Sea breeze, salty air and the smell of country.
Home
Una was finally home as she got off the plane in Charlottetown, she steps onto the tar mack and wheels her suitcase that has seen many things and places over the weeks.
She takes a deep breath as she walks into the airport and down the hallway until she was in at the set of doors. She could already see her father and stepmother Rosemary waiting for her on the other side.
She walks through the doors, takes a long deep breath she stops in front of them.
"Una," her father says softly. Soon she is enveloped in his embrace that is filled with every ounce of love that a father could have.
She hugs Rosemary next when she realizes that Bryce is sitting down waiting as he plays his video game.
"Don't I get a hug?" She asks him going towards him.
"You barely said goodbye when you left, so why would I say hello?" He says in all his pre-pubescent angst. He was ten now, and in the eight months she had been away he was slowly starting to change.
"Bryce," Rosemary says quickly.
Una sighs and sits down next to him. Feeling that this was important, more important than getting home soon as possible. "I'm sorry Bryce, that was wrong of me to do even if I was feeling dreadful."
"People said you wanted to die." He tells her and she sucks in a breath, but she slowly lets it go and smiles weakly at him.
"I did," she admits to him. "I needed to heal myself so I wouldn't think such things again. I'm sorry if I hurt you leaving as I did."
Home is always home in some way or somehow. Her room is still the same, her clothing is still in her dresser and closet. Books and CDs on her bookshelves. Purple bedding and fresh lavender sheets were on the bed. The photos are still there, up on the walls left she had never left. She steps on her bed and pulls them off one by one. Tucking them away in a shoebox, until there were no more reminders.
She pulls out a photo from her suitcase that she Alec did as a tourist thing and pins it up on the wall.
"So is that him?" Una turns as she hears Rosemary's voice. She's holding a cup of tea in her hands and places it on Una's old desk, taking a closer look at the photo.
"He's cute, I'll give you that," She says grinning and sitting in the chair. "A regular David in a way."
"He's beautiful," Una says quietly, "and definitely not David." She adds on with a touch of cheekiness.
Rosemary stifles a chuckle at the mention before sobering when she notices the box of old photos. "I mean to take those down."
"It's okay, it's a bit like closure?" Una tells her.
"Well I will let you get settled in, dinner is at the usual time. I'm sure with the time difference you'll want to make a call?"
Una blushes and nods her head.
Wifi still has the same password thankfully, she boots up her computer and signs into Skype.
He's there waiting for her it seems as she gets a call coming in instantly.
"I didn't think your room would be that colourful," is the first thing that Alec says as the camera begins to work.
The days following are oddly quiet, her siblings are scattered about with lives of their own at this point. Even Carl who was eighteen was barely at home, either working or out with friends it seemed. Faith and Jem lived together, Jerry had an apartment of his own in the city.
Still, Una feels like a circus animal when she walks into church with her family. She gives Jerry and Carl a hug as she sees them in the family pew. Of course, Faith is there as well, with Jem in another pew. Not with the Blythes, but in another one, but still, she feels the intent gaze of Mrs. Blythe. She straightens her back and sits straighter and her head upright as she waits for mass to begin. She's wearing her new dress, having gone through her closet twice over. Deep in the corners, she finds clothing that she doesn't remember buying but is there. Maybe Christmas presents or things. Rosemary offers a day to go shopping for some new things if she wishes, seeing the new dress in person for the first time. And the pile of clothing that Una plans to donate.
Faith and Jem come together afterwards, who gives her a long hug in the basement of the church as she stands around greeting people.
"Good to see you back," Faith says in a whisper. "Good to see you happy."
"Thank you, it's nice to be back," Una tells her. "Sorry I missed the party."
"Ahh don't worry about that, you missed nothing but a bunch of drunk people," Jem says giving her a sturdy hug. "They aren't here also," he whispers afterwards.
Una nods letting her guard down slightly. "Your mother is though." She tells him.
