The Love That Remains

By Tasha L. Harrison

Grief changes you, and no one is more aware of that inescapable fact than Carlotta Mercier. 

 

It's been four years since her husband, John Paul, passed, but moving on feels impossible. She feels like a shell of the woman she once was, but what else is there? Better to just lose herself in work. Better to fill her days to the brim so she doesn't have time to wallow. Never mind that she's so lonely for his company that she'd rather be alone if she can't have him. Never mind that she's so starved for his touch that her dreams of him border on hallucinations. Never mind because her heart will always be broken after losing the soulmate she waited most of her life to meet. How can anyone move on from that? 

 

Apparently, her husband, John Paul, knew. 

 

In a letter, written the year before he passed, Carlotta's husband, who loved to celebrate his wife and the day they married, guides her through a tenth-anniversary trip he planned before he got sick. A trip that will take her to his hometown of New Orleans where she will finally get to know the man he was before he left that city. Will this trip down memory lane help Carlotta discover who she is now that he's gone? Can a young man who idolized her husband introduce her to the woman born from the love that remains?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tasha L. Harrison
• Release date: Jan 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224662937

Tasha L. Harrison

Often accused of navigating life without a filter, Tasha L. Harrison has managed to brand herself as the author who crafts characters and stories that make you feel all of the feels. She writes African American, interracial and intercultural erotica and erotic romance with heroines just as brazen, emotionally messy, and dramatic as herself and heroes that love them anyway.  She also edits romance because love stories are her business.  Tasha’s work and information on her editing rates and services can be found at tashalharrison.com.

Book preview

My sweet, dearest Lotta-love…

As I write this, you’re sleeping on the other end of the couch. Maverick is curled up next to you and a soft summer breeze is blowing through the window. The wind chime you hung on the back porch is tinkling a chaotic melody and you…you’re beautiful. So, so beautiful, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry because the pain is back. The pain is back and I’m so sorry, baby. I’m sorry because I know in a year’s time — maybe less — I won’t be here.

We’ve done the most aggressive treatments. You researched and found one of the best clinical trials out there. You’ve got me eating the healthiest diet recommended for liver cancer, and I know the only reason I made it two years outside of that initial diagnosis was because of you. You take such good care of me, baby. And maybe that’s why I decided to do this, to make these plans. I guess it was a way to protect you from the inevitable. The way you loved me…the years I’ve had with you was more than I ever deserved after the life I’ve lived. You deserve to be celebrated every day, but especially on the day you decided to put up with my shit until death do us part.

The parting is just coming sooner than expected.

I should be more afraid of what happens next, and in a way, I guess I am. Not for myself, but for you. Finally getting this all down has granted me a sort of unexpected peace. Funny, but knowing the end just makes me remember the beginning. Cancer has a way of doing that, I’ve noticed. Bringing things into sharp focus. Things I fucked up. Things I wanted but kept putting off. A future I took for granted that will never be. Yes, things are more clear to me now.

You are in the midst of all that, Lotta-baby. I can’t hold you prisoner in this love. You deserve to be happy again. Yeah, I’ve tortured myself with the thought of you falling in love with another man. Having a life beyond the brief time we spent together. Building a family. Doing all the things we never got around to because we thought we had more time. But I want that for you, Lotta.

Six years together feels like a lifetime in the blink of an eye with you. I even wrote it in a song — the moment I knew you, I felt like I’d always known you. The moment I loved you, I felt like I’ve always loved you. That’s still true for me.

There’s one memory of you that won’t leave me alone.

Maybe it’s because the end is so close now and my hunger for things to be the same is so strong, and I want you so much, so much, Lotta. I want to be able to make love to you the way I used to, the way I always have, but the desire for that intimacy and this traitorous body are at war right now. What’s worse is I can see that you need it and I keep trying to come up with ways to⁠—

That’s not what I want to write here.

That’s not what I meant to write.

I wanted to tell you about the one memory that keeps sticking with me. I don’t know if it’s my favorite memory of us, but it’s up there. A flashbulb memory that I conjure when I’m feeling really pitiful.

Any-fucking-way…

Remember the first time we hooked up after you stuffed your panties in my pocket backstage?

(I’m never letting that go. I kept those panties in my pocket for days and sniffed them every time I had a chance.)

But the next time I saw you, after trying my best to woo you via the phone and FaceTime, was almost six months later. Six long fucking months. I suffered, Lotta. You don’t even know. Anyway, I knew I was gonna be in Atlanta, and I arranged a flight and put you up in the W and set up a big, expensive dinner for us at Aria.

You showed up in this dress… Goddamn, that dress.

It was one of those hi-lo things, short in the front, long in the back? I know nothing about women’s fashion, but you in that dress with those legs of yours…

Anyway, I watched you walk across the lobby in that dress, and I prayed…hoped and prayed you would be mine after that weekend.

I couldn’t decide if I needed to feed you before I fucked you or just fuck you. Lucky for you, I decided to do the latter.

You were all hot silk that night, Lotta.

