Love Story

Author’s notes: I wrote this story because I had been writing “dark” for quite a while and wanted to move to the other side. I saw the original movie with Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw and it broke my heart. The lyrics in here are from the soundtrack (Francis Lai) and I purposely left them out of my CAW writing competition entry because I had used lyrics before in stories, and one objective of the CAW was to remain anonymous. I felt the use of lyrics would help identify me as the author. As it was, no one guessed that I was the author. This story was originally posted by CAW SOP as part of the CAW, and now I’m posting it under my name. One recurring theme in comments on the first posting was that I seemed to end it abruptly, perhaps ran out of time. Not true. I was done two weeks before the CAW postings began. As death is often a sudden event, I wanted to mimic its abruptness with a surprise, sudden ending. I did not change one word of this from the original, save for adding in the lyrics. Final note…there is not much graphic sex in this story. If you are looking for that, I suggest one of my other stories. That again seemed to be a trademark in my stories, and I wanted to try something different. But if you are looking for a sweet story that might jerk a tear from you, then enjoy…


Chapter 1

Where do I begin
To tell the story of how great a love can be
The sweet love story that is older than the sea
The simple truth about the love she brings to me
Where do I start…

Before this evening, I had never thought much about murdering another person.

As the widowed father of two young children, I was always on the go. If it wasn’t work, it was the kids. Jessica was 12, and Nicholas was 10. Jessie looked so much like her mom, Rebecca. Nick, well, he had her blue eyes but my darker hair and skin color. Both kids were enrolled in private school, so it was a challenge each day getting them ready and off to school, running a full day at work, and then getting back home to work with them on their homework before bed. We had an au pair from Finland who helped by picking up the kids after school and getting dinner together. Milla had been with us for four years. Occasionally our neighbor, Mrs. McGarry, would watch the kids too.

Work wasn’t easy. I was a stock broker on Wall Street, and while that might seem exciting to some, to me it was often pure hell. I wasn’t one of the silver-tongued devils who could charm money out of little old ladies. No, it never was that easy for me, and frankly, I could never live with myself if I preyed on people like that. No, I had to struggle for each investment.

Being one of the brokers with the least seniority in the firm, I was given the slush pile. It’s a printout of a mish-mash of contacts from investment websites, IRA inquiries, and then just names and numbers of supposedly wealthy individuals. I was technically allowed to look for corporate investments, but for the most part they were handled by the heavy hitters in our firm. I was barely providing enough for us. Rebecca had been a lawyer so she had made good money; a double income household was really needed in New York City these days. She had a life insurance policy, but I was trying not to dip too much into that money, hoping to save it to help the kids go to college. Dipping was becoming more commonplace.

My murderous thoughts reared their ugly head today when I had a meeting with the private school that my kids attended. I had been semi-working on the business manager for a couple of years to let me take a look at their portfolio to see if I could help. Initially there was that look of partial mistrust and disdain, but over time, he must have seen the good in me. Or perhaps he just felt sorry for me for losing my wife in a freak accident. Regardless, he finally relented and agreed to meet with me.

This was a potential breakthrough account for me. The school was pretty well endowed, and the size of the account would have been larger than all of my other accounts combined. It was because of this that my supervisor assigned a Senior Corporate broker to “assist” me with the meeting.

I really didn’t see it coming. It might have been me feeling giddy over just getting the appointment, and the potential windfall from the account. I didn’t know much about Gerald Forkth, other than he came from “old money” as it was told to me, and he was just working for a few years to get seasoned enough to take over his old man’s investment banking firm.

So it wasn’t as if he needed the money, yet, that’s exactly what happened. The meeting started out well enough I thought. Gerald had apparently met Mr. Whitstone at some politician’s house in the Hampton’s at New Year’s Eve, and then as they shook they both noted the “H” on the ring, you know, the Harvard ring, so they had that to talk about.

I brought the meeting back on-track and began my presentation. Sure enough, the school’s internet went down in the middle of my online presentation. Thinking quickly, I excused myself to go back to my vehicle to get a USB wireless device so we could get back online.

It took about 20 minutes for me to get to the car, find the device, and then get back to the business manager’s office. When I returned, Gerald was sitting in front of my laptop and showing Mr. Whitstone HIS presentation. Apparently the internet came back up a minute after I had left. Gerald’s plan was somewhat more conservative than mine, and he presentation was much slicker. Mr. Whitstone apparently approved, because he rose, shook my hand, thanked me for bringing along my supervisor (which Gerald wasn’t) and for recognizing that an account as large as theirs needed a more experienced broker at the helm. Mr. Whitstone then looked at Gerald and asked him if he would accompany him to dinner, that he was meeting with several of the school’s Trustees, also Harvard graduates, and would like to introduce him around.

I was dismissed, dissed, and ultimately pissed!

Instead of the full commission, which by my calculation would have probably been in the $50,000 to $60,000 range, and would have taken the financial pressure off of me, I was going to get a 10% finder’s fee.

Gerald and Mr. Whitstone left, and I stood there, speechless. It took me a minute to realize that I wasn’t alone, that Mr. Whitstone’s assistant, Amanda, had been sitting quietly in the room, taking notes as she apparently always did during his meetings.

As she gathered her papers and began to leave, she stopped, put her hand on my arm, and looked at me.

“Hello, and, I’m sorry…that was really shitty,” she said in a lowered voice, and with that, she left.

All I noticed was that she was not wearing a ring on her finger.


Chapter 2

With her first hello
She gave new meaning to this empty world of mine
There’ll never be another love, another time
She came into my life and made the living fine
She fills my heart

It started out innocently enough. It was time to set up tuition payments for next year, so I needed to stop by Whitstone’s office. Thankfully, I didn’t need to see him. Instead, I got to see Amanda. My heartbeat quickened a bit when I did and it was totally ridiculous.

“Mr. Rivers,” started Amanda, but I quickly interrupted her.

“Please,” I said smiling, “it’s Jacob.”

Amanda smiled warmly, and my heartbeat upped a little bit more.

“Jacob,” she started again, “I have your paperwork prepared from the information that you sent in last week. I’ll just need your signature here,” she continued, leaning forward to point out on the paperwork where I needed to sign, “and here, and here.”

When she looked up, she caught my eye and saw that I had been gazing at her exposed cleavage. My eyes just naturally gravitated there when she bent forward. All I saw was the swell of her breasts, but, that was enough for me to blush when she caught me.

This was absurd. I loved my wife. Deceased wife.

“I’m sorry.” I scribbled my signature three times and then practically dashed out of the place.


Chapter 3

The next week was filled with running the kids to the dentist, working on homework, including a science project with Jessie, and other assorted tasks. Mrs. McGarry asked me if I would help her hang a picture of her late husband, Leo.