There was a time. A time when she was happy. She had her husband whom she loved dearly. She had a son who sat on the chair in the library and read them a story while her daughter dipped her fingers in paint and made pictures.
She lay in Will's arms, who looked at the children with the same pride as she did.
Everything would have been perfect.
But there was a shadow cast across the parents' faces. No matter how happy they would become, that shadow would always be there.
"What was Uncle Jem like?" her daughter once asked her.
Her son, who bore Jem's name, had just as much curiosity in his eyes as his little sister.
Tessa squeezed her husband's hand. She could almost feel the pain coursing through him. Her own children didn't even know him.
"Jem is all the good there is." Even if they hadn't had any sign of life from Jem for years, they both refused to believe that he was no longer alive. They just couldn't picture him dead. "He is the person who keeps the sun in its orbit. Whenever he lets someone into his heart, he lights up that life with every second." Will never stopped hoping to see him again someday. It was an instinct that anchored him to Jem. As if he took the second half of his soul with him when he left.
Tessa had always envied this. Not that she was jealous of it. She understood the bond between the two and was glad it existed.
But sometimes she wished for this security. She wished she could feel Jem on the other side of a bond as well. Being able to talk to him mentally as if he had never left.
But she hadn't been able to feel the brightness of Jem's existence like that in a long time. She loved him more than she could even put into words, yet it couldn't compare to the love the guys had for each other.
A love that neither distance nor years could fade.
While Tessa's perceptions of him became more distorted over the years and the stories of them became cherished memories, he always stayed alive in Will's mind. As if he could continue to spend time with him. As if he never left.
Tessa knew about the letters he wrote to Jem. Every year on his birthday. Well, it was more than a letter. Will kept the letters in a kind of diary, which he kept throughout the year and then sent to Shanghai in a small package every week. For a while Jem had answered. Mostly they were reactions to Will's letters, he said little about his new life. Enough to stop Will from traveling to China and looking for him himself, but not really much more.
And then the letters stopped. From one day to another. No goodbye, no explanation. But they knew anyway. They knew Jem enough to know that he believed Will and Tessa would not live their lives to the full while a part of them was attached to him. Still, Will never stopped sending his letters anyway. And since they were never returned unopened, Will had his confirmation that he was alive.
More than once Will had nearly gone looking for Jem.
Although he had never said it and never even hinted at it, Tessa knew that without her he would have left a long time ago. And no matter how happy their life was, that single omission was Will's only regret in life, to the very end.
"Mrs Herondale!" A young sister waved Tessa over, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Tessa recognized her, she was one of the older volunteers, but Tessa just couldn't remember her name. Her memory wasn't what it used to be either. Lately it happened more and more often that she was so sleepy with the past that she almost couldn't find her way back to reality.
Sometimes she saw Will in the faces of young strange men. Then she forgot for a moment that he was no longer among the living, which made her all the more disappointed when she did not recognize the Herondale fire in the eyes of these strangers.
Even her old, calcified brain could tell the difference.
So far she has managed to hide the onset of senility from her children, but this will not be possible for much longer.
When the time came, they would persuade Tessa to move in with one of the two so they could take care of their mother.
While it was nice to be with her family, she knew that if she admitted her senility, there would be no turning back. She would never feel needed again, would have no purpose, and that was always what Tessa hated most in life. She knew that after that she wouldn't have much time herself.
And silly as it sounded, Tessa couldn't just die while war raged. She needed to be able to leave knowing that Will's town, their family, could get through this.
She shook off the thought and went to the stretcher, to which the young sister waved her.
"What do we have here?" Tessa's voice was already scratchy. She'd been on her feet all day, giving one instruction after the next.
Her tired legs would certainly not carry her much longer.