I lie awake in our bed, watching the lights from passing cars shoot like stars across the ceiling. Beside me, sound asleep on his side, is my husband. The love of my life. The other half of my soul. My forever.

Tonight as I stare at the ceiling, like so many other nights recently, I am thinking that sometimes these days I don’t know where he is. It’s as if he’s retreated somewhere inside his head, somewhere that I, who know everything there is to know about him, all the ins and outs of him, can’t touch. I don’t understand it.

So I keep telling myself that this is not us. It’s not what we’re about. We’re supposed to be the fairy tale, the happy ending, what my best friend Maria calls "the look-into-my-eyes soulmates thing."

But I don’t know if I believe myself anymore.

Beside me, he shifts restlessly then sighs in his sleep. I have to stop myself from smoothing his hair off his forehead. The gesture I’ve done a million times in all these years seems too mundane, too familiar all of a sudden. And musing in the dark isn’t easing my mind. It isn’t helping me answer my questions. I just have more questions. I am so tired of questions that don’t have easy answers.

On that frustrating thought, I decide to get up from our bed. I drift through the hallways of our sleeping house, which is as orderly and neat as we are.

I stop at the doorway to our daughter’s bedroom and peek in. Claudia is asleep on her side too, one hand tucked under her pillow, the other under her cheek, sleeping the way small children are taught to take naps in kindergarten. She is our daughter, a perfect combination of both of us, the embodiment of our love for each other. That love is who I am, who I have become. It is my strength and my ability to go forward. I thought it was his too. But for the first time in my life since my life became his, I don’t know where his thoughts are.

I hear a sound behind me and turn to see him leaning against the doorframe to our bedroom, rubbing a hand wearily across his face.

"Why are you up?" he asks, and in that instant I feel the connection that is so much a part of us. I feel the momentary fear he felt when he reached across the bed to stroke my hip and I wasn’t there.

I don’t respond. Instead I take his hand and pull him with me downstairs to the kitchen. When we get to the kitchen, he drops into a chair, props an elbow on the table, and leans his forehead into his hand. I think, he looks tired, and I wonder if that is all this is.

"Do you want something? Hot chocolate?" I offer.

Smiling, he shakes his head then gets to the point. "Why are we up, Liz?"

I busy myself with filling a saucepan with milk and spooning hot chocolate mix into a mug. I can’t look at him while I am gathering my courage. I am not one to back down, but I do need courage to confront him. That is one thing I learned in high school. I need to stand up for myself and my feelings. To yank him out of his shell, I need to question, to probe.

So tonight I am determined to question and probe. I place my mug of hot chocolate on the table, sit down facing him, and ask, "Max. Where are we?"

He looks as if the question has thrown him so he takes refuge in stating the obvious. "We’re in our kitchen, Liz." He glances at the clock on the microwave oven. "And it’s three in the morning."

It’s my turn to shake my head. "No, I mean where are we in our relationship?"

He frowns. "Where is this coming from, Liz? What brought this on?"

I look down at my mug and pretend fascination in the swirls of steam rising from the milky-dark liquid. "Max, I’ll be honest. I don’t know what’s going on with you lately. I don’t know where you are mentally. I know that the office is busy, and that you’re working hard, but I am worried about what’s happening to us." Fighting back the tidal wave of emotion I feel rising inside my chest, I stare at him. "What is happening to us, Max?"

He gets up from his chair abruptly, as if sitting down at our kitchen table is the last thing he wants to be doing right now. I watch him press his fingers against his closed eyelids, a sign of how agitated he is feeling. He doesn’t react well to being cornered. Being cornered doesn’t mesh with his natural urges to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He releases a breath, then asks, "What’s going on, Liz?"

"That is exactly my question," I tell him.

He looks unhappy with the circularity of our conversation.

I sip my hot chocolate and wait.

Finally he says, "I don’t know, Liz. Maybe if you told me what you were feeling, I would be in a better position to answer your question."

"Fine," I say, and I look up at him, studying his defensive posture. I reach for my courage. "This is what I’m feeling, Max. I’m feeling separate from you. Distant. Unconnected, when we’ve always been connected before."

I get up from my chair so that we’re both standing, facing each other, like two boxers in a ring, squaring off. "I don’t know. It’s like there is less romance in our relationship. I mean, I know you’re busy with patients. And I know you’re doing a lot for your parents these days because your dad has been feeling under the weather. And I know you’re a great father, and you want to spend a lot of time with Claudia, and that’s really important, and I am so happy that you do that. And I know that you’re always trying to watch out for everyone, and that takes up a lot of time. But--" I am horrified to hear the crack in my voice-- "but ... I miss you. I know everyone needs you, but I need you more. I miss being so connected to you that I know what you’re thinking all the time, that I can feel your eyes on me wherever we are. I just miss you."

My voice cracks again, and I can’t stop the tears this time. I keep very still and bow my head so that he won’t realize how upset I am.

