I love you,
Faithfully,
Paul
Dear Paul,
I miss you terribly, Paul. I’m a little hurt that you don’t want me to come and visit you in Texas, but if this is the way you want it, then that’s the way it will be. Anyhow you might be home before you know it, and I’ll drive to Palm Springs to visit.
Dad spent Thanksgiving with us. It was wonderful, like we were a whole family, again. I just know in my heart that things at the Johnson house will be just like they used to be. I just know it!
My mother says she is getting me the perfect gift for Christmas, and I can hardly wait. But you know, Paul, the perfect gift would be to have you well again.
I love you,
Mariah
Chapter 27
There are no white Christmases in the southern part of California. Oh, there’s usually some snow up in the mountains by December, and you can see the white-capped peaks while surfing in our ocean. But I’ve always wanted to wake up some Christmas morning and see that it had snowed, truly snowed, right on my windowsill.
Christmas eve we all went to the church up on the hill. My mother held my father’s hand while we sang the carols. It was as though the two years my father had been away never existed. I just know that everything will eventually be okay with them and that the past will seem like a closed chapter in a book you know you’ll never read again.
Christmas morning my mother placed a huge box before me. “Be careful, it’s fragile!”
At first I thought it was a joke and Kim jumped up and down in her excitement. “I know what it is. I know what it is!” she squealed.
“Congratulations, honey,” my mother said to her. “I never thought you’d be able to keep this secret!”
My mother lifted the smaller box inside the big box out for me and placed it on the dining
room table. The label on the box gave it away! A typewriter! I couldn’t believe it! A portable-electric!
My mother smiled broadly. “Oh, Mom, I don’t believe it! You’re terrific,” I said, hugging her. She then bent over and helped me pull out the huge staples in the box. Inside was a brown suitcase. I flipped the latch open — and there it was. Lovingly I stroked the keys, and the smell of its newness filled my nose like perfume.
“I hope you like this one,” she said, touching my hair. “If you’d rather have a different brand, I’ll exchange it for another.”
“Don’t you dare touch it,” I told her, covering the machine with my body. “I love it. I wouldn’t dream of exchanging it!”
Taking two stairs at a time, I raced with the typewriter to my bedroom. My desk was really beginning to look like a writer’s. My dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus,a few writer’s magazines I had picked up in a bookstore in Laguna Beach, and a thick stack of blank white paper just waiting to be used. And now, to complete the picture, a real typewriter.
I slid one of the white sheets into the machine and plugged it in. And then I typed, Dear Paul,I began. I wrote and wrote and the typewriter softly hummed.
I didn’t even hear the phone ring as I slipped out of the house. There was a mailbox right at the top of the hill and I wanted to mail my letter to Paul as quickly as I could.
The last piece of mail I’d received from him was a Christmas card that I had propped up on my chest of drawers so that I could see it first thing each morning. It wasn’t a letter — not even a small note — just a Christmas card. Paul had written only three words on it and then he had signed his name. I could hardly recognize his handwriting — it looked like an old man’s.
On the card was a picture of tall evergreens standing deep in white snowdrifts. Tiny birds were trimming the trees, holding gold and silver ribbons in their beaks.
The printing inside of it said, “Love to you on this special of all days.” Then down below Paul had written his three words: Sometimes, remember me.… and then he had signed his full name.
“Oh, I wish Paul could be here right now and see that typewriter,” I said out loud to the sea gulls who were already forming their little classes on the sand. I climbed up my rock and stood at the very top, looking out to the ocean. It was a cool, brisk, clear day and it had been a good Christmas so far.
I looked up at the house and saw my mother coming out the side door. At first I thought she was headed for the car, maybe running back to the store for something she needed for dinner. But, no, she was heading down the hill and then straight for me. She looked like she’d been crying.
“Hi,” I called out cheerfully. “I’ll let you join me on the rock if you want.”
“Mariah,” she said, scrambling up to me. “I want to talk to you.”
We both sat down side by side, and the wind swirled my hair into my eyes. The wind was cool, but the sun still shone brightly. The beach was deserted; most people were still at home opening their gifts, playing with new toys, having fun with all the new computer games out this year.
“You look sad,” I told her. And then I reached out my hand. “Is everything okay?” I asked, a tremor in my voice. Suddenly I knew something was terribly wrong.
“It’s Paul,” my mother said. “Mariah, I wish to God I didn’t have to be the one to tell you. Mr. Strobe called when you left to mail your letter. Paul died…early this morning. He died at home in his own house, in Palm Springs.”
He’d died while I was still asleep, I thought. While I was still dreaming of a beautiful Christmas day ahead of me. He’d died and I’d never even felt him leave. They had sent him home for Christmas. He’d been one of the patients they had sent home because there just wasn’t any more they could do.…
I thought of his card. I hadn’t thought to look at the postmark on the envelope or his return address. Of course, it had been sent from his home. And the words he had written. “Sometimes, remember me.” He had told me that day on the mountain that you can keep someone alive forever by just remembering them once in a while. He was asking me to do that for him. I’ll never forget you, Paul, I vowed.
The wind tore at my hair again; I gasped
and drew in the sharpness of it. I looked up at my mother as though she was not real. I was just imagining the whole thing. She put her arm around me and drew me close. My eyes stayed wide open. I knew if I were to start to cry, it would never stop.
