Betwixt the Stars

by MrsVonTrapp

In this modern AU, a present day Anne begins to experience very realistic dreams of incidences in another life nearly a century and a half before. Is it her imagination or a remembered reality? Is she tied to the past life of her ancestor and namesake Anne Shirley? Does love carry on through the ages? Content Warning: past lives, death/rebirth, souls, spirituality.

8. If two lives join, there is oft a scar

Author's Note: Dear Lovely People

Another acceptance speech: I am going for the EGOT foursome I feel.

This chapter is incredibly long. Oh, so incredibly long. I apologise to anyone kind enough to take precious time out of their day to read this, and thank you sincerely. I struggled with sections of it so much; I struggled with its message; I struggled with its length. I have tried many times to split this… but felt that would be a disservice to what I was trying to do with the chapter itself (highlighted, as ever, in the title quotation) and to the story as a whole. The story wants what the story wants.

There are so many magnificent stories on this site; I am enjoying them all, past and present. I wish I was better at quick reviews to show appreciation for your own time and care and effort. And to thank you for your own reviews and PM's, which I relish. To answer those properly is my next quest. But in the meantime, as promised, thank you this week to LizzyEastwood, NotMrsRachelLynde, TooTiredtoReadEnough, StolenDanceCard1897, AnneFans, slovakAnne, linhhermione, sharynmitchell101, NovemberRainbow, Summer Allen, Bright River, crispybluebirdperfection, rebeccathehistorian and Alinyaaleithia. And to the fabulous guest who enquired about Anne's Windy Poplars love letters – they are coming! Also to tessamarie – if you are reading this too, sorry about 'The Land of Heart's Desire' wait – back to that next!

If you are playing the guess-the-80's-movie-reference with the fabulous mavors4986 and myself, you will find lots of 1980's movie love here, but specifically I have referenced the same film that mavors4986 has in her latest 'Haunt Me in the New Year' chapter (Chapter 16). Can't find it? Too many words? All right then, its's all towards the end, in the conversation between Anne and David. And for anyone reading 'Heart's Desire' too, there were some 'Back to the Future' references in Chapter 21.

It this were an acceptance speech, sometime after thanking God and my parents, I'd be thanking elizasky; for her beta reads, encouragement, ideas-tossing and entrusting of her characters to me. For anyone with sharp eyes there are some Easter Eggs here for sections of her story to come; and as ever, my own story pays a heavy debt to hers.

With love (You're still here? It's over… go home… )

MrsVonTrapp x

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Chapter Eight

'If two lives join, there is oft a scar'

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Interlude: Rob Blythe

Glen St Mary, PEI, April 1984

There was not much that would persuade young Rob-now-not-Robbie Blythe away from a day during the Easter break exploring the valley or trying his luck with a line by the harbour, excepting the prospect of a day with Melissa, which invariably also meant a day with her brother.

Michael Carlyle Meredith had long preferred the relaxed refuge of Ingleside to the multi-generational congestion of the Old Manse; he, Mel and their parents had had to take up temporary lodging there, while a brand-new abode was built up the other end of town to house them and their father's new money. While Rob and his parents strolled about the spacious Ingleside, the manse was the current cluttered home of Mike and Mel, their parents, and their grandparents, including incumbent minister Calvin, who was son to old Bruce. Ministers all, going back to Bruce's father John Meredith; except for Mike and Mel's own father, and best not to talk about that.

Mike rather hated the higgledy-piggledy ministerial quarters and frequently moaned about the spartan nature of life there; four months' building work on their house had turned to six, bordering on seven, and he was climbing the unpainted walls. The whole place was not a gift, according to Michael, but a tiresome ball-and-chain; even his own father had to acknowledge the manse was a bit of a death trap, with the stairs and the too-small rooms and the unreliable fireplace. Presbyterian ministers had little money and what they had spent on the place over the years was less professional renovation and more patch-up prayer. Yet the house sat on a fine plot of land, leading to the valley, and at least if the building became too claustrophobic the walk down the slope and out into the open meant you could find God there, if you needed to, or shake him off instead, more like.

Rob had argued it probably wouldn't be prudent for Mike to share the somewhat ironical thought, given his family background, that he might be atheist, or at very least agnostic. Best leave that conversation for now, alongside the one where he was thinking of dropping out of school and the other one that involved joining the Armed Forces. Mike Meredith could be relied upon to follow through with any or none of these schemes; Rob by comparison, steady and dependable and focussed, would probably become some history nut buried in some dusty little archive somewhere, unless the pinprick of Old Judge Jerry's good deeds over the years became more keenly felt. As for Michael, he had bragged many times that if all else failed he could just follow his father into Insurance. Though the Meredith ministers of the previous two generations had rather balked at that – surely insurance wasn't a career – it wasn't even a trade… it was a circus act; the sleight of hand of the magician, convincing, harassing – nay, even scaring people - into buying things they didn't need. Spectacularly failing, of course, to see the correlations apparent in the two professions. But they had underestimated Michael and Melissa's father (Timothy-call-me-Tim) who had the deep baritone of the most persuasive pulpit orator and the cheeky charm of a Cockney chappie on the make, and with the black hair and blue eyes of old Bruce himself, was able to soon shore up this risky new insurance venture into a decent developing business on the rise.

But no one was going to pour money into a house that they were but house-sitting, at the grace-and-favour of God and the parish. For there were no more ministers on the Meredith family horizon after Mike's Grandad finished up, that was for sure.

And thus Michael, complaining he felt too big to breathe properly there, did his eating and sleeping at the manse, and his living and lounging at Rob's.

As was evidenced on this day of so many days, Michael, through a mixture of seventeen year old seniority and selfishness, was taking up the entirety of the sofa whilst Rob and Melissa sunk into a club chair each, or, if checkers or chess drew them, took up residence on the floor.

"God I'm so bored," Michael now moaned, tossing his comic aside. "It's the term break. How can you guys stand this?"

"How can we stand you more like?" Melissa answered, head not even lifting from her book, and Rob, likewise occupied, gave a silent smirk. "It's Friday. We're all seeing a movie later anyway, aren't we?"

"Well, I know what you two will be seeing," he announced, "Revenge of the Nerds." He gave a pleased chuckle, his look typically a little too malevolent for merely mischievous, arms moving to rest behind his dark head as he leant on one of the many embroidered cushions which mushroomed to multitudes if you weren't looking, and had been passed down the Blythe line by some dextrous needlecrafter or other.

"And I know what you'll be seeing – Planet of the Apes!"

"Sorry, Meluna," Mike's black eyes flashed. "I don't think that's playing."

Melissa scowled at the oft-repeated play on her names, and Rob shook his head, even as Michael grinned a full-bodied grin, sighing.

"Did someone say they were bored just now?" came an amused voice from the kitchen, to the immediate hasty chorus of denials.

James Blythe, local doctor at large, tall, genial and debonair in the way of Blythe men of the family, hazel-eyed as his son and his own father Sam and with the ruddy curls of his grandfather – another James known as Jem – walked into the lounge, drying his hands on a tea towel, wry grin firmly in place.

"I think you must have misheard me, Uncle Jim," Michael remarked innocently.

"The old hearing certainly isn't what it used to be," Rob's father, hardly fading away at a trim, fit not-quite forty, lamented mock-sadly, shaking his head.

"What's up, Dad?" Rob decided to circumvent a protracted Blythe-Meredith sparring.

"Well, I was just about to make my way to some house calls. One of them will be to the Old Uncles out on the Lowbridge Road. They haven't been able to do much about the place lately, and while I take a look at how Uncle Shirley's leg is doing I might see if you lot can help tidy the place up a bit. It's too much for Uncle Carl by himself."

Michael stifled a groan. "Really, Uncle Jim, what was the old guy doing on the roof in the first place? He must be a hundred."

"The guttering," Melissa explained, with an exasperated look to her brother.

"He's in his eighties, Mike. Hardly ancient these days," James Blythe cautioned mildly. ''Infact, I am frequently annoyed to find that, his recent leg injury aside, Shirley Blythe is insultingly well preserved for a man of his advanced years."

"And a decorated pilot who served in both wars," Rob reminded loyally.

"OK, OK!" Michael sat up, raising both hands in surrender. Rob had forgotten he was touchy regarding their own generations of Merediths – old Uncles Carl and Jerry aside – having been too young to participate in any war, which Rob suspected might have seemed like a mercy but here in the Glen could easily feel like a slur. "I really wish I could help," the obvious insincerity making Rob wonder if Mike would shortly burst into flame, "but I've got a date tonight, and I have to pick her up early."

"We will ensure you have enough time to make yourself beautiful, Mr Meredith," James smirked.

