Summary: A girl who grew up too fast, a life of tragedies, and a boy who was never hers. AU. Ten-years-later-fic. BridgettexJoey. My first story.
Bridgette was five-years-old when she decided she liked ice-cream. Her nanny, Ms Kimberly, would not let her have it as much as she wished as the child was prone to sugar-highs, but on the rare occasion (aka for dessert after dinner every night) that she did, Bridgette decided to savour the taste and keep it for herself.
Try as Ms Kimberly might, she could not persuade Bridgette to share her tasty treats. That was, perhaps, the beginning of what would be a long history of Bridgette's selfishness.
Ten years after Nellie's death, though, Bridgette – having lost a child through miscarriage and a husband who could not deal with a depressed wife, just a decade after losing the one and only sincere friend she managed to make in life – had learned the lesson cruel Fates had set out for her.
Having lost everything she had and so swiftly, Bridgette could not believe in happiness anymore. And if she experienced a rare laugh, she shared it. She tried to not be selfish anymore. She tried to pick herself up off the ground, in vain dreaming of a fourteen-year-old girl with red streaks in her strawberry blonde hair, and attended church every Sunday where everyone told her that she was on the path of redemption.
Redemption for what, Bridgette never understood.
Perhaps it was to make amends for not spending enough time with one Nellie Stanford, maybe it was for trying to forget the girl after her death because, Bridgette had figured at the time, no one remembered anyway, or maybe it was for not consoling Lucy Stanford.
But Bridgette had always disliked Lucy Stanford, and enlightened or not, she was not about to go around sucking up to the Ms-Goody-Two-Shoes-Who-Bragged-About-Marrying-The- Love-Of-Her-Life-At-Every-Community-Meetings-Bridg ette-Was-Unfortunate-Enough-To-Meet-Her-At.
Carter Brenham.
Like people didn't know what his story truly was. Love of Lucy Stanford's life or not, she certainly wasn't his. Crescent Lake's women were only satisfied with gossip relating to Carter Brenham's latest escapades behind his crazy wife's back. Bridgette knew without a doubt that poor, crazy Lucy Stanford knew exactly what her husband did everyday – she had a dead twin sister who told her so every time she went to sleep.
The neighbours laughed at Lucy's original futile attempts to jog their memories of one Nellie Stanford, telling them that her sister contacted. A few weeks later, she stopped. But that didn't mean that the 'visions' stopped too. Bridgette knew that, because the ladies at the community meetings never failed to bring up Lucy's earlier 'delusions' of a sister and how she 'talked' to her at night, and Lucy's face paled three shades lighter – alarming for her already pasty complexion – and she always gave the same, tight smile and a faint laugh.
But we were talking about Bridgette.
Oh, Bridgette Harrington (previously Bridgette Harrington-Claude) knew that it was not the path of redemption she was on.
Sitting in a pew, eyes closed and supposedly thinking of the good in the world, she imagined a boyish laugh from a beautiful, muscular boy taller than her by two heads at least, with blonde hair and blue eyes, putting his arms around her fourteen-year-old self.
The image in her mind changed to a six-year-old Bridgette comforting a chubby, angelic-looking boy, who'd dropped his ice-cream and did not have any more money to purchase another. For the first time since Bridgette had discovered her love for ice-cream and her need to keep what was hers, she took a look at the ice-cream cone in her hand (which she'd been licking with gusto a few minutes ago), shrugged with the simplicity of a child, and thrust it at the crying boy who was trying so hard to look brave.
Ms Kimberly wasn't there that day, or she would have been extremely proud – and extremely irritated when the boy leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
And twenty-four-year-old, divorced, and alone Bridgette Harrington let a smile creep onto her face. In her purse was a piece of paper with an eleven-digit number and an email-id belonging to Joey Gabrielle.
~Fin~