Prologue
God, I love you Dessa. Dessa, Dessa, your name keeps rolling around in my mind. I miss you, everything about you—the way that you'd wake me up every morning, the scent of your pillow, how you braided your hair before you went to bed. It seems like forever ago, a lifetime ago that we were together. Maybe it was a lifetime ago, I've become a different person, all due to you. When I first met you I was a dumb kid from the States and four years later I was a happily married man. Now I feel like only a shell of that man that you made me, just an empty and broken shell.
I know I don't talk about you, but it's just that I don't want to open the wound. I've tried to close it, to make the hurt stop, and I don't want to open myself up to that pain. I haven't said your name to anyone since I came back here to D.C. "Dessa Mulder" means nothing to anyone here, except me. I haven't said your name out loud since I got off that plane after your funeral. The only time that I say it is when I dream, or when I cry for you at night. I want you to lay with me and whisper to me like you used to do.
When I saw you die, I didn't know that pain like that even existed. My soul was torn in half and my heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I should be able tell people about you; I owe it to you, you were my wife. Just like I know I should keep wearing my wedding ring, but I don't.
Like I said, Dessa, I haven't been wearing my wedding ring. It's not that I want to hide you—you were my pride and joy. I'm selfish in that I don't want to open something that hurts so badly. You were everything to be, you made it all better and I don't know how to tell people that.
Part of me wants to go on like I know that you'd want me to. Then there's this other part of me that wants to keep going like this. I can't bring myself to accept the fact that you're dead. I want to tell myself that you've just gone a vacation, maybe to Paris. I'm so sorry that we never went. I swear to you that I was going to take you that summer.
Sometimes I think I see you on the street here, and I always take a second look. I know it isn't you, you were prettier, more graceful; you carried yourself differently somehow. There are days that I just want you to hold me like you used to do when I thought my life was falling apart. The day you died, that was when I knew my life had fallen apart and no one could comfort me, because I wanted you more than I wanted anything else in my entire life.
I have a partner here; her name is Dana, Dana Scully. I think that I've started to fall in love with her. This love is different from what I felt for you though, Dessa. Maybe it's because I'm older or maybe it's that I won't let myself love a woman how I loved you. I don't think that I can ever feel like how you made me feel again. You would like her Dessa; she's wonderful. She's independent, and she knows exactly what she wants. I'll always love you; there is nothing that can change that.
Every once and a while I like to remember our story. I always remember it, its burned in to my mind and etched into my being. Our story is what makes me what I am today. I like to think of every detail of you, of us. Young and in love, not listening to anyone. Those days at Oxford when I was with you and there was always a tomorrow filled with potential.