Forever, Joan

By Carol Rich

How do you know when or if youve met your soulmate? What if you meet that person and let them slip away? Martin Scotts life of comfort and contentment is thrown into a tailspin when he begins receiving emails that are meant for another. Will he learn from them and find the love of his life, or will he let her slip away? Forever, Joan takes the reader on a journey of the discovery of love and what it means to lose it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546212966

Carol Rich

Carol Rich is an author living in Louisville, Kentucky. She practices law and loves to travel as well as spending time with her daughter, Emma. Her love of Paris, France was the inspiration for her breakout novella, Forever, Joan.

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© 2017 Carol Rich. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/8/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1295-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1296-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017917131

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CONTENTS

August 1998

September 1998

October 1998

November 1998

December 1998

January 1999

February 1999

April 1999

May 1999

June 1999

January 2003

Sometimes love doesn’t shout to get your attention … sometimes it whispers.

Joan Smithson

August 1998

C oming home from vacation is always a hectic time and it’s even more so when you’re a teacher and it’s the start of the school year. I was an English Literature professor at the University of Michigan in 1998. I hadn’t taught that summer but had gone to London, my hometown, for the entire break. I had gone to all my favorite haunts and visited all my friends. Most importantly, I had finally finished the novel I had been trying to write for the past five years, and, by finished, I mean it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The trip had been wonderful.

When I got out of my Lexus on campus that Monday morning, late in August, I had barely readjusted to the time zone. I knew I should have returned earlier, but I was having such an excellent time, I couldn’t make myself. That summer in London had made me miss the country of my birth.

August in Michigan is hot and humid, and that year it was no different. The summers can sometimes be as brutal as the winters with the mosquitoes biting and the air oppressive. That first day back was no exception. I had been in the states for fifteen years at that point, and often felt more American than British. That summer, though, I had rediscovered England. I had moved to Michigan originally for the woman I had married, but that had ended very badly with an incredibly acrimonious divorce. I didn’t feel the better for having gone through it either. She was a malicious woman, never happy. I tried to make her happy, but it was an impossible task. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this truth until we’d married and I had moved my life to the States. Maybe she changed from the time we dated, or maybe I did. All I know is that it took us only eight months to discover that we loathed, rather than loved, one another.

I had dated many women after my marriage, but had found no one with whom I was willing to make a second trip down the aisle. That summer I was content in my bachelor life and, I’ll admit, a little gun-shy. I had women with whom I had dinner and more intimate experiences. I had someone on my arm at parties and was often invited to escort others to theirs. No attachments had formed, though, and I was fine with that.

Sarah Barker, the most recent woman whose companionship I had sought was lovely and bright and I found her fun to be with. I had just started seeing her before I had gone to London, and wondered if she’d still be available once I returned. My life, at 53, was exactly where I wanted it to be. The completion of my novel was icing on the cake. I was ready to get down to another semester of teaching 18 to 22 year olds about the Romantic Era in English Literature.

My own fondness for Keats, Byron, and Shelley couldn’t be dampened by the lack of interest that often stared back at me from the students in my classes. Their eyes dulled and far away, their lack of enthusiasm apparent. Of course, there was the occasional student with whom I could share my enthusiasm, my feeling that the Romantic Era was beyond compare, and that the writers were brilliant. Michigan was an excellent school, but most were only in my classes to fulfill a requirement in the general studies portion of their pre-med or pre-law degrees.

While the climate in Michigan wasn’t always to my liking, I loved being a professor at the university. I’m convinced the college atmosphere keeps me feeling young. There are always new people, many eager to learn, and so much creativity and inventiveness led to debates and conversations that couldn’t be recreated at other jobs. This was especially true in my upper classes.

Michigan is a great school in the quaint college town of Ann Arbor, filled with sidewalk cafes, art galleries, and bookshops. I lived just off campus, on a corner lot with lots of space for the gardening that I loved so much. I had not given up that part of my English heritage when I became a Yank.

The campus that day was busy with students moving into dorms, their faces happy and eager. I had that fresh back-from-vacation-feeling when you just know that you’re going to do everything better than you did before, a new start as it were. While that day was hot and humid, autumn was right around the corner and the Michigan air would quickly become crisp and cool at night. It was my favorite season of the year, a time for comfort food, sweaters, and even American football.

I made it through the quagmire of campus and into my office, dropped into my chair, and turned on my computer. After my time away, I had a renewed interest in teaching. My office had not changed in the three months I had been gone. The old, worn chair that was my first purchase when I’d moved to America years before still sagged, but its faded brown leather only made it more comfortable. One large, paned window centered the outside wall of the room and most of the rest of the wall space was covered in bookshelves. My desk stood in front of the window and I quite enjoyed watching the students pass back and forth in front of it as I worked. It wasn’t a distraction, quite the contrary. It made me feel a little less forlorn during the depths of the Michigan winters.

I noticed the stack of mail to my right, but decided to take it home later and sort through it. After my computer powered up, I went into my school e-mail account and discovered, to my dismay, that I had 472 messages. Email was rather new to me at the time and I wondered when I was ever going to have time to go through them all. I had turned my answering machine off when I’d left and had asked the department secretary to have any important messages relayed via e-mail. Not having a spouse or children and not teaching for the summer, I knew that there would be nothing that needed my urgent assistance. I went through ten e-mails rather quickly and stopped when a colleague phoned and invited me to lunch.

After two hours of food, catching up, and some beers, I decided I could wait till the following day to clean out the rest. I went home, despaired at the shape of my garden, and spent the afternoon getting my house back in order. The next day was the first day of classes and while I knew I should prepare more, I decided to make it an early night, putting off work until the next day.

I woke up earlier than I had expected, jet lag no doubt, and made it through the first class of the day like a pro. I had lunch with my friend Paul, an ex Jesuit who thinks of teaching as the most important job in the world. Jesus Christ, apart from being a carpenter, was also a teacher of sorts, or so Paul constantly told me. That day he was excited about a discovery he’d had over the summer in the physics lab. I must say I barely listened to him. Paul’s got a brain as big as a planet and I, a literature major, have a very limited knowledge of the sciences. The fact that fans sometime appear to be going backwards still amazes me. Paul tried to explain that to me once, but it was no use. I keep telling him I’m a physics idiot. He refuses to listen. He simply can’t believe there’s anyone who doesn’t find physics fascinating.

Paul didn’t look like the stereotypical scientist. He was tall and broad shouldered with dark curly hair, and he always had