'Til Death Do Us Part

A Short Story by Kate Wilson

When He married Eve, they had intended to write their own vows.  The chaplain said they could say whatever they wanted, “Let your imaginations fly," but there were too many distractions for a young couple on their first visit to Las Vegas, and the traditional vows seemed to cover every eventuality, “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, I promise to love and cherish you.”

“They’ll do,” He said.  After all, they were already bound by three children and a mortgage on a too-small flat on an okay road off an up-and-coming street in Kentish Town.

They ate a wedding breakfast of Mexican food with the rag-tag crew of guests who had been prepared to make the last-minute trans-Atlantic trip, foregoing post-meal gambling to retire to their enormous suite and read the children a bedtime fairytale.  They indulged in a half-bottle of Sonoma Valley sparkling pinot noir from the mini-bar, toasting one another, “To our happily ever after.”

As the children grew and moved from Moses baskets to cots to bunkbeds, they took nightly turns reading to them, selecting their own childhood favourites from a bookshelf that included Anne of Green Gables, James and the Giant Peach, The Secret Garden and the story of orphan Annie.

“What is it with orphans in children’s books?” He asked. “Not a living parent among this lot.”

“Kids need to feel independent of their parents,” said Eve, always ready with a considered answer to a rhetorical question.  “They love us so much, so overwhelmingly much, and they need to know they’d be okay without us.  It’s all part of growing up.”