Sapphires

      They had been missing for about a week when he came. His eyes- they were a deep blue, and they looked just like the perfect sapphires that had been in the case just a week before. 

         “Hello.”

         “Hi.”

         His eyes looked cold, but his smile wasn’t. She felt herself smiling to match his, just to try and see if it had the same affect on him that his had on her. He had the most handsome of dimples, and she felt her heart pick up the pace just the slightest. 

         “I’m Daniel. You?”

         “Kary.”

         “It’s nice to meet you.”

         “You too.”

         “So,” he teased, “come here often?”

         He gestured at the museum and she chuckled, rolling her eyes. The uniform was a dead giveaway, so why was he asking? Better yet, why was she still willing to answer?

         “I work here.”

         “Perfect. I need a tour guide. You do you think your managers would let you leave your post? I can be… convincing.”

         He pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and her eyebrows rose. “You’re willing to give that much just for me to give you a tour?”

         “I would give much more than this, if it meant that I could spend time with you.”

         She felt her face turn beet red. “Well, I guess no one will miss me…”

         She offered him a wink, and his perfect smile grew. 

         “Shall we be off then?” He asked, offering her his arm. 

         “Absolutely.”

         That was what she said a year later, when he got on one knee, his eyes sparkling, forever reminding her of those two sapphires. They were so pretty, just like him. 

         “Absolutely,” she whispered at the altar, his hands resting solidly in hers. “Absolutely.”

         The gems were never recovered, but Kary didn’t notice. How could she, when she had her own amazing gem right here?

         Their marriage wasn’t complete bliss. Of course it wasn’t. But he was always there for her after they had their spats. He was always there for her, even after they learned they couldn’t have children of their own. 

         The two of them were happy. They weren’t perfect, and they knew it and they didn’t care. They worked hard to get a home and stable jobs, and so even deeper in love they fell. 

         They were happy. When she laid down at night in their comfy bed they had worked overtime to afford, he was there, peering happily at her with those mesmerizing eyes of his. She loved those eyes. She loved him more than words could ever express. So she would tell him, “I love you.” Those words couldn’t come close to how she felt, but it was enough. 

         “I love you too.” 

         And that was enough. And they were enough. 

         They grew older, as all things must. She found her first gray hair at 42. Technically, he found it, but it was there nonetheless. When he showed it to her, she gasped and almost began to weep. He held her with a sad smile. 

         “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You know I’m always going to love you, you know.”

         “Absolutely?”

         “Absolutely.” 

         He laughed just then, and when she asked why, he told her how he had found his first gray hair at 23. That got a giggle out of her, and soon they laughed until their lungs hurt and they were clinging onto each other. Then, exhausted, they climbed into bed, curling up in each others’ arms until all thoughts of gray hairs and the fears that come with getting old all but vanished from their minds. 

         “Most people aren’t in love anymore,” he told her one night, heartbroken. 

         In a tired, confused haze, she squinted at him. “Why does that matter to you?”

         “Are we like that? Do you too, no longer care for me? Do you still love me?”

         She was more awake now, and she sat up, carefully wiping away his tears with the pad of her thumb. 

         “Oh, Daniel, of course I still love you. It’s going to take a lot more than time to change that.”

         He sniffed, smiling at her. She hated his beautiful eyes obscured with tears like that. She needed to see them, to get lost in the darker flecks of blue that swam in their great depths. “I love you, Daniel.”

         “Absolutely?”

         Her smile grew, and she giggled like the 19 year old he had met in the museum all those years ago. “Absolutely.”

         Then she blinked, and ten more years had gone by. They were in their 60s now, and they were still hopelessly in love. Kary ran an orphanage, and together, they two of them were able to help raise the children they could never have. Those children felt the love that radiated off of them in waves, and like plants in the sun, they blossomed under it. 

