November 6, 1941
Normandy.
Kelly went up the stairs and her heart seemed to want to blow them up. She tried to calm down. She took a deep breath and tried to get her hair back in order.
She looked back at the closed door leading to the stairs, leading to the fake wall, leading to Brandon.
Then she went back to look at the silhouettes that were glimpsed behind the glass of the main door.
She opened the door and found three German officers in front of her.
"Good morning miss" the German soldier gave her a smile.
Kelly stayed behind the semi-hidden door and smiled to answer him.
"We're sorry to bother you, but we'd need to talk to the Mrs Isabel Dupoint."
"My mother-in-law is not there," she replied, "she had to go to Rouen."
"I understand," said the officer then looked at the other soldiers and finally said what he had come to ask "next Saturday our division general will come here, we would need to borrow your best tablecloths, we are asking all the wealthy families in the village."
Kelly didn't look them in the eye and feared they would read Brandon's presence on her face.
"The tablecloths are my mother-in-law's, as soon as she comes back I'll ask her for you."
"Well," the officer replied.
Kelly continued "we can bring them to you if you like... to the town hall"
"You are very kind but I can send my soldiers"
"No, we can bring them ," Kelly replied, looking him in the eye.
He also has blue eyes, but more metallic, more rigid.
The officer smiled "well, thank you"
The three turned around and went back to the cars.
Kelly closed the door and crouched: the fear began to rise like foam and she felt like she could no longer breathe.
November 06, 1941
Pearl Harbour
The sun was going down on the beach, it was the mute hour, the perfect hour.
Dylan was waiting near the altar of Hibiscus, behind him the ocean and in front of him his father, his friends. For the first time he felt that the black inside him was stretching.
Then he saw her.
The light wind moved her hair and dress. She proceeded barefoot and alone. On the head the white Hibiscus crown and in the hand a bouquet of all possible colors.
Brenda advanced and looked at him as if there was nothing more beautiful in the world, more perfect for her.
It was really like that.
Valerie watched her new friend advance and was happy with how good she had been at organizing the ceremony, finally a new thing. Joyful. She was the daughter of the admiral, since she was a child she had to attend military dinners, maintain the formality that her family required, but inside Valerie was a fire, she wanted to fly, she also wanted to transgress.
Her gaze rested on a soldier. David, maybe that was his name, had seen him wandering around and hanging out with the other military but had never noticed how cute he was. Their eyes crossed and smiled. Perhaps, with a little courage she would have been invited to dance. Later. Surely he would have been less boring than those guys his father approved of and with whom she didn't even know what to say.
Brenda arrived at the altar and not for a moment Dylan took his gaze away from hers. They were as if united by a mysterious force that anyone at the time could feel, a force that transcended thought and even time.
The two spouses turned to the altar.
"We are gathered here today to celebrate the love between this man and this woman," the minister began, "between a new and strong love that wants to get through these times with courage, that has decided that walking the road together is better than to continue alone. Fate made them meet, chose the moment for them, they faced with extreme courage the separation and the difficulties until they reached this moment.
Until they have the strength to arrive here before us and before God" he then continued "If one falls the other raises him up. This teaches us the Bible and this is what these young newlyweds teach us.
The sermon went on in the total silence of the moved guests.
"The newlyweds will now give reading of their promises"
Dylan turned to her.
He sighed with emotion. He had tried a thousand times to write something that was remotely close to what he felt for her, he had searched for some poetry in the military library and in the end it was decided that that day and at that moment the words would come to him on their own.
"I love you," he began like this, "you complete me and you've done it from the moment we met. I didn't have a simple life and in the last year two of the people I loved the most in the world left, but there wasn't a day when I didn't feel alive because I had you. It was you who kept me alive, it was always you. And this thing, believe me, sometimes scares me, but most of the time it even brings me closer to God. You have compensated for all the voids I stumbled in my soul, you have something in your hands that allows me to move forward, step by step, day by day, and I am and will always be grateful to God for this. I've never looked at life the way I look at it now that you're there. And do you want the truth? I like it. I like to look at you in the morning, I like to come home and know that you will be there, you make me want to be a better person. You make me want to be a better person every day. I will always protect you, I will always love you, and I will always be your best person."