"Well, I'll go, Uncle Jim," Melissa offered graciously. "It's been ages since I saw Uncle Carl." She turned to glare at Michael. "And if you are bringing Karen tonight Rob and I aren't going. Or we will see something in a different theatre."

Rob may have mildly protested at this arrangement, but his attention had been quickly diverted. Where Mel went, he naturally followed.

"Well, yeah, Dad, sure, I'll come."

Michael looked to his sister and then to his cousin. "What's wrong with Karen?"

"Everything," came the protest in unison.

Not as affronted as one may have expected at this slight, Michael shrugged his shoulders.

"Honestly, it's not as if I'm even related to Shirley."

"Yes we are, you idiot!" Melissa protested. "Tell him, Rob!"

"You're related to Shirley by marriage," Rob explained patiently, and not for the first time. "Your Great Grandad Bruce was half brother to Faith Meredith and to Judge Jerry. They both married Blythes – my Great Grandad Jem to Faith and Nan Blythe to Jerry. And Shirley was brother to Jem and Nan. Therefore, not directly related, but still related."

"You have way too much time on your hands to be figuring all that out," Michael's look was bemused. "It's a little disturbing."

"Just trying to keep the facts straight," Rob replied mildly.

"And Uncle is not just a marker of a relationship, Mike," James chimed. "It's also a term of respect."

"Well if they want respect they should have gone for sensei," he flashed cheekily. "Wax on, wax off, people."

"Please try that on Shirley Blythe," Mel smirked. "And please may I be around to see it!"

"Uncle Shirley's not that bad," Rob felt compelled to add.

"Well, that's enough commentary from everyone," James determined. "So Mike, are you with us?

Michael gave an expressive eye roll, with the aggrieved huff to match. "Oh, alright! Let's go rake leaves for the old dudes."

"I'll be raking leaves – you'll be doing the gutters!" Melissa teased with a pleased, arch smile, and Michael gave an agonised groan, turning in time to catch Rob's eye, smiling in exasperation at the sound and the sight of his warm, wry laughter.

XXXXX

The snug little house on the Lowbridge Road was still, after all these years, a determinedly bright burst of sunlight against the landscape, though admittedly the vibrancy of its outer shell had dulled, as a husk of wheat harvested and left to fade. It was certainly situated in a more populous prospect than it had once been, but neighbours were still not so near as in the Glen itself and there was a decided air of serenity about both the property's outlook and its inhabitants. Any visitors here made a conscious decision to come, and so even as Rob's dad pulled up outside there came a figure around the side of the house, ambling of gait yet still spry, carrying a bucket overflowing with weeds. He was elderly and stooped somewhat under the weight of the tin pail, though he sprung back up to full height when he set down his burden and hailed the visitors. Full height was not in fact very tall; even at not quite sixteen, Rob's hazel gaze already hovered at the man's hairline. He reminded Rob of a friendly bird, smiling and bobbing as he shook hands with he, Mike and his father and hugged Melissa, his one eye bright and blue as the deep waters of the gulf.*

"Hi, Uncle Carl," Mel grinned. "Mom sent over this pie for you." Melissa had begged James to double back to the manse on their way, whereby she rushed in to commandeer the first edible confection she could find; leaving a scatty note of apology in rare sibling safeguard lest Michael be later accused of secretly demolishing it.

"Thank you, love. That's grand. A slice of this will go down very nicely." Carl Meredith's smile was wide and typically charming, before it turned more knowing as he regarded Rob's father. "Are you here to see to the patient, Dr Blythe?"

"Indeed I am, Uncle Carl, and this lot are here to see to your garden."

"Really?" Carl took in the open faces of he and Melissa, and the frown Rob knew still hovered about Michael's. "Well that's very welcome. After all the rains over winter and again recently the back of this place looks like the Amazonian jungle. Come in, come in, we'll have a quick drink and then we can get to work!"

He ushered them to the front door and past the small, neat, sunny-hued kitchen and through to the living room, and Rob's eyes were alight to be entering the inner sanctum of these somewhat reclusive uncles, whose presence on the periphery of his life was long accepted but the mild air of mystery surrounding them had always been a tantalising question hovering just out of reach.

Clearly as a Blythe, Rob, his father James and his Grandpa Sam before him were directly related to Shirley, who was the only surviving brother to Great-Grandpa Jem. Jem – the last great Blythe doctor in the Glen before his own father had again taken up the mantle – as he had reminded Mike, had married Faith Meredith, one of two inter-marriages between the families, as Jem and Shirley's sister Nan had married Jerry Meredith, in a ceremony talked about through the Glen, by all accounts, for years after. ** So Rob was related through blood to both Shirley and Carl, and by marriage to the Merediths generally, making him feel as much Meredith as Blythe half the time, depending on the circumstances. And, obviously, through one of those life quirks, he was also related – just distantly enough for decency – to Melissa and Michael as well.

The over-familiar familial ties annoyed Mike and often exasperated Melissa, but Rob enjoyed the interconnection, and the feeling that they were children of an important and far-reaching network, like the soldiers faced with the puzzle of trenches and tunnels he read about of the Great War. He had grown up listening to the effusive war stories of Great Grandpa Jem, Grandpa Sam and Great Great Uncle Jerry, and the quieter, more meditative, occasional thoughts from Carl, though Shirley, both frustratingly and tantalisingly, never spoke about his experiences in either war at all. Most of Rob's free reading – including earlier today – was on both world wars, with which he was unduly fascinated. He longed to travel to the various fields of battle, particularly to walk the once-blasted, now regenerated, countryside of Belgium and France; to follow the footsteps of the many long-ago sons of Empire; to pay respect at the great memorials, from the Menin Gate at Ypres to the Lantern Tower Memorial erected at Ablain St-Nazaire, with its revolving beacon of light shining deep into the landscape every night, keeping a protective flashing eye on the dead, which always made Rob think of the Four Winds light and its efforts to protect the living. He had gone to the charmingly squat and slightly octagonal Kensington Veterans Memorial Musuem, here on the Island, every year since he was twelve, and he still routinely begged for his parents to take him to Ottawa, for no other reason than to attend the Canadian War Museum and the national Headquarters of the Royal Canadian Legion, with its Wall of Remembrance, and to run a wondering, reverent hand along the 11-foot stainless steel sword adorning it.

On a visit to Charlottetown years ago, Uncle Jerry had once spent so long proudly reliving his memories of his trip to France for the dedication of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial at Vimy Ridge, complete with extensive slides to accompany every step of the journey (and surely twenty alone just on the new and ever brief King, Edward VIII) that they both missed lunch and afternoon tea, and were ignored by the rest of the household, who had quite forgotten they had sequestered themselves in the library. ****

And one couldn't forget Walter, the missing brother of Jem and Shirley both, who had fallen at Courcelette. Rob would trace his long fingers over his name among the 11,169 ***missing at the Vimy Memorial as Jem and Nan and Jerry had done; a Blythe touching a Blythe, and make his own silent vow to always remember.

But here, now, were living veterans before him, and he tried to keep his grin contained as they greeted Uncle Shirley. Uncle Shirley, who had flown in both wars; who had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in WW1; who had done great, mysterious things in WW2 and who in the first war had jumped out of his own plane as it crashed before astonished onlookers, physically walking away from the wreckage. He was legend come to life; an urban myth made real. It came then as no surprise that this man would then break his leg in a fall from a ladder, and rather than phone around for his housemate Carl or an ambulance or even Rob's doctor father, would instead drag himself to his pick up and drive himself to hospital, though by the time he arrived at emergency he could do nothing but honk his horn in loud affront for some gobsmacked, unfortunate nurse to come and assist him.

"Hi, Uncle Shirley," Rob now greeted; the only one of them finding his voice.

A tall man sat, back ramrod-straight despite the invitation of the recliner to recline, steel-gray hair over a face whose wrinkles only served to frame penetrating brown eyes observant under heavy brows. Still broad-shouldered and intimidating, even from behind his newspaper, * he was adorned in undershirt and dressing gown, with only shorts accompanying one long tanned leg, the other encased in a white cast from thigh to calf. He gave them the concession of lowering his newspaper, though his face remained impassive to their presence, barring a slight twitch of his lips, and something glimmering in his eyes which one hoped was amusement but might just as easily have been annoyance.

"Well, hello there."

"Hi Uncle Shirley," his dad offered, extending a long-fingered, large Blythe hand to match the one that met it. "I've come to see how you're doing and to offer you some free, unskilled labour."

This encouraged a raised brow, though those eyes were still watchful as Rob and then Michael shook hands and Melissa, in a singularly spirited act of bravery, gave him a careful peck on the cheek.