That first taste of you when I pushed up that dress and peeled off your panties with your back pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window in your room? It still lives on my tongue. All those rounds of chemo couldn’t chase it away. I don’t remember the taste of my mother’s gumbo, but I remember how you tasted that night, baby.

Fire hot and sweet.

I actually feel sorry for the niggas that will never get to know you, but I hate the thought that you will never know pleasure again. Never know love. Never have someone worship you the way that you deserve. A woman like you, who loves the way you do, deserves to know love again.

This is harping, ain’t it? You hate it when I harp, but I will always harp when it comes to taking care of you.

Goddamnit.

I don’t want to leave you, Carlotta. I wish I had more control of this situation, but I don’t. I just don’t. But all I can do is try.

I will try, Lotta. I will try to stretch whatever’s left of me out to cover you in my love no matter where you are, no matter what stage of life you’re in, no matter if you want me close or need to keep me at a distance. I will stretch myself across the space between life and death to you and make sure you feel my love.

Damn. I already miss you, Carlotta. I know you’re strong enough to live without me. I’m the one who’s going, and I can’t help feeling like I’m the one who won’t be able to live without you. I wish there was a way I could keep you close. To keep your love with me always.

For our tenth anniversary, I’m sending you to New Orleans. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve tried to get me to take you back there since the day we met. Yet another selfish act on my part, but I wasn’t lying when I said being in my hometown hurt too much. I lost so much there. It’s only now I realize that meant you didn’t get to know or love those parts of me.

Growing up in the 9th Ward was a childhood experience like no other. Second line Sundays. Hot summer nights on my grandma’s sleeping porch when we’d stay up, looking at the stars, listening to the chorus of cicadas, and dreaming of the vast world beyond our neighborhood. The Sunday church services, where the entire community came together, bound by faith and linked by tradition. The gospel songs, the sermons that felt like poetry, the shared meals after — they made us a close-knit family and an even closer-knit community.

Even the bad times feel like cherished moments now. The 9th Ward raised me to be strong and determined. That community, in all its beauty and imperfections, had each other’s backs. We faced everything together — the good, the bad, the tragic.

I held onto these memories, treasuring them, yet fearing the pain they’d bring if I revisited the place I used to call home. But now, I want you to experience them, baby. I want you to experience the soul, the spirit of the city that made me. I want you to walk those streets, hear the stories, taste the flavors, and feel the love and warmth that made me who I am.

I regret not sharing this part of my life with you sooner. I wish we could explore it together, hand in hand. But sending you there, allowing you to discover my roots, feels like the closest I can come to sharing those cherished memories. I hope New Orleans touches your heart the way it has always touched mine. I’m including a loose itinerary and a reservation for a house I think you would love as well as the number for the artist who made your gift. The ten-year anniversary gift is tin or aluminum, which symbolizes preservation, longevity, and the ability for marriage to last through time. And we would’ve lasted. I know we would have.

I’m just now realizing that what I’m doing is pretty fucking selfish. Planning anniversary gifts for you to receive after I’m gone? Selfish. Very selfish of me to need you to remember and feel my love for you after I’m gone. That no matter how brief, our love is beautiful. So this is the last one I will plan. The last big milestone anniversary. I want you to remember our love one last time, then let me go…

Yours always,

Yours forever…

JP

One

At twenty-four miles long, the Causeway Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain is the longest bridge over water in the world. When you’re driving across it, there’s a point where you lose sight of land for an eight-mile stretch. In that spot, it feels like you’re at sea. That’s what all the blogs and YouTube videos said, anyway. But nothing could have prepared Carlotta Mercier for this. 

The scenery along the side of the highway had changed by degrees on her road trip from Greenville, South Carolina. At the start of the journey, the trees showed off their fall foliage against the narrow strip of blue October sky over the highway. Then those thinned away until tall, skinny loblolly pines skirted marshland, and then…well, it was as if the sky just expanded. She didn’t know how else to explain it except that the land went flat and the sky came down to meet it. Great white, fluffy clouds sat so close to the horizon that, at first glance, they could be easily mistaken for a ship on dry land. 

Then…she was on the lake.

And she meant on the lake. 

Water ahead of her, water behind her, and water stretched to the horizon on both sides. It felt surreal and kind of terrifying, so she was glad when she was over land again.

When the city finally came into view, she felt overwhelmed with a nostalgia that surprised her. She’d never been to New Orleans before, but driving into the city was like coming home, which made sense. John Paul, her late husband, was born here. He’d grown up here, found music, and became a brilliant jazz artist here. They were married for six years and together for eleven, but in all that time, he never brought her back to New Orleans. He said that too many of his demons were in this city. Demons that nearly drowned him after Katrina. He’d said, Lotta-baby, you’re the light on the horizon, and Carlotta had taken that as a compliment. 

But the way he’d spoken of the city of his birth in those last days was completely different. It made her homesick for a place she’d never been. There was a German word for it: fernweh. The word literally translated to far-woe — a term meant to convey a longing for a place you’ve never been. Wanderlust she’d heard of before, and at times, that accurately defined the feeling his words inspired. In those last days when the morphine made him delirious, he’d spoken of his childhood home so often that the memories began to feel like her own. 

