Chapter 24

The letter arrives shortly before Rilla's eighteenth birthday.

Aware that it would come, she made sure to be up to meet the postman every morning in the weeks prior. Busying herself in the hall, she invariably hurried to the door the moment he knocked and relieved him of his stack of letters with a bright smile and a cheerful greeting. Quickly sorting through the letters meant for Ingleside, she collected those meant for her and deposited the rest on the side table in the hall, ready for their recipients to come and get them.

Of course, her sudden interest in the post didn't go unnoticed. Susan grumbled at her to stop loitering and make herself useful, while Nan teased her about waiting for a letter from a nice young man. In response, Rilla rolled her eyes at her sister and, not daring to roll her eyes at Susan, henceforth made sure to hold a broom or a rag while she waited.

When the awaited letter finally comes, she quickly stashes it in the pocket of her apron, looking over her shoulder to make sure that no-one saw it. Thankfully, Susan is busy in the kitchen, her father is preoccupied with today's paper and her mother is discussing the choice of refreshments for tomorrow's Ladies' Aid meeting with Nan. Only Di looks at Rilla curiously as she carries the remaining letters into the house and places them on the side table.

"Anything of interest?" Di asks.

"A letter from Shirley." Rilla brandishes the letter in question, her name printed on the front in her brother's familiar no-frills writing.

"Is he still in Ontario?" queries Di.

Looking down at the letter, Rilla nods. "It appears so." She's come to recognise the appearance of post that made its way all the way over the Atlantic and Shirley's letter looks too neat to have travelled that far.

Di nods, having likely come to the same conclusion. "You'll tell us if he wrote anything about being shipped out?"

"Of course." After all, while the letters themselves might be private, they all make sure to share important information about brothers and friends, and Shirley receiving orders to leave for England certainly counts as very important. For now, it appears he's still busy training in Ontario, but after three months, they expect it won't be long before he's deemed ready to be sent into combat. After all, as Shirley himself explained to them over Christmas, airplanes are getting ever more important for reconnaissance and the Flying Corps is in dire need of good pilots.

"Anything from Jem?" Di wants to know, eyeing the other letter her sister is holding.

"There's a letter from Jem for Mum on the side table, and one for Nan from Jerry," Rilla informs her, before looking down at the second letter in her hand. "This one is from my friend Daisy."

"Daisy," repeats Di, looking a little puzzled. "Is she a friend from Queen's?"

It would be easiest to nod and allow Di to believe whatever, but it would also be a needless lie. As someone whose entire life appears to consist of lies, Rilla feels disinclined to add one more, especially one that doesn't feel strictly necessary.

"I met her when I lived with Aunt Dora last year," she therefore explains.

Has it really already been a year?

Di looks more closely at the letter. "Edmonton? I thought Aunt Dora lived in some village in the mountains?"

"She does." Rilla stacks both letters so Shirley's lies on top. "Daisy moved to Edmonton to live with her sister around the time I came back here."

She is, she realises, entering dangerous territory. There's a reason no-one ever talked much about her time out west in the previous year, and while she's reasonably certain that neither of the twins suspects the true reason for her stay, she also doesn't want to give them cause to ask questions. Questions, after all, lead to answers and if one is not careful, answers can reveal far more information than one is comfortable with.

Thus, knowing Di to be inquisitive by nature and not wanting to invite further questions, Rilla points to the side table. "There's a letter from you from Avonlea."

Di perks up. "Oh, good! It'll be from Anne-Cordelia."

Her sister's attention thus diverted, Rilla slips past her and quickly walks up the stairs before anyone else can stop her. She knows she will be roped into helping prepare the Ladies' Aid meeting soon, but before that, she needs to read her letter, the one she hid from Di and the rest of her family. She needs to find out whether the contents are what she hoped for and if that's the case, she needs to prepare a strategy to tell them about it.

This is something she can't get wrong and thus, something she has to prepare for carefully.

She doesn't, therefore, broach the subject right away. Instead, she sits patiently through the Ladies' Aid meeting in the afternoon, smiling whenever she's addressed and otherwise working on finishing a pair of woollen socks she promised to Carl. She is, she's well aware, perfectly inept at knitting, and the good ladies of the Glen appear to think so as well, because they offer periodic advice right up until Cornelia Elliot takes the knitting from her hands without ceremony and finishes the sock in record time. She even adds a nifty pattern near the border that Rilla is sure she would never have mastered.

