Here I go
Faith feels ridiculous.
Switching her shift at the hospital today was the easy part, but now she's at the zoo and doesn't know what to do. With no idea at which hour to meet Ken Ford and his children, she is left with no choice but to simply stroll around in the hope of running into them. This is what she's doing now and it feels frankly absurd.
Inwardly, she's cursing Esther for convincing her to come at all. Even more so, she's cursing herself for giving in. It was a silly idea to begin with and she shouldn't have –
"Dr Meredith?"
She turns her head and find herself looking at Jims Anderson. Or is he Jims Fords now? She never thought to ask and suddenly feels foolish for it.
"Hello Jims," she greets him.
The boy gazes up at her and there's something unsettling about his expression. It makes Faith feel like he knows too much, which is stupid, because she doesn't actually have anything to hide.
When he opens his mouth, she can't say what she expects him to say, but he just utters a polite, "It's a fine day for a visit to the zoo, isn't it?"
"A very fine day," she agrees, overcast sky notwithstanding.
"My father and sister are looking at the camels," Jims volunteers. "Would you like to greet them?"
Inwardly, Faith wonders how Ken Ford ever managed to raise such a polite child as this boy. Out loud, she replies, "Yes, I'm sure that would be nice."
There's a flash of something on Jims's face that might be scepticism or else, surprise. However, his polite demeanour doesn't waver even once when he tells her, "Very well. Please follow me, Dr Meredith."
With Jims leading the way, they weave around other zoo visitors on their way to the camel enclosure. It's not far and when it comes into view, Faith spots Ava and Ken Ford almost immediately. Ava, alas, is even quicker to see Jims and her.
"Where is my ice cream?" she demands, thus explaining in one question why Jims was separate from father and sister in the first place.
Ken Ford turns his head, sees Faith, and she can see surprise fighting with resignation on his face. It irks her for a moment, until she realises that only the surprise is directed at her. Any resigned feelings, on the other hand, are for his daughter and her demands. Whereas Jims has manners in abundance, Ava clearly sees no need for them.
"Ava, please," her father asks and it looks like he might be sighing. "You'll get your ice cream soon."
"I want it now!" insists the girls and for a moment, Faith things she might stomp her foot. Before she can though, she moves her gaze onward and suddenly, Faith finds herself looking right into hazel eyes.
She only just stops herself from recoiling.
Ava, for her part, inclines her head in thought. "Dad," she announces to her father, "the nice doctor from the hospital is here."
"Yes," replies Ken Ford. "So she is."
His eyes meet Faith's and whatever other feelings his face showed before, they're fully replaced by mirth now.
Faith purses her lips. She knew it was a bad idea to come here!
"Well, hello!" Ken Ford grins. "Fancy meeting you here, Faith."
"Yes," she replies, through her teeth. "Fancy that."
"It is a fine day for a visit to the zoo," interjects Jims helpfully.
Ava still watches Faith curiously. "Do you also want ice cream?" she demands to know.
Faith steels herself and looks down at the little girl. "It's difficult to argue against ice cream."
"Ha!" Ava looks from her father to her brother, clearly triumphant.
Jims rolls his eyes heavenward, but pats her head good-naturedly. "I'm already on my way," he promises, brandishing a crisp bank note. Turning to Faith, he asks, "Do you also want some ice cream, Dr Meredith?"
Her first instinct is to decline, because ice cream is not something she's thought to have in years, but then, just in time, she checks herself. It's not like she's been to the zoo in years either, or perhaps she's never been at all. Ice cream won't make this day any more awkward than it already is.
"Some ice cream would be nice," Faith tells the boy and offers him a grateful smile. She reaches for her bag to give him money, but Ken Ford beats her to it. He holds out yet another bank note, Jims takes it and is gone before Faith can protest.
She does so, anyway. "I can pay for my own ice cream."
"No doubt about that." The grin is back on Ken Ford's face, as self-confident and relaxed as ever. Faith thinks that no amount of ice cream will make up for having that grin directed at herself again.
"I want to see the penguins!" demands Ava and this time, she does stomp her food.
"But if we go somewhere else, how will Jims find us with the ice cream?" argues her father.
Ava remains unimpressed. "Jims will always find us."
Ken Ford doesn't look like he can disagree with that. His eyes find Faith's. "Do you want to see the penguins?"
"It's my birthday," Ava informs him. "I decide where we go."
