Love Locks
Keira Sperling and Eric Kantner's wedding was not one that would ever be featured on a WE TV program. There was no high-priced wedding planner to make the arrangements. The reception was held in a VFW hall rather than an upscale restaurant or hotel banquet room, with music not by a live band but courtesy of the couple's collection of CDs, combining the genres of country western and classic rock. The meal was provided at a substantial savings by Eric's uncle, who owned an Italian delicatessen. What the menu choices—consisting of baked ziti, chicken marsala, shrimp scampi and veal parmesan—lacked in sophistication, they more than made up for in taste. Even the simple, two-tiered wedding cake, which would never have been mistaken for a creation by one of the Food Network's celebrity bakers, was delicious. And while the average cost of a wedding gown was fifteen hundred dollars, Keira settled for having her mother make her a dress from a McCalls pattern.
Friends and family wondered why Keira, who had a good-paying, full-time job as an editor for a local newspaper, chose to scrimp when it came to the most important day of her life. When planning her wedding, the bride explained, she had to work within a budget. Even though she was marrying an attorney, Eric had only just begun practicing law and had yet to acquire a significant number of clients. Added to that, the couple (like many young Americans) was burdened with unpaid student loans. Rather than spend the lion's share of her available funds on the wedding itself—an event that would last only several hours—she chose to spend it on a dream honeymoon instead. Even there, the frugal bride shopped for the best deal she could find, eventually settling on a group bus tour that visited nine European countries in four weeks. At a cost of under ten thousand dollars—hotels, meals and airfare included—it was quite a bargain. The fact that the honeymooners had to travel with forty other people, most of whom were retirees, did not bother them.
"I can't believe we're in England!" Keira exclaimed when their plane touched down at Heathrow Airport. "I've never been out of the country before—except for that weekend trip to Niagara Falls we took three years ago."
After two days of getting around London by themselves, she and Eric met their tour guide and the other members of their travel group early Monday morning at St. Pancras station, where they all boarded the Eurostar for Paris. For the next two weeks, they journeyed through France, Spain, Italy and Greece, visiting Bordeaux, Barcelona, Monaco, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Sorrento and Athens. From Greece, they headed north and made their way to Vienna. Keira fell in love with the picturesque city, especially the Schönbrunn Palace of the Habsburgs, which she considered in parity with Versailles. After touring the Austrian capital, it was on to Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart and home to the music festival made famous by The Sound of Music.
It was while the honeymooning couple was strolling along the streets of Salzburg, admiring its baroque architecture, that they came upon the Makartsteg Footbridge spanning the Salzach River. What made this pedestrian bridge different from others they had seen were the thousands of locks attached to the chain link fence on either side of the structure. The tour guide explained that the "love locks" were part of a century-old tradition in which lovers inscribed a padlock with their initials, affixed it to the fence and then tossed the key into the river to symbolize their unbreakable and eternal love.
"How romantic!" Keira exclaimed. "It's like something you would read about in a Danielle Steel novel. I wish I had known about this place beforehand; I would have brought a padlock with me."
"You can purchase one in the gift shop across the street," the guide told her.
"Isn't this a little silly?" Eric asked, following his wife into the shop. "We're adults, not adolescents."
"Don't be such a wet blanket. It'll be fun, like carving our initials in a tree trunk."
For two euros extra, the man behind the counter of the gift shop sold them an indelible marker with which to write their initials. Keira wrote out both their first names on the lock itself and then put their initials on the key.
"That isn't necessary," Eric said.
"It's a way of distinguishing our key from the thousands of others that are rusting away down there."
"But we're only going to throw the key in the river. No one will see it there."
"It doesn't matter. I'll know it's there."
With a demeanor much too solemn for such a light-hearted occasion, the newlywed bride attached the lock to the fence and tossed the key into the Salzach.
The last leg of the honeymoon, during which they visited Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, went by quickly. As they sat in the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, waiting to board their flight back to the U.S., neither one of them could believe that the trip was at an end.
"I feel like Cinderella, watching her coach revert to a pumpkin," Keira lamented. "In a few hours, we'll be home. Then it's back to our normal routine."
Since she and Eric had been living together for more than two years before their wedding, there would not be any period of adjustment to married life. As far as Keira was concerned, nothing much had changed except her surname.
* * *
Another anniversary, Keira thought as she poured herself a glass of wine and looked at the empty dining room chair across from her.
Pushing her half-eaten meal away, she got up from the table and walked into the living room, wine glass in hand. She plopped down onto the sofa and reached for the photo album she kept in the lower drawer of the coffee table. The white vinyl was embossed with gold letters that spelled out "Our Wedding." She stared at the photograph of the bride and groom surrounded by the wedding party and members of the immediate family. Had it really been taken five years ago? Tears came to her eyes, and she tossed the book aside and reached into the drawer for the second, thicker photo album.