"Mom—mom won't bother you. Rosemary laid into her before the engagement. She actually rather gave her a tongue lashing afterwards." Jem tells her. "She's ashamed otherwise right now to approach you, especially in public."
Una nods her head.
"Though I hear you met someone," Jem says changing the subject, loud enough for almost everyone to hear.
"Jem!" Faith shushes him.
"I'm curious," Carl says joining the group. He's holding hands with a pretty brunette. "Oh this is Beth," he says. "We've been dating since spring," he says blushing.
"Nice to meet you," Una says nodding her head to the younger girl.
She couldn't escape the awkward conversations though, the thinly veiled attempts for information and jabs at her past decisions. After three cups of weak tea, and a headache she leaves before anyone else could stop her.
A missed telephone call, and another message.
She's home but the growing gnawing pit in her stomach tells her that as much as she wants to stay.
She'll never survive the gossip, not yet anyway.
"How did the interview go?" Una asks one afternoon a few days later. The time changes were tough to work around at times, and she could only feel like they would only get worse when she was further behind her.
"Good I think," Alec says after a moment of lagging internet. "How is being home?"
"All right so far, I didn't realize how much I have missed it, but at the same time, it's draining," Una tells him. "Though I miss you, something terrible. I feel like I shouldn't but I do."
"I miss you as well," he says smiling.
"We are rather pathetic isn't it?" Una says honestly. "That it's only been a week and yet we're already mooning about this?"
"Just motivates us both to figure this out I suppose?" Alec says simply. "Do you dream about me?"
"I dream about things you can do to me," Una says with quiet cheekiness and Alec grins rather unabashedly.
"Do you know? What do you dream about?" He asks in a low voice.
"I am not telling you that right now," Una shakes her head embarrassed. "My parents are home, and my little brother is across the hall."
"How is he?" Alec asks, knowing about Bryce's indifference upon her return.
"He's?" Una says sighing. "I didn't think me leaving as I did would affect him as it did," Una tells him sighing. "He's ten almost 11 and a bit too knowledgeable these days or the town talked enough that his friends talked. I don't know, but coming home to him saying that people were talking about how I wanted to die…whether they knew how true it was or not wasn't something I expected and something I never wanted him to ever hear?"
"Just reassure him that you're not thinking that way anymore maybe? Spend time with him and let him know that you care and that you are sorry you hurt him?" Alec says after a moment unsure of what to tell her.
"I've tried, he just avoids me pretending to be busy or just leaves in the morning and only comes home for dinner," Una says sighing. "I hate that I hurt him."
"Just keep trying to break though, he'll come around and if it still fails try ice cream?" Alec tells her. "Though I'm used to dealing with teenage girls, so it might be different but I think Ice cream is a universal thing?"
"I'll try that," Una says sighing.
They talk about mundane things, they are used to speaking about these days. Plans for their days and what the upcoming week was like for them, trying to plan calls and text messages as they could. A small mention of her period that was expected, and having to adjust the time of her pills but otherwise everything seemed fine so far.
They say goodnight, and Una decides to go out for a walk. Glen St Mary always felt quaint and it was in many ways. Whitewashed buildings of a century old, the old lighthouse up in the harbour.
She sits in her old haunt, wrapping her arms around her. She knows this landscape by heart, but it is never not breathtaking. She could sit here for hours, content at a clam in her shall if weather permitted.
"Una?"
"What are you doing here?" Una asks suddenly standing up from her spot quickly.
"I heard you were home," he says it so simply like he thought she would want to see him.
"Yeah, and considering everything I thought you would know well to leave me alone," Una says folding her arms over her chest.
"Honestly I was just out for a walk, I wasn't looking for you,"
"And yet you still decided to come over and talk to me. If you weren't looking for me, you wouldn't have disturbed me."
"Come on, Una," he almost whines at her supposed injustice.
"No," Una says shaking her head. "You know I don't want to see you, so why don't you do back to your girlfriend, fiancé, and mother of your child and don't do anything you will regret."
"Damn it, Una, I'm trying to apologize, I'm trying to say that I want to put water under the bridge."
