The Lavender Butterfly

Chapter 1

“Just look at her…. Isn’t she lovely?” I thought to myself as I revered the woman lying beside me. Laying here, watching her, I couldn’t believe that I had been so lucky as to share my life with her for all these years. Meredith is such a strong, determined woman that had been my rock for the thirteen years we’ve known each other. As tumultuous as my life was before her, ever since I met her my life has been a dream. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years, everybody has, right? But I can honestly say that with every passing day, I somehow loved her even more. We’ve been married for ten years, and our love had never been stronger. I felt like nothing could stop us – everything had been going right for us recently. I was working at the same graphic design firm for the past ten years and I now found myself in upper management. I invested more time setting up meetings and securing new clients than I did making the art I have enjoyed making my entire life. Sure, I feel like I had lost a lot of my creative outlet, but I’m proud of myself and how far my career has come. The paycheck has been nice too, with all the overtime I had been putting in. I don’t think I had taken a vacation day or a sick day in the past year. I’ve been making all this money, and I didn’t have any time to spend it. Not a bad problem to have, right? Spending all the time in the office that I did every day; it all seemed worth it when I came home every evening, and she welcomes me home with a warm embrace. And as I lay there watching her sleep peacefully, I was wide awake, enamored with the anticipation of spending the next two weeks in sunny Florida with her. With our ten-year anniversary coming up, we felt that it was well past time to get away for a while. Over the past few years, I had done a little traveling with my job, but other than that, we had been so busy we had hardly left the Chicagoland area for the past five years. I saw her tussle under the sheets, and she opened her tired emerald, green eyes and looked into mine. “Honey, we’ve got an early flight to catch tomorrow, you need to get some sleep” she whispered to me in a half yawn. “Yeah, I should get some sleep” as I brushed my hands through her flowing strawberry blonde hair, I leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek. She smiled and brushed her hand down my cheek. My apologies, I’ve rambled on, giving my entire life story and I haven’t bothered to introduce myself. My name is Chris – or at least that’s what I used to call myself. I laid my head back onto my pillow and closed my eyes, blissfully unaware of the dramatic turn my life was about to take.