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Waiting for Tomorrow
By PrincessAlica
Rating T
Disclaimer I do not own the character nor is any profit being made from the writing of this. Any resemblance to those living or dead is purely coincidental unless expressly permitted by the person it is modeled after.
This begins the morning after Melanie's death. I am writing my own sequel to Gone With the Wind. I have tried to back everything with historical data and I have a timeline composed in effort to figure out for sure what the seasons were. So I am trying very hard to stay accurate.
Chapter One
A gentle mist fell from the sky which was a dreary gray. It penetrated everything, the cold dampness, so unusual for the early September morning, finding its way into the bones of the mourners who gathered to pay their respects to Melanie Hamilton Wilkes. Scarlett stood at the edge of the ring of mourners. She was neither completely a part of them, nor was she completely separate. She did not cry. She could not cry, for if she began, she knew that there would be no end. It seemed as if all of the good in the world had departed with the final breath of the only woman other than her mother who had truly loved her. She squared her shoulders and took the burden upon herself. She alone would carry it.
She watched in agony as Ashley sobbed openly holding young Beau to his side. The sobs shook him to his very core. He fell to his knees and grasped at the dirt of the grave clawing it with his bare hands. A part of Scarlett longed to run forward and pull him back from the brink, but most of her knew that she mustn't and that it wasn't the right thing to do. But she would not. It was not a feeling borne of love. It was the desire of one stronger who had been protecting the weaker all of her life. And Ashley had been the protected weaker one. She had never seen it, never truly realized it until the night before, after Melanie died. She went to Ashley looking for a strength that he did not possess, for a strength that he was looking for in her.
Instead then, she turned and began walking away, longing to be rid of these feeling of sadness, desperate to break free of the grief that was enveloping her -- that had been shrouding her. "I mustn't think of it now. I'll think of it tomorrow when I can deal with it better." She told herself simply. It was the mantra of her life. She was just as Grandma Fontaine had warned. She was hard. She was cold. She had been to hell and back. She had seen the worst and now nothing could shock her, nothing could penetrate her heart.
The assembled mourners noticed her take her leave. They watched with their constant curiosity and nosiness unable to be hidden. They had assumed that she would stay and go after Ashley. For few believed in her innocence, even though she had been under Melanie's protection. Melanie was too sweet to believe of any wrongdoing on the part of her sister-in-law or her husband. Some even whispered that Melanie had asked Scarlett to take care of Ashley. So they were surprised to see her walking away leaving Ashley be. But she did.
Scarlett climbed into her carriage and told the driver to take her home. Not that, as she thought about, that the monstrosity was a home. It was a show place meant only to make everyone in Atlanta jealous of her. She hadn't understood… Somehow, somehow in those moments, those mere moments after Melanie's death, Scarlett's eyes had been fully opened for the first time in her life. She saw her life for what it was and what it had been. As soon as she understood, she had run to Rhett, begging him, pleading with him to understand. And he had. But he had seen the truth in her eyes, and he had left all the same. He believed her confessions of love at their face value, but he still had been too raw and too hurt to forgive or to truly accept. He knew too well. She couldn't lie to him without him being acutely aware of the fact.
Soon she was home. She alighted from the carriage and hurried inside to the protective dry warmth of her home. She called out for one of the maids. As soon as the girl arrived, Scarlett began directing her as to what needed to be packed and what needed done while she was away. Her other bags had already been packed and loaded into the carriage, and so she went up the stairs as quickly as she could. Once in her room, she striped off the sodden clothes that she had worn to the funeral and changed into traveling clothes for her journey to Tara.
Before she left, she made a slow journey through the house. Perhaps it was a farewell. But she walked through each room and allowed for just a moment to look back. For just a moment she could hear Bonnie's childish giggles and Rhett's sardonic chuckle echoing as memory through the austere walls. Scarlett paused at the bottom of the stairs as she remembered the child she never had held. Some part of her believed that child had been a son who would have looked just like Rhett. But Scarlett stopped. She couldn't think about it now, maybe never. The beauty of waiting until tomorrow is that tomorrow never comes. As soon as it arrives, it become today.
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