"Well, that is interesting news. How does the unskilled labour feel about that?"

"Oh, all good, Uncle Shirley," Rob heard himself chirp sycophantically, not daring to note Mel's suppressed eye roll or Mike's lingering glower.

It seemed they were all rescued by Carl's fond chuckle as he clapped Mike on the back.

"We won't look a gift horse in the mouth," Carl continued merrily. "Though Shirley is rather sorry that his dancing days might be behind him," there was a twinkle in Carl's one eye as he said this, and Shirley's lips twitched again.

"Everyone, sit, sit!" Carl gestured enthusiastically to a sofa and an armchair, though Mike's black eyebrows angled themselves in dare to Rob to take the other matching tan leather recliner."I'll pop the pie on to warm and rustle up some tea and lemonade."

"I'll help, Uncle Carl!" Mel was out of her seat in a flash, having been about to settle herself rather close to Rob on the sofa that the three of them would share, and his fleeting look of disappointment was registered by Shirley with a subtle shake of his head.

His dad and Shirley passed the time in pleasant if perfunctory conversation, whilst Rob looked about the room, noting the half dozen birthday cards propped between various framed photographs on the mantelpiece, though he didn't know whose birthday and didn't dare ask. The bookshelf was smaller than Ingleside's in dimensions, but it's volume-to-shelf ratio was absolutely comparable, and Rob wondered if it was a Blythe trait or a Meredith one, or a rare symbiosis of the two, which saw all their shelves teeming with tomes. Here was an eclectic feast; from numerous studies on the natural history of Canada and every ornithological book imaginable; to not one but two identical copies of some not very inspiring-looking botany text called Leaves of Grass; to Greek mythology; to names he didn't know well, like Walden and Eliot and Spenser, and ones that he did, such as Hemingway; to some engineering and aviation texts; and finally to a succession of neatly stacked magazines, including National Geographic and possibly every Aerial Age Weekly ever printed.

Rob turned back suddenly to Mike, expecting him to be feigning sleep in his boredom, only to look straight into his stare. Half a beat later those black eyes crossed themselves in his usual court jester shtick and he made to look like he was falling off the sofa having succumbed to staged narcolepsy, but then unexpectedly followed Rob as he got up to look closer at the photographs on the mantle, wishing there were any in war uniform. He had to settle for the still diverting images of another time; young Shirley Blythe standing on a barren strip of land, beside an old plane that looked so vintage it might have belonged to the Wright brothers; another of older Shirley, pictured with a snub-nosed, striped plane and a trio of boys he knew to be his curly-haired grandfather Sam, his brother Wally and the tall, golden-haired Gil Ford from Toronto; and probably his favourite, of Carl captaining his boat, golden-brown hair the color of Mel's caught by the breeze, laughing up at the camera, or at least the person behind it. His gaze moved to the wedding photo of grinning Great Uncle Jerry and Auntie Nan, pictured on the steps of Ingleside, the entire population of the Glen, it seemed, surrounding them, Carl distinctive and dapper as one of the wedding party, and Shirley head and shoulders above all in the milling crowd of friends and extended family. ** Finally, his gaze lit on a slightly older Shirley and Carl, joyously pictured either side of a tiny, dark-haired lady in a smart suit, still winsome of expression, who Rob immediately recognised as Auntie Una, Mel's namesake.

"He actually could smile!" Mike breathed low, indicating the image of Shirley, and then louder to those who had just entered with refreshments, "You were a handsome devil, Uncle Carl. Er, you too, Uncle Shirley."

"What do you mean were?" Carl tittered, setting down a tray and beginning to pour tea as Mel passed around plates, lemonade to the boys and a biscuit tin of what was possibly homemade shortbread. As Mel sat back down Mike relaxed himself next to her, taking over his own previous seat and flashing a deliberately knowing grin to Rob's own tight-lipped grimace.

"So, you kids on holidays, then?" Carl began conversationally. "Aren't you graduating soon, Michael?"

"That's the plan, Uncle Carl," Michael replied smoothly.

"Well, that would involve actual studying, Uncle Carl," Mel interjected airily.

Carl diplomatically bypassed the jibe.

"What have you thought you might like to do?"

"I might take a year off to contemplate things," Mike offered seriously. "Work part time for Dad in the office, travel a bit. The rest of your life… it's a big decision."

Carl nodded with the solemnity due this pronouncement from the lips of a seventeen year old. Rob contemplated that when Uncle Carl was seventeen, his major decision would have been what uniform he would be wearing, if the war were to last another year.

"Where would you like to travel to, Mike?" James Blythe asked conversationally.

"Oh, perhaps across the border, down the west coast to California, LA, San Francisco…" Michael gave the time honoured answer of just about every second teenager in North America.

"I'd chase some proper sun," Melissa interjected with her winning enthusiasm. "Hawaii, or somewhere in the Mediterranean."

Rob very much tried not to imagine Melissa in those assorted sundrenched climes, particularly in the pink bikini she had debuted the previous summer.

"And what about you, young Master Blythe?" Carl encouraged.

Rob felt himself redden, unsure if he should be completely honest, and take the conversation on a potentially downward spiral, if not a complete death dive, or whether to give an easy, glib answer.

"Ah, Uncle Carl, I'd choose Europe," Rob offered carefully, flushing. "Particularly, ah, France, and maybe Belgium… the war memorials, you know."

Indeed he knew they did know, they and their comrades having been bombarded with bombs and gas and mud on the ground, or blasted clear out of the sky. Their blood and the blood of an entire generation, watering those famous fields of Flanders, Hill 145 and the trenches of the Somme.

When there was a long silence, Rob tried to fill it with as many halting words as possible.

"Ah… to visit the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge, naturally…" he stumbled. "And the Arras Flying Services Memorial…" he flicked a glance at Shirley here, "and the five Newfoundland caribou memorials and…"

"You've certainly done your research," Shirley's deep, irony-inflected voice entered the conversation.

Rob cleared his throat. "Ah… yes, Sir."

"I didn't know your interest had developed so much." The statement seemed too tempered for admiration and yet too firm for mere curiosity.

"Ah, yes – I mean, no, Sir." He felt his cheeks flushing, and the weight of the eyes of the room upon him.

"I believe Rob's eighteenth birthday request won't be a car but a plane ticket," Rob's father added, with a stab at humour.

"Uncle Jerry showed me lots of slides, once, of his trip with Great Grandpa Jem, back to France, and to the Vimy Memorial and…" Rob tapered off at the expression on Shirley's still-tanned face, which was darkening by degrees, and his own face reddened further in welling misery. Damn, he knew he shouldn't have mentioned the war stuff.

"Have you ever been back to the Memorial, Uncle Carl?" Melissa asked gently in unexpected rescue, and Rob flashed her a look of gratitude.

"Er, no," Carl admitted carefully, glancing himself at Shirley's too-still face, and then added with slightly forced levity, "I saw rather enough of the French countryside the first time. But then, Jerry's many slides do make you feel like you're right there."

There were polite smiles at this, and it seemed that the awkward moment had passed.

"I've seen it," Shirley offered, so unexpectedly that Rob's glass nearly went crashing to the floor. "Quite a few times."

"Y…es, Sir," Rob stammered, watching as the quiver crossed his glowering brow, wondering if he would offer anything more.

Several leaden moments passed, each feeling like a year.

"I never saw much of anything in that war except from the clouds," Shirley offered carefully. "All the memorial sites are important, certainly. But… don't forget Paris. Everyone should have Paris at least once in their life, you know."

Rob's father nodded at this dispensed wisdom. Mike and Mel beside him had fallen into a rather awed silence. Uncle Carl was grinning ear to ear, blue eye very bright, as he topped up everyone's tea.

"Paris is always a good idea. Isn't that what they say?" **** Carl chuckled.

"I'll remember, Uncle Shirley," Rob remarked gravely, as if this was advice from the Oracle.

The nod and the resolute gaze that came in reply was firm, brief and unmistakably Blythe.

XXXXX

As his dad remained with Shirley inside to examine him and talk over how he was doing with his leg, the rest of them trooped outside onto the porch and down to the pretty back garden, which was not quite the overgrown tangle Carl had alluded to, but would benefit from a little additional manpower all the same.

He and Mike, as Mel had predicted, were assigned to tackle the gutters, with strict instructions to do so little by little, to not overreach themselves and to have one of them holding the ladder at all times.

Mike clambered up first, after having dressed himself in the offered gardening gloves with more ceremony than a surgeon snapping on the latex, his black eyes flashing with merriment as he sent fistfuls of wet leaves and other debris raining down on Rob below.

"Hey, swap!" Rob called up to him after a time.

"Huh?"

''I'm sick of holding the damn ladder."

