DISCLAIMER: Guiding Light and its characters are the property of Procter & Gamble; no copyright infringement is intended.
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There was something different about this day.
Reva O'Neill sensed it the moment she woke.
To begin with, she was sure something had wakened her. Some sound, some movement? But the baby wasn't crying...
She rolled over, forced sleepy eyes to focus on her bedside table - and sat up with a gasp.
The only thing that should have been on that table was a clock radio. But next to it stood a framed photo of Jeffrey - the one she'd been keeping on the mantel, the only one she hadn't put away. And next to that was a small box, wrapped in silver foil and decorated with red, white, and blue ribbons.
While the objects themselves didn't seem alarming, her immediate reaction was terror. Someone's been in the house!
She leapt out of bed and rushed to check on baby Colin. When she found him sleeping like an angel, she made a quick check of every room. No one was there, and nothing else was out of place. Front and back doors were locked. At last she came back and sat, shakily, on the bed.
Shayne and Jonathan have keys...
But she couldn't imagine either of them coming in while she was asleep and making these small changes. If it had only been the photo, she might have convinced herself she had put it on the table last night. But the little box, wrapped like a gift? She was sure she'd never seen it before.
With trembling fingers, she tore off the ribbons and foil. The size of the box suggested that it might contain a piece of jewelry. But even a miniature bomb wouldn't have surprised her.
She was, however, surprised when she lifted the lid, and discovered it was a box of -
Nails?
Dumbfounded, she belatedly saw there was a folded note. She picked it up, unfolded it - and almost dropped it, in her shock on seeing the handwriting.
I told you I was going to the hardware store for nails, remember? For putting up our Fourth of July decorations. Sorry it's taken so long!
J.
She was too stunned to move or make a sound. She just sat there, stupefied...till a soft knock came at the front door.
He's alive! she realized. It was all a terrible mistake. He's back! He did this to break it to me gently, and now he's right outside the door!
She lurched to her feet, intending to race to the door...
And with that jolting motion, she really woke up.
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Somehow, she remembered the baby in time to suppress what would have been a scream.
Ohhh. Ohhh!
Oh my God. It was just a dream...
Sitting up in bed, she didn't even try to control her trembling, or stem the flow of tears.
She'd had dreams about Jeffrey before, of course. Often. Some of them embarrassingly erotic.
But none had been as vivid, as cruelly real, as this.
Whenever she woke from a dream about him, a song-fragment came into her mind. Rodgers and Hammerstein, she thought - though she couldn't place the musical, or remember more than the one phrase.
"Out of my dreams and into your arms I long to fly..."
Yes, that was still true. As true as ever, or she wouldn't have been so shaken by the dream.
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But...there really was something different about this day, she realized.
It was the day on which Josh had said he'd come back to Springfield. One year since he'd left. If he was true to his word, he'd be at the lighthouse at noon, hoping to take her and Colin away with him. Away somewhere - he hadn't even told her where. Maybe Tulsa, maybe not.
She still wasn't sure whether she'd go.
She hadn't heard from him - not a call or a note, all year. She knew he was keeping in touch with Billy and Shayne, but neither of them told her much. At times she'd thought there was a conspiracy of silence; at other times she'd convinced herself she was imagining it. Maybe they've been waiting for me to ask about him?
Now she was in the awkward position of not knowing who in Springfield - if anyone, other than herself - understood the significance of this day.
She knew Josh had told Billy about his plan. And in her first need to confide in someone, she'd picked, of all people, Olivia. But later, she'd asked Olivia to keep it secret, except from Natalia - who'd been so near them when they were talking that she'd probably heard it, anyway.
Billy. Vanessa, with whom he shared everything. Olivia and Natalia. They wouldn't have forgotten the plan itself. But if no one else had mentioned it to them all year (she certainly hadn't), they might have forgotten the date.
Were they the only ones who'd ever known? Or had Billy - or Josh himself - told Shayne, and others? Was it possible that all her friends and acquaintances knew about the decision she'd have to make this morning? She imagined them making gossipy phone calls. Even placing bets!
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She got out of bed, kissed Colin - without waking him yet - and began her normal morning routine. The things that would have to be done whether or not, an hour from now, she'd be packing their bags.
As she made up her bed, showered, and had a quick breakfast, she tried to organize her thoughts and reach a decision.
I've been Jeffrey O'Neill's widow longer than I was his wife...
On one point, she was sure.
I'll never take a new lover.
For her, that would be an inexcusable betrayal of Jeffrey. There were only two alternatives: to live out her life as the chaste widow of the man she still adored, or to reunite with the one who'd been a part of that life all along. Jeffrey had at least known about Josh - known she felt something for Josh, that didn't lessen her love for him.
Was it wrong of me not to confide in Shayne and Jonathan? If they know about today, are they feeling hurt because I didn't ask their advice?
But if she'd consulted them, she would have had to consult Marah and Dylan as well. Too much discussion might have driven her half-crazy - and set her children feuding among themselves.
She feared that no matter how many of them she'd consulted, Jonathan would have been a lone voice urging her not to go.
She'd never been able to forget Shayne's telling her he couldn't bond with her as Jonathan had. It's a miracle even one of them could. I deserted them both, however unintentionally. Shayne might seem close to her now, but he had to know she was to blame for his father's absence. He probably wished she'd been the one to leave. Probably cared less about his parents being reunited than about getting Josh to move back to Springfield. But with that not an option, he'll be rooting for his father's happiness.