Chapter 28
A faint sound of Christmas carols drifted up the stairs and under my closed bedroom door. I lay in the bleak darkness, holding my breath until I had to gasp for air, and then I held my breath again. Holding my mouth very rigid, I could control myself. I still would not cry.
A streak of light grew wide from out in the hall and my mother opened my bedroom door. “Are you awake?” she asked foolishly, and then she bent over me and brushed my hair from my face.
“You shouldn’t stay up here alone, Mariah.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I told her, burying my face further into the pillow.
“I understand,” my mother said. “But I want to talk to you — and I will.” I pulled the blanket halfway over my head, but I could still hear her.
“I want you to think now of the others who are suffering,” she went on. “I want you to think of Paul’s mother and father. This is the greatest loss of their lives. Their only consolation now is the realization that at one time they thought they could never have a child. Instead, God gave them a child and he allowed them to keep that child for all of eighteen beautiful years. How much better to have had those eighteen years than nothing at all.”
We sat in the darkness. I thought of Mrs. Strobe. She had tried so hard to protect her son, to keep him from his illness. And Mr. Strobe who had tried so hard to smile through it all, to be gracious, to welcome me into the short time he had to share with Paul.
“And I want you to think of Paul. Yes, Paul,” she went on. “He would have hated to see you here, hiding in the dark. He loved life so much, so very much. Don’t make him disappointed in you now.”
I thought of Pau
l and my mouth began to relax as I thought of him — his sandy hair, his wonderful smile, his eyes so blue like a summer sky, the way he’d held me that day on his rock.
My eyes grew moist, remembering. The tears squeezed out the sides of my eyes and then they were tumbling finally over my cheeks. I sat up in bed and looked at my mother, barely being able to see her through the tears. “Oh, Mom,” I cried, “I will miss him so.…”
She reached out and folded me into her arms. “Mom, why couldn’t my story, my real life story have a happy ending — like in the books?” Finally the tears were coming, a waterfall of grief I had kept in.
“No true love story has a happy ending,” she said gently, stroking my hair. “One always must die and leave the other. So there’s never a totally happy ending. It’s good you’re finally crying now, Mariah. We must cry, you know. But the tears are for yourself. You’re crying now for your own loss. Now go and do something for Paul. Paul passed through your life for a good reason. Now go and find it, Mariah; I know you can do it.”
Chapter 29
The morning of January the second, Amy knocked on our kitchen door. “Hi,” she called. “Did you have a nice Christmas? Did you miss me?” She didn’t know about Paul and something told me now was not the right time to tell her.
I opened the screen door and let her in. “Amy, I didn’t think you’d be home from Pasadena today. I thought you said the fourth — ”
“Mom’s expecting company from the East,” she told me, grabbing a big red Roman apple from the kitchen table. “Do you mind? I’m trying to stick to fruit instead of doughnuts now.”
“Sure,” I told her. “What did you get for Christmas?”
“New clothes, mostly,” she said in between crunching the apple. “And I’ve got to keep my weight down or I won’t be able to wear them.” She laughed. “And how about you?”
“The best present in the world,” I told her. “Come on upstairs, and I’ll show you.”
Amy saw it the second she entered my bedroom. “Oh, Mariah!” she exclaimed. “I love it. I love it!” She touched the smooth keys,
stepped back, and touched the keys again. “Mariah, you’re so lucky!”
I smiled. “Yes,” I agreed. “It is something I always dreamed of having.”
Amy hadn’t been in my bedroom since the summer. She went over to my vanity table and poked at her hair and then she saw it. “What’s that bumper sticker doing on your mirror?” she asked, pointing at the yellow strip.
“I know, it’s pretty corny,” I told her, “but Paul wanted me to put it up somewhere where I could see it every day. And that’s where it stays.” Amy moved back to my typewriter again. “You’re starting, you’re actually starting to write!” she exclaimed, bending over to read what was in the machine. I had just finished typing the title when she’d appeared at the kitchen door. She read it off slowly, “P.S. I Love You.” She laughed. “Oh, how cute. Palm Springs, I Love You. Can I read it?”
“When it’s finished,” I said.
She grabbed her sweater then. “Well, I’ve got to go now, Mariah, or my mom will kill me! I promised I’d only stay a few minutes. I have to go and help her with the house.”
I walked downstairs with her and waved as she ran down the hill. Then I slowly closed the screen door. Amy didn’t have to know that the title really meant, Paul Strobe, I Love You. It would be my secret — and Paul’s — forever.
Nothing makes a summer special like falling in love…
When her father left after the divorce, Mariah lost her sense of family. Now she’s lost her special summer, too. Instead of fulfilling her dream to become a writer, Mariah has to help her mother with a house-sitting job in very rich, very snobby Palm Springs. People with a lot of money make Mariah uncomfortable.
Until she meets Paul Strobe, the rich boy next door. Paul’s not a snob and he doesn’t act superior. In fact, his sandy hair and piercing blue eyes break down all Mariah’s defenses. With Paul, Palm Springs becomes the most romantic place on Earth.
But Paul has to go into the hospital for some tests and then an operation. He’s seriously ill and all his family’s money can’t help him.
Will Mariah lose Paul, too, just when she’s found her first love?
Table of Contents
P.S. I LOVE YOU
Barbara Conklin
Sweet Dreams #1
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
P. S. I Love You Page 13
