"It was sweet–so sweet–to be at New Moon, but it is just as sweet to be home," Juliet remarked, sitting on the porch at Forget-Me-Not cottage, with Allan and Miss Eppie and Mona and Maggie around her, and the remains of a large, festive meal on the picnic table before her. That was one of the perks of living in California–even in November, when lovely New Moon was cloaked in snow and frost, the weather here was as cool and balmy as Indian summer.
"Home?" Allan queried, with a smile. "I remember you saying that you still thought of New Moon as home."
"Wherever you are is home," said Juliet. She realized now that something had been missing from her visit to the Island, and that something was Allan. New Moon wasn't the same without him. She gave him a look of such deep adoration that Maggie smiled, remembering the moments she had spent with Dennis, and Mona shivered, thinking of Barry. Miss Eppie thought about each of her three husbands and thought, with satisfaction, that they'd all been good decent men–but she wished at least one had been as handsome as Allan Miller was, looking at his little wife now.
Maggie had taken heaps of pictures of New Moon and its environs with the Kodakchrome that Allan had lent her and the whole group poured over them in the deepening twilight. Juliet sat back and let Maggie explain each one–she put on such airs having been to Juliet's ancestral home! "That? Oh that's the Tomorrow Road," she'd say casually, showing the photograph to the others. Or, she'd say to Juliet, over dessert, "This must be Aunt Ilse's recipe for pumpkin pie–oh the rest of you should taste her pies! They're like preserved sunshine!"
Allan stifled a giggle at that. He knew the secret recipe for his mother's pies–that they came from the bakery counter at the grocers's. But--
"I'll be sure to tell her you liked them," he said seriously.
"How old Bea looks!" he remarked a moment later, taking the photograph that Maggie held out to him.
Now it was Juliet's turn to stifle a giggle. Oh, Bea would be so angry if she had heard him say that!
"Bea has two children that run her ragged," she admonished him. "When we have two children to keep up with, Allan dear, will you say I look old, too?"
Allan looked at his slim, slate-eyed wife and thought that no matter how old he might get, she must remain the same lithe, ebullient figure that she was now. Even if she had twelve ragamuffin children to run after!
"And here's Little Juliet." They all crowded around the picture of the dimpled, happy baby in her christening gown. "Doesn't she look like Bella?"
"I rather think she looks like Uncle Dean," said Allan pensively. "The same queer gray-green eyes--the crooked little mouth--"
"How interesting," Mona remarked, resting her head on Melanie's dark hair, "To think that this little baby will one day be an old lady–with grandchildren–she might be a teacher, or a writer or a lawyer, or the first female Prime Minister of Canada, but she will always be a baby in this photograph. What if there were baby pictures of Moses–or Methuselah–or Homer? Think of that."
They did–and each one of them shivered in the twilight–not unplesantly, though–when they beheld in their mind's eye the swift, unstoppable passing of time.
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A few weeks after they got home, Juliet awoke with a deep, satisfied, expectant feeling in her soul She knew exactly what it meant–but told her news to only Allan in a whispered, happy conversation before their Christmas hearth. There was no need to tell anyone else–not yet, when it might turn out as it had the last time–but Juliet felt in her heart that it wouldn't. Still, it was such a dear secret to just keep it among her very nearest and dearest. She did tell Mother, in a sweet, laughing letter, and Mother wrote back a letter of her own, that Juliet and Allan laughed over and tucked away, to be read in years hence, when they could see if what she wrote was true. The funniest thing of all was that when they did look back over it–it all was true! Oh, how could Mother have known?
Juliet was too busy to worry. Her Ladies' Reading Group had been making progress in leaps and bounds. Before Christmas they put on a play for the War-Widows and Miss Eppie, all of them memorizing lines from and dressing as characters in Alice in Wonderland. They had asked Juliet to be Alice, but she declined–and Soo Yin took the part instead. She made such a haunting, other-worldly Alice. Miep gave a jolly rendition of the White Rabbit, and Nwama was such a terrifying Red Queen that Denny, who had consented to play the part of the Pig-Baby, was afraid to go near her!
