Author's note:
This story is set about half a year after the end of World War One. I would really like some feed back because this is my first completed story.
WARNING!
If you have not read Rilla of Ingleside do not read this fanfiction because it will contain MAJOR SPOILERS for you.
Una's Regrets
It was a cold evening in late September. The leaves on the trees were just turning yellow and crimson and russet. Una Meredith leaned out of her second story bedroom window. She could smell her stepmother's fresh baked bread cooling but she did not bother to go and eat some. For she was thinking about Walter. How he would have loved this time of year. His favourite spots would be a-glow with color.
Oh, how the young, dark haired preacher's daughter had loved him. His soft grey eyes, his dark hair. His kind heard and eye for beauty. She wished he would still be alive, but alas, he fell at Courcelette and there Una's heart had fallen too. She could love no one like that again.
At that moment the moon passed behind a cloud and Una saw Shirley Blythe walk up the lane towards their house. For a fleeting moment, Una's eyes betrayed her and she thought Shirley was Walter. But then the cloud moved on and the light came back.
Una though back to the day Walter came to tell the Meredith's he had joined up. Una had escorted him into the parlour where Faith had sat between the two and entertained the young man.
When Faith has reached down to get a photo album from the coffee table, Walter had looked into Una's eyes and the expression he gave her said more that Walter had ever written.
Little did Una know, but the heartfelt young man had treasured that moment through the front and until his death. He had loved her.
A knock at the front door made Una come back to reality. She heard her younger brother open the door and the lively conversation the two young men had. She would have gone down to talk to them, but she wanted to be alone in her thoughts.
Una looked down at the floor and saw the hope chest hidden under her bed. She sighed as she remembered the time when she thought she would use it, when she thought she might one day be someone's wife. But the moment she found out Walter had been killed, she knew that dream was never going to happen.
Una remembered the day she found out he was dead. She was writing a letter to him. She was thinking about declaring her love for him when her father entered the room. John Meredith's face had a very concerned expression on it. He eyed the paper she was writing on and gently took the pencil out of her slim hand. She looked at him with her blue eyes. John knelt in front of his younger daughter and took her hands.
" What is it, father?" The frightened girl employed.
" Walter was killed at the battle of Courcellette."
Una closed her eyes and then opened them. She felt nothing, her whole body went numb and then she was a wreck, she cried on her father's shoulder and would not come out of her room for days. But then she realized she would become hopeless if she stayed on this path, so she turned to her step mother for comfort. Rosemary Meredith has been desperately in love with a young man when she was seventeen but the relationship ended tragically when he sailed away in a ship and never returned.
Una returned to reality when there was a knock at her bedroom door.
" Come in." She said hoarsely. Her throat was dry from not speaking for a while.
In came Faith, flushed with excitement, but she quickly lost her gusto when she saw Una, sitting pale in her chair.
" What is it, dearest?" Faith enquired.
Una looked up at her older sister and said nothing, for nothing needed to be said.
" You are thinking about Walter, aren't you?"
Faith said softly.
" Yes." Came the soft reply.
" We all miss him." Faith said as she tried to comfort her sister.
" But I cannot follow where he is." Una said, as tears began to well up in her eyes.
" I loved him." She sobbed.
Faith hugged her sister and stroked her silky black hair.
The next morning Una got up to blue skies and beautiful weather.
After breakfast, Faith announced that she and Carl and Jerry were going over to Ingleside to join the Blythe party for a picnic.
" Would you like to come, Una?" Carl asked.
Una looked outside and then back at her little brother. She laughed and said she would come.
The four young people walked though the glen and to Ingleside where Jem, Nan, Shirley, Rilla and Ken Ford waited. The young people all ran down to Rainbow Valley and had a lovely time eating and exploring all their old haunts. When evening came, Una was almost her old self. But something was missing, and they all knew what it was. Life would never be the same for the Blythes of the Meredith's, but what remained was enough to build a new generation on, one that would face another enemy even greater that the last, but would defeat it.
The End