Hello, I'm new to this fandom thing. I've been in love with Anne most of my life and thought I might give this a shot.
Rilla sighed as she wandered the house, Leslie and Owen were out, leaving her by herself with Ken's latest letter still unopened on the bedside table. Part of her wanted to read it, cherish it, but the other part was still mad, angry that he had gone, he didn't even consult her about it, he just went once again to the damn recruitment office and managed to enlist this time. Instead, she stood out on the porch, watching the twinkling lights in the darkness. How many times had they walked down this road, too self-absorbed? Too into each other to care about what others would think? Staying out to the moon was high in the sky, talking about the future, stealing kisses against old trees.
She had come to Toronto for him, she had left her home and her family to be with him. It had not been a decision her parents liked or even wanted. The circumstance had been less than ideal when her parents found out. Rilla tried to explain it had not looked like what it looked like, but the damage was already done. The rumours have been spread and no amount of Susan's good word of mouth could change the fact.
A small wedding, nothing that she ever dreamed about. No lace veils or pretty china patterns, but at least there was Ken, who loved her or so he said anyway. His small diamond ring sparkling on her finger, where he put it for it to stay. Followed by a honeymoon in a small hotel by the lake, where they fumbled and giggled with each other, learning about each other in a way indescribable that was in her head.
These days it was hard to tell what they had felt, what had driven them crazy for each other. All she knew that they had been happy and he left the first chance he got. They had been only married for a year at that point, they parted angrily, they parted hurt.
With each passing week, the month comes to a close and when she is certain there is no life to bring into the world when their father is off across the ocean she sighs a breath of relief. She didn't think she could do it without him after all.
Instead, she buries herself in her letter-writing, social tea calls. Sometimes she catches glimpses of young girls embracing their young man all dressed up in a uniform. Had that been her and Ken to a degree?
Rilla remembers what the whirlwind of courtship could feel like, sometimes she wonders if it had all been in her head? Still, the memories were bold and colourful in her mind, she could remember how it felt to be in his arms, how his arms cradled her when she needed it the most.
Then time the circus had come into town and they had snuck into the tent. How the thrill of it getting caught, made her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, smiling as he grinned down at her. How was this real, how could such a feeling be allowed? Did Di or Nan ever feel such a way? Is this the feeling that made Jem act liking a bubbling fool around Faith occasionally? Though Ken never acted in such a way?
All the times he would visit the island, how they raced along the beach as he chased her to be able to catch and kiss her. Her curls blowing in the wind, his hat shielding their faces from whoever might be passing by. Her father would argue that she was too young, her mother would murmur that time had made Rilla a woman all too soon for her liking, but Ken was a respectable young man. Still respectable doesn't count for other people's talk.
Now the good times that played like a carousel in her head came the moments that neither were proud of.
Why did she say those hateful things? The yelling and screaming that could be heard about the house. Even Persis stayed far away from them when they fought, while his parents tried to bring light to the issues of the young couple but they always laughed it off. They were never mad for long, they always seemed to make up and quickly.
Because despite their differences, they had been happy.
It was the golden days that she made her smile sadly, the parties the dancing. The glasses of champagne that made her giggle as he spun her around, her skirts flaring around her ankles that she had been told were scandalously pretty. The nights she would write home about with careful details of exclusion.
Her parents wouldn't understand after all, what it was like when she was with Ken. How her blood raced in her veins, how everything was in the gloriously perfect frame when she was with him.
She was happy though and that flowed from her pen, her mother could only shake her head as she read her daughter's letters. Still worried that Rilla hadn't been ready for such a step in life. Then again who was the woman-child writing about evenings to the opera and afternoon tea with the ladies?
Rilla had become Mrs. Ford, the Little Mrs when being compared to Leslie Ford, or in the company of. She was a country girl but no one could fault her manners, no one could question just was Kenneth Ford saw and had to have about her. She was young but she was eager.
Which suited Ken, who showed things that she never imagined, their heated kisses that burned into her mind. How her body felt alive when he touches it. It had been good, and she could remember it all too well, she missed it now.
All the same, she remembers how they would lay whispering the dark, talking about the future how he was going to buy them some land and build her a house on the lot of lands that Owen owned. Soon, when he had a bit more money saved up, a name for himself he would tell her. Until then they would make do at his parents.
She sighed as she wrapped her cardigan around her shoulders, finally deciding to read his letter, but first, she read his first, the one of romance that always made her forgive him.
Instantly she could see him in her mind, his voice in her head. He always had such a gift with the word
Rilla-my-Rilla, Dearest, The Loveliest Creature who I get to call my wife.
I hope this reaches you, it pains me to know we left on such terms for that I am truly sorry.
We have reached England, it's cold and rainy though I think you would love it here if you let me take you here when I return.