"I don't want your apologies Walter, and I sure as hell know I don't need your forgiveness," Una stressed as she pulls the cardigan around her shoulders. It still smells like him—Alec, his cologne and she can see his smiles.
"Oh, so that's how it will be you traipse all over Europe, doing god knows what with that guy I kept hearing whispers about? God, I look at you now and wonder if I even knew you at all."
"You never knew me! My god, I bent myself broken trying—to make myself be someone you might notice. I don't know exactly who I am, but I know one thing whoever I became on that train to Paris, to Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece. I am far more proud of her than I ever will be of the Girl you knew and allowed you to use as you did!"
It hits an honest nerve because she watches him pale as Used at you did.
"If you want forgiveness? How about learning to take some of the blame and forgiving yourself for your own actions, and maybe then you will get the forgiveness you are looking for. But you won't get it from me because I have done my soul searching. I have prayed, cried and wandered one too many Cathedrals, to which I wonder if I am actually Catholic these days. Going to sacred places, and trying to find an answer, to come to a simple conclusion that I am at peace with my choices." Una shouts at him, tears threatening to pour from her eyes.
She watches him back away. Once, even a year ago she would run after him. Try and try to get him to see her, make him feel something. Today she doesn't and it takes every ounce of willpower to not fall back into herself when his stormy eyes pierce into her.
"You have a baby on the way, don't ruin that for yourself." She reminds him, even as it sends a piercing feeling into her heart.
"Una?" She hears Bryce's voice call out from outside her room. She barely made it inside before she is crying bitterly.
It had taken all her strength, all of her strength and thoughts of Alec to not break down on this hill.
Bryce looks gangly and tall in her doorway, where was the little boy she knew and cuddle with only a few years ago?
"He hurt you again didn't he?" He says it so simply by crawling onto her bed. "You're going to run away again."
"I'm not running away," Una says through her tears. "It's so complicated to explain Bryce."
"Everyone keeps saying they'll explain it when I'm older, but I don't think they are. You got sick and spent the night in the hospital and then you came home. But you weren't the same, and then you left and everyone is whispering things and my friends tell me things they hear from their parents." Bryce says stubbornly. "Just tell me?"
Una sighs, sniffling and stays silent for a long few minutes.
"What do you know?" She asks him.
"That you lost a baby?" He says. "Or chose not to have a baby, but isn't that a sin?"
Una sighs. "That world isn't black and white Bryce, no really no matter what the bible tells us."
"So it's true?" His brow furrows. "Is that why you were sad?"
"In some ways, yes, and in some ways no?" Una starts, chewing her lip for a moment. "I loved someone who was never going to love me back. To bring a child into that, it wasn't good or healthy for anyone in the picture. Babies should be loved and cherished and wanted, much like you had been." Una tells him quietly.
"And that hurt you enough you wanted to die?"
"It hurt immensely, and I thought a lot of dark things at that point. I knew I couldn't— I couldn't stay here and move on, or heal myself with knowing he was around the corner," Una says carefully. "I couldn't face my own self. I needed to get away, I needed to learn things about myself. I searched for something to heal the pieces of my heart and soul."
"Did you?" Her little brother's voice asks quietly.
"In some ways I did," Una says nodding her head.
"Then why were you crying?"
"Because sometimes you can do all the soul searching you need, but the other person still refuses to own up to their own mistakes?" Una tells him simply.
"Do you want me to egg his car?"
"Lord no Bryce!" Una exclaims, wiping her eyes and running nose. "Excuse me for a moment."
She goes across to the washroom for tissues and when she comes back she sits down back on her bed.
"Who's that?" Bryce says pointing to a photo.
"His name is Alec," Una says. "He's someone special to me."
"That means you kiss him don't you?" He makes a face. "I can hear you talk across the hall by the way. You love him?"
"It is a little early to call it love," Una says quietly.
"Una?"
"Yes?"
"I don't want you to leave again." He says quietly. "But I understand if you have to."