Chapter XXII

Somehow March was almost halfway through and therefore Hester managed to get the whole week off to spend it in the company of Jo and Fleur. All three of them along with all the women of their family were spending their days in the old and cosy Ingleside, talking, knitting and passing little Fleur from arms to arms. Fleur looked exactly like her mother apart from her eyes which were her father's, according to Jo. Fleur Hester Sutton had a bundle of brown curls on her small head which now both she, her mother but also her grandmother all shared. Her lips were as full as Jo's and just as perfectly shaped into a flattened heart mirroring Hester's own lips. Finally, Fleur's eyes were not Jo's brown but the crystal green which was the exact shape and colour of Jo's fiance's eyes, who was, of course, as delighted to hear of his daughter's birth as Jo herself was to experience it. Rilla's stomach, however, was starting to show eventually and she was as proud as a mother-to-be should be. So were the people she loved most in this world.

Now it was the middle of the week and Hester was knitting a new pair of socks for Selwyn on the sofa of the Ingleside's living room. She was listening to the chatter of the Blythe, Meredith, Ford and Douglas' women and even felt a bit strange that her Group was missing but that couldn't be helped, all of them were at work or like Lily, in Redmond. Jo was there, though, sitting next to Hester with Fleur in her arms who was playing with her mother's brown locks making the sweetest sound of an almost a month old baby. Hester would look at Fleur from time to time and her heart would flutter furiously, filling up with love and emptiness at the same time. Was Seb still in love with me? her mind was thinking instantly.

But Hester shook off the thought quickly and tried to concentrate on her knitting instead when something distracted her again and she looked up. Nothing. Everything seemed normal and jolly like always at that time of the day and the activity of knitting. However, something inside of her was whispering softly: "You should go outside. Go outside, Hester!" and she put the knitting on the side at the same time as there was a knocking at the door.

"I'll go." Hester smiled at her grandma Anne who was about to stand up from her chair and who at once returned the smile of her granddaughter. Hester's heart was beating swiftly as she was making her way towards the front door and she couldn't help herself but to think of the worst. A telegram. But when she opened the door, a huge smile appeared on her face instead "Phillip!" she exclaimed happily and wrapped her arms around her friend's neck, he had grown again, it seemed!

"Surprise, dear friend." he whispered into her ear and only then Hester stopped laughing for she looked down at the jacket he wore. She immediately stepped back, as if she touched something extremely hot and her face turned as white as paper. She opened her mouth but nothing came out of it. Instead, Hester closed the door behind her and stepped on the verandah with Phillip who was dressed in a full American's army uniform with a cap proudly resting on his head.

Her eyes searched through him and his through her. Phillip finally took her hands in his own and looked into her eyes deeply "I'm sorry, Hester." he said softly but decidedly "I had to."

That was when Hester finally found a tongue in her mouth again "When?" she managed to ask.

"Enlisted a week ago and I'm supposed to go to the training camp in two days time." he replied readily "But I had to come and see grandma, and you. Before I go, that is."

Hester let out a trembling breath of the air. She couldn't hide her emotions anymore, not like she could when she was sending her brothers off, or even when Seb enlisted. Without her quite noticing, warm tears were rolling down her cheeks and she was suddenly in the arms of Phillip, her friend yet somehow almost a complete stranger because of the uniform her wore. "I can't loose you!" she sobbed into his shoulder "Phillip! Not you as well! There are simply too many people taken away from me… Everyone is taken away into this... horror!" she looked into his eyes, their faces only inches away "Why?" she asked helplessly.

"It sounds ridiculous but it's true: it's my duty, dear one." he whispered to her while smiling assuringly. He blushed then when he saw Hester gazing intensively into his eyes still "But I'll be fine. You'll see." he said and then looked at Hester's neck and took the silver necklace into his hands delicately.

"Everyone says so, Phillip. Every soldier does." she whispered herself, studying his face whilst he studied the necklace he gave her once upon a time "And they die. Jo's husband, Hawk, died at the front. Jimmy Flagg died two months ago. Don't make promises you won't keep, Phillip." she said almost angrily "I could be fooled like that by my brothers or my… Seb," she shivered at the mention of his name but quickly shrugged it off "But I'm not going to be fooled again."

