“These are Aunt Molly and Uncle Rome’s woods, Penny. Papa told you that before. You never listen!”
I inhaled through my nose when they started arguing again. Then they stopped, like nothing had even happened. Penelope turned back to look up at me and flashed me a toothy smile. “What else, Papa?”
I held in my laugh, but I caught Elsie chuckle from behind. Penelope tugged on my arm goading me to speak. So I did.
“Because we didn’t have lightning bugs, I couldn’t make the real thing, so I wanted to give Mommy a homemade one.”
“Like Aunt Lex had made for Dante?”
“Yep,” I agreed. “So I did. Mommy watched me as I emptied the glow stick into the jar, and she kept it with her every night after that, putting it in her window so I could see she was okay.”
“She does that even now!” Jackson said with excitement and I looked to my wife. She gave me her secret smile. Because that same damn jar still sat on our bedroom window back in Seattle, and Elsie had insisted that, for all of these years, she kept it lit. The jar barely gave off light anymore because it was so well used, but she wouldn’t part with it.
I wouldn’t let her anyway. It was our light that never went out.
We turned a corner and the creek came into view. I heard a quiet gasp come from Elsie when she saw the cluster of lightning bugs up ahead.
“Look,” I instructed to Penelope and Jackson as we crouched down in the long grass. “Y’all see them?”
Penelope’s hands went to her mouth as she did. Jackson’s little hand rested on my shoulder as he watched in silent fascination.
“They’re so pretty. Mommy, can you see?” Penelope said and moved to Elsie’s side, cuddling in to her arm.
“I can see, baby girl.” She looked from our daughter to our son, and asked, “Should we go get some for our jars?”
“Yes!” they both whispered in unison, and Elsie handed each one a mason jar along with the mesh lid.
“Now we have to be real quiet, okay?” I said to both of their excited faces. I couldn’t help but smile as they stood, bent forward, tiptoeing through the grass after me.
Elsie was laughing too, but I could see in her face that she was just as excited. I’d promised her this trip years ago, but my playing football for the Seahawks and her work always got in the way. It’d taken us quite a few years to fully heal and achieve our dreams, but that was fine. We’d seen the world together, and every year we’d fallen even deeper in love. We had our twins eventually, our two sweet children making our lives complete, whole, all we’d ever hoped and dreamed.
I’d retired from football this year, moving on to help Austin develop Daisy’s Smile and Kind centers nationally. We were both driven to do more, to expand on the couple of centers we had. Both the husbands of wives who the centers could have provided help for if only they’d existed before.
I came to a stop when we reached where the bugs flew, and Penelope giggled seeing them flying around. “Papa! They have lights on their butts!”
Jackson’s peeled laughter at his sister cut through the night, and we all started laughing too, until the bugs flew up higher.
“Quick, hold out your jars,” I instructed. Penelope and Jackson both did as I asked. I laughed to myself when Elsie held ours out too.
Swiping the net through the bugs, I brought it back to the jars, tipping it upside down watching as a few bugs landed in each jar. Penelope and Jackson’s eyes were huge as they watched the bugs dance in the jars in their hands.
“What now, Papa?” Jackson asked, all wide eyes. I could hear the nerves in his little voice.
“Take hold of your lids, and when I move the net, put it on the top. Yeah?” I asked and they both nodded their heads. “On the count of three… one, two, three!”
I moved the net and the twins slammed the lids on the top. I screwed them on tight to be sure, and lifted the wire handle for them to take. The minute they held them in the air, the lightning bugs shone from the glass, causing them both to squeal in excitement.
“We got real lightning bug jars!” Penelope shouted and then turned to me. “Can we run and show Daisy? Can we go show Aunts Ally, Molly and Lex and Uncles Axe, Aust and Rome?” Shaking my head in laughter at my daughter reeling off everyone who was just over the garden while we all visited at Rome’s house, I nodded my head.
“Just don’t run too fast. Make sure we’re always behind you,” Elsie said, and the twins ran off, their jars in the air as they giggled their way back to the yard.
I watched as their lights told us where they were, when Elsie’s hand slipped through mine and she offered my jar with the other. I took the wire handle and held it up to the dark.
“What do you think?” I asked as we started walking back to the garden, hearing the twins shouting for their aunts and uncles to come see their jars in the distance.
Elsie was holding up her jar and she laid her head on my arm. “Just as pretty as you promised they’d be.”
“Good,” I said and slipped my hand from hers and put my arm around her shoulders instead.
“Though not as good as my homemade jar in our window.”
I looked down at her and frowned. “You like that old jar of glow stick juice better than the real thing?”
Elsie shrugged. “It’s my real thing. That jar has kept me safe in the dark for years.” She put her arm around my waist and cuddled in closer. “And it led you back to me. It’s my jar, the jar that reminds me every single night of where we came from.” She looked up at me and smiled so big my heart swelled. “And how blessed we are now.”
Checking no one was around, I pulled my wife to a stop, and turned her in my arms. On instinct she tipped her head up toward me, waiting for my kiss. In seconds I had my lips on hers and she sighed as our lips moved against each other’s. When I pulled back, we were both breathless.
“You’re still as beautiful as you were when I made you that jar all those years ago,” I told my wife and watched as her eyes softened in the true lightning bug glow.
She lifted her hand to run through my hair. “And you’re still the sweetest soul that ever lived.”
Seeing the love she had for me in her pretty blue eyes, my heart melted when she pressed her palm to my cheek and her forehead to mine. Bringing my hand up to her cheek, she smiled as we silently said that we loved one another.