With a sigh of impatience that would have done Shirley proud, Mike made his way down, taking the gloves off with rather less care than before and then whacking Rob on the shoulder with them.

"Suit yourself."

They adjusted their position further round the house and Rob climbed the ladder gamely, making sure he was high enough to come into Mel's direct line of sight, giving her a cheeky wave once her eyes strayed in his general direction, earning a 'Watch it!' from Michael lest he overbalance and go the way of Shirley before him.

Rob frequently glanced back to find Mel sadly oblivious to any of his further attentions, engaged in an animated little tete-a-tete with Carl, arm in arm, which seemed to involve a tour of the vegetable garden and perusal of the large, luscious-looking pear trees by the back fence and not much else. But looking down he always met a pair of black eyes staring back up at him with a new, surprising intensity, and he flexed his swiftly tired shoulder muscles in lieu of any conversation starters having fled him.

"Swap!" Mike called up.

Rob was more than grateful to make his way back to earth, and he leant against the ladder as he exchanged gloves with Mike yet again, wiping his glistening forehead with his t shirt sleeve. He noted the strange look to Michael's face, as he opened his mouth, closed it again, and shook his head, as if in disagreement with himself.

"What's up?" Rob questioned.

Michael paused, his hand on the first rung, and turned back to him.

"You know what they say at school about them," Mike ventured.

"Who?"

Mike's eyes furtively strayed to Carl and Mel and then swept back to Rob. "The old uncles, of course."

Rob felt his brows pull together.

"What? What do you mean?"

Mike looked around him carefully before answering, and his voice lowered appropriately.

"That they're both… you know."

Rob rolled his eyes. "I don't know. That's why I'm asking!"

"God, young master Blythe, do I have to draw you a picture? That they've been on together for years… That, you know, they're… gay." He ended the sentence on a whisper.

"What?"

"Jesus, keep your voice down!"

Rob clamped his lips together.

"Look, I'm just preparing you, that's all," Michael huffed. "You and Mel will be moving into the senior levels next year, and you might, um, hear some stuff, occasionally."

Rob's wayward brows now flew up in response. "That's such rubbish!" he scoffed. "They're friends. Buddies. They grew up together."

"Two buddies who never, ever married…" Mike raised his own black brow suggestively.

"Yeah, 'cos that's a federal offence."

"And they have lived together on their own forever…"Mike rolled his eyes.

"Yep, two old guys sharing a house. That's never happened before."

"They weren't always old…" those black Meredith eyes flashed knowingly.

Rob felt the slow burn of his indignation, alongside the bead of sweat that worried its way down the back of his neck and into his collar. What Michael was alluding to was dangerous, and while not illegal some would have that it was definitely immoral. Young Rob Blythe was a very live and let live kind of guy, with an ingrained sense of justice, and didn't believe any of that occasional fire and brimstone talk you would hear. But discussion of sexuality generally was just another thing to add to the complication of his fast-growing body and his haphazard hormones, not to mention the disturbing fact of his own feelings, and hazel eyes which turned to Melissa and could not hide their growing interest and regard.

But all this in the same breath as a discussion about the benign old uncles was just insanity, and Rob turned his own worry and frustration onto the nearest target.

"I would have thought better of you, Mike!" he hissed. "Passing on nasty rumours like that. That's bloody defamation! Do you wanna share your thoughts with Shirley? You know he could still kick your butt into next week, even with his broken leg and his mangled hand… And I just want to be here when you say something about Carl in front of Mel, because that would really be something to – "

"Hey! Hey!" Michael's swarthy face had turned pale, and he was furiously waving his hands in front of him. "Settle down." Black eyes had grown wide." I'm sorry, alright?"

Rob swallowed the last of his retort, breathing heavily. The vehemence of his vocal reaction had evidently shocked Mike and he had perhaps even surprised himself.

"Sorry." Mike laid a hand on his arm, looking uncharacteristically shaken.

"Maybe I'm not the one you should be saying it to."

"Maybe not. But I am." He gave Rob's bicep a squeeze, his expression earnest.

Rob's hands had gone to his hips, and he expelled a long breath.

"What if those same idiots were saying something about you, Mike?"

"What?" Mike quailed, looking aghast to Rob, and then to his hand, which he dropped back to his side, almost guiltily. "What are they saying?"

"Nothing! I'm just giving it as an example!"

"Oh."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Two old guys, both of whom you're related to, who can't defend themselves and shouldn't have to. Way to go there, Meredith."

Mike scowled at that. "Don't beat this up, Rob! And don't be a bloody arrogant Blythe ass over it!"

At that inopportune moment Uncle Shirley reappeared, in striped flannelette pyjama bottoms with a slit down one leg, replacing the shorts. His good hand clutched a rather handsome cane and the other ensured his tightly knotted dressing gown remained decently closed. His still-sharp brown eyes, which had seen, Rob had often mused, more terror and pain and suffering than anyone had cause to in one lifetime, looked around him with a lightness to their dark depths, echoed in the soft smile he gave in the direction of Carl, who had just leaned in to say something that had made Mel laugh.

Rob's pulse quickened. He shouldn't be reading so much into things. It was Mike and it was all this stupid innuendo. But it also wasn't. It was not just the mere fact of Old Uncle Shirley smiling, which was a rare and surprising enough event at the best of times, but that his entire being relaxed itself, and seemed to stretch out towards Carl in silent communion. Rob knew that look. It was the look his Grandpa Sam gave Grandma Zoe; it was the look his Dad gave his Mum. It was the look he felt every time he gazed upon Mel, beating the longing behind it back down, lest his heart explode with the ever-expanding fullness of it.

Rob swallowed, and darted a guilty hazel glance towards Mike, whose face was tight lipped and impassive. He could almost feel the heat of Uncle Shirley's frowning contemplation, the softness having quickly melted as that uncompromising look swept back over them, like a searchlight seeking captives.

James Blythe joined Shirley, and then they both alternatively strolled and hobbled to the far corner of the garden towards Uncle Carl and Mel. Rob watched them with eyes that seemed properly open for the first time. If it were true then that was… he frowned. He didn't know what it was. No one could look at Shirley and Carl and think anything immoral. On the contrary, no one could look at them and not see the underlying thread of affection. But where Rob had always presumed deep friendship, had he also been seeing something else?

He remembered himself and cleared his throat, murmuring in a voice as low as he could manage, his face flushing with the words.

"I don't care what anyone says... The uncles are great. Whatever the story is… it doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter."

Mike's smile was twisted, and there was an edge of something Rob couldn't quite define in his answer.

"They are two different things, Rob, my man. And I wish either of them were true."

Behind them, Carl announced their break for pie, with a voice that was like a bird-call echoing across the valley. Michael's look was pained as he threw down the gloves, shoved his hands into his jeans, and with long strides was the first to make his way back inside the little house.

---

Rob sat with Tessa on the sofa, as they smiled at one another stupidly, their current circumstances an embarrassing echo of the previous day's events.

"Hi," Rob finally managed, his lips turning up at the corners in sheepish amusement.

"Hi," Tessa quirked a knowing smile.

"Are you… OK? Are things OK?"

"Do you mean, did I survive my mortifying breakfast conversation with my daughter?" Tessa's brown eyes twinkled; hot chocolate, with a dash of cream.

"Something of that nature…"

"Well…" she sighed, and the briefest cloud passed over her still-smooth brow. "I think the answer to that is… mostly. You?"

Rob's smile was wry. "I would have to concur with those findings."

Tessa nodded, and looked down at her hands.

"I wonder what happens now?" she murmured, a little hesitantly.

Rob looked down to his own hands, to his signet ring; gold initials winking at him on a bed of onyx. "I've consulted my research…" he mused slowly, "and I think… this."

His large brown hand reached for hers, and brought the palm up to his lips, next moving the focus of his mouth to Tessa's own. Their kiss was long and almost chaste, excepting the mutual look of smoke and smoulder when it ended.

"Your lovely Maddie Meredith…" Tessa breathed, "has invited Anne for a sleepover tomorrow night."

''Really?" hazel eyes sparked with interest. "That is… an intriguing development."

"Yes… I thought so, too."

"I'd hate for you to be lonely, here in town by yourself."

Tessa smiled at the game; the suggestion of suggestiveness in their new shorthand. "Well, I'm quite self sufficient, though I hate to dine alone."

"Would you… like some company tomorrow night?"

A different smile curled itself around Tessa's lips. "Dinner is all well and good, but I find that breakfast is actually, ah, the most important meal of the day."

Rob's grin was all the response required, and certainly all the response they had time for; a herd of elephants was descending the Ingleside stairs, thunderous in their approach.

