Her Red Shoes

You or your character find a forgotten letter or card from someone important in your life--whether good or bad. What does it say? How does it affect you or your character? What is done with it?

This is the most current part of Greta's story.  If you want to read about what has happened before this, please click on the "Greta's Story" tab on my menu bar.

If she would have just worn the pink dress and strappy sandals, she thought later, none of this would have happened.   

Ever indecisive, she had thought she had settled on one of her favorite dresses, pale pink, a little above her knees, sweetly ruffled.  Looking in the mirror, self-critical to a fault, she questioned the ruffles.  Maybe they were too sweet, better suited to her monthly dinner with the girls than for a first, well, whatever this was. 

Shedding the dress amongst the other discarded options littering her floor, her eye landed on her favorite jeans, snug but not tight on her increasingly toned legs, the perfect shade of indigo. 

Forcing a decision, she tugged on the jeans, pulled a deceptively simple, silky black tank over her head and strode into the second bedroom to find the shoes that had tugged at her memory when she spied her reflection in the full-length mirror. 

Greta sank to the floor in front of the large closet, pulling out a box shoved to the back, spilling with items she hadn’t needed in so very long, monogrammed note cards with a monogram she would never again use, her yoga DVDs that didn’t clear her head like her runs, and shoes she hadn’t worn in ages. 

Her searching fingers found the shoes within moments, the pointed stiletto heal balanced by a towering platform, the supple leather a shade she had once called wine but could now admit was actually red.  She gently placed them on the carpet next to her as another object snagged her consciousness.   

Gently, she lifted the card from the box and pulled the well-creased letter from the envelope with her index finger and thumb, her expression rapidly moving from disgust to regret and back again. 

Slightly shaking hands smoothed the paper over her thighs, her unfocused eyes uselessly scanning the words crammed together in a torrent of emotion. 

The words had once been tattooed onto her heart, until a callous formed over the scar, but even a callous couldn’t erase the memories forever stored in her brain. 

…forever and longer… 

…whatever the future may hold… 

…a love impossible to deny… 

…able to withstand any hardship… 

Promises written in blood and tears and hope, tenderly sealed to be read the morning of their wedding.  

Once, she had read them with tears in her eyes. 

Once, she had carried those promises into the depths of despair, grasping at them to keep her afloat. 

They hadn’t. 

Red shoes forgotten next to her, Greta gingerly replaced the paper into the envelope with the meaningless card, the creases opened and closed so many times that the letter almost folded itself. 

She braced herself for the familiar sting of her tears, the shaking shoulders that always accompanied her sobs. 

But something else was shaking her shoulders. 

Laughter. 

Belly laughs, causing her shoulders to heave, a different sort of tear smearing mascara onto her fingers as she gently wiped under her eyes. 

Her reaction was so unexpected that she forgot to drop the card when she heard a buzz from the other room, and she answered the door with the card in one hand and the shoes in her other. 

“Did you get some fun mail?” his voice asked, glancing at the envelope, confusion creeping into his voice when he spotted the worn edges. 

“No.  This is garbage,” she answered with a smile, tossing the card towards her kitchen and pulling on her favorite shoes.   

Drew smiled back and gently steadied her as she balanced on one leg, grabbed her purse, and firmly closed the door behind her.