Brenda had tears in her eyes, even she couldn't imagine more beautiful words, she had prepared an old poem but she decided that maybe she too would find the right words in the sparks of that afternoon.
They kept holding hands in hand and looking into each other's eyes. A slight breeze was blowing. The ocean was in front of them. More in there you could see Arizona and South Virginia.
Brenda tried to stop the tears but was moved and her voice was broken.
"That strength that you believe I give to you is actually you to give it to me, every single day, from the moment we met and probably even before, I fantasized about how you would be, what face you would have and when I saw you I knew it was you. That you were the one I was waiting for. My eyes and my heart rested on you and never left you again, because I can't and I could never, it joined in a single river that flows through the veins of life, and pulsates, and digs and gains strength, every single day. I see love in your eyes and I think we have to be really beautiful together because the people who love each other are always beautiful together. I will take care of you, I will take care of your days, I will take care of your heart and not only because I love you beyond anything but because it is something that makes me live, it also allows me to be strong, to be the woman I want to be every single day. No matter how many difficulties we encounter, these years and these winds of war don't really matter, we don't even feel them as long as we are together, and we will never feel them, they will never bend us, because it's you and me. I couldn't choose a better man. I think that destiny will make us meet again and again for all the lives that will come because certain things cannot be broken, they cannot die, they can only approach God and ask for his blessing. I love you Dylan and I will love you forever.
The guests applauded and there was no dry eye. Valerie thought she would like a love like that too, maybe one day it would come. She felt a look at her, that military David had eyes on her, everyone was for the newlyweds, he was for her. He smiled. One day I'll have that love too, she thought again.
The minister concluded with the marriage formula:
"You came together in the Father's house,
Because your decision to join in Marriage
Receive his seal and his consecration,
In front of the minister of the Church and in front of the community.
You are already consecrated through your Love and now God blesses and strengthens you with the nuptial sacrament,
Because you love each other with faithful and inexhaustible love
And responsibly assume the duties of Marriage.
Dylan kissed the ring intended for Brenda and looked her in the eye.
"I Dylan, welcome you Brenda as my bride.
With the grace of God
I promise to be faithful to you always,
In joy and pain,
In health and disease,
And to love and honor you
Every day of my life.
You who are my love, my life, my wife.
It was her time.
"I welcome you Dylan as my husband.
With the grace of God
I promise to be faithful to you always,
In joy and pain,
In health and disease,
And to love and honor you
Every day of my life.
You who are my love, my life, my husband.
The rings slipped through their fingers and sealed that love that didn't need rings anyway.
"With the power bestowed on me, I declare you husband and wife," he then turned to Dylan, "You can kiss the bride."
At the kiss it was a riot of joy.
Boston. 90s
Brandon returned to his apartment with a devastated soul. He had said goodbye to Steve in New York and it hadn't been a simple greeting. They had wondered several times how to get Kelly out of Colin's hands, how to help her. Brandon looked around. That dark apartment, that opportunity that had seemed to him the opportunity of a lifetime didn't make much sense knowing that Kelly was in that condition.
They had often hurt each other and above all he had a lot to reproach himself starting with Emily and then in the way they had broken up, the words he had said to her. Kelly was not an easy person, she had often been hidden by a frivolity that Brandon had not understood, not at least at the beginning but over time he had learned that behind that Kelly there was another one, that she was afraid, who came from a highly disconvincing family, trained and almost accustomed to the sudden disappearances of the people she loved most and the repercussions of her mother's alcohol and drugs. And now Brandon was gone too, without a word, indeed with bad words. Brandon had understood that Kelly had learned that she could never count on anyone to stay, maybe that's why she had taken Dylan because Dylan was exactly like her and because Dylan disappeared according to the moods of that day and if this would be a difficulty for anyone, for Kelly it represented everything she knew by heart, an ugly and uncomfortable thing in which she had nevertheless grown up, the only thing she knew. It was a null relationship and subjected to fragility, she believed she could have what Brenda had with him and never had it and to do this she sacrificed the love and stability of her friendship with Brenda because for her it was an unknown terrain, which somehow scared her, she believed that sooner or later she would lose Brenda anyway. Neither Kelly nor Dylan had any security, but that broth of loneliness was a thing known to both of them, the only thing they knew. That's why they got scared when both Brenda and Brandon had offered them a different way of living, of being part of something. The fear of losing them had overwhelmed both of them. Sooner or later the fear grabbed them and they lost their courage. For Kelly and Dylan, their toxic and volatile relationship was comforting for paradox, they saw themselves reflected in each other and they knew how to endure that toxicity because they were born there, it did not push them to change, it did not require them to take steps beyond their borders.
