Little black book

“ C’mon’ Babe, it’s just a one-time investment of $500.00, It’ll pay off in the end, I promise, I wouldn’t steer us wrong.” Luke Jennings said in his most confident and reassuring voice to his wife Eve of almost 8 years.“ I just don’t know Luke, it’s a huge risk, and we can’t afford to just take $500.00 and invest it in some future cryptocurrency that may or may not double in price... eventually,” Eve mumbled under her breath. Luke was always coming up with these crazy get-rich schemes that his Air Force buddies put into his head. Most of the time, Eve went along with them, but this time she was feeling a little hesitant. Investing was not something she or Luke was familiar with, especially not in cryptocurrency, it seemed an extremely high risk to her, and $500 was a good bit of money to a young couple with 5 kids living paycheck to paycheck. “Okay babe, we’ll hold off buying the Bitcoin, but your gonna hear me tell you I told you so one day, watch and see.” Luke broke out into a huge smile and scooped Eve up in his arms and planted a kiss on her cheek.

Luke and Eve Jennings had been married for a little under 8 years, marrying just 6 weeks after meeting in a sleepy little beach town bar where Eve was a bartender, and Luke was an adoring customer. They hit it off instantly and fell head over heels for each other. Luke was a staff sergeant in the Air Force, had been in for 6 years before meeting Eve while he was stationed in Navarre Beach, Fl cross-training into special forces to become a Combat Controller. He used to be a survival instructor, but he always wanted something more exciting, dangerous… he wanted a job that would fuel his adrenaline addiction, and being a combat controller was the tip of the sword for exciting jobs that the Air Force had to offer. Luke was a twenty-seven-year-old man, with no kids, no baggage, a bright career that included traveling the world, jumping out of airplanes, diving the Red Sea, and dropping bombs on bad guys. He had everything a man could want, and he knew it.

Eve was a twenty-seven-year-old single mom with 2 kids, an abusive ex-husband, and more baggage than one person should ever have to carry. She was working as a bartender at a tiny little beach bar called the Funky Frog, which was the coolest little open-air bar in the whole state of Florida. It only had

8 bar stools, 4 picnic tables, a sandpit that doubled as a dance floor on most Friday and Saturday nights, and there was never an open seat at the bar. The barstools in the Funky Frog were earned, or if you had enough money and charm, bought. Luckily for Eve, Luke had enough of both to call the 3rd barstool from the cash register home for the remaining two months of training he was in Florida.

The two hit it off instantly. They were both Libras, they both had a deep red tint to their hair, both outgoing, funny and both had big baby blue eyes that they used to their advantage. They had a whirlwind romance where they spent every second possible together. They spent lazy days at the beach, nights mini-golfing with the kids and searching for crabs with flashlights on the beach. Both of them avoiding the fact that Luke had current orders to England. He was set to leave to start his new life in England in a couple of weeks and neither of them wanted to face it. Eve finally had enough courage to say goodbye to Luke when at the last minute, he dropped to one knee and asked her to spend the rest of her life with him. She could not spit the word yes out fast enough and within two weeks they were happily married and off to England to start their new lives together.

The next few years flew by for the young couple as Eve gave birth to 3 beautiful little ones. First was a boy followed by two girls all exactly 17 months apart. The older girls, both now teenagers proved to be a great help to Eve in helping with the 3 littles, as Luke was now training and absent 265 days a year learning how to fight the good fight. To Eve, it seemed like she and the kids only got short and temporary visits from Luke. After spending five years overseas in England, Luke received orders back to Florida, to the same town the couple had met in. They were elated, and the warmth and sunshine were a welcome change for all of them.

It was a hot, sunny day in August. It was so humid outside, when you found some relief in air conditioning, it had felt like you just walked through a bowl of jello. The kids were playing in the pool, Luke was off to work, and Eve doing laundry and cooking the kid’s lunch, enjoying spacing off daydreaming about the future when the phone rang and jolted her back to reality. “Jen, Jake Miller here, How are you?” It was Marty’s commander. “ H-Hey Jake, I’m okay thanks for asking. What’s up? Everything okay?” Eve clamored as she tried to ignore the lump forming in the back of her throat. Eve’s mind was racing to try to catalog through reasons that her husband’s commander would be calling her mid-day on a Monday and all of the possible reasons ended the same way, negatively.