"Dad! Tessa!" David appeared in front of them, with a look of schoolboyish excitement, and Anne's high color a startling accompaniment. "We have something to show you!"

"And a lot of things to ask you!" Anne bubbled beside him.

"Oh?" Rob exchanged a bemused look with Tessa.

"Shirley Blythe," David announced. "Great Uncle Shirley Blythe."

"Great Great Uncle to you, Rob," Anne corrected.

"Yes, he was," Rob looked from his son to Tessa's daughter, trying to read their expressions as the lawyer he was, and felt a puzzlement even as he tried to hang on firmly to his smile; until he saw that Anne clutched a particular volume, and his smile slipped; its distinctive green cover unmissable… and unmistakeable.

---

Rob Blythe held the unopened letter in a hand that David noted was not as steady as usual/

''Just… let's slow down a moment," Rob directed. "Take me through this again. One at a time."

Anne's look flickered to David, passing the lead to him, though he could see she was perturbed, for really they had only gotten to producing the Whitman, let alone the contents of the letter, before his dad's complexion began to mirror the color of its cover.

"Well, Dad, yesterday, Anne and I did some family research, as you know," David began to explain. "We explored the attic, sorted through what was there and took down some boxes. We had a break for lunch and then I went back up to my room for a final stab at study but didn't last very long, and I came back downstairs and…"

"I was at your bookshelf, Rob," Anne interrupted him, glancing at David, before continuing the narrative gamely. "It's a beautiful home library – I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb it. I was perhaps looking for Keats but mostly I was, ah, just looking. I hadn't even taken anything down. But I came across the Whitman… I'd heard of him but wasn't really familiar with his work. Well, except for the film, ah you know, Dead Poets Society…" Anne trailed off at the haunted look that crossed his father's face at this, his dark brows drawing together.

Tessa had evidently noted his change in expression, too. "Anne, really, you had no business going through anything of the Blythes," she chastised.

The hurt filtered across Anne's face, and David could feel her bristle beside him.

"All respect, Tessa, I told her she could look at anything she wanted," he defended, moving imperceptibly closer to Anne but really wishing he could do something more reassuring, such as put his arm around her. To his father, he added, "we weren't doing anything wrong, Dad. Anne was flicking through the Whitman, I came down and asked her what it was, and we were almost about to put it back on the shelf when the letter literally fell out at our feet."

His father, usually so quick off the mark, took a worrying amount of time to process this, blinking as if to clear his mind several times.

"Anne, don't get me wrong. You are welcome to anything here," Rob recovered himself slightly. "I only… that is, the copy of the Whitman belonged to Melissa, David's mother. It was a special gift to her, and she read it frequently, particularly when…" Rob cleared his throat, "that is, when she was undergoing cancer treatment." He looked to swallow carefully, and then glanced up at David. "You didn't remember?"

"I did later," David murmured quietly, his eyes shadowed and the sorry heat flooding his face. "But… not at first."

His dad looked like he might say something about this, but then paused and nodded to himself. "You might not have known how much. I forget you were away at Redmond."

David pursed his lips, and Anne looked up to him, her eyes mournful.

Tessa's own expression was closing in on itself as Rob continued.

"This was with Mel – ah, my wife Melissa – when she died," Rob tapped the cover of Leaves of Grass, which Anne had given over to him as Exhibit A, his voice turning to a hoarse rumble. "I haven't even opened it since that day." He stared at the Whitman, as if a little afraid of it. "I couldn't bear to… I stuck it back on the shelf. I don't know anything about any letter or letters she kept in it."

"There was… just this one," David clarified, his own voice a little unreliable.

"Where was it?" Rob looked up suddenly, his question sharp. "Where did you find it?"

"Sorry, Dad?"

"Which poem did it bookmark?" Rob opened the volume carefully and began to turn pages rapidly. "Which section?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I was holding it at the time but I didn't see where the letter slipped from."

"Um, towards the middle…" Anne interjected. "I… I remember reading, um…" she began to color magnificently, "some of… Book IV… and I… I didn't come across a letter before that, so I think… a little bit after that…" Anne's cheeks had turned as scarlet as when David had happened upon her the previous day, and glancing at her he made a mental note to go back over this Book Four business.

Rob's long fingers had still been turning during Anne's explanation.

"Maybe Calamus…" he muttered to himself, stopping at the start of that section before closing it with resolution, giving a bleak little chuckle. "That figures."

Rob had balanced the letter on one knee while he looked at the volume, but now Whitman was relegated to the coffee table and he picked up the folded page again. Worn and worn again, and slightly discoloured, but cared for; cherished. David saw how the historian in his dad looked and noted these things, and also how the man paused, on the threshold.

"You've read this? Both of you?"

He and Anne nodded together in silence.

Rob leant over, made sure the coffee table was not hiding any stray stains, gently pushed aside the Whitman and unfolded the letter. David thought he might prefer to ponder it with white gloves on, so careful was he in unveiling it to the world.

Anne and he leaned over; Tessa leaned in; everyone seemed to read whilst holding a collected breath.

Finished, his father leaned back on the sofa. Tessa looked to Dad; he and Anne looked to each other.

"Pretty remarkable…" David offered to his father's stunned silence.

"Yes…" Rob managed.

"It's a beautiful letter…" Anne looked engagingly misty-eyed. "A love letter, really, that wants to be a leaving letter."

"Yes…" his father had evidently run out of more varied responses.

"Shirley…" he ventured, with as much delicacy as a doctor giving a diagnosis. "Dad, we think… we believe…that he was gay."

"Yes," Rob answered without ceremony.

David's felt his eyes widen to proverbial saucers; he exchanged a glance with a similarly agog Anne.

"You knew this?" David gulped.

"Yes."

Anne opened her mouth to speak, but seemed to look at her mother and think better of it.

"He was writing at the end of the war… to Kit," he pressed, feeling he had just fallen down the rabbit hole. "Who was… a man?"

"Yes." Rob raised a slightly challenging eyebrow.

"And Ma had this letter… which means she had to have known Kit."

"Yes…" Rob, more anguished now, rubbed a suddenly tired hand through his hair, and then his fingers strayed, as they always did, to his signet ring.

"You knew… Kit… too?"

"Yes, of course."

David looked to Anne in bewilderment, and she gave a slight shoulder lift in hopeless reply.

"Then Dad… unless it's a terrible secret, can we ask who on earth Kit actually was?"

His father started to laugh unexpectedly, shaking his head.

"Oh, how he would have loved this little play, you know…" Rob smiled, crossing his arms. "He had a delightful, impish humour, really. All the family did, in their way. He certainly needed to, in order to draw out old Shirley, that's for sure."

David felt a concern for his father's mental health in that moment, to be so blasé about these rather extraordinary revelations, but Anne had a feverish look about her he was beginning to recognise; the sense of a challenge, as if her mind was racing, her memory running through a forested tangle of family trees.

"Shirley never married…" she mused suddenly. "Did Kit?"

Rob raised an eyebrow, his look to Anne more than a mite impressed. "That's an excellent question. Pull up a seat, Anne."

Anne did as bid, her grey eyes alive with alluring glints of green, and mesmerised though he was by this, David's hands strayed to his hips impatiently. "Or, you could just tell us, Dad!"

"Where would the fun be in that?" his father smirked, infuriatingly, and David took his own seat in a chair, expelling a breath.

"All the family did…" Anne echoed, her look growing thoughtful. "You knew the family, Rob. And so did Kit know yours. Shirley talks of weddings, of standing beside Kit as a Best Man – as a best friend would. Which family here would be such great friends with the Blythes?"

Rob's smile was soft, and his hazel eyes watched her carefully.

"Merediths," Anne and David ascertained together.

"Which Meredith at the time was unmarried?" David continued thinking aloud, making his own logical conclusions, leaping back up to cross to the table and the copies of the family trees. He withdrew the Meredith page, ferrying it back to where they congregated around the sofa.

"Careful, there," his dad cautioned, as David laid it on the table.

Anne's hair brushed him as she bent to the page, auburn brows drawn together, and she began to count on her fingers as they located the right branch.

"Jerry Meredith married Nan Blythe, so he's out."

"In a manner of speaking…" David smirked, looking to see that both his father and Anne were rolling their eyes at him, whilst Tessa shook her head in amusement.

"So that leaves Bruce or Carl…" David continued. "They're the males left. Bruce went into the ministry – he's my great great grandad on Ma's side. I mean, he married himself, but he could have become a minister first if he was nursing a broken heart…"

"David, Bruce Meredith was aged eleven in 1919," his father responded wryly, having leant over himself to confirm this fact. "That's the date of Shirley's letter. So I hardly think so."

