Page 188 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Diego had never done a thing in his life to deserve this moment, but he liked to think that the work he’d done over the past year—on himself, to love Amelia—at least meant he had earned some piece of it.

It had not been easy to work through his grief and his guilt, and heal from his physical injuries as well. He and Amelia had gone through their fights, their low points, but love had always brought them back to each other to take the next step forward.

And he would spend the rest of his life earning this happiness, Amelia’s love, in the same way. He had promised himself, and his ghosts, that. Now he would promise her.

He stood in the ballroom in his wedding finery, next to the grand Christmas tree they’d decorated together. Their family attended via pictures scattered about the room, and perhaps the warmth that settled there next to him.

Amelia looked like a Christmas angel in her white dress, her bouquet a cascading delight of evergreen and bright red berries and bows. The smile she beamed his way from the end of the aisle was all the Christmas magic he would ever need.

The sound of a bell tinkling drifted over him—as if to remind him he had been the recipient ofplentyof Christmas magic, and he could not disagree.

That bell’s little song always seemed to offer a little punctuation to a moment. Diego could have written it off, but what was the harm in thinking that the bell was a sign from those he’d lost that they were watching?

Amelia thought none, so he agreed, and he was happier for it. More blessed for the belief that no love was really lost, only rearranged into something else.

Like the marriage he was about to begin.

She met him at the end of the aisle, beautiful and perfect and his. They listened to the priest and repeated their vows to each other.

Diego promised to love, cherish and protect, just as Amelia did the same to him. When they were invited to mark the promise with a kiss, the bell tinkled again from deep inside the tree, impossibly loud, considering nothing had disturbed the area around it.

A rousing punctuation mark to the perfect moment. A promise that love never really died.

And when their first child was born some nine months later, they named her Belle Aurora. Her sister, Noelle Joy. Their boy, Emmanuel Bartolo. They threw a Christmas Ball every year and invited only those who brought joy and warmth to the occasion.

They raised their children in the memory of the family they’d lost, with stories of bells that marked important moments, ghost voices who saved lives, but most of all with the deep, abiding love they’d learned to give each other through loss, penance and finding the belief in joy all over again.