Emma sat down at the table again. “First, he retired with a government pension. Then he married Ruth, the woman I once told you about who was like a mother to me. That was a happy occasion. But Papa liked to keep busy, so he went into local politics.” Emma stood up again. “Let me get some photo albums. I’ll show you more pictures.”
Suddenly Oliver was back in Emma’s kitchen on Sable Island, with the smell of bread baking in the oven and a deep hope for reconciliation—or of friendship, at least—after a hurtful goodbye in the past. Here they were again, slowly reconnecting. He hoped.
She returned with an armful of photo albums, and Oliver was grateful to spend the next half hour at her table, flipping through plastic-wrapped pages that covered most of the past half century. They included Emma’s early life on Sable Island, but Oliver was most interested in the pictures of Rose, from her birth to the present day.
There was only one picture of Matthew with Logan. “Did they see each other much?” Oliver asked.
“Not really,” Emma replied. “Logan moved back to Saskatchewan when Matthew was ten, but they wrote letters, and Logan came to visit every few years. But I think the main reason he stayed away was because he was afraid of my father.” She gave Oliver a telling look. “Papa was very protective of us.”
The sound of a car rolling onto the driveway caused each of them to look up. Oliver realized how warm and humid the afternoon had become. Cicadas were buzzing loudly in the yard, and he was perspiring.
“I wonder if that’s Rose.” Emma stood to look out the front window. “Yes, it is.” She hesitated. “Oh, goodness. Would you mind waiting here while I talk to her first? This is going to be a shock. I’d like to prepare her.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll bring her in afterwards,” Emma promised him reassuringly.
He nodded, and she walked out the front door.
Almost immediately, he stood up and moved to the living room to watch from the open window. Outside, two rambunctious children spilled out of a blue minivan and tore across the front lawn to a tire swing in the shade of the trees.
A woman got out of the driver’s seat.Dear God.This was Rose. His daughter. Strikingly beautiful, with a face like her mother’s, and dark hair like his.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” she said. “They’ve had too much sugar. They’ll probably crash early, though.”
Oliver stood in a stupor, his body and soul drenched in awe as he watched Emma hug her daughter and whisper something in her ear. He wished overwhelmingly that he could have held Rose as an infant, seen her as a toddler ... a child ... a young woman. He’d missed everything—her first words, her wedding day. What had she been like all her life? Had she always been this happy, like she was outside in the yard today? His heart was a bottomless well of questions and wishes.
Emma and Rose stepped apart. Rose looked directly up at Oliver in the window, and his heart throbbed agonizingly. He reached a trembling hand to the back of an upholstered chair to steady himself on this staggering wave of sorrow.
“He’s been alive all this time?” Rose asked, keeping her voice low.
Emma watched her daughter’s expression and knew she had not yet fully comprehended everything this would mean for her—that there was a man with whom she and her children would need to become acquainted, and it might cause confusion, anger, and hurt. But Rose had always been careful to think things through before reacting emotionally.
Emma glanced over her shoulder at Oliver in the window, and he retreated.
“This is unreal,” Rose said. “Are you okay, Mom?”
It was just like her daughter to think of others before herself. “Yes,” Emma replied. But truthfully, she felt like a leaf floating and spinning on the wind. She took hold of Rose’s arm. “Let’s take a walk around back.”
Together they strolled past the children at the tire swing and reached the sloping lawn that overlooked the water. It was a hot, humid day, and the harbor was flat and still, a perfect mirror that reflected the evergreens on the far shore.
“Mom,” Rose said urgently. “You must have fainted when you saw him. And where has he been all this time? Please don’t tell me he had amnesia and only just remembered who we are.My God.What does this mean? What does he expect is going to happen?”
Clearly the situation had begun to sink in, and for that, Emma was glad. “I don’t know, and I’m trying to be sensible. I want to think of you and the children and give you the chance to get to know him, if that’s what you want.”
They both faced the water and said nothing for a moment while they watched a sailboat in the distance.
“But before we start any of that,” Emma finally said, “there’s something you need to know.”
“What is it?”
Emma faced her daughter. “You’re welcome to spend time with him. I would never discourage that, but I might need to set some boundaries.”
“In what way?”
Emma felt herself retreating into a state of sensible caution, which she should have employed all those years ago. “I can’t do this again,” she said. “I don’t think I can allow him into my life.”
Rose regarded her with concern. “I’m surprised to hear you say that. The way you’ve always talked about him ... you said he was the great love of your life and that he was the most handsome man you’d ever seen, and you had a soulful connection that most people could only dream about. Now here he is, back from the dead, and you don’t want to see him?”