"Well, then – it's Thomas Carlyle Meredith. Carl. He has to be Kit. The only one of that generation not to marry, if we're going with that 's best friend, similar age, just a walk through the valley and over to the Old Manse."

Rob's smile flittered across his face. "So that would be your conclusion?" he challenged both his son and Anne.

"It would make the most sense," Anne piped up. "Particularly if the copy of Shirley's letter was found in the Whitman, and the Whitman was given to David's mother. A Meredith would be likely to give such a gift to another Meredith."

"Indeed, Counsellor," his father grinned at Anne; one that she returned.

"Carl… how do you get Kit from Carl?" he puzzled. "Did Shirley have a nickname too?"

This made his father laugh outrageously.

"Oh good God, David! He wasn't a nickname sort of guy. And I think Shirley was enough for the poor man, don't you?"

"Probably. It seems to go with the territory that Blythes get the great names," he found himself grumbling.

"Well, you know my thoughts on Gerald," Tessa gave him a warm smile.

"The name!" Anne breathed beside him, launching out of her chair as if rocket-fuelled. She clambered over to the dining table, taking another of the family tree spreadsheets, and walked back with it, her steps slow as she perused it as she went. "Thomas Carlyle…" she looked wonderingly at his father. "I was trying to understand that yesterday. Grandad Tom was christened Thomas Carlyle."

"A Meredith name?" David called back to Anne, and then noted Tessa begin looking from his dad to her daughter earnestly.

Rob smiled at her discovery. "Why is any name given?" Rob answered, a little sadly, "except to honour those who have come before, either directly… or indirectly?"

Anne's grey-green eyes widened at the clue.

"Indirectly…" Anne repeated, too excited to sit, though she placed the sheet reverently on top of the Meredith one. "Thomas Carlyle Ford was a tribute to Thomas Carlyle Meredith…but also to someone else… someone close to him, to both of them… "

"Yes," Rob affirmed. "Most definitely."

"I thought it was because… Great Grandad Gil was stationed with him in the war, or they bonded through flying… but Thomas Carlyle – Carl Meredith - wasn't the pilot. Shirley Blythe was."

"A bit hard on everyone to name a son Shirley, though," Rob's look had become teasing. "Especially again."

Anne grinned in return. "Most definitely!"

"Carl Meredith… Grandad Tom has his name?" Tessa sighed. "He's named in honour of both. That's just beautiful. Does he know, Rob? Does he know any of this?"

"Most definitely…" Rob continued the joke. "He got his wings from training with his father Gil Ford, who got his from training with Shirley… as did my Grandpa Sam as well. So your Grandad became a talisman, Anne, and your Great Grandad Gil was the conduit. You're part of this story, too."

David thought the radiant look on Anne's face at this was a thing of such beauty it caught his breath; the girl who had decried any link to Islanders only days ago was finding comfort in connection.

"Of course, so is this great lug," Rob cast a fond look across to his son.

"So this great lug what?" David rolled his eyes, covering his distraction over Anne.

"You're part of this story too, you know." Rob set aside the Ford and Meredith trees on a spare chair, so carefully, and drew the Whitman back to him. "If you had only looked at the other evidence in front of you." He shook his head indulgently, flipping open the Whitman, and turning reverently over to the title page, revealing a handwritten inscription.

Dearest Melissa

There have been three comforts for me in this twilight time; the view of the gulf and the shrill of the birds, the sharing of Whitman and of stories, and your visits with me. You are Bruce's great-grand-daughter but I also claim you for mine, now and always.

Have this, with my love and the love of us both, in honour of another in so many great Meredith-Blythe partnerships, and of your little co-production. May he carry the best of both our families in him. And may he get to know all our stories, both those from long, long ago and the ones not yet written.

"To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.
When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)" *****

Love, your dancing partner,

TCM

August, 1997

David stared down at the words. He knew vaguely that Tessa's eyes glimmered suspiciously; that his father's eyes were on him; that Anne had to dam her river of tears with a wad of tissues she sought from the kitchen; but al he was capable of was trying his hardest to process the words.

"They were discussing me…" he announced thickly, after a time.

Rob's smile to him was gentle. "Yes, son. Your mother found out we were expecting a boy, but she didn't tell anyone… or at least, I thought at the time she hadn't… but here, Carl knew, two months before you were born." He shook his head wryly. "Typical Mel."

David nodded, and struggled very definitely with his next words.

"Ma said that… to me… before she died…" He cleared his throat. "She said that… the quote. Be it as if I were with you."

Rob nodded, seeming to seek a way to lighten the cloud that was darkening David's features, and his tone was lighter, too. "Again, knowing your mother, I don't know if that was a threat or a promise."

It worked; all smiled despite themselves; David himself gave a pained chuckle.

"David, those words – they weren't the only things left to you." David looked to his father, worrying his signet ring again, his brows drawn together, as if in hushed conference with themselves.

"Dad?"

"I wasn't going to bring this up, naturally, until your birthday in October…"

All eyes were on Rob now, and he frowned to himself, as the agog gallery waited patiently.

"Ah, when your Great Great Great Uncle Carl died, there were only a few of the new generation of Merediths and Blythes about… and Fords," he flicked a smile at Anne. "Carl was closest to those here on the Island, though he left a number of things to your Grandad, Anne, and to your Great Grandad Gil Ford, and Shirley before him had done the same, I believe. Carl had lived a long life; modestly, but comfortably… he had some money, and left this to various charitable causes – local wildlife funds and the like; a little here to the Glen Presbyterian church, for their outreach programs; some to the Aged Care Home up at Four Winds; a little to your Uncle Mike, who had Megan by then, with Max just on the way… and his house, his and Shirley's house, he left to your mother. And your mother left it to you."

"A house?"

Rob shifted in his seat.

"Their house. His and Shirley's. Their home for forty years or more. You talk, son, of marriages… of Carl and Shirley never marrying… but what you must understand is that theirs was a marriage, in every way that matters, pieces of paper aside. Sickness and health, better or worse… There were no vows in a church or in front of anyone save perhaps themselves, but you'd better believe it, they were bound together, irrefutably."

"Cleaved…" Anne whispered, as David's stricken eyes took in his dad's kind nod and Tessa's tremulous smile.

David rose slowly from the chair, arms crossed in front of his chest, his face a whirl of incredulity.

"A house. Ma left me Carl and Shirley's house?"

David felt his father's eyes follow him as he began to pace the room, as if measuring his concern with every footstep.

"For when you turned twenty-one, David," Rob clarified. "A few years ago, you were still a teen, just embarked on your course at Redmond. It would have been too much to tell you about it then. Really, it's been too much for me. It's been in the hands of the real estate agents; the same ones your Ma appointed all those years ago, when you were born. It's been rented out all that time; a modest sum, for families, as it's a ways out of town, between here and Lowbridge. But it's helped pay for college for you; some of it towards your Ma's treatment, too. It will be yours, David, come a couple of months' time… the rent could be towards expenses during your medical degree perhaps, or board, or whatever. I won't interfere with anything regarding your future decision about it, except to say, it was a special house, and a lot of love resided there, and to be mindful of that."

David knew his expression was a catalogue of conflicting emotions.

"It's the house on the Lowbridge Road, isn't it?" he croaked.

"Yes, son. You might remember we would visit occasionally, to inspect the place, but mostly we've left it alone."

"With the pear trees."

"That's right."

"Dad… I'm sorry. I know you and Ma meant well. But… I can't have that house."

With that he excused himself and all but flung himself out the front door, to the bewildered looks of the trio left behind.

---

With a flummoxed apology to Anne and Tessa, Rob made motion to follow his son.

Anne was breathing heavily, shocked to the core not at his words, though there was some surprise in them, but his look as he read about his mother… and of himself. His haunted look back to them as he pushed out the door… would she ever forget Gilbert's face? She blinked back the blurry vision, of his face white to the lips, and his eyes.... ****** How did Gilbert get in there? She knew nothing of Gilbert. Didn't she mean Ken? Or…

"Rob!" she called shakily, as he was about to push through the door himself.

"Anne?"

She walked to meet him at the entranceway.

"Rob… would you mind… if I went?"

"If you went, Anne? To David?"

"Yes. I…" she hesitated, swallowing. How was she to explain? That she knew that face from before and knew how to comfort it? That she might talk to him now when she didn't even know what she would say? She didn't know what she was doing. Only… there had been times when she should have gone after him, and didn't. So many times. Or when she should have said something, and didn't. Or when she shouldn't have said anything at all… "you've spoiled everything…You must never speak to me of this again…" ****** Anne recoiled at the words, in her remembered voice… from her remembered lips… and knew nothing except they made her stomach churn. She knew nothing except the heat of his hurt and whether she might cool it.

