his life. He wouldn't have wanted there to be. He could never have lived with himself if he had allowed another to take her place. It would have proved his love was inconstant, that she was forgettable.
He had loved Chloe Lane for the past sixty years of his life. All his life before he met her seemed murky, dark, and empty; everything after her death was cold, harsh, and unreal. Instead, his mind focused on those three too-short years when she had been the driving force of his soul. She had breathed sunshine into his despair, replaced hatred and bitterness with love.
He could not even imagine what his life would have been like without her. No doubt he would have come to some self-destructive end. He remembered the first time he had met her, sixty years from the day. Dark, tortured, yet strangely beautiful, she had called to him. Something deeper than instinct had told him she was destined to be part of his life—more than part, the center from which all things sprung.
There was a theory, just now gaining prominence though Einstein had begun the work over a century before, that everything in the world was tonal; when broken down enough, all the world made music. How he wished Chloe could have lived to hear that! How she would have delighted to know they were right when they imagined notes raining down on them from heaven. Even a person's DNA had a tune all its own. Scientists were using that to explain why some people were attracted to each other. Their notes clicked. He knew that had been the case for him and Chloe. They were soulmates. Everything inside of him had sung to her, and her heart had echoed back, until they formed one complete and harmonious melody.
Nobody had believed such a thing could be when first they met. Belle, bless her heart, had struggled to make them tolerate each other. She had never seen that all the fighting, all the insults they had hurled at each other, was simply an attempt by the both of them to deny that instant connection. But it was useless. He had felt it every time he touched her; every time her hand rested in his for even the slightest instant. He had known it every time her eyes met his.
She had run longer than he had. She had fought against their love until she couldn't fight anymore. Time after time, Chloe had run back into Philip's arms. Not because she loved him; because she didn't. It was so much safer to stay in a relationship that could wound her vanity, but could not touch her soul. She had been hurt too many times in the past. She felt she was jinxed. He, fool that he was, insisted she wasn't—that they could have it all. Reality had caught up with them though. His lifelong torment was the knowledge that she would have been safe if not for him.
He wondered if, given the chance, he would have done anything differently. Could he honestly have lived with himself if he had never told her how he felt? Or maybe that wasn't the problem; maybe he had waited too long to tell her. He should have told her long before, should have admitted it that summer when Philip was in Puerto Rico. Would that have made a difference in the end? Would it have spared her such an undeserved fate?
What ifs had dominated the majority of his life. He had yet to come to any answers that satisfied him. The one constant in his life since that dreadful day had been his yearly pilgrimage to her grave. He couldn't bear to come more than this. It was a solid stone reminder that Chloe, his Chloe, was gone and never coming back. He didn't want to face that. He wanted to treasure her life, not remember her death. Yet once a year, he came, bearing a memorial to the ever-growing shrine.
Fifty-seven stones now lay around the base of her tombstone. On a day long ago, he had given her a stone as pledge that his love would outlast the mountains, the glaciers, the rocks themselves. Year after year he came, adding another testament to his undying love. Fifty-seven years had been and gone, but his love burned as brightly as it had on that cold autumn morning. He had kept his promise.
He gently fingered one of the stones, rubbing it repeatedly as the carven letters stared coldly back at him. "I'm here, Chloe," the old man croaked. "It's your birthday again. You would be seventy-six years old today. You should be celebrating your birthday in Brady's Pub, with our children and grandchildren all around. We should be dancing. I should be holding you close and telling you, you look as beautiful as the night I met you. I'm sorry, Chloe. I'm so sorry…"
His voice broke. He couldn't go on. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. It was wrong. Everything about it was WRONG. They were soulmates. They were meant to spend eternity together. Instead, they had three years—most of which they had wasted foolishly avoiding their feelings for each other. Maybe Chloe had been right. Maybe there was a curse…but it was his and not hers. First his mother, then the love of his life. Why?
He had been asking that question his entire life. No answer had come to him yet. There was no point to life. There was no justice in the world. God was distant and unfeeling, if he existed at all. He shrugged the thoughts aside. He had spent years dwelling on them and accomplished nothing. Not even his mother had showed her face since Chloe died. He wasn't even sure he believed in heaven anymore.
Time passed, but he was unaware of it. The sun rose high in the sky. People everywhere went about their lives, but time stopped for Brady. He felt his chest being squeezed as if to extract the last drop of blood from his heart. After fifty-seven years, he finally felt the release he craved steal over him. Gently, he traced one last time the elegant letters of her name. She would be forgotten now, as he had always feared she would be.
But maybe it didn't matter so much after all. Maybe all that mattered was that she had been loved, loved with all the passion and fire a man had in him. She had consumed his life, utterly and completely, but he would not wish a second of it back—unless it be to spend them all on her again, to do better by her, to be more worthy of her. "Oh, my Diva…"
The long silence of heaven was broken, as with his last breath, he heard her voice whisper his name. "Brady…"