It's almost amusing to watch her father pull a grimace that is very reminiscent of a person with severe tooth ache. He might be responsible for Ava's utter lack of manners, but to his slight credit, at least Ken Ford is aware that he's raised a very draconian child indeed.
"The penguins are fine," Faith tells them in the interest of keeping the peace.
Ava bestows a brilliant smile on her for her effort and with a jolt, Faith is reminded of Rilla Blythe, who was always a little too vain for comfort but certainly had reason to be vain about her smile. She finds herself wondering if it was her smile that first drew the notice of Ken Ford, but knows she couldn't possibly ask.
Ken Ford, for his part, smiles a smile that is long-suffering, more than anything. He nods in direction of a path to their left and gives his daughter a little nudge. "On to the penguins we go, then."
The girl doesn't need to be told twice, happily skipping ahead. Faith can't tell whether her good moods stems from being allowed to see the penguins or from having gotten her will, but she supposes it probably doesn't make any real difference.
Without thinking, Faith herself has fallen into step beside Ken Ford and that's perfectly alright until she notices. The times she's been alone in his presence have been few and far between and most of those moments, they didn't spend talking very much. Now, fifteen years and a couple of lifetimes later, she has no more idea what to talk to him about either and that is both bothersome and awkward.
He, alas, seems utterly unperturbed. When she sneaks him a glance, he just strolls along the path, his arms swinging lightly by his side, and looks like he doesn't have a care in the world.
This, of course, makes the entire situation even more bothersome than before.
She needs to say something, Faith thinks, and so she says the first thing coming to her mind. "Is Jims's last name Anderson or Ford?"
Ken Ford turns to look at her. There's mild surprise visible on his face, but more so, amusement, and Faith mentally chides for asking this question, of all the possible ones.
"Ford," is the answer, given in the relaxed, easy manner she's come to expect. "We changed it when we adopted him. It made daily life far less difficult."
Yes, thinks Faith, she can actually imagine that.
"We kept Anderson as his middle name," Ken Ford continues, even though, strictly speaking, the question could be considered answered in full. "I know Susan Baker picked his original middle name, but I can't say her choice was a particular favourite."
Faith raises her eyebrows in question. She knows she should probably remember which names the Blythes picked for Rilla's soup tureen baby, but many years have passed since then and she has, quite simply, forgotten.
"Kitchener," replies Ken Ford to her unspoken question. "Susan Baker called him Little Kitchener and meant it affectionately."
Now Faith finds herself as the one grimacing. She remembers it now, the middle name, and she remembers how she found it patriotic in the beginning and more than tone-deaf in the end. Or the middle, as it were, because by the end, she had other things on her mind than the name chosen for Rilla's Blythe soup tureen baby.
"We thought he wouldn't be sorry to lose that particular name," continues Ken Ford. "Or rather, I thought so and I don't think Rilla minded much either way."
He says her name so normally that Faith sharply raises her head. There's no hesitation, no pause, no catch in his voice. He says the name of his dead wife like it was any other word, which it couldn't possibly be. It's something Faith cannot fathom, cannot rationalise, and she finds that it unsettles her.
And because she is unsettled, which she hates to be, the only thing she wants is for him to talk about something else. Thus, for the second time in as many minutes, she blurts out the first question that floats to the front of her mind. "Why did you keep him?"
Ken Ford looks at her oddly from the side. "Who? Jims?"
Distractedly, Faith nods. "Yes, Jims. Why did you keep him after…" She trails off, just as she realises that in her rush to say something, she didn't change the subject at all.
Feeling uneasy, she turns away from him, looking instead at the figure of his daughter, still skipping ahead of them. In the distance, she sees the penguin enclosure and suddenly finds herself wondering why everyone but her is so sure that Jims will find them here.
Beside her, Ken Ford starts laughing.
Sharply, Faith turns her head, because surely, this is not a question that warrants laughter, is it? Sadness, perhaps, or outrage at her having asked at all, but certainly not laughter.
And yet still, Ken Ford is clearly laughing. Not loudly, but not without amusement either.
"Do you know that no-one has ever asked me that question at all?" he wants to know. "Everyone must have been wondering about it, but no-one's ever asked me outright."
Faith shakes her head. "It's an impolite question. Please forget I asked it. I was just…" Again, she trails off, because she has no words to explain what she was, or is, and she's annoyed by it.
"No, it's alright." Curiously, he sounds like it really is. "It's a good question. I'm a little surprised that I've never been asked it before."
Well, then. "So, why did you?" Faith reiterates. "Why did you keep him after…?" Once more, she can't bring herself to end the question.