Marah would be pulling for Josh too - as would Dylan, his nephew. Neither of them lived in Springfield, anyway.
But Jonathan had no reason to care about Josh, one way or the other. He had every reason to want his mother - Sarah's grandmother - to stay where she was.
And she worried about Jonathan. He'd seemed anxious, stressed-out, for the last few months. I probably made a mistake when I encouraged him to live in the home he would have shared with Tammy. His memories are too painful.
Still, she was leaning toward going. That might even be best for Jonathan, in the long run. Perhaps he was reluctant to leave "his and Tammy's" house for fear of hurting her feelings. If she herself begged him to move into a newly-vacated Cross Creek, pretending she couldn't bear the thought of its being unoccupied, he'd have the perfect excuse.
But...
Do I have the right to do this to Colin?
She'd be taking him away from everyone and everything he knew. To go off with a man who, after a year's absence, would be a stranger to him...and yet would threaten, at some point, to usurp the place in his heart that should belong to the father who'd loved him so much.
Josh was no kin to Colin. Shayne and Jonathan and their children were his kin.
Like it or not, she herself was old enough to be Colin's grandmother. Or even his great-grandmother - she had a granddaughter in college! She'd hoped that to make his life a little more normal, he could grow up near, and emotionally close to, his younger relatives. In particular, she'd hoped he and Henry would become almost like brothers.
On the other hand...
Do I have the right not to do this for Colin?
How important was it that a boy have a father figure in his life? Much as she wished it otherwise, Colin's father was dead, and he wouldn't remember him. His adult half-brothers had children of their own. Realistically, the only man who could serve as a full-time father figure for Colin, and was presumably willing to do so, was Josh. Did she have the right to deny Colin that, because of her attachment to Jeffrey's memory?
Time and again, she kept coming back to the thought I've been Jeffrey O'Neill's widow longer than I was his wife.
There was another person she had to consider, though she hated forming his name even in her mind.
The man who'd made her a widow. Edmund.
In all the months Josh had been gone, no one she knew had mentioned Edmund Winslow. It was as if they'd forgotten him completely.
She never could.
She hated the thought of Edmund gloating somewhere, congratulating himself on all he'd accomplished. But his satisfaction with what he'd done might be the only thing keeping his enemies safe.
By bringing Jeffrey's plane down and killing him, he'd dealt crushing blows to her and baby Colin. He'd also managed - however indirectly - to ruin Shayne's chance for happiness with Dinah, and Marina's with Mallet. He probably thinks that marriage broke up because Marina couldn't forgive Mallet for having suspected her of killing "John Doe."
Edmund almost certainly didn't know Shayne and Marina had, discreetly, become a couple.
If I go away with Josh, will he find out about it, and go on a kidnapping or killing spree because he thinks I'm happy again?
Even if I'm not all that "happy"?
No, she told herself, I'm being paranoid.
Her departure with Josh - if she went - would be so low-key that even if Edmund learned she'd left Springfield, he wouldn't know she'd gone with a man. Or where they'd wound up.
And he must have abandoned the idea of abducting his grandson Henry. The media had interviewed Shayne for human-interest features about his son's rare blood type - which he, fortunately, shared. Edmund had to know the child might not survive if he snatched him and tried to raise him.
With a wry smile, she thought of Phillip and Beth. They had a history with Edmund, too. But so many things had happened to the Spauldings in recent years, unrelated to him, that they'd seemingly put him out of their minds. They'd been happily married for ten months now - and evidently, there hadn't been as much as a murmur from Edmund.
Phillip and Beth had the right idea. Edmund will only win if we let fear of him paralyze us. He probably doesn't have a real, flesh-and-blood spy within a thousand miles of here.
Finally, Josh.
She knew she could truthfully tell Josh, "I love you. I always have, and I always will." She'd done that a year ago. (Echoing words he had spoken first...)
And yet she also knew that deep down, she no longer loved him in the same way he loved her.
On that day when she'd last seen him, he'd made it clear he still thought of her as the great love of his life. But to her, he'd become one of a dozen or more people she loved in various ways.
She didn't love him "like a brother." If she went with him, she'd share his bed - and enjoy it, in a comfortable-as-an-old-shoe, middle-aged way. She'd be grateful for his devotion, for his help in raising Colin; and she'd find contentment, of a sort, in giving him pleasure.
But she wasn't passionately in love with him.
With Jeffrey, she'd been swept up in an unexpected love that changed everything. She'd felt young again - seen a world of new, exciting possibilities opening before them, without any need to make an artificial "fresh start" by leaving Springfield. Perhaps it had been too good to be true, too magical to be real. But the interlude with Jeffrey had been the high point of her life.
Would it be fair to Josh to begin a new relationship with him without telling him that?
Was it possible he already knew, wanted her anyway, and it was better left unsaid?
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Don't get ahead of myself, she thought wryly. He may not even show up - may have convinced himself I never took such a harebrained idea seriously.
She didn't think that was likely. But it was just plausible enough that it had given her an excuse not to tell Shayne or Jonathan - and to hope no one else had told them.
Josh might not show up. Or he might come, but only to tell her he'd changed his mind...had realized the plan was ridiculous, and knew she felt the same way. Perhaps he'd even tell her that by now, there was another woman in his life.
Would I be crushed, or relieved?
But in all probability, she knew, Josh would still want what he'd wanted a year ago.
And she'd have to give him an answer.
Soon.