Jonathan Turlington's Last Kiss: The Ohoopee River Anthology, #4

By KM Paradice

The world is black. The world is white. Jonathan and Sadie were unlikely high school sweethearts. Jonathan—boisterous, high-energy, grab life and run, grew up in a military family. Sadie—laid back, methodical, determined, grew up on a farm in the south. Jonathan—blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin. Sadie—dark skin with eyes to match and a sixties afro. Each with their own past of significant personal struggles. Each from a world antithetical to the other. But love found them. Now older and seasoned with life events, tragedy has also found them and struck hard, and their love is plumbed to a far deeper level. Having survived the challenges of societal divides, is their love strong enough to overcome and conquer events that threaten life itself? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: KM Paradice
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223148623

KM Paradice

A prolific writer, an avid gardener, and a life-long  fan of science fiction, KM uses his life experiences to craft stories where dreams are reality and reality is a dream, and the universe of his creating is filled with amazing what-ifs.

Book preview

Sadie Mae

Dark of skin but not asphalt.

Dark, but not the blue-black of Superman’s hair.

Dark, but not espresso bean dark. Think Colombian roast gently mixed with breakfast blend.

Petite of frame.

Pretty as a picture.

Eyes that glowed with the mystery and wonder of life, despite long years enduring the crushing reality of an existence painstakingly hewn from the rock of hardship.

A smile that welcomed you into her world, into her heart, embraced you warmly. Told you that everything was just fine.

Even when it wasn’t fine.

Especially when it wasn’t fine.

Sadie Mae Turlington née Sadie Mae Thompson.

Born in a tobacco patch on a small farm in Candler County Georgia.

Well, almost born in a tobacco patch.

Would have been born in a tobacco patch.

Except that her father, Roger Carl Thompson, a sinewy young man, strong of spine and fleet of foot, had rushed her mother back to the old wrought iron bed that took center stage in the one-room house they called home, laying his wife down only seconds before Sadie made the momentous decision that it was her time to greet the outside world.

And greet it she did!

With a cry as soft as a kitten’s mew, she announced to the unsuspecting world and her doting father, I’m here!

Hands trembling, voice shaking with fear, excitement, and an inordinate amount of love, Carl lay the almost-five-pound doll baby on her mother’s belly and smiled.

"She’s beautiful, Lucy. Just like you."

And just like that the whole world changed. Not five minutes of breathing on her own, Sadie Mae Thompson had already flipped the world on its head, unwittingly becoming the focal point of her first traumatic life event.

Her mother, Lucille, didn’t see her take her first breath. Didn’t hear her first cry. Didn’t give her the first suckle from her breast.

Lucille Renée Thompson lay quiet and still on the blood-soaked bed linens, no longer an inhabitant of the land of the living.

*****

That’s the way my father told me the story, Sadie said. He never got over it. Never remarried. As far as I know, he never even thought about another woman. Years later, when I was in college and still living at home, I’d find him sitting alone at night, holding an old photograph of my mother in his lap, weeping, whispering her name. He passed before I graduated college. I think he died of a broken heart.

I don’t know what to say, Miss Sadie, the young attendant in the Candy Striper uniform sniffed. You still miss him?

"Young lady, let me tell you something about love and the unavoidable scars it carves into your life.