I will return, please do not fear. I will come back to you. I made you a promise that day at the courthouse that I will never abandon you. I know that you think I have already broken that promise, but please, believe it why I say. I will return to you.
I want to see you grow with our children, be a mother and sing them to sleep. Much like how I saw you with that little boy you took care of back on the island before his father came back. Back when I would visit the island, but when we would stay out and watch the boats on the water near our lighthouse, that night where we fell asleep. The night that changed our lives?
Please, Darling, don't be mad at me forever, I had to go, we both know that and no amount of tears or fears could change that for us.
I love you
Your Kenneth.
She sobbed holding the letter to her chest, breathing in the scent of the paper. Was it in her mind? Did it actually smell like him?
She was just imagining things at this point.
Leslie and Owen learned to not ask about her red nose and eyes in the mornings. Then again it was hard to ignore the cries of anguish that came from their son's room. They always made sure that her comfort foods those mornings after a letter came. A cup of cocoa, pancakes with jam on the table. Trying to ensure that the slip of a thing their daughter-in-law was, didn't harm herself in the process of her grief, but still, her dress hung off her frame in a way they hadn't before.
Rilla hated the telephone, she hated answering the door in the middle of the afternoon. Though morning and the late evening were the worst times. No one visit at such hours and that only means one thing. It never was good news.
If it wasn't about Ken, it was about her brothers all fighting in this god damn war.
Walter was hanging on for life, Jem was making his way up the ranks. Shirley was, Shirley was itching to go.
Yet all she could do was knit socks and make blankets. She might be married but still, she was too young for the Red Cross, she was too young to do much of anything she found out. It was only Leslie who gave her things to do, make her feel useful in her dozens of bizarre and fundraisers.
Her dear daughter-in-law, playing the worried little wife at events, crying came too easily when she spoke about how she missed her husband.
Of course, there were the comments of her age, that she had been lucky that he had only left her and not a baby at the same time. Though that didn't come from a lack of trying on Ken's part, she on the other handheld little attachment to the idea of children. But Ken wanted them.
Still, they had been happy.
And then it came in bold words. To not his parents, to her.
Mrs. Kenneth Ford,
We regret to inform you…
Our deepest Condolences…
Missing,
Presumed Dead…
Our sincere Sympathies…
rShe fell to the floor and it wasn't until Owen picked her up off the floor did she let the paper fall to the ground.
The entire house was silent as Owen read it quietly to his wife.
Missing?
Was that any better than dead?
At least if he were dead she could grieve properly. Instead, she got intolerable looks of sympathy, no one could understand how she felt. Or they could but she never wished to believe it. How was missing better than dead? It wasn't it was worse because there was no concrete evidence it was all just a blur of nothing substantial.
"We love you Rilla and you're welcome to stay, but it's been so long since you saw your parents, your sisters? It might be good for you?" Leslies tried to encourage her one day as she laid in their bed.
"No," Rilla shakes her head. "If there is any change I need to know right away. What if I go away and there is news?"
There hadn't been news for three weeks and she was a shadow of the girl she had been and her parents barely recognized her when they appeared in their doorway.
Her mother choked back a sob, her father carefully looked her over.
"We were happy, we had plans," She sobbed angrily, letting out shrieks into her pillow until her father gave her some drink. It made her drowsy, it made all the memories fuzzy and vivid at the same time.
Trapped in her mind on repeat.
She dreamed of him.
She dreamed of him returning home, of coming home to a letter from him. She spent the majority of her time lying down, and even Leslie couldn't get her to get up in the morning. Which prompts the call for help to her own parents.
When she woke once more it was her father pleading with her to eat, as she sat wrapped up in a blanket in the window seat. Her hair tied back in an old ribbon, from the way she was sitting he could tell she was still wearing the rigid bones that were her corset.
It was Anne who eventually leads Rilla to bed, it wasn't until she unlaced her daughter from the ribbons corset did they notice the swell of her stomach. She looked to her husband, as she tucked Rilla into the bed and quietly left her room.
"She's pregnant! How did you not notice she was pregnant!?" Rilla hears her father bellow.
"Ken has been gone for seven months, how can it be she would be showing be now?" Leslie says quietly. "Don't look like that Owen, she's a good girl, I don't see her doing such a thing?"
"You do remember the reason they got married in the first place?"Owen says to his wife gruffly. He loved Rilla as a daughter, but she had been young when Ken had brought her home to Toronto. Married at that.
"We won't know how far along she is until she goes into labour at this point. Either she's been sleeping in her corset to try and hide it?" Gilbert says shaking his head. "Either way she needs to stop wearing the corset."
How could this be possible? She may not be terribly regular, but She had bled. She had!
"Rilla why didn't you say anything? I explained what to look for?" Her mother questions her later. Trying to find answers to the questions they all asked, "Rilla it is Kens is it not?" She asks quietly. She didn't want to believe it, but she had to know.
