Free The Plan - Chances & Choices Prequel by Helen Karol

Chapter One
    Present Tense
     
    “Julian, its Susanna’s favourite charity - you can’t not be there.”
    Andrea delivered this ultimatum with a tone that was kind but no less commanding.
    “I thought we agreed we were going to stop that.” 
    She looked puzzled and he forced himself to look her square in the eye before telling her.  “Talking about Susanna in the present tense.”
    He half expected her to feed him some bullshit about Susanna being alive in their hearts.  That kind of crap was all over the media when she died and people still said stuff like it whenever they reviewed her films or she received some posthumous award.  In a way, they weren’t far wrong – she was still present on the screen.  It made him think of his college art teacher.  A rt is in the present tense because it lives.   The idea inspired him at the time; the words rousing in him a burning desire to create designs that would remain an enduring part of the present. 
    Now they gnawed at his guts.
    Celluloid was no substitute when you had held the real thing in your arms for over five years.  Besides he never watched her movies anymore – it didn’t fit with the plan .  Neither did attending a Spring Ball for her favourite charity.  But Andrea had more common sense to trot out platitudes and she was too determined to be so easily distracted from her purpose.
    “Sorry – it’s just habit.  I still find it hard to think of her as part of the past.  Considering that…”  She paused and he knew where she was going from both her tone and the direction of her gaze.  He rubbed the ring defensively.  “I can understand you wearing it for a while, Julian.  But it’s time.”
    “Only a little over a year.  Lots of widowers continue to wear their rings in remembrance of their wives… and...and...well...it keeps away unwanted attention.”  He regretted the last words almost before they were out – why hadn’t he just kept them in his head?  Andrea pounced.
    “Exactly.  I would understand if it was just because of Susanna’s memory, but you’re using it to avoid things you shouldn’t.   Those men are usually much older with decades of marriage and often children together to remember. You’re still only twenty-seven, Julian.  A year is the required time of mourning for a reason – as with most ritual etiquette.  Life goes on and society must function.  You’re far too superior a specimen not to procreate.” 
    He listened to her little spiel without surprise.  Andrea said shit like that all the time.  Like she was a society lady in some period drama.  He was used to it by now.
    She paused and then presented what she thought was her trump card. “I know you promised Susanna you would marry again.”
    “What about Liam Fitzpatrick, he always wears his ring and he’s never married again.”  He knew he sounded like the petulant boy she was treating him as, but he was looking for a focus to keep him on the plan, anything to stop him remembering when he made that promise.  Anything not to see her again so hauntingly, gorgeously frail, so delicate and yet still able to wind him around her perfect little finger. 
    But he hadn’t perfected the plan yet and so she came unbidden.  She half sat up in the hospital bed to compose her demand, the musical voice that had been charming moviegoers from before he was born, and mesmerised him from the moment they met, breathy and weak.  “Promise me, Julian – you must...” she sank back into the pillows, her voice and strength abandoning her.  And so he promised without a thought in his head but for her and her needs.
    Alive, he could never say no to her, but now she was gone he didn’t feel bound by the promise at all.  A twenty-two year age difference had prepared him for losing her sooner than a wife closer to his own age, but he still thought they had many, many more years together.  She told him nothing of the cancer that was in remission when they met.