As usual, the Ladies' Aid meeting runs longer than planned, for it takes time to exchange all new information about everyone in the village, so by the time it's over, they only take a light supper before retiring to bed. When Rilla does so, the letter in question is placed under her pillow, in the hope that by literally sleeping on it, she will be able to think of a way to broach its contents with her family.

The next morning, she doesn't have a well-defined plan, but she has, at least, made a decision.

She will talk to her father.

She knows that there are easier ways. She could go to her mother first, who already supported her when she wanted to go to Queen's and to whom she has rebuilt a fragile, cautious connection since Christmas. They're still treading on tiptoes around one another, but as long as they carefully pretend the previous year didn't happen, they're fine, or as close as they possibly can be.

If not her mother, she could also approach her sisters for help. She's not particularly close to them, never has been, but she bears them no ill and knows they feel the same way. If she approached them and asked for help, she doesn't think they'd deny her their support, as long as it was in their power to provide it. Both being curious by nature, she might have to give them some well-measured information, but she thinks she'd be able to walk that line, if it came to it.

Alternatively, she could, of course, repeat the neat little clou she pulled off with Shirley's help a year ago when it came to convincing her father to allow her to go to Queen's. There are often visitors in Ingleside and if she timed it correctly, she could make her announcement when some of these visitors are present, thus forcing her father's hand as she did once before. She doesn't assume it would be easy, but if she played her hand well, she thinks could make it work.

She's aware of those three options. She also knows she won't choose either one.

She's right sick of the cunning plans. She's sick of the lies and the half-truths, of the games played to deceive and mislead others. She's sick of saying one thing and meaning another, of never getting to say what's truly on her mind. She's sick of hiding her thoughts and hiding her feelings and hiding herself.

This once, she will say the truth, and she will do it bravely.

It's not that she isn't nervous to do so, that her heart isn't beating in her throat and that her hands aren't shaking, but she's resolved to do this right, for once. Her hand might tremble as she raises it to knock on the door of the library, but she steels herself and knocks anyway.

"Come in," calls her father's voice.

Carefully, Rilla opens the door. She knows there's no going back now, so she closes her eyes and steps forward, into the room.

"Rilla." Her father sounds surprised.

"Hello, father." She opens her eyes and looks directly at him.

There's a moment of pause, before her father extends his hand to point at the chair standing opposite him at his desk. "Please, sit."

It doesn't escape Rilla that the last time she was in this room like this, she wasn't invited to take a seat. Considering it an encouraging sign, she pulls out the chair and sits down on it, facing her father.

"What brings you here?" he asks, politely interested.

Rilla doesn't reply. Instead, she reaches into the pocket of her apron and pulls out the letter. It rustles slightly in her tight grip, and she has to will herself to let go of it again, but after a moment of reluctance, she places it on the desk between them.

Without hesitating, her father pulls the letter closer towards him and examines it closely. He sees, Rilla knows, her name printed in neat letters on the front, and above it a red shield below a crown.

"Victoria College?" he reads the letters printed right below the shield, and Rilla hates the note of surprise in his voice.

"I was accepted to study at Victoria College," she explains, trying to keep her own voice steady. "It's part of the University of Toronto. The female students are taught alongside male students, but live separately inside Annesley Hall."

"You applied to Victoria College and were accepted?" Again, the surprise in her father's voice is difficult to miss, and for a moment, his disbelief is almost enough to discourage Rilla.

She teeters, briefly, on the edge of withdrawing, of snatching back her letter and running from the room, but then another, more defiant part of her takes over. She leans into that feeling, fuelled by the pride and stubbornness so well-known in her family, because anger is an easier emotion to manage than sadness is.

"I did well at Queen's," she informs her father, bristling visibly. "I might not be clever, but I worked hard. I spent every moment studying and it paid off. I did well in most of my subjects and my teacher wrote me a lovely letter of recommendation saying so as well. She thinks I can be successful in college and evidently, Victoria College thinks so, too!"