Love, the real one, had always been scary for them, because it pushed them to change, to invest in a relationship and especially in the other person, to move steps in unknown terrain that required sacrifice but that could lead them to be better people. When you are born with the constant fear of losing the person you love most in the world, you often hurt that person before they can hurt you.
Losing the person you love is a risk you have to take is the price of love but it will always be worth it.
Brandon loved her. He said it while looking at Boston and never denied it to himself again.
Brandon sighed as he sipped his coffee.
He opened the laptop to finish his job, the report to be delivered for the next day, then he would return to New York, he would find a way to talk to Kelly, alone, he would tell her this: he loved her.
He searched for the report file.
FILE NOT FOUND
Brandon watched the lap top screen flash.
FILE NOT FOUND.
He retyped the file name again, looked into the search.
FILE NOT FOUND.
His entire work was gone.
He opened the drawer and took the floppy on which he had kept a copy.
Corrupted file. Unable to read.
Brandon was shocked. His entire report was gone from his laptop. He had nothing to deliver and yet until he left for New York the document was there.
He took his laptop, his jacket and ran out.
There was a computer and computer store two blocks away. Maybe they could help him.
Pearl Harbour
November 06, 1941
The reception was held near the ceremony venues. The small military orchestra was on all evening and Brenda and Dylan twirled from one table to another with a magnificent smile. The atmosphere was cheerful, full of light, so far from the war.
"The admiral's daughter has been watching you for quite a while," Steve said, elbowing David.
"... it's not true"
Steve laughed "isn't it? All she does is look at you, forward invite her to dance"
"You're crazy" David noked his head "her father is here, tomorrow morning I find myself cleaning all the toilets of the ships"
Steve made a curious grimace with his mouth "in the meantime that beautiful girl is forced to stay seated because everyone is afraid to invite her"
"Invite her if you want to clean the toilets," David replied.
"Come on... A little courage, I throw myself on Andrea, she's so rigid, she's so sexy," Steve said.
David laughed, after all he liked that weird from California, he had a courage and a spirit that didn't belong to him.
Steve began to elbow him "... David"
"Okay" David got up quickly "just stop beating me"
Valerie noticed that David was coming towards her and began to feel her heart beating very hard.
"Miss..." he said under the stern gaze of the admiral "I wanted to ask her for the honor of this dance" David trembled.
Valerie turned to her father who gave his assent, the admiral was a good person but he liked to scare his daughter's suitors.
Valerie took David's hand "with great pleasure".
David breathed a sigh of relief and began to giggle nervously.
The newlyweds danced in the center, looked into each other's eyes, touched each other's souls, all the rest of the world revolved around them, even if only for that day but all the rest of the world belonged only to them and the sunset left room for lighted candles everywhere and the sweetness of a November evening.
Dylan's father approached the couple and knocked on their son's shoulder "Can I dance with the bride?" He asked him.
Dylan smiled and then left the place to his father.
That man hadn't danced in a million years and certainly didn't believe that he would ever dance again since his wife Nicole died, but that night, Dylan's wedding, the pain that had suddenly left room for the joy of something new and strong that was born, had given him courage.
He gently put a hand behind Brenda's back and began to lead her into the dance with real mastery.
He and his wife always danced away from anyone's prying eyes. It was something they both liked to do when the demons gave them respite.
"Thank you," he said to her in a very low voice.
Brenda smiled.
90s
Jamie was watching Dylan, he was in tears, light tears barely touching his face. Reliving that day had moved him and he had certainly touched some ropes of his heart, an ancestral and forgotten rope, that day so far away he could see it again in his stories, he could taste it.
It was all there, in Dylan's tears, in the impending fate.
He reopened his eyes and noticed that his cheeks were wet. He wiped himself by passing his shirt sleeves.
"Sorry, I never cry"
"And did seeing this marriage again make you cry?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Why..." Jamie asked
"Because it was love," Dylan replied.
The darkness descended out of the tent, the darkness descended even on those lost lives.