CHAPTER 6
20 September, 1949
Please ignore the letter I sent you last week. I didn’t mean anything I said in it. Father forced me to write it. I tried to refuse him, but couldn’t. He held me down at my desk for hours until I wrote it. It killed me to write those words. It pained me to say the things I said about our love and relationship, because none of it is true.
After we came home from the cove that day, Father ransacked my room. He found my diary under my mattress and found the paintings of you in the back of my cupboard. I’m grateful he didn’t find your letters, though. I’ve never seen him like that before. His face went red, even the jagged white scar down his cheek went red. I was so afraid. He dragged me outside and made me build a fire; he wanted me to throw everything into it. It felt like I was digging my own grave as I piled the small sticks together and rolled the newspaper into small balls. And then he dropped the match and it all went up in flames. My heart might as well have been in that fire, it hurt so much to watch the corners of my papers curl and disintegrate, to watch the paint blacken on the canvas until there was nothing left of you. And then he dragged me back inside and told me that, if I ever saw you again, I would be dead to him. But I was already dead. A little part of me died in the fire that day.
But, when we were inside, Miriam managed to save some of my things from the fire. She kept them for me. She told me that she’s known about us all along; she saw us once at night. She won’t tell anyone, though; she’s on our side.
The next day, Father took me to see Father McMillan because he says I have to marry Ian. He’s arranging my marriage to him and I can’t stop him. How can I marry him? How can I marry a man I don’t love? I stood there, outside the church on the hill, and I looked out over the town. It had rained the night before and the river was overflowing, escaping its banks and running into the sea, turning it brown. The water was so fast and quick and breaking free of its confines . . . it gave me an idea.
I’m going to try to escape. I’m going to pack a bag and I’m going to meet you under our willow tree on the river. I’ll be there at midnight on the last day of September—my father will be away—and I’ll wait for you there, right in the place where we carved our promise to each other in the tree.
It’s perfect, us meeting there, under the largest and oldest willow tree in the country, because I imagine our love is a lot like the tree itself. It’s big and will stand up to gale-force winds and thunderstorms and black frost, and still it will never stop growing. No matter what my father says, the government, the world, I will never stop loving you.
I’ve found a better hiding spot for my letters to you. You will be able to get them there. I’m putting them inside my “favorite book.” Please go and look for them as soon as you can, in case there is a change in plans. Miriam says she will deliver this one letter to you only, but she says she can’t deliver any more—it’s too dangerous for her. If Father found out she was helping us, who knows what he would do, and I can’t put her in that kind of danger.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you and I cannot wait to be with you again. It’s been thirteen days since I saw you. I’ve been making markings in the wall behind my bed, like someone in prison might do. Because that’s what it feels like without you—that I’m trapped in prison.
We’ll see each other soon, though. We’ll run away somewhere, like we spoke about. We’ll build a little house in the middle of a forest where no one can find us. And we’ll live in it together, away from this cruel, cruel world . . . just like we talked about.
We’ll wake up together every morning and hold each other for hours in bed, because we don’t need to be away from each other. We’ll spend our days swimming, and I’ll paint you and you’ll read to me, and we’ll talk all night long if we want to, because neither of us has to run off somewhere. And we’ll tell each other that we love each other, out loud. We’ll say it all day and all night, until finally we’ve said it enough to make up for all the times that we weren’t able to utter the words, and then we’ll still keep saying it . . .
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Wait for me under the tree. I am coming and then we will start our life together.
You, me, forever.