All she could do was turn her eyes up imploringly to so similar hazel ones to his, here narrowed in confusion.

"Well, Anne, of course…" Rob assented with a troubled smile.

Anne tried not to note the cryptic, silent exchange between Rob Blythe and her mother as she left, and focussed on what she would say to the man outside.

Her steps were as inevitable as his had been. Down the verandah, over the grass, through to the garden behind the wall. And he was there, sitting on his mother's bench, curly dark head in his hands.

He heard her steps and did not even look up.

"Dad, sorry, but I really don't want to talk about it!"

"Wrong guess," she offered softly.

He lifted his head in surprise, watching her approach, his expression uneasy.

"Anne, sorry, but I really don't want to talk about it," he huffed, though he was a fraction calmer, his tone reaching for wry and settling on disgruntled.

"OK," she nodded, her look searching but her tongue, for once, had stilled on all its questions.

She waited while he weighed his indecision; would he ask her to stay or to go? His pained hazel eyes betrayed the struggle, and in the end he heaved a great sigh.

"I know what you're going to say, Anne."

"Do you?" her mouth lifted, and her reply was challenging enough for him to contemplate her with the hint of his own chagrined smile.

"Well, maybe that was a dangerous thing to say," he offered, "as you already have a short but decided history of wrong-footing me… and I've already established my own record of underestimating you. So, who knows?"

"Wise words at last," she grinned, and he allowed himself a dark chuckle.

"Alright, I'm not emotionally equipped to deal with an extended guessing game after we've already played that inside. You might as well come out with it."

"Well, can I at least sit down?"

"Sorry," he frowned, moving to make room on the bench. "Of course."

She folded her hands together calmly. "You think you don't have a right to the house."

His expression clouded. "Of course I don't have a right to the house!"

"Why?"

"I can't keep the house, Anne. I don't deserve it. You of all people have to understand that."

"I understand a lot of things, but I don't understand your reasoning here."

David blew out a breath. "If it was any other house, Anne… but it's different, now. We know something of them… Shirley and Carl. My parents knew them…"

"Then you have a link to the house, which makes it perfectly valid that it passes to you."

"That's just it. The link isn't mine. Therefore the house shouldn't be."

Anne's own brows puzzled this out. "You were too young to know the Great Uncles. Any link to them was always going to be through your mother or your dad."

"Then let them keep it…" he argued quietly but no less stubbornly. "Let Dad keep it."

She bit her lip, she stepped back from the edge, but then she launched the protest regardless. "Your mother obviously didn't want it that way."

His expression grew very troubled now, and he stood unexpectedly, fisting his hands into his pockets. "Anne, best leave my mother out of this!"

"Yes… because you are doing an excellent job of not including her in this at all…" she challenged with a sad smile, casting a knowing look around them. He frowned down at her, all put-out petulance, and she had a flash of him as a boy, only confusingly with ruddy curls and not dark ones, and…. She gulped, blinking herself back to focus. She stood herself and reached for his left arm, dragged out his hand to the sunshine, grasped the left hand tight in hers. "Please, please save the plants today, David."

He gave a choked laugh, then threw his head back to look at the sky.

"That's all fine for the plants, but where do I put the pain instead?"

When he looked at her again there were tears in his eyes, and he made no effort to blink them away.

"Here," she whispered, reaching up to kiss his cheek, and then laying her lips to his hand. "Put it here."

With a sound smothered in anguish, he drew her to him fiercely, and his lips on hers were not polite or smiling as of earlier, teasing her with his hello, but desperate and aching. Anne yielded to his kiss and to the pressure, not knowing how to temper it, only to absorb it… only to help save him, with the length of his hard body pressed against hers, even if she couldn't save herself.

His fingers were threaded through her hair, pulling her in even closer to him, and then, the stumbling back as he pushed himself away.

"Jesus, Anne! S-sorry!" he was all glazed-eyed astonishment. "I didn't mean to… to…"

"It's OK!" she gasped.

"No, it's not…" he replied unevenly. "At least… I'm not a caveman, Anne. I really must be losing it."

He shuddered a breath, and almost collapsed back onto the bench.

"I am usually not this unstable… at all." He shook his head despairingly.

"Not unstable… just emotional," she countered, after a moment.

He blew out a breath. "Some doctor I'd make."

"Maybe it will make you a better one," she paused, sitting back on the bench next to him tentatively. "A little empathy and all that."

He looked at her with an embarrassed half smile. "Not emo, just empathetic. That's a relief."

"Don't worry. All your other manly virtues are still intact."

She realised a beat too late how that dry observation might be interpreted, and made a garbled, flaming-cheeked retraction that only made the situation far worse, and encouraged David to snigger in barely suppressed delight.

"Oh, honestly!" she huffed, exasperated.

"I've thought it many times. You are adorable, Anne Ford."

She looked away and rolled her eyes, at his unashamed grin, the tables turned, and he reached out for her hand with his left one, holding it firmly.

"So Kit was Carl Meredith…" he changed tack. "That's pretty amazing, when you think about it."

She nodded. "I know…"

"Do you think Carl ever wrote a letter back? A reply to Shirley?"

Anne looked out ahead, onto the garden that Shirley would have known, and Carl too.

"Shirley came back to the Glen, to him. I think he had to have had. Something had to convince Shirley that his views weren't the end of things, that his goodbye wasn't truly a goodbye."

"And they lived here in the Glen, together, for decades, in a house on the road to Lowbridge. Another Meredith-Blythe partnership. Carl said it himself."

"He also said that you might carry the best of both families in you."

"Well, see, that's one of the parts I have trouble with," David frowned. "I'm just a regular upstart like everyone else."

Anne couldn't help a smile, and gave his hand a squeeze for good measure. "Hardly a regular upstart, surely?" she gave him an arch, sideways look. "More of an extra special upstart from where I'm sitting."

He smirked, but made no reply.

"It's not a pressure, David, you realise. It's not an expectation, those words. They're a gift. It's just another of all these lovely reminders of your mom. She was so excited about you she couldn't wait to tell Great Uncle Carl, and he wrote those lovely words to her about you. You have all these touching anecdotes about her and what she was like, how she changed up your ring tone on your phone, how she would say or do this and that. Your dad still practically worships the ground she walked on. I wish… that I had half the memories you have, you know."

He was instantly mollified. "Anne… I'm sorry. I didn't think… I'm sorry…"

She shrugged, the pinprick tears annoying her eyes. "It's OK." She paused, composing herself. "You will be given a house when you're twenty one, David. I'll be given a trust fund and my dad's shares in the company. I won't have earned a cent of any of it. Does that make me unworthy, too? Does it make me undeserving?"

"God, Anne, of course not!"

"Then how is this different?"

His mouth tried to work through an answer, though he struggled to force any sound out.

"Because…" his tone was a strangled thing. "Because then she'd be truly gone. Not just a presence I still expect to walk through the door. She'd be consigned to history, just like the rest of them. Just like Carl and Shirley. And what she did and who she was just becomes… a name on a page. An inscription in a book."

"Then make it matter, David! Make her passing matter! Become a doctor and do good things – find a cure for cancer, I don't know, anything!"

Her own face, lighting with the words, challenged his ashen one.

"And I don't agree that none of this matters – that history doesn't matter! That we live our lives and are consigned to the rubbish bin when its over. Or that we are just footnotes at the end of a chapter. Your dad would wash your mouth out with soap at that! Because things… go on, David! People go on! Your mom left you that house because Carl and Shirley mattered! And because you are the next link and she loved you and you matter! But, you know, if that's not enough, then go fight your battles; make a difference! Go shoot down enemy planes like Shirley did, or save someone from a burning building and lose an eye for your trouble like Carl did, or hell, just even read and research and remember them so someone like me can read about them, like your dad has! Do whatever you feel you have to do, but don't say you'll never feel worthy and therefore won't even try. That was my dad's line, and you know, I'm a bit tired of it. Because after a time it stops being an explanation and just starts to become an excuse."

David stared at her, a little dumbstruck.

Oh, God. "I'm sorry, David! I don't know where that came from!" she tried to extract her hand from his, but he held it fast.

He continued to look at her through lowered brows. Damn! Was this a way to comfort him? To beat him about the head with her own misgivings, bleeding into that diatribe?

"You know that wasn't only just about you…" she continued, cheeks heating.

"Do I get a right of reply, now, Anne?"

Her eyes, grey sparked with bolts of green, assessed him warily. Was he angry? "Yes… of course."

"OK. Yes. You're right. And I'm being a pain about it."

Her eyes widened at the admission. "OK…" she echoed uncertainly.

"You always seem to call me on stuff. No one's really done that, before. At least, not a girl." He gave her a loaded look. "Trust a Ford to do it."