Although she and Eric had taken more than four thousand photographs on their honeymoon, only their favorites had been printed and placed in the book. The others were kept on their computer's hard drive and backed up on cloud storage. As Keira thumbed through the plastic-protected pages, she reminisced about those four weeks in Europe. There were pictures of the Tower of London, Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, the Palace of Versailles, Notre Dame and the Sagrada Familia.
Her tears returned when she saw an eight-by-ten enlargement of the newlyweds in front of the Eiffel Tower.
"As Humphrey Bogart said in Casablanca, 'We'll always have Paris.'" She flipped through the pages and added, "And Carcassonne, and Capri and San Marino, and even Lichtenstein."
Looking through her honeymoon photo album was like peeking into the pages of a history book: the Roman Colosseum, the ruins of Pompeii, St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City and the Parthenon atop the Acropolis. By the time she came to the photographs taken in Austria, Keira's emotions were at their peak. When she turned the page and saw the love lock bridge, she finally broke down.
"We were so happy then," she sobbed.
A car pulled into the driveway, and she quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. A few moments later, Eric unlocked the front door and entered the house.
"Sorry I'm late," he said.
No, you're not, she thought but held her tongue. You never are.
Today was their fifth wedding anniversary, but there was no gift, no card, no flowers, not even a verbal acknowledgment of the occasion. The unhappy wife doubted if her husband even remembered what day it was.
Five years. So much had changed since that optimistic bride placed a padlock on the chain link fence of the Makartsteg Footbridge and tossed the key into the Salzach River. Putting her frugality to good use, she wrote a book, Wedding on a Budget, advising brides on how to economically plan that special day. The book became a bestseller, and Keira quit her job with the newspaper and started a blog giving cash-strapped brides tips on everything from floral arrangements to wedding favors. Between the royalties from her book and the money she received from advertising on her blog, she earned a six-figure income, more than twice that of her lawyer husband.
Yet while Keira would prefer to think that the trouble with their marriage could all be attributed to her successful career and Eric's fragile male ego, she knew the source of their disharmony went much deeper than that. After five years of marriage, there were still only two people living in the large, four-bedroom home. Three years into the marriage, she had consulted a fertility expert who assured her that all tests confirmed there was nothing wrong with her. Her husband, however, refused to be tested. His resistance to seeing the doctor caused a deep resentment in his wife, opening a rift in the relationship that had yet to close.
* * *
After Keira went upstairs to bed, Eric got a bottle of pilsner out of the refrigerator and went into the living room to watch the late-night news. Sitting down on the sofa, he spied the photo album his wife had left on the top of the coffee table. He could not understand why she wanted to relive their wedding and honeymoon; he would just as soon forget them. Seeing the albums, however, reminded him of the significance of the date.
Today's our anniversary, he thought glumly. Five years! It seems more like fifty.
Eric could not pinpoint the exact moment at which he fell out of love with his wife, nor could he give a definite reason for doing so. He chose to believe he was not envious of her success or that he felt threatened or diminished in any way by the size of her income, but he had to admit that the disparity of their financial situations did irk him. Still, the marriage might have survived had this been the only bone of contention that existed between them. However, Keira's eagerness—more like obsession, he thought—to start a family was a far stronger cause of the disintegration of their relationship than their respective paychecks. He saw her insistence that he be tested by a fertility doctor as a way of putting the blame for her not conceiving squarely on his shoulders.
The greatest contribution to the failure of the union, at least as far as Eric was concerned, was the arrival of Ariel Breyer at his law firm not long after the Kantners celebrated their third wedding anniversary. Unbeknownst to his wife, he and the attractive paralegal soon took their relationship beyond the workplace. Many of the nights he supposedly worked late, claiming to be preparing for a trial, he was, in fact, carrying on an affair with Ariel.
Five years ago, I believed I was in love with Keira, he reflected. Now I only want to be with Ariel.
Eric was no lovesick fool, though. If he tried to divorce his wife, he would lose everything since he would be seen as the guilty party in the eyes of the court. His law practice was still in the growing stage, and he did not earn anywhere near enough money to start a new life. There was only one way out of his predicament: if he could represent a client who was on the winning side of a major lawsuit, he might walk away with a substantial sum.
How long is Ariel willing to wait? he wondered. She's already showing signs of impatience.
He could not blame her for not wanting to be the other woman, forced to remain in the background of his life while the world acknowledged Keira as his legal partner. Ariel ought to be at his side, living in the same house with him and not waiting for those precious hours when he could deceive his wife and sneak over to her apartment.
"Please, sweetheart," he had pleaded with her on several occasions, "just wait a little while longer. I swear, once I'm making enough money to support us both, I'll ask Keira for a divorce."