He finally looked up at her once more, still holding the small, silver miniature of a cello in his hands "You're right, and I'm not going to fool you." he said, letting go of the necklace and putting his hands on her shoulders instead "But I can promise you that I will be keeping as safe as I can, always." he said seriously.

"Alright." she whispered back, wiping away the tears from her cheeks "You will write to me, won't you?" she asked him through a new wave of tears forming in her eyes one more time.

He chuckled softly "Of course I will." he said "I can't wait for you to send me one of those pairs of socks you always talk about in your letters to me."

Now it was Hester's turn to chuckle quietly as well before turning serious again "Phillip?" she asked him suddenly.

"Yes?" he replied, his voice lower and quieter as his eyes were focused on hers.

"You know that it doesn't change anything?" she questioned him and he looked at her for a moment before sighing heavily and managing a tiny smile of his.

"Yeah, I know." he said finally "I got used to that thought ever since your seventeenth birthday." he smiled wider at her and Hester knew that he was telling the truth "And I hope that things will work out finally between you and Seb."

"I don't know if they will." she said with a bit of a wistful look in her eyes "But we'll see about that." she smiled with courage and he grinned back at her.

"Hester?" he asked, blushing unexpectedly.

"Yes, Phillip?"

"Could you at least…" he asked and rubbed his ear nervously "-if you don't mind, that is, and it doesn't mean anything but…"

Hester put both of her hands on his cheeks and smiled into his eyes with tears in her own "Of course." she said and kissed him on the lips, softly. She pulled back a few moments later "Be safe, soldier." she told him and he grinned back at her.

"Always." he replied and he pulled Hester into another embrace and they both stood like that for what it seemed hours, hours both of them would never forget.

It's funny how with just one letter everything can change and then make a perfect sense in a whirl of chaos it brought.

It was a day after, a warm but foggy Thursday morning and Hester woke up very early probably because she couldn't sleep at all last night. How could she? She was thinking of Phillip in a new uniform and the fact that she had only one day more which she could spend with him before she was to set him off to the training camp all the boys she loved most went to.

After eating her breakfast downstairs as silently as she could, Hester brushed her hair and then put it into a loosened pony tail. She then put on her nice pink dress with a white neckline, black and practical yet still quite elegant shoes, and just as she was putting on her old silver earrings, she looked outside the window of her room and a frown appeared on her face. The postman was putting letters into their mailbox, and even though it was a very normal thing for her to witness, she felt that something was wrong but just didn't know what. It wasn't a feeling of panic that something happened to any of her boys at the front, no, but it was a queer feeling that something is simply different. But what? she asked herself as she was coming outside into the silence of the front of the House of Dreams. A thick scarf rested around her shoulders as she was opening the mailbox, curiously popping her head inside of it and taking out the whole of four envelopes. All white, meaning no telegram.

"Bills," she said to herself while rushing through the envelopes "-for dad from work, a letter from Lily…" and then there it was, Hester's hands froze and so did her eyes "Seb." she whispered to herself, tracing the handwriting of her sweetheart, or a sweetheart she once had, she still wasn't sure. She opened the letter and started reading it hungrily. The whole world seemed to stop for a moment when she finished and as she looked into the space in front of her. Then it was as if the world started to spin quicker than normally and suddenly, without hesitation, Hester was running down the lane, as if for her dear life, to the place she needed to walk through right now, the Rainbow Valley.

Phillip was sitting underneath the old White Lady with two blankets, one over him and the second one under him. A book was held in his hands as he looked up and was almost startled to see a running Hester, with a letter in her hand, her face red and her hair completely disassembled. He stood up quickly and ran up to meet her with a worried look on his face "Hester…?" he started but before he said anything else Hester was already in his arms, weeping like a baby. What surprised him was that her tears weren't tears of sadness or lost hope, they were tears of fury and anger. He pulled away, looking into her flushed face and his hands on her shaking arms "Hester, what are you doing here? Why are you crying?" he asked her caringly and worriedly.