         Children came and went, and still Daniel and Kary loved each other and those children. The would sometimes get letters from the ones who had grown up, and then they loved even more. They were happy, and in love with the world and each other, despite the bad in both. They loved and loved and loved. And life was good. And they were good. Not so much the children, but then again, children rarely were. 

         They continued to get older. The gray hairs they found multiplied until it was all that was left. He eventually took her to the sea, where the sand was smooth and the ocean was as wrinkled as they were. They still loved each other, and both were happy. 

         ‘In love’ wasn’t quite the term to apply to them. No, not anymore. Their love wasn’t really a feeling- it was more like an air about them, and an effort. It wasn’t both giving 50%. No, both gave each other 90%. Giving each other 100% would be unhealthy, and they knew it, so they didn’t. 

         Their love was work. But not the kind of work you came home exhausted from. The kind that invigorates you, the kind that reminds you of everything good in the world. Love like carefully plucking weeds between strawberry plants in the summer, pleased with the crop you have worked so hard for. Work like a parent picking up toys in the yellow light of the living room as their child sleeps. Both know that their efforts is just going to be thrown back in their faces. The weeds come back the next week, the toys the next day. No, that’s not why they do it. They know that the problems are just going to come back. But they care. They do it for the quiet, simple satisfaction of knowing that your work might eventually noticed and paid back, but even if it doesn’t, you don’t care. You care about them, and that’s all that matters. You care.

         They loved each other. Even as they grew older and less and less beautiful, they loved each other. They felt old, but they grew not to care. 

         They walked together every night. As the sun set into the ocean, they walked, their hands clasped tightly together. He would look down at her with those eyes, and they were happy. 

         They were until one day, she woke up and he didn’t. She waited to hear and feel his steady, soothing breathing, for his hand to squeeze hers more tightly, and for his eyes to flutter open, revealing those perfect, deep blue eyes. 

         But they didn’t. 

         She couldn’t breathe, just like he wasn’t. A sob built up from her, and the tears flowed like water from a spring.

         One of her grown children from the orphanage found her like that. He and his boyfriend were attending their place for dinner that night, and they found her clutching his hand, her sobs now quiet and subdued. 

         The funeral was the next week. Many people came and many people went, until only she was left. He was buried that night, and she was led to her bed and helped into it by the children she and her loved one had raised. 

         That night, the window was opened. The curtains she and Daniel had loved so fluttered in the cool wind, and it brushed a stray lock of hair onto Kary’s face, making her stir. Something was Not Quite Right, and her eyelids fluttered open. The familiar feeling of being watched made her skin prickle, and she sat up, her old, brittle bones creaking. 

         There stood a familiar figure at the foot of her bed. 

         She squinted. It looked like him. It felt like him too, but it couldn’t of been. Where were his deep blue eyes?

         “Kary.”

         The figure’s voice rumbled around the room, echoing in a way Kary was certain was not entirely human. 

         “You have proved yourself. Come live with me.”

         “Where?”

         Kary barely recognized her own voice. It was strong and even, not the raspy whisper she had come to call her own in her old age. 

         “I cannot tell you. But it’s me, Kary, I promise.”

         She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have those eyes.”

         The figure chuckled. “That’s because they were never mine.”

         She stared at him, suspicious, but then she realized. She shoved off the covers, not even bothering to put on her slippers. It didn’t matter anyhow, as her feet hovered an inch or two off the ground. She made her way over to him, his milky white eyes peering intently into her dark brown ones. She glanced at her bed one last time, noticing that her old shell had been strewn about. But she didn’t care. 

         He held out a hand, and she took it. 

         The headlines were only in one paper. After all, who cared about some old lady? Even if her head had been found in a different corner than her arm, leg, torso, and right ear. It was just a robbery. A brutal one, yes, but a robbery nonetheless. At least, that’s what it seemed to be, since the room looked like it had been ravaged by a frenzied tornado. 

         That was the part that baffled police.  How could it have been a robbery, when on the windowsill, plain as day, lay two sparkling sapphires?