Regrettably, a month into the Kantners' sixth year of marriage, Eric ran out of time. Ariel discovered she was pregnant and issued an ultimatum: either he divorce his wife and marry her or she would leave him and have the baby on her own.
* * *
Eric poured himself a large glass of Scotch and brooded. He knew he had to choose between a financially comfortable life with Keira and an emotionally happy one with Ariel and their child.
If there was only some way I could maintain my lifestyle and marry the woman I love, too, he thought with despair.
By the time he finished his third drink, he had solved the problem. He could have the best of both worlds. All he needed to do was get rid of Keira. Having decided to end his wife's life was easy. The difficulty was in finding a way that would cast no suspicion on him, especially since he would remarry soon after he was free.
It has to look like an accident, he concluded. But how?
Eric ran over alternatives in his mind. Drowning? An overdose of sleeping pills? A fall down the stairs? These methods might not hold up to police scrutiny. No, there could not be a single doubt as to his innocence.
As he finished the last of the bottle of Scotch, the kitchen telephone rang. Since his calls always came through on his cell phone, he never answered the landline. After four rings, the answering machine was activated. The caller, a wedding planner from Orlando, phoned to confirm Keira's attendance at an upcoming bridal expo. A smile spread across Eric's face. Should his wife have an accident in Orlando, no one would suspect him if he were at home thirteen hundred miles away.
That still left him with the problem of how she should die. One ancillary benefit to being an attorney was that he often came into contact with unscrupulous individuals who were willing to do anything for the right price. The danger was whether or not he could trust such a person.
What choice do I have? he asked himself.
After begging Ariel to give him just one more month, he arranged for Keira's accident. If the contracted killer was successful, he would rid himself of his wife at a cost of twenty thousand dollars—a bargain considering what he would get in return.
* * *
Two months after Keira was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Orlando, Eric, the widower, married an obviously pregnant Ariel Breyer. No doubt eyebrows were raised and tongues wagged, but the Florida police were satisfied that he was not involved in his wife's death. Better yet, the insurance company raised no questions when they paid out the one-million-dollar double indemnity death benefit.
Once the life insurance was paid, the newly married couple purchased a home of their own, much larger than the one Eric had shared with Keira. Having just entered her third trimester, Ariel occupied her time with decorating the nursery and left the task of unpacking their belongings to her husband.
As his wife was upstairs pouring over fabric swatches and color charts, Eric was in the kitchen cutting open cardboard cartons and placing pots, pans and dishware into the cabinets. At the bottom of a packing box filled with linens, he found Keira's wedding and honeymoon photo albums. Without bothering to open them, he put them in a bin earmarked for the trash dumpster.
"What are you doing?"
Eric turned at the sound of the voice, expecting to see Ariel standing behind him. No one was there, however.
I must be hearing things.
"You can't get rid of those albums as easily as you got rid of me."
The attorney's heart raced with fear, realizing the disembodied voice belonged to his late wife.
"Keira?" he asked in a whisper that he hoped his new wife would not hear.
"Yes, it's me."
"Where are you?"
"Right beside you."
Eric's head turned from side to side, but he saw nothing.
"I don't have a body anymore, silly. You had me cremated. Remember?"
"This can't be happening," he told himself. "It must be my imagination."
"I wish it were, but I really do exist."
Keira reached out an invisible hand and tried to touch his upper arm. The fingers that passed through his skin felt like icicles against his warm flesh.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded to know, barely able to keep his voice from rising in fright. "What do you want?"
"You probably won't believe me, but I want to be free of you as much as you want to be free of me."
"Then why don't you just go?"
"I can't. I'm bound to you for all eternity."
"No," Eric groaned. "That can't be true. You're not the only woman to ever have died ...."
"Died? Don't you mean murdered?" she interrupted.
"All right. Yes, you were murdered. But surely not every murdered wife comes back to haunt her husband."
Keira's sudden laughter sent an eerie chill up Eric's spine, causing him to shiver uncontrollably.
"Oddly enough, it's not my murder that keeps me bound to you. It's that lock."
"Lock? What lock?"
He had forgotten all about the incident on the Makartsteg Footbridge just as he had forgotten about much of their European honeymoon.
"Salzburg," the ghost reminded him. "I wrote our names on a love lock and threw the key into the river."
"You can't be serious! It was nothing but a cheap padlock."
"Nonetheless, the old tradition has its basis in fact. As long as that lock is on the bridge, I can't leave you."
"But I'm remarried. I'm going to be a father, for Christ's sake! Why would you want to be around me? I would imagine my happiness would be a source of pain for you, considering how our marriage turned out."
Keira was silent for some time, giving Eric hope that her spirit had gone or that it had never existed in the first place. However, she finally spoke again, her voice revealing the emotional agony she felt.
"There's nothing I want more than to leave this place and to move on. Oh, if it weren't for that damned lock!"
