My Husband Gave Her My Parachute Chapter 12

Three years later.

Black Hawk Canyon baked under the blazing sun.

A small stone house now stood in the windswept, rocky wasteland.

Built from the black granite on the canyon floor, it had no electricity or running water. The cramped interior felt more like a stone chamber for storing the belongings of the dead.

A white marble monument stood by the cliff in front of the house.

A single line was carved into it.

To my beloved Claire. Here, she took to the sky.

Fresh sunflowers filled the space in front of it.

In a place this dry, keeping the flowers fresh meant buying new ones every day. He had to ride his motorcycle fifty kilometers to town before dawn, then carry them on his back down the path from the cliff.

A man with graying hair stood slightly hunched over the monument. He wiped away the dust

with a soft towel.

He had a slight limp in his right leg. He wore an old skydiving jumpsuit, faded from repeated

washing.

It had been Claire’s favorite team uniform. Her initials were embroidered on the chest.

He wiped slowly, his fingertips moving over the stone through the towel,

It was Ryan.

He was only thirty-three, but looked sixty. His shoulders slumped, and there was little life in

his face.

After the fall three years earlier, Mia had been charged with murder. She was eventually

sentenced to death,

Her sentence was automatically appealed. California had suspended executions, so she

remained in prison. Her death sentence still stood.

On sentencing day, her parents waited outside the courthouse. They stopped Ryan, weeping and begging him to support a lighter sentence for their daughter.

They offered him a civil settlement agreement, promising a huge sum in compensation. They wanted a statement from him supporting leniency for their daughter. It would be submitted to

the prosecution and the court.

Ryan glanced at them. Then he tore up the agreement in front of all the reporters.

He then sold his property, his car, and every share he owned in the club.

All the proceeds went to a nonprofit foundation supporting high-altitude search and rescue. He had one condition: they had to establish a search and rescue fund in Claire’s name.

Once everything was settled, he took the little metal box to Black Hawk Canyon alone. It held Claire’s remains and belongings.

He stayed where she’d fallen.

The wind rumbled between the rock walls. It sounded like a parachute canopy opening in

midair.

Ryan wiped the last word clean, then slowly sat down against the monument.

He pulled an old DSLR camera from inside his jumpsuit. He opened the photo gallery.

It held nothing but photos of Claire, taken while she was alive.

She was upside down above the clouds, laughing into the camera.

In the light of the setting sun, she looked down as she packed her parachute, carefully checking every fold,

She leaned against the doorframe of the plane, looking back at the photographer with one eyebrow raised.

Ryan reached out with rough, cracked fingers and gently touched her face on the screen.

“Claire, the wind’s good today. It’s coming from the south, and the air’s steady.”

He looked toward the mouth of the canyon, then back down at the photos.

“You’d tell me I hadn’t understood the weather report at all. Then you’d drag me along, insisting on one more jump before sunset.”

No answer came.

Only a few eagles circled high in the distance. Their criès drifted down from overhead.

Ryan looked up, following the birds with his eyes as they soared freely.

Tears ran down his wind-chapped cheeks.

He knew her forgiveness would never come.

He’d destroyed their marriage while she was alive. Now she was dead, and he had no right to ask for his remains to rest beside hers.

He would stay among the cold, loose stones, growing older day by day and remembering what he’d done until the end of his life.

The wind grew stronger. Dust swirled across the canyon floor.

The lonely, stooped figure slowly vanished from view in the depths of Black Hawk Canyon.