"After Rilla died," Ken Ford finishes for her. His voice is even, controlled, and again, Faith finds herself wondering how it could possibly be.
"You must," she swallows, "you must have been quite close by then. Jims and you, I mean to say."
A sudden grin flashes over Ken Ford's face. There is, perhaps for the first time, a touch of wryness to it. "We weren't, not then. He didn't like me much in those first years and I must admit that I wasn't very eager to start married life with a five-year-old boy in tow that wasn't even mine."
Briefly, Faith takes note of the past tense and she thinks it's a positive sign. "Why did you agree to adopt him?" she asks, thus changing her own question.
"I realised that he and Rilla weren't to be separated." There's a wistfulness in his voice that she didn't expect from him. "After I returned to Canada in 1919, she and I barely had a few days to get to know each other again before she heard that Jims's parents were dead and that he, himself, was ill. That nasty flu got to the Island late, but no less forcefully. When Rilla learned about his illness, it was like nothing else existed in the world anymore. Gilbert warned her that she might get infected herself, but she didn't care. She rushed to care for Jims and just as he recovered, she fell ill herself. It was a tense few days and for a while, Gilbert wasn't sure whether she'd pull through, but I realised she never regretted her decision."
Unconsciously, Faith nods along to his words. She herself was long gone from Canada when all this unfolded, but she remembers the letters from Nan and Di, detailing not only the illness of Jims but also that of Rilla. Nan's writing was, as ever, more oblique, but Di wrote very bluntly that for some days, Rilla's survival hung in the balance. Not, of course, that Faith had much thought to spare for Rilla Blythe, once she flu had reached the Glen St Mary Manse.
"When Rilla woke up again, her first thought was for Jims. She didn't care about her own well-being, she just wanted to know that he was okay," continues Ken Ford, unaware, perhaps, of where Faith's own thoughts went. "When I heard her asking for him, I realised that there was no possible way she'd let him go again. From that moment, I knew that where she'd go, he'd follow, or maybe the other way around. I can't pretend I liked the idea of having my bride walk down the aisle with someone else's child attached to her skirts, but I knew that I'd either have them both in my life or neither."
"So, you agreed to adopt him." It makes sense, the way he tells it, and Faith even finds that she's getting used to the calm tone of his voice as he talks about days and weeks that certainly were anything but calm. It's easier, anyway, to focus on his voice than to focus on the time he's talking about.
"I did," confirms Ken Ford. "He and I didn't become friends right away, however. For the most part, we tolerated each other for Rilla's sake, and otherwise tried to keep out of each other's way. She knew that, I think, but never tried to force us, so with time, we forged a truce that lasted for almost two years."
Two years. That puts them in the summer of 1921, which was, as Faith is aware, when Ava Ford was born and her mother died shortly after. The same Ava Ford who has just reached the penguin enclosure, standing on her tiptoes to peer over the fence. In silent agreement, both Faith and Ken Ford stop as well, some metres away from the girl, just out of earshot.
"Did she ask you to keep him?" The question leaves Faith's lips of its own volition, not giving ger a chance to swallow it back down.
Ken Ford shakes his head, the ghost of a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. "Curiously, no. I think that's what everyone else thinks happened, but it wasn't. Rather, not long after Ava's birth, I found Jims asleep by Rilla's side. He must have sneaked into her bed and she was watching him sleep, stroking his hair. When I came in, she looked at me and, without any prompting, told me he was a blessed child. 'He's a blessed child', she said. 'Life has asked more of him than it does of most people and I fear that it always will, but he'll always have a guardian angel watching over him.' Those were her exact words. I still remember them all."
Watching him from the corner of her eye, for the first time, Faith thinks she notices his calm demeanour shift for a moment. When she turns her head though, he looks perfectly collected again and she can't be sure whether she just imagined it after all.
Feeling her gaze, he turns his head again and raises an eyebrow slightly. "Why, then, did I keep him anyway, you ask?" Again, a wry smile. "It's still a valid question. I had enough people offering to take him, or even Ava, too. There were Nan and Jerry, Gertrude and Robert Grant, Anne and Gilbert, even Susan Baker… All of them, certainly, would have treated him well, but for some reason, neither choice felt like the right one."
Faith inclines her head, her curiosity piqued. "Why not? Anne and Gilbert were a big part of his early childhood, weren't they?"