How could they think of her in such a way! Of course, it was Kens!
"She swears it's Kens," Rilla hears her mom say later when she leaves my room.
"Then she's at least 7 months along? She is way too tiny to seven months," Gilbert groans.
"Should we send her to the hospital?" Owen asks next concern suddenly.
"If we send her to a hospital she'll only get worse by herself." Gilbert shakes his head. "I'll stay, I'll take care of her. We need to get her up and walking, in better spirits if she wants to make it through this," Gilbert tells them looking to his wife. "If we're welcome of course?"
The baby came with a fanfare, and what Gilbert estimated to be nearly full term, if not a little small. Small tufts of hair that they couldn't tell was dark red or Kens own dark hair, a small little body that almost seemed too small for even a newborn.
"What are you going to call her?" Anne asks her daughter who was still exhausted and to quiet for her parents to feel completely unworried about her. "Did you ever talk about names?"
"Aurelia," Rilla answered after a quiet moment. "Delphinia Ford," Rilla finished off the name. Fresh tears beginning to trickle down her face, she didn't know if they were happy or sad tears at that point.
"You're daddy should be here." She whispered when she was finally alone.
Whoever was worried that Rilla wouldn't bond with the child, were wrong in many ways. If anything it was the opposite effect. The child would never be let out of her sight, the child still slept in her parent's room. It wasn't until her child was almost a year when Rilla saw a notice for respectable young women. One to help keep patients company by writing letters and handing out blankets to recovering soldiers did Rilla finally allow herself to leave her with her grandmother.
She had to be strong for Aurelia after all. A few hours here and there, few days a week would do her good? So she applied and as each shift went by the easier it got, it was easier to talk about things. She had a snapshot of Aurelia in her apron, for those who were missing their own children when they noticed her wedding ring still on her hand. She never explained, she could barely say his name to this day. These men had seen so much death, it seemed wrong to make them think of another.
She didn't believe her hearing at first, as the new arrivals, arrived as she straightened up the common area. At first, it felt like it a trick on her mind as she heard what appeared to be his laugh. She shook her head, letting her day go by, counting the hours until she could go home and cuddle her daughter.
She was just about finished when a sister sent her over with fresh blankets for the bed, and there he was sitting up in bed, half his head and eyes bandaged over but still she knew the shape of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, the curves of his lips.
"Kenneth?" She drops her basket of linens.
"Pardon?" He turns automatically as if he heard the name all his life. "Do I know you? Your voice?"
"Do you know me?" Rilla sobs are loud enough for a superior to come into the room.
"What in the world?" His voice was raised.
"Ken, it's me, your wife!" Rilla cries as the doctors come swarming in, some roughly grabbing her from the floor as she goes into full-blown hysterics.
"Don't hurt her," The nurse chides them. "Calm down Marilla, we'll sort this outcome along and let's leave this young man to his rest.
Rilla struggled, falling by the bed once more.
"Remember the beach, the lighthouse, we were happy, you have to remember me, your parents."
"Mrs. Ford, this Captain Johnson," The doctor hissed at her. Clearly over the hysterics of young women who had no place in hospitals when she was clearly unfit to help.
"Wait wait!" Rilla pulls at her necklace, a locket beneath her uniform. "Tell me I'm not wrong!" Thrusting the open locket in his face and slowly the doctor's face changed from angry to impassive. As he compared the small photo of the man to the man in front of him.
"Get the commander on the telephone," he barks.
What seemed like hours, as telephone calls were made. The heavy footsteps of her father-in-law against the wooden floors, followed by the lighter footsteps of her mother law. Along with the babbling of toddler that didn't quite know what was going on.
It took Owen one look at the man sitting in the bed before he nodded with tears in his eyes.
That man was his son.
"Your name is Kenneth Ford, you are twenty-five years old. Your birthday is May 28th, 1984 Your id tags must have been misplaced, switched and lost during the battle. Your parents are Owen and Leslie Ford, you have a sister Persis Ford," The commander told him. "Your wife is Rilla Ford, nee Blythe."
"I'm married?" He says rather stunned.
"You have a daughter," Someone told him.
"What's her name?" Another look of disbelief, why couldn't he remember?
"Aurelia, her name is Aurelia," Rilla said stepping closer to the bed. "She right here," she explained for him.
"Aurelia?" He hums. "Why do I have images of the broken-down car from that name?"
"Orillia, we broke down on the side of the one night," Rilla told him, her cheeks turning red as she smiled through her tears.
His memories are there somewhere.
"You said we were happy?" Ken spoke looking over to the blurry sight of a red-haired woman, he would need glasses but that would come in time. The closer she got the more he got the impression of how young his wife seemed to be, who seemed to be holding a child wearing a white dress, dark hair. She was barely out of childhood herself.
"Because we were," Rilla said quietly, trembling as she hesitantly sought out his hand.
"We were happy."