The Cardinal

Winter was setting in. Tiny fractals of ice had begun to form on the window panes of every home in Chesterbrook, foretelling the year’s imminent first snowfall. Behind one of those windows stood Juliette Morrow, clutching a blue ceramic coffee mug, her breath creating a faint cloud upon the glass. She gazed out at the quiet street below her third-story apartment, her eyes fixing upon a cardinal gathering what twigs and dead grass it could find to prepare for the coming storm. It seemed unnecessary, to her, that an animal with wings would choose to stay in an environment that it knew, instinctually, was about to become hostile. Yet, she reminded herself, she had once been exactly like that perfectly capable and knowledgeable bird.

Something about the winter reminded her of Joseph. More than the bitterly cold wind that seemed to chill her very soul, she supposed it was the way that a beautiful, peaceful snowstorm could silently smother the ground, rendering communication with the outside world useless, and trap her within her surroundings. Though he had been dead for nearly three decades, she could still hear Joseph’s gritty voice whisper “Lettie, my love. Stay with me.” She shivered at the thought.

In the beginning, things had been so magical. That was how love stories always began, she mused. No one ever talked about how love stories ended. No one wanted to believe that they did. No one wanted to think about the what-ifs, the impossible possibility that something horrible might lurk in the shadows of the bright future that lovebirds dreamt of for themselves. Sometimes, as Juliette knew, those possibilities did exist, and sometimes they destroyed the very fabric of who the two people once were.

Just a month after they had said their wedding vows beneath a flourishing magnolia tree and danced with their drunken relatives into the early morning, fate had dealt the newlyweds a cruel hand. Joseph was in a fiery auto accident. His face and hands were severely burned to the point that he was blinded and his fingers were amputated. Injury to his spinal cord had paralyzed him from the waist down. In a matter of minutes, their lives and roles had been forever changed. He had become an invalid and she, his caretaker.

As the years had passed, they both adjusted, in their own ways, to what cards they had been dealt. Upon first seeing his face, she had bit her lip so as not to scream. However, over time, she had to look at old pictures to even recall what he had once looked like, before the accident. Nursing her husband had become second nature. She knew what pills he needed at what times, how high he liked to be propped to sleep, when to give him a little extra morphine to help him get through the night. It had been a rough road and she had learned all that she could from his home health aide, but she felt confident that she was doing the best job that any wife could manage on her own. Though, truth be told, she felt less and less as though she was anyone’s wife.

Joseph had become embittered. What little control he could exert over the smallest details of his life, he did so with rage and condescending remarks. Unfortunately, for Juliette, she became the outlet for his frustration with his newfound existence as a crippled, disfigured man. For years, he belittled her and blamed her for his predicament, as it was a trip to the store made for her, in the middle of the night, that had caused his accident. If she had only waited until the next day for that pint of strawberry ice cream and not asked him to go out and get it, he insisted, he would still be an able-bodied man instead of the “monster” that he had become. She owed him her dignity and a lifetime of service, he had once bellowed. It was only fair.

As she was his lifeline and means of support, Juliette found it harder and harder to escape their small apartment, even for quick errands. “Lettie, my love,” he would whisper, disdainfully, “Stay with me.” It was as though, because he was confined, she must be, as well. It was her punishment. Though she could’ve left at any time, she felt somewhat obligated to live out her sentence in his medicated purgatory.

She couldn’t remember if she had cried the morning that she awoke to find Joseph, purple and cold, next to her with the phone cord wound tightly around his neck. There was no note, no explanation. There needn’t be. His reasons were as obvious as her guilt-ridden relief.

His memory haunted her on days like this, when gazing out of her window seemed to be the only thing that she could do to make herself feel connected to the outside world.

“Am I interrupting your reverie?” a familiar, low voice asked softly from behind her. She turned her head as his arms enveloped her waist.

“No, no, far from it,” she replied, taking a sip of her lukewarm green tea. “I was just getting ready to go out and get some rock salt for the sidewalk. We’re out and you know the landlord hardly ever clears the ice. “

His blue eyes met hers and he leaned in, pressing his soft, warm lips against hers.

In many ways, he – Nick – was what saved her. An unlikely pair, she had met him only a few years ago. He was at least 30 years her junior and the first man to come along since Joseph that swept her off her feet. There was something familiar about him. The way he held her, the way he touched her face when they danced.

Their lips parted and a smile curled up on the corners of his mouth.

“Lettie, my love,” he whispered, “Stay with me.”

She screamed and struggled against him as he tightened his grip.

Word Count: 1000