“I know, I know! I’ll be there!” Jon hung up his phone and levitated it over to the side table by the sofa.
“Negotiations with your campaign manager?” Sarah asked as she glided into the living room.
“Sometimes I feel like Karyn wants this more than I do,” Jon sighed. “Honestly, sometimes I’m not even sure I should be running at all.”
Sarah took Jon’s arm and pulled him down with her as she sat on the sofa. “Congress needs you, Jon. You’re going to make a difference in Washington.”
“It’s a lot,” he sighed. “Am I even good enough?”
“Jon, look at me.” He did. “You’ve always been good enough. Always. I know sometimes you don’t see it in yourself, but I always see it in you. I always have. And Karyn always has. That’s why we’ve always been your biggest cheerleaders, even when the uniforms are long-retired.”
“You know Karyn still has her Cornell uniform, right?” Jon rolled his eyes.
“She has shown it to me on a few occasions, yes.”
Jon leaned heavily back into the sofa and stared blankly at the ceiling. Sarah snapped her fingers, triggering classical music to play on their home sound system. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos. Then she leaned against Jon’s shoulder, humming along to the music, and the two of them sat there listening for a good, long time.
“Sage is doing well in college” Jon finally murmured. “But having your dad run for Congress can easily bring attention you don’t want and throw you off. Jace will be just a few weeks into his first semester of freshman year on election night. That won’t be easy. Tristan and Riley are still in high school, and I don’t know what that’s going to do to them.” He brought a heavy hand to his forehead. “Hell, I can’t believe I’m even considering bringing so much attention to our family while you’re president of the High Council. President outranks congressman, you’re more important. I don’t want to put your position at risk.”
“I’m president of a small, insular council.” Sarah kissed Jon on the cheek. “You’re about to become one of 435 people tasked with making decisions for an entire country. We’re both important. Nobody outranks anyone here.”
Jon wasn’t so sure. “Sarah,” he sighed, “everything I have in my life, I have it because of you. Your dad got me into Cornell. Got me a start in business. When I struck out on my own, it’s because you convinced me to do it. When we moved to California, that was your idea. I started Houses for Humans because you pointed out how poorly the homeless population gets treated, and that’s how I ended up on City Council, and that’s why anyone is taking me seriously for Congress. It’s all you. I’m just playing a part.”
Sarah didn’t react immediately. Instead she looked around the living room. At pictures of the four children that the two of them had raised together. At the small copper statue of a turkey that Jon had won in a raffle that a 12 year-old Jase had entered him in without telling him. At the glass orb, nondescript to most, which emanated an energy indicating to any magic user that it was owned by a High Council president. A position she could not have attained if Jon hadn’t supported her. She looked at the coffee table that they’d bought at a yard sale that really was too old and needed to be replaced, but neither Jon nor Sarah could bring themselves to throw it away. And the chip on the mantle from when Jon fell off a ladder trying to change the battery in the smoke detector. And a dozen, a hundred-dozen other small artifacts and imperfections that filled the room, that they had filled this room with over their years of living in it. Together. Neither of them playing a part. Both of them being precisely who they are.
But instead of mentioning any of those things, she began humming along to the music once more.
“Do you know how to Vivaldi a woman?” she asked wistfully as the movement ended.
This pulled Jon out of his thoughts. There was some kind of wordplay here, but he couldn’t see it. “I give up,” he said a little too quickly. “How do you Vivaldi a woman.”
“Jonathan Malachi Gibson,” Sarah admonished playfully, “I’m surprised at you! Of all people, you should know. You’ve been doing it since we were teenagers, and you’ve never stopped.”
This did not alleviate Jon’s puzzlement, and he let his wife wrap him around her finger just like he always did.
“What you do,” Sarah said with an intimacy borne of twenty years living and building a life alongside and intertwined with your soulmate, “is that you give her a life that’s filled Vivaldi things she loves.”
She kissed him, and every concern in his head melted away. Just like they always did when Sarah was with him. And just like they always would.
-THE END-
