Review, Revision, Edit and Update
I was tempted to not touch anything for this Episode. Reading and reviewing it carefully more than once, I did find a misplaced comma and an unnecessary word. There were other minor changes but more than once I said out loud to myself: "Don't fiddle!" When does any artist or writer know when to stop finding things to fix? I handled this episode very carefully.
Blank Pages
When any relationship is put on hold for years, picking up where you left off is all that can be done. The intervening years are like the blank pages missed in a journal. It’s a gap that can’t be explained to anyone. The only things that can be explained are the superficial relating of events. Anything too painful is left out, ignored and hopefully lost in time. That evening, at the end of supper, Dez had told Emmie her dark, painful secret. One she had even kept from herself. But that terrible day, the tragic death of her dearest friend, stayed on, like faded wallpaper in her mind.
~~~~~
Dez and Emmie were restless, needing to shake off the tension that crowded around them. Clearing up the dishes, tidying the living room, straightening the curtains….they were running out of things to keep them busy. Dez asked “Do you know when Martha and Digby will be back?” Emmie replied without thought “I think this week. Have you seen Matt lately?” Dez said “No. He said he’d call me sometime this week. Have you heard from Jeremy?” Emmie hesitated then said “He’s on night shifts so I won’t hear from him til next week.” There was a long pause. Emmie started to say something then stopped. She plumped up the pillows on the sofa for the fourth time in the previous hour. She picked one up and held it to her. “Dez. I have to tell you something.” She placed the pillow just so on the sofa. “But we have to go for a walk. Out to the orchard where there’s no one around.” She went to the front hall closet for her jacket. “Hold on, Emmie. Wait a minute. You can’t just say something like that and then say we have to go for a walk.” She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair she had dropped it on. “I have to put my shoes on, Emmie. You go ahead and I’ll catch up.” Emmie stopped, in quiet voice she said “No, that’s ok. I’ll wait.”
~~~~~
On their way past the garden, the sisters waved at Samuel. He was just locking up the tool shed. He waved back and headed home. “Ok, Em, what is it you want to tell me?”
Emmie filled her lungs with the cool early evening air, then let it out slowly. “Dez, you shared your dark secret with me. It must have been horrible for you the day your friend died. It may be too soon to tell you my secret, but I need to share it with you. You’ve been right. Michael’s death was very hard on me, but there’s a part of it that no one else knows about.” Dez slowed her walk. “This sounds serious, Em. What could be worse than losing the love of your life?” Emelina stopped and turned to face Dez. “Losing the father of your child - the child that neither of us ever knew.” Dez was stunned. “What? When?”
“Let’s keep walking. I was sixteen and Michael was eighteen. We both had other plans for our lives. Getting married and raising a family didn’t fit with them. We were both going off to separate universities. Michael right away. I had to finish high school before going to a completely different university. We didn’t really think our relationship was anything more than a high school fling.” She hesitated. “Remember what mom would tell us… “It only takes one time, girls.” Well, she was absolutely correct. By the time I knew I was pregnant, Michael and I had broken up. He was gone to University in Alberta and already had a girlfriend. The only person I could tell was mom.”
Dez wished they were somewhere that she could sit down - a tree stump, a rock, anything. Emmie was a mother!? That made her an aunt! “But Emmie, how could I not have known. We shared the same room the whole time we were kids. Why didn’t mom tell me?” Emmie put her arm around Dez. “Because I told her not to tell you. I had tried to call Michael, but he never returned my calls. She was the only one I could trust. And besides that, you and I were fighting about some stupid thing.” Dez laughed. “We were always fighting about some stupid thing. I don’t think we really liked each other when we were teenagers. Did dad know?” Emmie stopped and looked up in her apple trees. In the dusk, she could see apples but couldn’t tell if they were ripe to pick. “I’m sure he knew, but mom promised me that she wouldn't tell anyone else, but she can't have kept it from dad.” Dez's curiosity was almost overwhelming. “So what happened? Did you want to keep the baby?” Emmie looked almost horrified. “Of course not. I was only sixteen. And like I said I had plans that didn’t include a baby. Michael didn’t know and would never have to know.” Dez interrupted “But I never even saw a......what do they call it now......a bump? You were so skinny, I had to have noticed something.”
Emmie pushed on. “Dez, don’t you remember? I went away for six months on a ‘student exchange’ that fall before school started. Really all I did was go to mom’s hometown on the mainland to Aunt Leila's. I went to school there and had my baby. She was adopted before she was even born, but I did get a chance to see her and hold her. Oh, Dez if I could have changed my mind right then I would have. She was so precious. Soft and beautiful.” A tear escaped from Emmie’s eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“But where does Michael come into all of this?” Dez could barely contain herself. Emmie smiled at this next frame of memory.“Two years later, I graduated from high school. Michael was home for a couple of weeks and called me up. I acted very annoyed with him. ‘How dare you call me when you have a girlfriend in another city.’ But I was so, so glad to hear his voice. He came to the prom with me. He was so handsome….more handsome than ever. I don’t know if I even thought about our baby that weekend. We were apart again for another two years while he finished his degree. I had stayed on the Island for university. One evening, mid semester, he came and found me in my dorm and proposed! I’m not going to fill in all the gaps, only to say that our teenage fling had matured. I never did find the right time to tell him about our daughter. And then he was gone. That's the part of my grief that I could never share with anyone. Now she will be about 27 years old. Where is she now? Do I look for her? When you and I started talking about what our legacy would be, I started thinking of her again.” Emmie had gone through a roller coaster of emotions telling Dez her story, filling in the blank pages from her memory. Dez and Emmie had finally found each other.
“Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything
else in the world but that: to love one another.”
~ Victor Hugo
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