For Alinya, who inspired this from your review. I hope you like it.
It felt like a dream, it truly did until he realized that it wasn't. It felt like a bomb had been dropped on the family, happening as it did. He didn't expect, it to happen as it did. Walter supposed it was a little different than Kenneth Ford being found miraculously alive and in a hospital by his little sister after thinking he was dead for almost a year.
He didn't expect her to show up, not that he didn't want her to. He dreamt of her from the day he left France. She was the reason he had been alive, she had saved him from whatever death that had waited for him. That he had welcomed, only to wake up to some maiden wiping his brow in a house that was far too noisy.
"You're awake," She said to him in a thick accent and he was overcome by something in his heart.
Now she was here, at Ingleside, the room across the hall, so close yet so far away.
His parents didn't know what to think of this latest development. They thought once their daughter being caught with a man in the middle of the night was bad enough. For a woman, a French woman at that to show up, to have enquired throughout town to where to find Walter Blythe was enough to send tongues wagging.
To make matters only more complicated, she had come with a child. His child and there was denying that the small boy was very much like him. Still, he wasn't entirely sure how to face his parents. He felt the phantom pain down his stub of an arm. His hand had been too mangled, too infected to ever heal properly, which prompted it to be taken from him. There had been a crash, and fire and then it was all black. Then he woke up in a brothel of all places.
He dressed him as well as he could, before crossing the hall, knocking on the door.
"Oui," she calls out.
He comes apart at the sight of her, her dark hair flowing down her back, her heart-shaped face with a pair of lips he could write about forever. Her long white nightgown, floating about her, her shoulders bare except for a piece of lace that was the nightgown.
"Did you sleep well?" He asks finding his voice.
Was this happiness? Seeing her here and not just his dreams?
Was this what Rilla went on about in letters, constantly trying to reiterate that she was happy, they were, she and Ken were happy?
"I did," she says pulling a dress from her bag "Is this all right?"
"Everything you own is respectable Esme," he tells her. "I've missed you," he says stepping into her room to kiss her privately.
"I wish I could have let you know about Theodore," she says resting her head on his shoulder.
"You did what you had to do," Walter shakes his head looking at the little boy sleeping in the bed still.
"I don't know how to explain myself to your parents," Esme chews on her lip.
"Just tell them what you feel comfortable with, no one needs to know what you do not wish for them to know," Walter reassures her, running his only hand down her arm.
"Mama ran a house," Esme says looking at Walter. "A boarding house? Is that the right word? I'm sorry, English doesn't come easily to me," she blushes.
"Yes, a boarding house," Walter nods his head. Really, her mother ran a brothel. But they weren't telling his parents that, plus Esme was not a working girl, she was the mistress's daughter. She would tell him stories about how the ladies would spoil her and dress her up like a doll. She would be the one with the stopwatch she told him giggling one night in her little bed.
"I had been walking home, when I found him, stumbling down the forest path. Mama's house wasn't far, so I brought him there. He slept for almost two days, in and out of—"Esme turns to Walter for the word.
"I was in and out of consciousness," he says for her, grasping her hand.
"Finally by the third morning the fever had broken, I had one of the local midwives look at his arm, we had no doctor. She's the one who managed to save him," Esme explains.
"As time passed I fell in love with her, we were sheltered away in a small town, I knew I had to come back, it wasn't right for me to make you believe I was dead after all," Walter adds on for her.
"But you're not married?" Anne Blythe asks only to frown, thinking of that dark-haired child still asleep upstairs.
"We planned to be," Walter tried to give his parents an ounce of relief. "It's not like we went to bed together and then I left the next day. It's not like we didn't talk, or court or fall in love before it happen. I tried to be responsible" He says plainly to them. Looking at his father who coughs and clears his through.
"I'm a doctor's son, and a man, I wasn't planning on being a monk or join the catholic church." He adds on. "Then the British army was passing by, it was the only time I could safely bring myself out of hiding. I didn't wish to leave when I did, but it was the only way to get home safely without having to worry about money. We had enough for passage, but it was hard to get out which is why Esme waited so long to join me here."
"What about your mother? Surely she was disappointed in this?" Anne says to Esme. If Rilla spending the night with Kenneth Ford when she was 16 was enough to bring about marriage, enough of a shock to send her a bed for three whole days upon the realization that her baby was no longer a baby. What would Esme think of Walter and her Daughter?
"Mama wasn't," Esme says chewing on her lip. "Mama wasn't completely happy with me, she wanted more for me. But family comes first and when it became apparent that I was expecting, she made sure that I was safe and helped me in the early days of his life." She says.
"You will have to find a place to live," Gilbert speaks up for the first time that morning. "You will get married at the soonest possible convenience to Rev. Meredith. So it will be legal in Canada as you lost the papers in France, it should be enough of a story to keep tongues from gossiping. You married during the war, got separated and only just found each other. That way Theodore will not be gossiped about."