In his journals, he wrote about the humidity and the air heavy with the scent of night jasmine, magnolias, lantana, and gardenia. Long, drowsy days and hot, sweaty nights spent playing music in some place barely structurally sound enough to be called a bar. Carlotta had longed for that place and the man he was there.

And now she could almost hear him say, I told you it was beautiful.

She smiled. You’re home, babe. 

A soft breeze whispered through the open moonroof of her SUV. One that she would’ve sworn carried his laugh. On the radio, the opening chords of Let’s Go Get ‘Em by Rebirth Brass Band began to play, one of John Paul’s favorites. Hers too. Carlotta laughed and turned it up, eyes welling with tears because it felt like his way of letting her know he was there with her. 

This would have been their tenth anniversary. This trip was planned by John Paul when he wasn’t very sick but knew he was terminal. The trip, the gift, and the letter all came last week, and Carlotta was here to fulfill them. Her friend Evelyn tried to convince her it would be good for her, but she was struggling with that. She was here, though.

To say that Carlotta Mercier had married a beautiful, passionate, and loving man was an understatement. John Paul had been invested in her happiness and lived to make her feel loved. Made it his business to give her a hefty dose of it every day. It was one of the many things she missed about him. 

When it came to anniversary gifts, John Paul was always very particular about exchanging traditional gifts that would not only honor the years they spent together but also be something beautiful and useful they could pass down to their children — when they finally had them. Last year, she received a lovely willow twig chair made by a couple from Asheville who were among the few in the region who still knew the art of chair caning. To honor his gift, Carlotta purchased an earthenware vase from a local ceramist, Agostina Malone. Pottery represented hearth, home, and family. The willow symbolized strength, durability, and the intricately woven aspects of a good marriage. Both gifts now lived in her favorite place in the house — the sunniest corner of John Paul’s music room. 

Tin was the traditional gift for a tenth wedding anniversary. She was curious to see what it would be. Whatever it was, it was the primary reason for her trip, and she would pick it up on the day of their anniversary. 

But today, his instructions were to get settled in. Walk around the Quarter, get something distinctly New Orleans to eat for dinner, and hear some live music if she wasn’t too tired. 

And, of course, he provided a list of recommendations — he was nothing if not thorough, even from beyond the veil.

The place he rented for Carlotta in Marigny was a cute pink shotgun house with mint green shutters and a deep porch with gingerbread detailing. She parked her SUV in the driveway alongside the house and climbed out.

The neighborhood was vibrant. Lots of foot traffic, and half a block up was a café with outdoor seating. She would probably frequent that spot during her stay. It was the complete opposite of the neighborhood around her bungalow in downtown Greenville. She liked it.

Grabbing her purse from the front seat, she climbed the steps, unlocked the door, and immediately gasped. The soft pastels continued inside. The interior was filled with soft, comfy furniture, gleaming hardwood floors, and kitschy, colorful folk art on the walls and shelves. It was also flooded with light pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Just the kind of space John Paul knew she loved. 

Well, I do love it, she said, hugging herself, wishing his arms were around her.

She walked through the house to the lush greenery of the backyard that she saw through the patio doors at the back of the house. Pushing the doors open, she stepped out onto the little back porch. The air was more humid back here, fragrant with the drowsy blooms that crowded the tiny space and an underlying smell that was decidedly human but not too unpleasant. She gripped the handrail, which had been turned a bright rust red and vibrant turquoise by oxidation. Camellias as big as her hand and red as the flesh of a ripe watermelon dipped and bowed in the breeze. Bright pink azalea bushes provided privacy along the fence line and fed fat, slow-moving bees. A little magnolia tree held up the far corner of the small yard and threw shade over a wrought iron bistro set.

Yup, the little shotgun house was adorable inside and out. She imagined him finding this place online and thinking, Lotta would love this, and found herself getting weepy again. 

Carlotta’s phone rang, and she went inside to answer it, knowing Evelyn was probably calling to check to see if she’d arrived.

So, are you there yet? How is it? Is there an underlying scent of mildew and enough brocade to bury a Renaissance whore? she asked by way of hello, and all Carlotta could do was cackle.

No, it’s beautiful. Perfect. Just like the pictures. 

Evelyn sighed. Of course it is. Even in death, JP makes it hard for the average nigga to compete. 

She chuckled, but then her throat felt tight and funny. She was definitely about to cry. Maybe it was a mistake to come down here alone.

What? Carly, no!

I just… Maybe it’s going to be too lonely. It’s a trip meant for two and⁠—

Evelyn groaned. Carlotta…you haven’t even been there an hour. 

And I’m already feeling sad and pathetic! I should just head back home in the morning⁠— 

The hell you should! Listen, she began in her most lethal I’m-a-lawyer-and-I’m-not-to-be-fucked-with tone. You’ve become a hermit. Your world has revolved around your work, this big-ass dog you got me babysitting, and the memory of your husband. It’s been four years, Carly. And while I know everyone has to mourn in their own way and on their own timeline, it’s time for this to end. You can’t keep going on like this because… She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was a little shaky. "I’m afraid I’m going to