“Jen, I don’t want you to panic, but there has been an accident. Luke has been injured in a parachute training accident, he is alive, but in critical condition. He is at the hospital in Pensacola, and we are on our way to your house to come and pick you up, the kids should come to….” She slammed the phone receiver down and started ringing Luke’s number straight away. “Voicemail, shoot.” She said out loud. Her mind was racing. She didn’t know what to do. She rounded the kids up out of the pool and jumped into total mom mode, systematically getting them dressed, and pointing them towards the driveway to wait for the van to take them to see their daddy.

The van arrived ten minutes later and whisked them off to the hospital. Eve knew the outcome wasn’t going to be good when Jake introduced the men in the van, and one of them was the chaplain from the base, well, Eve knew at that moment she was going to say goodbye. The doctors surrounded Eve all telling her there was nothing they could do to save him. She began to scream and cry uncontrollably as she went to go say goodbye to the love of her life. Two hours passed, and they were in the same van on the way home from the hospital, each one’s life path completely altered from what it was going to be. All of them trying to comprehend why they would never see Luke again, and pinching themselves in silence trying to determine if this was real or just a horrible nightmare.

The next few years were tough on everyone. The teenagers went haywire. They ran all over Eve, who was struggling to get out of bed every day to take care of the kids who so desperately needed her to be normal. The teens had constant run in’s with the local police. There was a disturbance of the peace charge, a DUI for her 15-year-old, House party broken up by the cops. It was always something with the two older girls. Eve tried to keep it together, but it was so hard for her. They ended up losing their home and moving from house to house for a couple of years. Losing Luke was like removing the glue that held their family together. The life insurance money was gone within 3 years, and they were flat broke, facing eviction number 3, and Eve was on the verge of breaking down. She was trying so hard to keep it together for the kids but her grief was raw and she did everything in her power to avoid dealing with it, that it controlled her.

Eve was in her closet packing things up to move yet again when she came across a box labeled “Luke’s Desk” She stopped dead in her tracks. “ Why have I never seen this before,” she thought to herself?” It must have been delivered a couple of weeks after Luke died when the guys from the base brought Luke's car and other items he had at work she remembered. She grabbed the box and brought it to her chest. Carefully she took the tape off the box and removed the lid. There were a couple of pics from his desk, a few notes from the kiddos that they had written him in the days before he died, and there was a little black notebook. It didn’t’ say anything on the front, the first 6 pages were blank, and then on page 7, there was a phrase written down. “ How odd..” Eve thought The phrase was 12 words long, and it said “ Eve, do you remember the day I said I told you so” That was it. That’s all the darn book said.

Not a single word was written anywhere else in the notebook. She was so confused. She grabbed the book, and headed for the beach to the spot they loved the most, and spent their last evening together playing with their kids, hoping it would spark her memory to help her figure out what this phrase meant.

She spent a couple of days rummaging through the memories and conversations in her mind that included Luke saying “I told you so”. Finally on the 3rd night, two days before she and the kids had to move again, two words popped in her head “ Crypto Currency”. She sprung up out of bed, and grabbed her laptop, she googled “Bitcoin” and started scanning through the webpages.” Twelve-word phrase needed to create a password for E-wallets” popped out at her. She clicked the link that went on to explain how to retrieve your e-wallet when you enter your 12-word phrase on Coinbase. She quickly counted the words in the phrase. “Twelve,” she said out loud. She hits the login button, enters Luke’s “go-to” username, and a box pops up. “please enter your 12-word phrase now” She quickly types the phrase from the notebook into the box, and hits the enter key She holds her breath for what feels like hours while the little top arrow goes round and round waiting for the webpage to respond. Finally, just when she lets out a huge breath of air because she can't hold her breath for a second longer, it pops up on the screen, "The current balance of your e-wallet is $20,000”. Eve didn’t know if she should cry, scream, or laugh as she began to do all three. Luke had just given them a gift from above that could only change their lives for the better. She was overcome with emotion. She grabbed his favorite t-shirt, held it tight, closed her eyes, and whispered the words “thank you, babe”. She fell asleep that night crying and laughing he was still looking out for her, which brought her some peace and helped her work through the grieving process. She used that money to provide stability for her kids and to start seeing a grief counselor. They also took a much-needed family vacation, and they finally began to heal, together, as a family. Above the front door at Eve's home, there is a plaque with the words I told you so, that she sees and reads every day as a way of saying thank you to the love of her life who had a little black book.