"If you think that is best," Walter bows his head to his father. He was rather calm compared to the fiery temper that erupted when Rilla had been found with Kenneth Ford, semi-clothed. Even if they had sworn nothing had happened.
"I do, you will find yourself a job as well, or might want to ask Mr. Teller for more work on the paper if you plan on writing or ask around town," Gilbert tells me, effetely telling him that he was not supporting him more than necessary. If he was old enough to bed a woman, and get her pregnant. He was old enough to get married and support a family.
He may be san's half of his left hand, but he could still write with his right easily and for all the things that could have happened. Losing his hand and forearm seemed very little these days.
It was not long ago that Rilla and Ken visited with Little Aurelia, or Aura as Rilla called her daughter. Blind would be worse, he concluded as he watched his best friend be led around by his sister who wore garishly bright colours these days. Aura was precious though, how she gravitated towards Kenneth, crawling into his lap whenever she could. Bringing him children's books that were filled with different textures and fabrics.
They were happy, and it fascinated him their relationship, especially as his best friends barely recalled their friendship. It was strange enough that little things, like holding a conversation were simple enough that it was like the old days, but the moment you brought up specifics it would confuse him.
Mostly he sat back and watched Kenneth and Rilla together. There were entirely in sync and the last time he had heard about them, things had been confusing and stilted. But seeing them now, after a year of letters. There was chemistry between them that couldn't be denied, even with vague memories he could tell. He could tell they forged a new relationship with one another and it wouldn't surprise him if there wasn't another little Ford running around soon enough if he could read people as he could.
"Mama? Mama!" He heard the cries from above.
"I should go to him;" Esme says getting up from her chair.
"Of course," Anne says nodding her head. Walter looks to his mother, who had
A strange expression on her face.
"You remember who I told you who was going to see," her words were a whisper a few moments later coming down the stairs. "That's right Theo, your papa and Grandmere and Grandpere."
"He looks so much like Walter," Anne says under her breath. "His eyes have that same curiousness to them he had."
"He is Walter's son," Esme says rather snappish. "I'm sorry I did not mean to —,"
"It's all right Cherie," Walter says standing up. "It's only natural," he says to her.
"Papa?" The little boy says letting his thumb fall from his mouth. Bringing out a snapshot that Esme had given him from the pocket of his little shirt. "Papa?"
"Theodore," Walter said taking him with his good arm. Letting the small child, reach out and teach his face as if he wasn't real. He had been asleep when Esme had knocked on the door, there had been a brief introduction but he had been tired. "Theo," he says closing his eyes, relishing in the feeling of little hands on his face.
There has to be happiness Walter, life is not something worth living without some form of happiness.
Let there be happiness for yourself, don't let yourself be cheated out of happiness.
His sister's words echoed in his mind from one of her letters.
"Why Theodore?" His mother asks curiously.
It brought him back to that morning, limbs wrapped around each other as she swept his dark hair from his brow.
"Theodore, I do like Theodore, my whole family has this thing with familiar names and I don't want that. If we ever have a child he or she will have their own name," he tells her. "I don't mind being named after my mother's father who died long ago of course, but sometimes I wished to be called something else?"
"Esmé means beloved, Mother wanted me to always know that I was loved," She told him. "Names have meaning and they should be considered."
"Theodore means a gift from God, and any child of ours will be just that," Walter says pulling her closer, lapping over that spot on her neck he knows drives her mad.
"Walter told me he liked it and if he had been a fille, she would have been Theodora," Esme explained as she gathered her son in her arms, turning towards the matriarch of the family. "Can you say hello to your Grandmere?" She whispers and the little boy waves shyly to his grandmother.
"Does he understand English?" Gilbert asks from his spot by the window.
"I tend to speak in both to him, he knows words in each language coincidently because of it," She flushes. "I wanted to teach him English, so he would have a chance to understand Walter, my Papa was English, which is how I learned. He would visit when he could."
"Visit?" Anne asks confused.
Esme's eyes dart to Walter for help, clearly afraid that they would throw her out of their house. She was a madame's daughter, fathered by some aristocrat in England who would come around here and there to see her. She was a bastard, illegitimate, she was nothing in the eyes of many people. He paid her mother to keep her fed and warm, he bought her toys but always went back to his castle in the country and to a wife he never loved.
"Her parents are divorced, a rather common thing in France. His parents never approved of the marriage" Walter thinks quickly on his feet. "Her father went back to England, and Esme and Rachelle ran a boarding house for extra money.
Walters looks at his father, who was quietly watching them. Could he pull the wool over their eyes? He wasn't sure anymore, but it was their word against no one.
In the end, Theodore sat on the floor playing with the wooden horses that he once played with, from the trunk of toys that were around for the grandchild these days. He knew it was only a matter of days, hours before one by one they would come to meet this woman.
Still, his sisters words rang in his head.
Happiness, happiness is all he needed.