She groaned in enmity and threw her hand which held a letter right in front of his face "Seb! You know him, don't you?" she, of course, didn't wait for an answer from Phillip and he looked at her with amazement. Hester, a person who was the last one to ever get angry or sarcastic was both in that very moment "You know what he wrote in this letter which he sent to me a week and a half ago? He wrote," she opened up the letter with her trembling hands and then after a few moments searching for the right sentence looked up at Phillip with a hurt and furious look in her hazel eyes "-he said that he doesn't love me anymore." she stopped reading there because another wave of tears ran through her cheeks and she wiped them away again "He never loved me - he wrote! He instead loves the person who turned her back on me on apparently discovering her own feelings towards him... Flora!" Hester put her hands on her face, pacing up and down in front of a nearly shocked to his bones Phillip "They're engaged!" she breathed out finally and collapsed onto the wet grass like a perfect definition of a 'crying mess'.

Phillip pulled her up though and embraced her. She sobbed into his chest as he was stroking her hair gently whilst saying "Shush, now, it's alright." into her ear. Finally, she stopped crying and pulled away from him, almost reluctantly, wiping away the tears with the hem of the scarf she still had around her shoulders.

"How is it alright, Phillip?" she asked him with a red face and misty eyes "Why did I deserve such treatment from someone I thought I would share my life with?"

Phillip shrugged helplessly "I don't know that, Hester." he said to her calmly and put his hands on her shoulders trying to calm her down a bit more "But I know one thing right now and that is that he never deserved you. But also that this whole situation only proves that you two simply weren't meant to be, it happens, you know." he smiled at her a bit awkwardly, and when Hester realised what he meant, she blushed a little herself.

She returned the smile weakly "I know." she said finally, a bit more calmly and steadily "But it's just that…" she looked away for a second before looking up at Phillip again "I did love him. How can I now be sure that love, and true love at that, really exists?" she asked him expectantly.

He grinned at her lightly, almost smirking "I suppose that all it takes is to look around you. Look at your parents, your aunts and uncles, your grandparents, your own brother!" he chuckled humorously and Hester smiled at him softly "It exists, Hester. Don't you dare lock the idea of love and romance out of your life just because some idiot turned out to be… well… an idiot." that was when both he and Hester started to laugh, quite hysterically, holding onto each other's arms so to not fall over.

Finally they stopped and were now looking into one another's eyes with grins on their faces "Seb is an idiot, you're so very right, Phillip!" she exclaimed and he chuckled again "No, I'm not going to lock love and romance out of my life, no. I'll wait for it but it will be an impatient wait, I think." she suddenly looked deeper into Phillip's eyes and her smile weakened slightly. She put her hand on his cheek tenderly "How much I wish I could love you in that special way, Phillip." she whispered all of a sudden "I tried. Many times actually. After you kissed me at my seventeenth birthday and during those few months when I could feel in my bones that something wasn't right between me and Seb. But I just… can't." a single tear dropped down her cheek "But now, now that Seb isn't in my future anymore and I can truly feel that he's not, I can now feel... hmm... something else instead."

Phillip looked down at her curiously "What can you feel then, Hester?" he asked her.

She looked away at something behind him which she couldn't quite see herself yet she could feel it as much as that sudden wind which blew into her face and brought colour onto her cheeks. Hester smiled half dreamily, half absent-mindedly and then looked back into Phillip's intrigued, smiling face "I can feel... although it might seem silly..." she said and felt a thrill which might have been a shiver running down her neck "-that there's someone out there who is waiting for me and for whom I am waiting myself." she frowned at her own idea "Is that strange? To feel something like that right after someone has broken up with you?" she asked him fearfully almost.

He grinned at her gently "No." he replied "It's quite… wonderful really." he said to her in his merry old voice "And, by God, I do envy that man. I already do, even though you haven't met him yet."

She smiled at him softly and squeezed his hand "And what if... I already have?" a sudden thought stroke her like a thunderbolt and she blushed with a sudden rush of emotions, a fresh and a ready smile appearing on her lips like the morning fog starting to appear all around them.

Phillip chuckled at her reaction and put her into an embrace again, a friendly one, the kind he was now used to using towards Hester "Well, that will only make it even more wonderful." he said to her and then Hester put her head up to look at him.

"And much more romantic." she added and both of them laughed together, tears running down both of their cheeks for they knew that it could be years before they would laugh together like that again.