This time, Ken Ford takes a moment to answer. "To be honest, from the little Rilla said, she and Susan were the primary carers for Jims during the war years. Both Anne and Gilbert were too busy to spend much time with him. Even if that hadn't been the case though, I wasn't sure whether Ingleside was the place for him. Anne, especially… she had seven children and she buried four of them. She never was the same afterwards."
There's a part of Faith that wants to protest that Anne Blythe didn't bury four of her children at all, that she only witnessed the burial of two of them, because one has a grave somewhere in France and one has no grave at all, or at least none that they know of. The lump in her throat prevents her from saying so, however, and she thinks that for the purpose of this particular discussion, it makes no difference, even if, otherwise, it makes every difference in the world.
"Having no idea where to send Jims, but expecting him not to want to stay with me, I simply decided to let him chose." Not being as overwhelmed by the thought of graves, no matter their whereabouts, Ken Ford simply continues talking.
"He chose to stay with you anyway?" asks Faith, surprised and pleased to find her voice working better than she expected.
The wry smile is back on his face, but this time, there's something else infused in it. Faith thinks it might be pride. "No. He chose the baby. He chose Ava. I asked him who was the one person he'd want to live with if he could decide for himself and he picked a newborn baby."
There's meaning to that decision, Faith knows immediately, but now is not the time and here is not the place to unravel it all.
"I honoured his wish," adds Ken Ford, the note of finality in his voice making it apparent that his retelling is coming to a close. "He stayed with Ava and Ava stayed with me, despite the thinly-veiled hints that maybe a widower wasn't best-placed to raise two children. We weren't fast friends immediately, Jims and I, but we both love Ava and we both loved Rilla. After a while, that proved to be enough common ground for us to get along."
"You seem to be doing alright," Faith tells him, instinctively, not quite knowing whether she means him and Jims, his parenting or the three of them as a family.
There's a moment of pause and when she turns her head, she finds him looking at his daughter, his expression pensive.
"Yes," Ken replies finally, "we seem to be doing alright."
To DogMonday:
Yes, this was a quieter sort of chapter. I guess in some way, this entire story is a quieter sort of story. We're sticking very close to Faith throughout and watch her as she navigates her life. There's lots happening under the surface, but her life isn't filled with super exciting events. A visit to the zoo actually already stands out ;).
Faith hasn't broken ties with her family or with the Blythes, as evidenced by the fact that she is, indeed, reasonably well-informed about their lives. She still writes her family members and is in contact with Nan and Di. It's really more of a case of her withdrawing or growing apart from them. Esther correctly states that Faith ran away when she decided to stay in London and in doing so, she ran away from her past altogether. She is in contact with her family back home, but as they're a reminder of what has been (and what could have been), that contact became looser with time. It's all part of the process Faith is still going through.
All of that doesn't mean that she doesn't care for her family anymore though and she does also have her friends to look out for her, as Esther does here. With Faith being reluctant to come out of her shell, Esther has her work cut out, but she knows her well and knows how to talk to her. She's the quiet sort, but she's steadfast and if she wants to, her stubbornness can match that of Faith. Sometimes, we all need a little push and friends are often well-placed to provide it. Esther certainly was successful, because as we saw, Faith did, indeed, end up going to the zoo!
To AnneShirley:
No worries! I always love reading your detailed comments, whenever you have time to post them =). It sounds like you're very busy at the moment, and very accomplished, too. Do be proud of what you made happen! And yes, I fully look forward to conversing in German in the future ;).
I don't want to give away too much in my replies (no hints on possible romances for now!), so I won't address all of your points just yet. I can, however, assure you that it's a lot of fun to look at Ken through the eyes of someone less than enamoured with him. Canon Rilla has him on a pedestal, but Faith definitely doesn't, so to write her view of him has been a lot of fun. Equally, it's been very interesting to write him as a single father, because it goes so far against the common iteration of him. To his credit, he's trying his best, even if him spoiling Ava turned her into a total brat. She's absolutely hard to bear and will continue to be so, though she also has a heart and I hope it will become visible in time.
Occasionally, I wonder if readers will ever grow bored of my dialogue-heavy chapters, so it's good to hear this one worked for you! Being a psychologist, talking is what I do, so writing dialogue feels natural to me. On the other hand, I always marvel at the beautiful, poetic descriptions other writers can write, whereas I usually just go 'There was a tree. It was green.' ;).
We will learn more about Jem's fate and how that soldier played into it in a later chapter. For now, let me just say that sometimes, in absence of a body, a fellow soldier witnessing what happened to his comrade was all certainty they could get. It also meant that sometimes, complete certainty could never be achieved.