She colored. "Well, it's all part of the service…" she attempted uneasily.

He relaxed into a grin. "And you're not merely adorable. You are magnificent."

The heat shot through her, even as he leaned in, kissing her softly but resolutely, his lips asking invitation this time, and making a rather persuasive case for himself. He drew back and smiled at her, rising slowly and pulling her up with him.

"You're right. I'll get over myself. I will work towards worthy."

"Well, we're all working towards that…" she breathed.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Meanwhile, we're young. We're alive. It's summer. What the hell are we doing?"

"David…?" she questioned as he began to walk purposefully back out of the garden, Anne trotting to keep up alongside him.

"We've been obsessing about letters and history and the love lives of two uncles who would probably just be laughing at us if they knew. Let's get the hell out of here, Anne Ford, and live our own lives for a change."

The words were more prophetic than he knew, and she smiled at the irony of them.

"What are we going to do?"

He turned to her, his expression full of beguile and bewitch, his dark brows waggling suggestively.

"The question isn't what we are going to do; the question is what aren't we going to do?"

He made a sweeping gesture to the dazzle of sun on harbour below.

"Before you, Anne, the splendour of the Glen and the gulf. Ours. For as long as we can have them."

Anne's smile was as wide as David's, but the gnaw that tugged at her belly was the same misgiving as her mother's; how long was long? How quickly would a summer fly? Was there any part of the fairytale that would last beyond the leaving of these shores?

"I have been a lousy tour guide. That isgoing to change. I am going to show you every corner of the Glen. I am going to take you to every place worth going to. And perhaps some we shouldn't even set foot in." He gave a wicked smirk.

She leapt at the light of his tone.

"Are you intending to lead me astray, David Blythe?" her pulse quickened at the thought of it. "To lead me down the primrose path?"

He ben(t) forward with a smile on his face - a smile which seemed to Anne at once triumphant and taunting. *******

"This from the person who made us break into the lighthouse last night." His voice was low.

"You may have broken in…" her pulse now fairly leapt, unrestrained, "but I merely entered after hours through an unlocked door…"

The smile continued to hover about his lips, enticingly. He shook his head in amusement.

"You just give good kids bad ideas."

She smirked at this herself, now.

"And meanwhile…" he gave a fond glance back up the slope to the old, handsome house. "I'd better go back to Dad and grovel an apology. And tell him it would be my privilege to become… a landlord… in October."

"You're sure? I didn't force you or guilt you into – "

He gave an effusive sigh.

"Surrender! Know when you've won, Anne!" he grinned, rolling his eyes, and then kissed her again to mitigate any further doubts.

---

Robert James Blythe sat on his sofa, within his own inherited house, as the chimes of midnight floated on the otherwise quiet air, cradling the words of Old Walt in one hand and the words of young Shirley in the other.

Young Gerald David Blythe had staggered in half an hour or so earlier, grinning and Anne-drunk, blathering about being worthy and making it matter. Rob had no idea what Anne had said to him in the garden, and even less idea of what had kept them out for all the afternoon and half the evening, but the gleam of giddy wonder about him was one he had rarely seen, and one that he himself was only just daring to rediscover.

So David would have the Lowbridge house, and enjoy an independent income during his hopeful medical studies to come, which was one of the things his mother had wanted for him, as well as a continuing connection to the man who had lived and loved there, and who had thrilled to the idea of a Meredith-Blythe baby after all this time; the literal embodiment of the union of their two families.

So Mel would get her way, even from the grave. It didn't surprise him. Was she calling to him from the grave as well, just at the very point when he was not always listening now for her voice?

Rob looked over Shirley's letter, amazed that the taciturn man he had known could have also been this striving, doubting, agonising, longing creature, loving yet regretful, thinking it wasn't worthwhile living, let alone coming on home. David and Anne had stumbled upon a heartfelt relic of another love of another time – a love that dare not speak its name ******** back then – and yet had been proclaimed so loudly in coded letters, and in the shadows, and behind locked doors, and so beautifully in the hush of a bedroom in that Lowbridge house, glimpsed and overheard by his younger self thirty years ago, now, and never forgotten.

He would see Tessa tomorrow night, but he looked at the Whitman, now, and he saw Mel. He saw her reading it to Carl when his poor, lone eye began to fail; he saw her dipping into it, casually, as she would one of her pulp paperbacks, as she called them when a young Master Blythe insisted on being rocked to sleep; he saw her cleave to it as maverick companion during her treatment; he read it to her, himself, when she no longer had the strength to do so.

He saw it by her bedside during that long final night.

And then he buried it on the shelf, because he couldn't bear to see it again.

But Time, if not the ultimate healer, at least attempted to soften the memories. Perhaps as he had found Tessa, so too he could find this again.

"You who celebrate bygones…" ********* she had so often teased him. And yet, here all this time, she had the letter Shirley Blythe had written to Carl Meredith at the end of the Great War, rehomed in a volume of verse. She who had kept that secret, he wondered now… what others had she safeguarded?

When I read the book, the biography famous,

And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?

And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? **********

Oh, Mel… he began to cry his silent sobs, lest he wake that boy upstairs, that gift, that talisman.

Rob flicked, paused, turned further.

He could have read any number of poems and sections; he could have exhilarated at Song of Myself, or remembered the first time he blushed at Children of Adam; he could have quietly reflected on Calamus, even more so after today; or meditated on Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. That was the beauty of Whitman, he supposed; everyone had his or her own version of him; he sounded his barbaric yawp to all, and everyone heard it differently.

Perhaps it was the Island boy in him; born of a coastal town on an enchanted isle as so many before and since, but he found himself float towards Sea-Drift.

… A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chatterer of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing…

Up this seashore in some briers,

Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together,

And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,

And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,

And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes…

Till of a sudden,

May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate,

One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest,

Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next,

Nor ever appear'd again…

Oh night! Do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?

What is that little black thing I see in the white?

Loud! loud! loud!

Loud I call to you, my love!

High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,

Surely you must know who is here, is here,

You must know who I am, my love…

Hither my love!

Here I am! here!

With this just-sustaine'd note I announce myself to you,

This gentle call is for you my love, for you.

O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!

In the air, in the woods, over fields,

Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!

But my mate no more, no more with me!

We two together no more." ***********

Rob, cheeks wet, sunk into the sofa, against an ancient embroidered cushion, and found himself pulled into the maelstrom of memory; but by morning he awakened, cleansed, on the gentle wash of the tide.

---

Chapter Notes

My chapter title is taken from Robert Browning's 'By the Fire-Side'

*As is only right and proper, the opening descriptions of Old Carl and Old Shirley belong to elizasky

**Referring, naturally, to Nan and Jerry's wedding in elizasky's'The Happiness We Must Win' Chapter 15 'Happily Ever After'

***This quote is always attributed to one of my favourite ever actresses, Audrey Hepburn, in the film Sabrina (1954). She never actually says it in the film, although it is mentioned by Julia Ormond in the 1995 remake, although Audrey had a lifelong love affair with Paris, a lifelong friendship with Hubert de Givenchy, and had many of her best known and most beloved films set there. However in Sabrina she did say 'I have learned how to live. To be in the world and of the world…' which is equally wonderful.

****Thanks to elizasky for her idea of Jerry's trip for the opening of the Vimy Memorial. For those of you too young to have ever been subjected to a Slide Evening; be grateful.

***** Walt Whitman from 'Full of Life Now' in Leaves of Grass (1892) Book V Calamus With thanks to elizasky for suggesting the quotation.

******Anne of the Island Ch. 20

*******Anne of Green Gables Ch. 33

********Quoted at Oscar Wildes's gross indecency trials of 1895 (the first was a hung jury), taken from a poem called Two Loves by Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), who was Oscar's lover and also acknowledged in many ways as his destroyer. It was in defending his reputation against Bosie's harsh, violent father, the Marquess of Queensbury (whom he hated) that Bosie goaded Oscar Wilde to take the matter to trial in the first place, against the advice of many of his other friends, including George Bernard Shaw. The evidence brought forward in the criminal libel trial in the Marquess's defence (which included incriminating letters written by Oscar still in the pockets of his old clothes that Bosie would give to his male prostitutes) was then used to charge and try Wilde in a case of sodomy and gross indecency.

A selection from Two Loves (1892):

And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend,
Come I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life…

I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

*********Whitman from 'To a Historian' in Leaves of Grass (1892) Book I 'Inscriptions'

**********Whitman from 'When I Read the Book' in Leaves of Grass (1892) Book I 'Inscriptions'

***********Whitman from 'Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking' in Leaves of Grass (1892) Book XIX 'Sea-Drift'