Her father blinks, clearly surprised by her sudden outburst. "I saw the report of your final exams. I know you did well. I'm… I'm proud of you for what you achieved. Your mother is, too."

Now, Rilla is the one who's briefly rendered speechless. "You… you are?" she asks after a moment, all anger having dissipated in an instant. Her voice, she notices, sounds oddly small.

"We are," her father reiterates. "We know you worked hard to graduate. It's an achievement to be proud of."

"Then why are you so surprised that Victoria College accepted me as a student?" Rilla demands to know, hurt turning to anger once more. "If you think I did well, why are you surprised that they want me?"

Her father watches her for several seconds, his expression measured and thoughtful. "I'm not surprised Victoria College accepted you. I'm surprised you picked it to apply to."

"If you're alluding to it being Methodist-affiliated, the alternatives were Anglican, Catholic or, God forbid, non-denominational. On balance, Methodist felt like the best fit," Rilla informs him primly, knowing fully well that religion has nothing to do with her father's disbelief.

As expected, he shakes his head. "Only Cornelia Elliot will care about Victoria College's religious affiliation. Religion aside, my thought was merely that Redmond would have been the obvious choice. Don't you agree?"

Not for her, who she aims to follow in the footsteps of Clara Brett Martin.

"I believe that Victoria College offers me more fitting possibilities than Redmond does," she replies, choosing her words carefully. It's a half-truth again, she recognises, and she dislikes having to use one, but instinct tells her that some things cannot be revealed at this point. Her plan to become a lawyer and reclaim her son is one such thing.

"Toronto is very far away," her father points out, watching her closely.

Rilla narrows her eyes in defiance. "Are you afraid I'll get in trouble again? Well, I won't! I was on my best behaviour the entire time in Charlottetown. I barely went anywhere except for Queen's and our boarding house, and if I did, Shirley was with me. After he left, the two people I saw the most of were my landlady and one of my teachers. I didn't even make any friends, because everyone must have thought me such a bore!"

Her father inclines his head, and his calm in the face of her emotions is positively maddening. "Toronto isn't Charlottetown. It's much bigger and much further away."

"I know that. Toronto was one of the cities I travelled through last year," Rilla reminds him. In her eagerness to make her point, she blurts out the words without considering them fully, and realises too late that she has thus broached the subject that they don't talk about – her stay out west and the reason for it.

A long moment passes, before her father nods slowly. "Indeed you did, didn't you?" he replies thoughtfully.

Feeling defensive, Rilla lowers her chin and draws up her shoulders protectively. "I know I made a mistake. I know it was a horrible, shameful mistake. I might not be very clever, but I'm clever enough not to make the same mistake twice."

"No." Her father's voice is quiet, almost pensive, but his eyes are alert. "Because you paid the price."

They're her own words, she recognises, words she threw at his feet in a fit of hot anger right before leaving for Queen's. She said more, she knows. She remembers every word she said that day. She just doesn't know if she wants her father to remember them, too.

"I won't deny that we were very disappointed in you," he tells her, but his voice is calm, bar of any accusation. "We raised you better than that, your mother and I. We never thought any child of ours would ever bring such shame upon our family, especially not one of our daughters."

His words settle heavily on Rilla's shoulders, but she wills herself not to falter under her father's gaze. Squaring her shoulders, he meets his eyes, not defiantly so, but not simpering either.

"I apologise for all the problems I caused," she responds, her voice trembling only the tiniest bit. "I never meant to make things difficult for mother and you, and certainly not during times such as these. For causing you pain, I'm sorry."

She won't say that she regrets what she did. She can never regret her son.

"I believe you," replies her father after a moment of silence. "And I apologise as well."

Startled, Rilla sits up straighter.

Her father… apologising?

"I won't excuse your behaviour, though I recognise that your apology is genuine, and I believe that you didn't mean to cause problems for anyone," her father continues calmly. "However, in hindsight, I can't deny that mistakes were made on part of your mother and myself as well."

Too stunned to say anything, Rilla just sits opposite him, unmoving and hardly daring to breathe. Is he really saying what she thinks she's saying?

