“What would you risk for me?”

- The Best of Me, coming to theaters October 17

Prelude

It was the summer the Jackson Five debuted, the summer mankind first stepped on the moon, the summer of Woodstock, and the summer everything would collide and collapse. It was the summer of 1969.

On one hot, bright day in August, when the sky was clearer than polished glass and the wind was blowing a cool breeze through the town streets, Elara Song dashed out of St. Joan’s Cathedral. She clutched onto her dress, pulling it above her ankles so it would not drag on the concrete steps she so quickly sped down. Her black hair fluttered in the billowing wind, her breaths coming short and fast. Behind her, she heard the church bells chime, a strong startling crescendo that almost made her trip. Elara did not look back, she did not dare in fear of what she would see, who she would see standing in the arched doorway. She thought she heard a voice cry out her name, she should have stopped and gone back, or at least paused to see who it was but her feet were moving of their own accord and she found she could not stop, or care for whoever called her.

Elara soon reached the end of the fathomless stone steps that lead up to the cathedral and this time, she paused but it was only for a second before she turned and started running down the street. These heels were not made for running, neither was this dress and she was twenty-seven, far too old to be running like this.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, harder and louder than the church bells blaring behind her. She glanced up at the afternoon sky and saw only blinding blue and the bright glaring sun. Elara turned a corner, the branch of a tree smacked her hip and left a dirty streak on her dress. She spotted her car, a green Austin Mini she had purchased two years prior. Elara fumbled to retrieve the car keys from her purse for a few seconds, she yanked the door open and hopped into the car. The engine roared to life, Elara harshly stepped on the pedal and quickly drove off, away from the cathedral and the prying eyes and the source of her guilt.

As she sped down the streets of Hampshire on that late August afternoon, paying little mind to the speed limit or her own safety, Elara Song found herself thinking of her younger years. Her mind drifted to St. Catherine’s, to Ravensworth, to the meadow in between the two and to all that had transpired there. She thought of Rosemary, of the way she treated the world like a stage, of her bright eyes and sharp mind. Most of all, she thought of him. The first true friend she ever made. The first and only boy she had ever loved and her fierce grip on the steering wheel tightened enough to turn her knuckles white. When she thought about it, about her time at St. Catherine’s, about him, something close to sorrow and longing flooded into her chest and it took her breath away.

Elara knew where he would be. It was where they had met all those years ago. The meadow. The meadow, where everything began, where she was speeding towards at that very moment, and where, she realised with a hammering heart, where everything would end. She drove resolutely, her stricken expression had turned blank and her dark eyes glassy and vacant. Time seemed to stretch and what felt like four decades was in fact a little over thirty minutes. She came to a bushy hedge she knew went on for miles, and she parked her car in the shadow of an oak tree she had once attempted to climb many years ago. Elara got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. She clutched onto her dress once more and crept into the forest she had spent a good portion of her adolescence exploring. It had not changed since her last visit, still the same earthy smell, the same leaves rustling and the same birds singing in the distance. Elara could walk through these woods blind, for she knew them better than she knew herself.

She swallowed as she quickened her pace. She was close.

Elara pushed past thick bushes and protruding branches, leaves fell into her hair and dirt peppered her dress until she felt the sun on her face and smelt the overpowering scent of lavender and heard the sound of a river rushing nearby.

She was here. The great expanse of the meadow lay before her, the same as it always had been, a small strip of land time seemed to have forgotten.

She inhaled sharply as she spotted the familiar figure. And there he was, tall and lean, standing in the middle, dressed in a crisp black tuxedo with his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets and his head tilted up to the summer sky.

“Sam,” she said, his name falling out of her mouth like a falling star and in that moment it felt as if her heart did not belong to her. It belonged to him.

He stiffened just as her heart stopped and slowly, ever slowly he turned around.

She realised then, everything that had happened washed up here and she knew it would all collide like never before. This was it. The beginning of the end and the end of the beginning and she merely hoped she would survive to see the moonlight once again.