The Two of Us

They walked through the park, just the two of them. Just like they did every morning. This morning was different though; this time they were going somewhere special. Josh waited as he walked, waited for the conversation, the conversation he could never forget nor ever find an answer to. At least, he had never found one before. Maybe this time an answer will be there. Lately, their conversations have been more by voicemail or text. He preferred voice mail because, even if it wasn't in person, he still loved to hear her voice.

"You know I love you," Lilly said, her voice full of longing, as if eager to hear the same thing from him.

"Of course I do," his standard answer jumped from his mouth, "and you know that I love you. I thank God every day for you."

"Come home, Jimmy, don't stay away anymore. Don't let that job keep us apart."

The job, it was always the job. The job was a managerial position in the Chemical Manufacturing company that he had been working at for ten years. He had started out as a laborer, then a janitor, an administrative go-for, and Safety Inspector. Finally, he had been offered a promotion to Quality Control Manager. It was great job, more money, a chance to rise up the chain. The only problem was that it was 300 miles away. At that time, he had been dating Lilly for three years and things were getting serious, in fact, they loved each other. He had no doubt that they would be getting married. But the job. What should he do about the job?

"Why don't you come with me?" he asked her.

"You know I can't" she had answered. "I have my own job, but even more importantly, I have my mother."

Her own job was as an Elementary School Teacher with decent pay and benefits. Her losing that would be costly but again, the key was her mother. Her mother was 68 years old, in poor health, and living in Lilly's spare room. If she left, there would be no place for her mother to go as Lilly was an only child.

"Bring her with you," he had told her many times. "I will rent a house; we can all live together like a family ought to." Did he say that or just think it? Sometimes he wasn't sure, but in the end, it made no difference. She wouldn't come, thus the conversation.

He tried to explain his end of things to her. "Listen," he said, "I don't have a college degree because I never could afford to go to school. I made it the best I could, and I finally am working my way up. This is a great opportunity for my, for our future."

"You know I miss you, which is why I am talking like this. It is hard sometimes to go on without you. I know how important the job is to you and how great an opportunity this is for you. If you come back home, another opportunity will present itself. I know how smart, how dedicated, how hard a worker you are. You can go to school, get a degree. Please come home."

He sighed, remembering the conversations in the past that ended the same way. But this one was going to be different. This time he had something special to tell her. He was coming home. He had finally decided that the job was not worth her love. He was choosing her over an opportunity to advance."

"Listen, we will talk soon," she said. "Just remember that I ......"

There was nothing else on the voicemail, the voicemails that he listened to on his cell phone every day because he didn't have Lilly to listen to anymore. His father had called him that night to tell him about the accident, the collision with a pickup truck that happened just as she was leaving him her final message. The accident that claimed his love. He turned off the phone and put it back in his pocket.

"Come on Lilly," he said to the golden-brown Labrador pacing next to him. "Let's go." Suddenly they turned left at the end of the park and walked through an open gate. Surrounding him were headstones, crosses, and the memories of loved and missed people. Lilly started walking faster, almost running, as if she knew where they were going. Lilly was two years old, but she had only come into his life in the last few months. He didn't know what he would do without her. Although her name was different when he adopted her, she was quickly renamed and had adjusted to the new name quickly. She even came when he called out the name in the middle of his sleep, an event that happened too often. He would wake up to Lilly nuzzling him under his chin.

Halfway through, he tied Lilly's leash to a tree stub and walked through the plots with names he neither knew nor recognized, except for the fact that he saw them every day when he came to visit Lilly. Lillian Beatrice Connors, the headstone read. August 23rd, 1987 - June 25th, 2024. The day his life changed forever. He had planned on calling her back after he heard her voicemail, but he never got the chance. She never knew that he was coming home. But he knew it and he had. Even after she was no longer here, he had still quit his job and come back home. He had moved back into the same apartment that he had left two years earlier, took the same job at the same company but finally enrolled in college. He was a Junior on his way to a degree in engineering. She would be so proud of him. He walked away, grabbing hold of the other Lilly's leash, the one named after his love.

The two of us, he thought, it would always be just the two of us.