Word Count: 387
The last time I saw her, her hair was aflame with sunlight. Funny how I’d never much been attracted to redheads until I saw her. Coppery curls that surrounded her face in an angelic halo with blue crystal eyes and skin the color of cream.
She was the first and last love of my life and we were seventeen at the time. You know, at that age, how the breath catches hold in your throat, how the thought of your life doesn’t move past the moment, how the light settles into each dusky night.
We married right out of college. She got a job at the bookstore while I went to school to earn my Masters and worked nights at the grocery store bagging and stocking shelves and sweeping the floors. Then I was a lawyer and she took her turn studying and staying up nights. Not a day went by without my loving her so bad it hurt but the years went by like hours. Before long we were two professionals with demanding careers and a humongous home dripping with crystal chandeliers I couldn’t reach with a ladder to change a burnt bulb.
She said it was a good thing we didn’t have children and she was moving to take a job out of state so all that was left to divide was our money and she wouldn’t be needing very much.
Yes, there was another man in this event as well, and he made enough to support her as well as two previous wives and three kids. Still, I liquidated stocks, remortgaged, balanced things right down the middle. Then she was gone and I was alone with the memory of flame-red hair until I saw her again many years later.
She was in town for her sister’s funeral and I had stopped by to pay my respects. We spoke for just a few minutes, the usual polite words ex-lovers make when they’ve been caught unaware. But all I kept thinking was how strange she looked as a blonde and I had to keep myself from asking her why? Then a miniature her came running up to her and she introduced me to her young daughter. She had curls of bright flame and eyes like blue crystal in a face the color of cream.
