Alberta

Chapter Twenty One: A Sacrifice

"I missed you" I confessed, but I needn't because she knows by the way I hold her, tightly and unmoving. I dare not let her go.

"Allie what are you doing here" She asks.

I must then remove myself from her arms, and confess "Willa I'm worried about you" as she had done for me.

She takes a moment to consider that "I'm sorry I worried you" she replies. "I just had to go...and I should have called when I got home... I know it... but Allie I just don't know what to say...so much has changed. I came home from that trip so emotionally broken like all those years of holding it together just blew open all at once. I felt so foolish to have thought they would ever accept me..."

I watch her features change from calm, to worry and then to anguish and I feel so angry for her, so disappointed that she has to even consider her place in the family and whether she will be wanted.

"Willa I'm so sorry that happened" I finally reply, stepping forward and holding her arms affectionately "I would do anything to make all this right for you..."

"Allie..." she begins, before I can finish "I'm not coming back this time" she confesses.

My breathing quickened and it must have been visible through my clothes because if a heart ever threatened to fling from its rib cage it was this one. To hear those words and know she was serious... "but Willa" I begin to beg but I stop myself, forcing the sentence I want to scream to stop. I want to scream "I can't live a life without you in it" and to make her see that I love her and need her...and that I want nothing more than to stay with her and never return there either. I wish I could take her hand, kiss those lips and confess my heart beats for her, and beg of her to feel it too, but Harper stills the calls for honesty. The vision of my daughter, a love unmatched, floods my mind, and I know I cannot be with Willa and keep my child as she is, care free and in the life she loves. Ben wouldn't allow me to leave with her.

A sacrifice. It would be made today, a decision, a course redirected, a shift in our story, a release of a hand, a push, a nudge... a goodbye.

I wasn't quite ready to commit to it...and so I push down the sacrifice, for a few hours more and wonder if I should take this moment, being together, so rare and let it take us for a day or so with its current. There would be no fighting it's course, no clinging to the edges, no steering against it, just let it flow and see where it takes us. For one day and one night... I would let myself float, and I would be free.

"Show me your life" I ask, looking up to her waiting eyes and seeing the flash of change upon her face. It was confusion, followed by relief that the conversation had shifted.

She welcomed the redirection and smiled "okay" she said quietly...a smile tugging on her lips "what do you want to see first"

"Oh everything" I reveal animatedly "I need a town tour and dinner at your favourite food place. I want visuals for days please, and stories. I want it all. I don't want to leave here until I am so immersed I feel like I've always been here, like I didn't miss a single second"

"I will get changed and take you out" Willa says amused by my sudden enthusiasm and change of energy. "Dinner at Stygos " she says one finger poised in thought "with Aunty Mary and Erica" she offers, and I nod.

"That sounds lovely... I would love to meet Mary" I reply happily.

"If I didn't invite Mary to dinner with you she may actually kill me. She's wanted to meet you for as long as I can remember"

"The feeling is mutual" I say, squeezing her hand as she moves away to her room to change. I walk back into the family room to find Erica sat reading a book "she's taking me out to see the sights" I reveal.