"I have no doubt that it was the best possible decision to send you to live with Dora. Only by sending you far away could we protect your reputation and ensure that you can continue to live your life unencumbered by what happened. There is no doubt in my mind that we chose correctly in doing so. However…" Her father, hitherto having been utterly certain in his choice of words, now lowers his head, briefly pinching the bridge of his nose. "However, looking back, I believe we were mistaken in not explaining all this to you."

"I… I thought that… that your reason for sending me away was something like this," Rilla offers, wringing her hands in her lap nervously.

"Yes, you're too perceptive not to have understood," agrees her father. "Nevertheless, I recognise that we should have prepared you better. Our plan was all along for you to return after… after everything was over, yet I believe we never said so to you."

Silently, Rilla shakes her head. She remembers, of course, how she agonised over whether she would be allowed back home after what she did. If she had known that her parents meant for her to return all along… she can't deny things would have been easier.

"What is more," her father continues, looking down at the top of his desk, "as a doctor, I should have ensured that you were better prepared for… the inevitable. I told myself that Dora and her family's doctor would inform you about everything you needed to know, but I recognise that I ought to have done so before your departure."

"Dora did tell me a little," Rilla hears herself reply. "It was still… confusing and… a bit scary."

It's a perfect understatement, of course, given that she still has nightmares about that night and Dr Anderson's treatment of her, but she knows she won't reveal anything about that to her father. It's not deceit keeping her quiet, but a need to protect herself from acknowledging the pain and terror she can't seem to shake. They might be her constant companions in the night, but she refuses to allow them to follow her into daylight.

Her father raises his head and looks at her. "I have been unable to forget what you said last year about the delivery. I have… thought a lot about it since then. The truth is, when we sent you with Dora, I convinced myself that you would be looked after well and that you would be taken care of. I should have known that the delivery would be difficult for you, young and slight as you are, but I told myself it would be fine. When Dora wrote afterwards to tell us that you were recovering successfully, I believed that everything went well, without making sure that this was truly the case. I pulled the wool over my own eyes, if you will. I was wrong to do so."

Of all the words her father could have possibly said, none could have been as unexpected as these, yet hearing them, Rilla realises how much she longed for these words. To have her suffering acknowledged, and to hear that not everything happened was her fault, that what happened wasn't just consequence for what she did, means more to her than she herself can express.

Overcome by the feelings welling up inside of her, Rilla doesn't respond to her father, cannot respond to him, and is thus rendered silent. Studying her, her father appears to understand that she has no command of words at this very moment, and he doesn't make her find them.

Instead, he tells her, very calmly, "I permit you to go to Toronto to further your studies. I'm not doing it as a way to make up for what happened, nor because I'm concerned you will use social pressures to force my hand again. Instead, I'm doing it because I agree that you're too clever to make the same mistake twice, and because you earned your place at Victoria College through hard work and dedication."

"You'll allow me to go?" Rilla asks, having to make sure. As she awaits her father's reply, she hardly dares to breathe.

"I will," he replies, quite practically. "I trust that you'll conduct yourself in an exemplary way throughout. If just one word reaches us that gives us cause to doubt it, I won't hesitate to recall you home immediately."

Quickly, Rilla nods. "There won't be any need to do that." This, she can promise with absolute certainty.

Her father nods, and for once, she thinks he shares her opinion on the matter, if, perhaps, not her level of surety.

"With your permission, I will go upstairs to write back and accept my place?" she asks him, already scraping her chair back to get up.

"Yes, do," he agrees. "I will handle the financial side, as I did for your siblings."

It's not inevitable, Rilla knows, that he covers the cost for college in the way he did for the others, not after what she did. "Thank you," she tells him, sincerely. "I appreciate it, truly."

In response, she receives another nod, indicating that her father doesn't mean to discuss the matter further, now that is has been decided. Not wanting to keep him any longer, she gets up and walks over to the door, ready to go upstairs and write her reply to Victoria College.

However, her hand already on the doorknob, she finds herself hesitating. "Father?" she asks, without turning.

"Yes?" comes his voice from behind her.

Rilla takes a deep breath as the question rises to her lips, ready to finally be spoken, prepared to finally be asked. She parts her lips, almost tasting the words – but then, in the very last moment, closes her mouth again and swallows the question, unspoken.

