After making love, Jack and Ellie lay naked in the motel room, the glow of neon lights filtering through the faded curtains.
“God, I’ve missed you,” said Jack, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Ellie blew the hair out of her eyes. “Me too. Promise you won’t wait three more months before coming to see me.”
“You know I can’t promise that, but I’ll try my best.”
“I still can’t believe you’re here.” She traced a finger lightly on his chest.
“Neither can I. This is the furthest from home I’ve ever been.”
“Really?”
“And it’s all because of you. You give me the courage to do things I never thought I could.”
“Go on.” She grinned.
“I mean it,” he said. “Without you, I don’t think I would have ever left Sims Chapel, let alone the state. And look at me now, hundreds of miles from home. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Ellie. Sometimes, I think it’s almost too good to be true.”
“What do you mean?”
His mood shifted. “This. You. I just don’t want this to end.”
Ellie rolled onto her side, crooked her elbow, and rested her head on the palm of her hand. “It won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know the way I feel about you, and I never want that feeling to go away. I realize we don’t come from the same places or have the same experiences, but I think that’s what makes it work with us. We complement each other. And I don’t know why God brought us together, but he did, and I’m grateful because you’re the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. And even if that means we can’t see each other every day, I’m okay with that because you’re worth waiting for.”
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
SnowedUnder
Ellie woke the next morning, clinging to Jack’s book. She had fallen asleep in the living room sometime after two. After a fresh cup of coffee, she curled up on the couch and picked up where she left off.
I woke to the sound of rain. The steady pitter-patter told me there’d be no tours today. Which was fine considering I was in no mood to face the world. She was gone, a notion that even the heavens seemed to echo.
When the last tour ended, I took a job at the mill. The work was backbreaking, the conditions deplorable, but it was honest work, and it paid better than anything I could have found at home. When I wasn’t working, I passed the time by fishing. And as the lake levels dropped, the places she and I had visited—the places that bore my greatest memories—slipped further and further away.
Ellie put down the book and went to the window, finding fresh snow covering the ground. Lifting her gaze to the flat gray sky above, she longed for the orange and amber Tennessee sunsets.
Turning back, Ellie’s eyes met the golden light of the fire, reminding her of something Jack had told her years earlier; that if you stare into the flames long enough, you’ll find answers to questions you didn’t know you had.
Questions? She had more than a few.
At the back of the closet, Ellie found her trunk that held her most precious memories and began sifting through old photographs, letters, and journals. Spreading the contents on the floor, she spent a few minutes thumbing through some pictures of her and Amelia from when they were teenagers. There was one at the beach and another on the steps in front of their house. She even found one from the trip they’d taken with their parents to Chicago. A jewelry box revealed more photographs: some of her roommates from college, and one of Michael, taken a few weeks before he’d broken her heart. Then, she found the memory box, the one that contained the artifacts from the summer when she fell in love with Jack. Lifting the lid, she saw the arrowhead, and the bottle of sand and pebbles Jack had given her. Biting back tears, she recalled how happy she had been that summer, and how her heart had broken when it all fell apart.
Resuming her search, at the bottom of the trunk, she found a journal she’d kept during the time she and Jack dated.
March 7, 1951
The clock starts now. Two years and counting. 24 months. 104 weeks. 730 days. God, that seems like a long time. Knowing Jack will be half a world away is enough to make me go mad. But as difficult as this is for me, I can only imagine what he’s going through.
She thumbed ahead a few pages.
June 14, 1951
So far, so good. I received a letter from Jack in the mail yesterday, all the way from Korea. He seems to be in good spirits, which is more than I can say for me. Now that school is out, I find myself longing to be in Tennessee. Clara was right—when it gets in your blood, it’s impossible to get it out.