Although any love he once felt for his former wife had long ago vanished, Eric felt a twinge of guilt over his role in her death and compassion for her current dilemma. However, his primary concern, as usual, was for his own happiness. What kind of life would he have with Ariel if the ghost of his dead wife was always around?
"There must be something we can do," he said, his brain frantically searching for a solution. "Some way we can free ourselves from ...."
When the idea came to him, he laughed aloud at its simplicity. Upstairs in the bedroom, Ariel called down to him.
"Is everything all right?"
"Yes," he quickly reassured her. "I'm just finishing up in the kitchen, and then I'll call it a night."
"I suppose you're not going to tell her about me," Keira said. "You do realize that eventually you'll have to?"
"No, I won't. I know how I can get rid of you."
"You already tried that. It didn't work very well, did it?"
"Sorry. I wasn't referring to your murder. I meant I know the way out of our unpleasant situation."
"What's that?"
"I'm going to fly to Austria and remove that lock from the bridge. That ought to work. Don't you agree?"
"It sounds like a wonderful idea!"
It was a good thing that Keira's spirit was invisible, for had he seen the malignant smile on her face, Eric would have begun shivering once again.
* * *
The following morning, Eric booked a flight to Vienna, although he told his wife that he was flying to Chicago to clear up a problem with his late wife's will.
"I thought the estate was settled," Ariel said.
"It is. I have to talk to her publisher about signing over future royalties on her book."
Three hours later, he was sitting on an American Airlines 767 waiting for the flight attendant to come around with coffee. As he scanned the onboard entertainment options, he felt icy fingers grab his forearm.
"What are you doing here?" he whispered without moving his lips.
"I'm going to Salzburg with you," Keira's voice echoed softly in his ear. "I'm going to help you find the key."
"I planned on just using a bolt cutter."
"That might get you arrested. How will you explain that to your pregnant young wife?"
"How can you find the exact key among all those at the bottom of the river?" he asked, seeing the logic of her argument.
"Since I no longer have a body that requires oxygen, I can remain underwater until I find it. It shouldn't be too difficult. Remember that I wrote our initials on it?"
"No," he admitted. "To be honest, I completely forgot about the bridge until you showed up at my house."
When Eric saw the strange look on the face of the woman sitting across the aisle, he quickly ended his conversation with his late wife's ghost. It was not until he got behind the wheel of his rental car at the Vienna International Airport that Keira spoke to him again.
"You could have taken a train," she said.
"It's only a three-hour drive to Salzburg."
"The train would still be quicker."
"If you're going to nag me ...."
"Would you prefer I kept quiet?"
"Honestly? Yes."
The music on the car stereo suddenly rose in volume. The action of turning up the music when she was angry was typical of Keira's behavior during their marriage.
The sun was just beginning to set when Eric turned off the A1 and headed toward Salzburg.
"Now, where is that damned bridge?" he asked himself.
"You have to go to the center of the city," Keira answered him.
"Are you going to be my navigator?"
"Yes. Trust me. I know the way."
He found a parking spot near the bridge and waited until after midnight, when the crowds disappeared. Alone, in the dark, he walked to the edge of the river.
"I'll wait here while you look for the key."
"Be back soon," she told him.
There was no splash as she entered the water.
Without a body, there wouldn't be, he reasoned.
What seemed like an eternity but was actually less than fifteen minutes, Keira returned.
"I found it."
"Great! Give it to me."
"I don't get it. I can't pick it up without any hands. But I can show you where it is. From where you're standing, it's about three and a half feet from the bridge. You can clearly see our initials written on it if you look."
"You expect me to jump into the river?"
"You'll have to if you want to retrieve the key and remove the lock."
"This is all your fault," he grumbled, removing his jacket, shirt and pants. "If you hadn't bought that stupid lock ...."
"Do you want to sit here and argue, or do you want to remove the padlock and return to your wife?"
Mention of Ariel renewed his resolve. He walked into the river, and although the water was cold, he dove beneath the surface. Eric opened his eyes, expecting to see the bottom of the river, but all around him was darkness.
What was I thinking? It's the middle of the night! I'll have to try again when the sun comes up.
He attempted to surface, but he was unable to come out of the river. It was as though something was holding him down. The drowning man fought to raise his head above the water, but it was a battle he was destined to lose.
Keira!
His mind screamed her name as, incapable of breathing, his panic mounted.
Moments later, unable to hold his breath any longer, he opened his mouth. As the water rushed into his lungs, one thought haunted his final moments. Keira had orchestrated his death, getting revenge on him for her murder. As he crossed over from the world of the living to that of the dead, the first sound he heard was his late wife's triumphant laughter.
There is such a bridge in Salzburg with thousands of locks on either side.
I once tried to lock Salem in a cage, but he used a spell and turned himself into a key. Just my luck! It was one of the few times one of his spells didn't backfire!
