Longing For December - Shelia Burket (best short novels of all time .txt) 📗

Chapters


1) Longing for December
2) Meeting Ryan
3) Sweet 16
4) Auburn Angel
5) The Wedding
6) Married Life
7) The New Arrival
8) Losing Ryan
9) Learning to Smile Again
10) December Wind
11) Tiny Black Box


Longing for December

The August moon glistens through the mountain tops as she smiles softly. Her mind drifts back to another place and time. She remembers his gentle touch, his hands so strong, the hands of a working man. His uncle was a lumberjack. He worked for him through the summer.
He didn’t wear a shirt most of the time. There was something very erotic about his sweaty, muscular, bronze body; even covered in dirt she wanted him, every ounce of her. He knew how to touch her, like no man had ever touched her before and like no man could ever touch her again.
She closes her eyes…. She smells him…. She opens them as a chill runs down her spine. Making sure, she laughs to herself as her mind plays a trick on her. Again she drifts away, she finds him in the corner of her mind and heart. She sighs once again as the scent of firewood lingers on his clothes taking her to a cold winters night one late December.
She often goes back to “that day” that changed everything she thought she knew about or had ever known about love. The day that changed her life forever and the night that would never be the same, Savanna Oliver a 38 year old artist, writer, a bit of a dreamer and a full time mother of three. Her auburn hair swept up in a “not so neat” knot on top of her head, sometimes a ponytail, rarely hanging down or curled. She would be described as petite by most standing four foot eleven barely, (to be honest four ten and a half). She is everyone’s friend, and a therapist to anyone in crisis. She wears a sweet smile and receives frequent compliments on her emerald green eyes with spider lashes.
Her children Caden 20, Cyle 14 and Cassandra 12, are the light of her life. All three have inherited her talent for art and writing. She married once, Ryan a hardworking man, the father of her three children. He swept her off her feet. He made her feel safe and secure; he was a wonderful father and husband. He stood six feet to her four eleven; his blue eyes sparkled as his smile warmed your heart. His hair was darker blonde than when he was a child, sandy with highlights from the sun. The three children favored him. The oldest with light auburn hair like his mother, the younger two blonde like Ryan.
Ryan…..she missed him so much. In the back of the closet in a little wooden box only to be opened with a tiny gold key is a stack of letters. Around the letters is a thin pink ribbon tied in a small bow. She opens the box and sighs with a smile. She pictures Ryan in his military uniform. He is so handsome, she closes her eyes, he smells like English leather. “That’s what daddy wore,” she thinks to herself. She remembers buying Ryan a bottle for Christmas. She opens an envelope with a military stamp and unfolds a letter written on military stationary. She reads the first letter Ryan wrote after they first met.

Dear Savanna,
I hung your picture in my locker. Everyone is so jealous of my “girl back home.” I tell them to eat their hearts out you’re mine. To answer some of your questions, I’m stationed in camp Lejune NC for now. My favorite groups are Rush, Led Zeppelin and Lynard Skynard. What are yours? My favorite color is blue. My guess is that yours is pink, am I right? Well in October I will be going on a cruise to the Mediterranean for six months. I hope you can read my sloppy writing. I don’t have any pictures to send you right now, but I will later. Tell your mother and father I said “Hello.”
Write again soon,
Love Ryan

Is it possible for love to find its way to me twice in a lifetime? Why do I feel so guilty? I love Ryan with all my heart and soul…. I still love him but yet my mind often takes me back to another love… to another time. When the wind blew in more than the December snow, love found its way to me again.
Beneath Ryan’s letter lies another letter. She hesitates and with a lump in her throat she sips her coffee and reaches for the next letter. She reflects back to the day her second letter from Ryan came. He left on Sunday and by the time the next Monday rolled around the second letter arrived. From the living room window she watched the mailman come and go. She ran to the mailbox shuffling through the day’s mail there it was. She left the family mail in the box and ran upstairs to her room.

Dearest Savanna,

It’s only been a week and I miss you already. You are so beautiful; I can’t get you out of my head. I know it’s too soon but I think I’m falling in love with you. You don’t have to answer. Tomorrow I will write again, I have to go its lights out.
Love, Ryan

Savanna sits at her dresser and begins to write a letter to Ryan.

Dear Ryan,

I miss you, I feel like you took my heart with you to North Carolina. Please call me when you get a chance, I’ll be waiting. I’m so glad I met you; I hope to see you soon. When do you think you’ll be coming home? I’m sending you some more pictures, please send me some soon. I really don’t know what to say, please think of me…. I’ll think of you every minute of the day until I see you.
Love, Savanna


Meeting Ryan

Savanna was raised in Elkview West Virginia. She had family all over WV and some in Ohio and Kentucky. The mountains were beautiful, especially in the fall, all of the orange, gold brown and reds.
Ryan too was from a small town in West Virginia. They met at a church picnic. She reads from her journal…..
Ryan was shy but I knew he liked me. I wish things could have been different she thinks to herself. It was a typical July day; the sun was dominating the clear blue sky. It was a perfect day for the annual church picnic, typical in every way but one.
Today was the day Savanna would meet Ryan Oliver, her future husband. She shuffles through the summer dresses hanging in her closet. Her hair in curlers and cotton between her toes, waiting for her nails to dry. Finally, she chose four to try on. The picnic starts at twelve p.m. Savanna