"Liz...." Max takes two steps and pulls me almost roughly into his arms. "Liz, what are you talking about? Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way before?"

"I don’t know, I don’t know," I whisper into his chest. "I was afraid that you weren’t in love with me anymore, I guess. And I didn’t want to ask...." I laugh, and my laugh sounds soggy even to me. "You’ve been in love with me for so long, since grade school. Maybe it goes away."

I feel rather than hear the rumble of his laughter under my cheek. "Liz Evans, you are such a doubting-Thomas." He places a finger under my chin to tilt my face up to his, and I lose myself in his eyes. "How could it go away?" he asks, and I recognize the beginnings of a teasing note in his voice. "Liz, my love for you isn’t like a bag of groceries. It doesn’t have an expiration date. You are always with me, in my heart and soul. When I’m at the office, when I’m helping my parents, when I’m with our friends. Especially when I’m with Claudia." He kisses me gently, then tightens his arms around me. "I’m sorry you were feeling neglected, Liz. I should have been more sensitive."

I look down and shake my head against his chest, a movement he feels even though he can’t see it. "No, not neglected," I tell him. "Unconnected."

He pulls away a little so he can look me in the eye. "Liz, listen to me. We have been connected since that day at the Crashdown. Even before that, your soul was tethered to mine." He says his next words slowly so I won’t mishear him. "You have always been my forever."

And those magical words reassure me. I relax in his arms and think maybe I’m over-reacting to everything.

"Yes, you’re probably over-reacting to everything," he agrees even though I haven’t said the words out loud. He offers me his slow, sweet smile, the smile our daughter inherited, as he takes my hand. "Come on. It’s the middle of the night, and I can think of a lot of better things we could be doing with our time than..." he slants another half-smile in my direction "... as Michael would put it, yakking in the kitchen."

As he leads me back upstairs to our bedroom, I am relieved that I told Max how I’ve been feeling. It was good to reaffirm out loud how we feel. Every so often, even in a fairy-tale love story, we need to do something that reminds us of what is important. Something that helps us re-find each other. Something that re-sparks our connection to each other.

Max and I have been in love and loved for so long that it’s easy to forget that we need to work at it always. Because that’s what love is. Even the fairy-tale kind. Love isn’t easy. It involves work. And, as someone wise once said, a successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. So Max and I are working at falling in love with each other again and again. And we’ll keep working at it.Because that’s who we are. Each other’s forever.

* * * *

Epilogue

"So, everything is fine with you guys again," Maria states, although I know it’s really a question, as she puts her groceries away a week later.

"Totally fine," I reassure her. "It was just me being stupid."

Maria stops what she’s doing and leans a hip against her kitchen counter. She examines my features, her own face very serious. "Oh no. Don’t tell me that. You weren’t being stupid. You and Max needed to talk, so it was good that you talked, no matter how it turned out. Though it is really good that it turned out as well as it did. But, you know, I always say if you’re feeling something--"

I try to hide my smile.

"What?" she demands, knowing something is up.

I laugh at the expression on her face. I adore Maria. Even after four children and a lifetime with Michael Guerin, she is still the same, still my bubbly, wacky best friend. Not in the same way Max is my best friend, but in a way that is wholly Maria. I laugh again, and she taps her foot impatiently when I don’t answer. Taking pity on her, I explain: "Actually, what I was feeling were mostly hormones."

Maria looks stunned, as if she is afraid to believe what she thinks I’m saying. "What hormones?"

I turn away and pick up where she left off putting away the groceries. Maria grabs my arm. "You can’t just leave it hanging like that, Liz. What are you talking about? What hormones?"

I straighten to face her, bracing myself for whatever she might say. "I’m pregnant, Maria. Max and I are having another baby." I look closely at her, trying to gauge her reaction. "I can’t believe it myself. I mean, we have a sixteen-year old daughter...." I let my voice trail off.

"Oh my god, Liz," Maria says, and the shock in her voice is almost comical. "Are you okay? I mean, considering....? Are you okay?"

I smile. I *am* okay, really okay. This is what Max and I needed, I think, to remind us of what we are to each other, to remind us that we need to work at being in love and loving each other. But all I say out loud is: "I’m fine, Maria. One of the advantages of being married to a doctor is that the first thing Max did was check me out. I’m healthy, and the baby is healthy. And Max and I are happy, despite the surprise."

As I watch Maria struggle to come to terms with my announcement, it occurs to me that Max and I are happy *because* we love each other, because we have always loved each other. Our love defines who we are, as well as who we are becoming. And it can certainly expand to include one more person.

Because our love *is* the forever, fairy-tale kind, the kind that links beginnings to endings and endings to beginnings. Because in every ending, there is a new beginning. And that’s what being each other’s forever is all about.

"Facing the endings and the beginnings,
facing whatever life brings, together.
Life has taught us that
love does not consist
in gazing at each other
but in looking outward together
in the same direction."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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