"Nothing," she tells her father. "I'll leave you to your work."

For what she meant to ask, of course, was whether he knows that he's alive, that her son survived, that he's out there somewhere, now grown into a toddler, possibly walking and speaking already.

Do you know?

But, the words still on her lips, she suddenly knew that she couldn't speak them, couldn't ask the one question burning on her soul, because the answer might be too unbearable to fathom. Of course, if her father answered No and told her he had no idea, things would be so much easier, but if he said Yes…

If the answer was Yes, she'd have to hate her parents and she's not sure she has the strength for it.

A/N: Once more, I have both a fun and a work trip coming up, so there will be a break of two weeks. The next chapter is scheduled for November 14th.

To Joanna:
Yes, I was almost very much certain it was you ;). And please, never apologise for long and detailed reviews! I very much appreciate all the time and effort that goes into writing your comments and I'm grateful that you're sharing your thoughts with me. It's truly always so interesting to read what you think about my chapters and I also really appreciate your knowledge and insight, especially considering LMM, her life and how it influenced her writing.
We're still living in a world where women aren't equal to men, not even truly in most developed countries, because being equal on paper and being equal in practice isn't necessarily the same. Considering that even today, that's a very real problem we're dealing with, it's intriguing to consider how much more pronounced it was a hundred years ago. Back then, higher education for women was such a rare thing still, and women were hardly allowed or able to make their mark on society in a visible way outside of their homes and their immediate community. It's not something I necessarily set out to explore with this story when I first conceived the idea, but as I wrote it, I realised it fit quite nicely with my theme. As Rilla matures and her world is opened up, she's exposed to new ideas and to people outside of her previous social service. Queen's gives her a taste of it already, but as we see in this chapter, she's off to a much bigger and diverse city than Charlottetown next, where she will not only further her academic education but also broaden her horizons.
You make some really interesting points about AoI and the way it depicts the Blythe children! I must admit that's it not one of my favourite books (in fact, it might be at the bottom of the list alongside AoWW, which might be because LMM didn't really want to write either book), so it's not one I re-read frequently or gave overly much thought to before, but now that you point it out, it's hard to miss how it divides the children to all have their own adventures. When thinking of the childhood days in the Glen, I suppose I tend to picture RV more than AoI, and while it features much more heavily on the Merediths, it does tend to portray them as more of a unit. I think I transferred that to the Blythes and pictured the older four children to be something of a unit as well, but you're right that AoI rarely shows them as such. There are positives to that, I guess, especially in that it allows the twins to have lives and personalities of their own, but we're certainly told that they're close much more than we're shown it. It's certainly a good thing, considering, that we have an active enough imagination to picture it, at least ;).
I must admit that I find Gertrude Oliver to be quite difficult to write. I've never really attempted it before, but I liked the idea of including her in this story in a slightly different role, so I figured I ought to give it a shot. She certainly also serves a purpose in helping Rilla graduate from Queen's, but I didn't want to reduce her to just that, so I took a bit of a leap and that's how the previous chapter was born. It doesn't do as much to drive the story forward as this current one does, but I wanted to allow Gertrude to show some of her personality in this story, too. We get some glimpses into her past in canon and I believe that, just as you say, Rilla is normally the type of girl she would have resented in her own youth, but at the same time, she's now become an example to show that even the supposedly charmed girls don't lead charmed lives, which, I think, is a lesson many women have to learn at some point, even today. Gertrude, thankfully, is a big enough person to help Rilla at no advantage to herself, and that they've forged a connection over the previous months is, I believe, shown in the fact that Gertrude feels comfortable sharing her dream with Rilla. It's only a glimpse into a possible future and might not come true like this at all, but it not only encapsulates Gertrude's more mystic side, but also opens up the possibility for Rilla that she will be reunited with her son one day, even if there's no way to be sure who the man and the girl in that vision are.
Yes, we will certainly find out everything - one day ;). And yes, we will also get another look at how the situation unfolded from Rilla's point of view. It certainly won't be explicit, because no-one needs that, but part of her healing process is also to face that memory and while she isn't there yet, one day, she will be. We just all have to get to that point first and since I lean to not writing short stories, unfortunately, it won't happen tomorrow. We're getting there though, promise!