"Soon they won't need me anymore," said Juliet sadly after the play's success. She had grown to love–and like–each of the women. She would be sorry when they went on to bigger and better things--real schools–universities–and proud, too, but she had grown to love their cozy evening lessons.
But there was no danger of the classes stopping altogether. More and more girls were signing up for the classes–Anoushka brought her myriad cousins and Nwama all of her eight daughters. Some were strangers who heard from word about town. And all of this new class insisted on paying a wage–they were good, honest people who knew that what Mrs. Kent was offering them was something worth very much indeed. And even when her old class had moved on, Juliet found they would not forget her–the little cottage was often full of visitors of all shapes and colors, and when the new class put on a play of their own, her old pupils were the ones who made up the gladdest part of the audience.
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"What are you thinking of, under your dear golden hair?" asked Juliet to Allan one day in the New Year. She had finished cleaning the spare room for Bea's upcoming visit and was now looking to sit down by the fire and have a good cuddle with her man. How lovely it was to prepare a room for a friend! Juliet had folded back the covers on the spare room bed carefully, invitingly, and put out purple towels--purple was Bea's favorite color--and lavendar sachets in the drawers of the old bureau. There were padded hangers in the closet for Bea's pretty dresses and soap shaped like seashells on the sink in the bathroom. Juliet admired her handiwork and left the door open--every time she passed it seemed to exclaim to her, "Bea is coming! Why, she'll be here before you know it!"
But she found Allan in no mood for cuddling. He stared moodily into the grate, where flames were leaping happily and furiously, all at once. His very posture said Keep away. He was slouched in his seat, his shoulders hunched up, with a very worried look indeed on his face.
"What is it, Allan dear?" Juliet asked him, perching on the floor at his feet, but Allan only sighed and said,
"Oh Juliet, Juliet, how--darned confusing it is to be a grownup." And offered nothing more.
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He has shut me out before, Juliet wrote to Bea. Back after the war, when he didn't want any of us to know the pain he was in. But this is different, Bea, I can sense that whatever's bothering him now isn't exclusively his trouble, and that he'd like to talk to me about it, but won't let himself. And that makes me even madder! He knows he should tell me--he knows he's being crabby. He left a bouquet of winter roses on the table for me after not saying one word to me the whole of last night. And Bea, he gave me the most beautiful cameo for Christmas--but he knows I hate cameos. I think they're ugly and hard and morbid. Doesn't he know me at all?
"Men are like that," was what Bea wrote back. "When you've been married as long as me, you'll see. Go charge heaps of goods in the shops and get something nice for yourself. That always makes me feel better when David and I row."
Juliet was exasperated. Bea was missing the entire point!
She tried to pen a letter to Mother, pouring out all of her feelings. He used to be so loving, she wrote.Could it be that we've just settled into the routine of being married, Mother? Perhaps the--spark--has gone out of it for him. Maybe he doesn't love me anymore!
But she crumpled that up and then threw it in the wastebasket. Mother and Father had been married for years and years and they still loved one another. The spark was still in it for them. She, Juliet, would seem like such a failure if she had to admit that her husband didn't love her after only one year!
Likely she was just overreacting. All husbands and wives had quarrels and periods of unease and unrest. Even the best of them did! Soon this black cloud would pass and Juliet would laugh over how foolish she'd been. But still--
"Right now I'm so blue I could cry," said poor Juliet--and sat down on the kitchen steps and proceeded to do just that.
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A/N: Where are you guys?? Thanks for the reviews I did get. They mean so much to me. You guys write the BEST reviews and I'm glad you are liking the stories.
Miri, Jake Blythe is one of Faith and Jem's sons. Hope that clears things up a bit.
