Chapter 31

I was tired and jet lagged and just dumped my stuff and went to sleep when we arrived at our home outside London.

In the morning, I fired off an email to let Jeff know I had arrived safely. He apparently thought it required no response, because he didn't reply.

We visited with friends, made plans to attend parties and relaxed around the pool for the first few days. I wasn't quite so relaxed.

I sent off a few chatty emails to let Jeff know what I was doing, but he didn't reply to any of them.

It was one thing to have the opportunity to find myself in his absence; quite another to have to go cold turkey.

I wasn't becoming concerned, I was becoming unhappy.

Why didn't he contact me, if only to say hello? Had being with me constantly been so difficult that he needed a vacation? Had he realized I needed time to figure some things out and decided to give me the necessary space?

Quite unexpectedly, I received a letter on our fifth day there. There was no return address and my name and address were hand-written. I opened it to find a hand-written letter, readable, but with decidedly inferior penmanship.

What? No email and then this, what is it?

I read it again.

It clicked. This must be like those letters Thomas Jefferson wrote to that French chick. Or maybe Benjamin Franklin. I wondered if there was a direct quote in here. I whipped open my dictionary to be sure I understood everything he was saying.

This was so much more thoughtful and personal than an email or IM. This was his way of saying we weren't getting divorced when I got back.

The time and effort he put into creating this letter was far more valuable to me than any gift he could have purchased.

And the poetry of it. He might be a nerd in the 21^st Century, but in the 18^th, the ladies would have been lining up for a piece of him.

"Bask in the warmth of your presence as a rose resumes its growth when revived from the chill of the night by the morning sun, and be nourished by the sound of your sweet voice."

It made me weak in the knees. If I found out he had stolen that phrase from somebody else, I would make him weak in the knees with a baseball bat. If it was his, I would do anything he asked.

My God, what would have happened if my parents had intercepted this letter?

Probably nothing. They would have thought I had a deranged stalker.

I would have to keep this letter to show to them when I told them my intentions with Jeff, if he shared them.

I would have to keep this letter to read to myself when I grew old, to relive the love of my life.

I lacked the resources to respond to this letter in the manner it deserved. Well, I lacked the resources to write him back in the appropriate style and vernacular. But I would find a way to personally respond to the writer in a manner he deserved.

For now, I contented myself with a brief email. "Thank you."