“Braden, Remember”

Alex sat on his bed with his covers up to his chin. He was almost ready to go to sleep, but he wouldn’t really be ready until he heard a bedtime story. It was hard to break habits after so long. Barely patient, he waited for his dad.

Braden was in the kitchen finishing up a glass of bourbon. He rinsed it out when it was empty and grabbed a chair from around the table. He carried it into his son’s room and placed it backwards next to the racecar bed he had gotten for Alex when he turned five. He swung a leg on either side of the back and rested his arms on top.

“Now, what story do you want to hear today?” He looked at his son expectantly. He always asked for something different, and always something interesting. Luckily for Braden, he had seen enough in all his years to make up or retell any story that Alex asked for.

“Tell me about mommy.” The man looked at his father expectantly. He had heard the story before, but not in a long time, at least twenty years. And aside form that he never got tired of hearing it, no matter how many times it was told.

Braden smiled and shook his head. He liked that his son wanted to hear about his mother, even after almost one hundred years. It had been so long since Braden had seen her and he missed her, so he didn’t mind retelling the story over and again.

Braden prepared himself by shifting in his chair and clearing his throat. Alex knew this routine and sat up straighter, knowing the story was about to begin.

“Well, it was a long time ago. I was eighteen years old, much younger than you are now.” He paused for a moment. He didn’t realize how long it had been and how much time had affected his son.

“I was had just moved down to St. Augustine, in Florida, where you were born. It was summer, but that was the great thing about the town—it was summer all year. I hadn’t found a house yet and was living in an inn. It was run by an ex sergeant and his wife. They were a nice couple, Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez.”

“And this is when you met mommy!” Alex interrupted. Braden smiled again.

“Yes, this is when I met mommy. She lived at the inn too; she was Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez’s daughter. And the first time I met her, I knew that I was going to be with her forever. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

Braden knew that he sounded cheesy when he described the first time he met Sofia, but he couldn’t tell it any other way.

“And then you married her!” Braden laughed at how excited Alex still was.

“Not quite yet. I had never said anything to her, not even hello, but she was the girl for me. I would go out of my way to see her at least one every day. Finally one day I talked to her. I was on my way to my room late one night and she was coming home from a date. I bumped into her in the hallway. I thought that would be then end of it because she was with someone else. But later that week, we talked again and this time we ended up going out together.

“We didn’t date for very long. It turned out your mother felt the same way about me as I did about her.”

“She loved you too!”

Braden nodded. “Yes, she did. And she had the whole time. It just turned out that both of us were to shy to say anything first.”

Braden thought back to those days when he and Sofia were still dating. They were young and excited about everything. They were lucky not to have to keep it a secret from her parents, but they still snuck around the town after dark.

“We dated for only a couple months before we decided to get married. I asked Mr. Gonzalez before proposing to your mother. The date was set for September. We started making plans as soon as we could.

“Finally the date came and we couldn’t have been happier. Your mother looked like an angel in her wedding dress and I could hardly contain myself. She fit into the cathedral better than even La Madonna. This was back before we had electric lights and the candles made her glow, too.

“We were married in the smaller chapel, to the left of the main sanctuary. Everything looked like a painting with the blue and red stained glass shining over all of us. It was the happiest day of both of our lives; our dreams were coming true.”

“Is mommy an angel now, too, daddy?”

Braden paused. He knew that Alex understood why his mom wasn’t there. But Braden didn’t like to think about it. He missed Sofia more than anything else in the world. When she had died, he thought he would die too. It had just been so unexpected.

“Daddy?”

Braden jerked out of his reverie and blinked away those thoughts. He nodded hurriedly.

“Yes, Alex. Your mommy is an angel now too—a real one.” He could picture her, in her wedding dress, sitting among the clouds and yellow sunlight, smiling at everything. She was always a happy woman.

“Good.” Alex smiled and the sleep was visible in his eyes. He scooted farther down into his blankets and started letting his eyes close.

Braden stood up and kissed his son’s wrinkled forehead. “Goodnight, little boy.”

Alex reached up and hugged his dad around his neck. “Goodnight, daddy.”

Braden left the room with his chair and turned out the overhead light. He closed the door all he way and returned to the kitchen.

He poured himself another glass of bourbon from the same bottle he hadn’t put away earlier and slumped into the same chair he had just told his story from. He loved his son and he loved thinking about his wife but sometimes he wished he just didn’t have to tell that story. He wished he had been blessed with a bad memory, and had gone with her; so that he wouldn’t have to think about how long he’d have to live without her.

Braden closed his eyes and rested his hand on the table, still around the short glass. It felt cool and he could tell he was drifting off.

Not soon after he was sitting on a thin old mattress with his head in his hands. Sofia was standing against the wall opposite him looking at her feet and holding her hands in front of her stomach. He looked up at her suddenly.

“It’s ok. It’s ok. You’ll be fine, right? The doctors…”

Sofia cut him off. “No. They said they couldn’t predict it. And now it’s just—”

“Now!? But Sofia, this isn’t sudden. You’ve been sick for years, since—”

“Since before we met, I know. But I had hoped…I don’t know, Braden. I had hoped that I would get better or that the doctors would find a cure or…I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“No,” he stood up and walked across the room. He only crossed a few feet, but it felt like he had to walk across the entire state to get to his wife. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. The doctors here…they know what they’re doing. You’ll get better and then we’ll start our family.”

Sofia smiled sweetly at her husband and he kissed her forehead. He brushed back her hair. They were still young and had plenty of time left. The good and the young never died like this.

He took her hands pulled her off the wall. “Look at me, Sofia, love. You’ll be ok.”

She nodded and went back to her bed, the one Braden had been sitting on, and looked around. This was where she was born and where her father had his leg amputated after the war. Her family history was here. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and could already feel a bulge forming. This was where she would have her own child. And this was also where she would likely die too soon.

“I love you, Braden. Remember.”

He had been leaving and turned back to her suddenly. “I know you do. I love you too. No matter what.” He headed back to the inn to have some rest. He still wasn’t comfortable with most military personal, but that was where Sofia had to be treated.

He slept fitfully through the next eight months, going back to the hospital daily. It was hard watching his wife become weaker, but he felt that she still had some life inside her and that he wouldn’t need to say goodbye to her.

One night though, he arrived to find his wife sweating, barely conscious. He called for a doctor.

By the end of the night, he was holding his new son in his arms and watching the doctors cover his wife with a white sheet from the bed next to hers.

They explained that the strain had been too much for her because he body was already so weak from the consumption.

He didn’t talk to anyone that night. He sat in a faded rocking chair next to what had been his wife’s bed and held Alejandro, Alex, his son.

Time stopped moving for him after that.

For everyone else, the funeral happened very quickly, a short three days after Sofia’s death. The crowd somehow fit within the walls of the old French cemetery. They were already starting to crumble then, but of course they were nothing like they are now, hardly supporting themselves and more penetrable to trespassers than if there were nothing there at all.

Braden didn’t let go of his son for two long years—enough time for people in the town to forget who Sofia was at all or for those who wouldn’t forget to die off as well.

Braden remembered sitting on another old thin mattress, putting Alex down for the first time since his birth. His son’s feet touched the floor for the first time and he stood steadily. Braden smiled to himself and opened his eyes.

He looked at the kitchen, only ten years old, made ninety years after his son was born. He emptied his glass and rinsed it again. He pushed the chair under the kitchen table and headed for his empty bed.