My Ex-Fiance The Detective Who Arrested Me Chapter 10
While I was in prison, Arthur came to see me every month.
He’d had my mom’s grave moved to a better plot and planted a pine tree beside it.
Along with news from the world outside, he’d bring me
a pressed pine sprig tucked inside a letter every time.
“Hazel, keep your head up in there. I’ll be right here when you come home.”
I didn’t want him to waste his life on me.
I refused visits for months.
So he started writing letters instead.
Sometimes he’d tuck in old photos of us.
I’d look at our younger faces, smiling like we had all
the time in the world, and something in me would soften.
He wrote on the back of one.
“Hazel, we took one wrong turn. That’s all it was.‘
“Give me the chance to fix it. Let me find our way back.”
“Even if it takes the rest of my life to make it right, I’m willing.”
I traced our faces in the photo with my fingertip. I didn’t write back. But I stopped refusing his visits.
Prison life was quiet. I learned a trade.
Good behavior earned me early parole.
In the end, I served twenty years.
Twenty years. Just gone.
The day I walked out, Arthur had taken the day off. He was waiting at the gate.
He pulled out a coat, one he’d clearly been holding on
to for a while, and wrapped it around my shoulders.
He pressed a trembling kiss to my forehead.
Twenty–three years too late.
He helped me into the passenger seat. The car smelled
like wild bluebells, my favorite.
The city outside the window looked nothing like the
one I remembered, but Arthur’s monthly updates had kept me tethered to it.
I didn’t feel lost.
Arthur drove me to our old place.
When everything fell apart twenty–three years ago, the
apartment had still been unfinished.
Back then, I’d spun through that empty space, giddy,
arms wide, dreaming out loud with Arthur.
Sofa here. TV there. No coffee table, just a little rolling cart instead…
Now, he’d brought every single one of those plans to life.
The style was twenty years out of date. He’d done it exactly the way I’d described.
The moment I walked in, a sound system started
playing the song I used to love most.
As if the last twenty–three years had never happened.
After lunch, Arthur said there was somewhere he
wanted to take me.
I didn’t realize where we were until we got there. A
photography studio.
“Engagement photos?”
Arthur put his arm around me like it was the most
natural thing in the world. “We’re newlyweds. We need
our first photo together.”
The makeup artist knew what she was doing. In half an
hour, she’d softened the years on my face.
When Arthur saw me, he went still.
His eyes went red.
“Hazel, you look exactly the way I remember.”
After the photos, Arthur practically dragged me to the
courthouse to get married.
“Twenty–three years late, Hazel. I’m not wasting
another second without you.”
He’d already put in for early retirement.
After the courthouse, Arthur wanted to take me out and celebrate.
I said quietly, “I want to see my mom first.”
The cemetery plot was immaculate. Arthur’s work.
The white lilies in front of the headstone were still fresh.
Arthur replaced them with a new bouquet without a word.
“Every time I visited you, I’d come here after and tell her how you were doing.”
“She’s been waiting for you. And now you’re here.”
I pulled out the marriage certificate, freshly stamped by the judge, and set it against her headstone.
I looked at her photo, at that warm smile, and the tears
came before I could get a word out.
“Mom… I got married.”
“I lost my way for a long, long time. But Arthur brought me back.”
“I’m starting over, Mom.”
I stood up. The sunset spread out in front of us, wide and golden and endless.
Tomorrow was a new day.