Willa

Chapter Twenty Two: Returning

On the fourth anniversary of my absence, my mom had started asking for me to return home, for a weekend, or a trip, or even Christmas vacation. It had been easy up to now, to decline offers to return, but by year five, my heart felt a little stronger, and my thoughts could linger on Alberta with no pain. The thought of her and Ben didn't draw the usual pains, and time had healed a part of me that as a teenager I couldn't mend. The wound was in its final stages of healing, a second skin forming and concealing evidence of it, almost like it was never there at all.

I was a grown woman, twenty three years old, coaching my own team, fulfilled in my work life and loving life in our little town on the Oregon coast. I still hadn't acquired love. I'm sure there was a girl out there for me, but I had not met her quite yet. Calliope would attempt to set me up quite regularly, even Teddy had tried to set up a date between me and her second grade teacher, who was quite lovely, but not for me. When an eight year old starts meddling in your love life, it's perhaps time to get serious, and get on every dating app out there. I had seriously considered it, dating apps, and if not for Mary's warning of serial killers and con men behind the profiles I flirted with, perhaps I would have given it a go. It didn't do to be single, not when you were surrounded by bossy women of every age, who made it their mission, and were determined, that you not be alone.

And so year five, thriving, finally, in most aspects of life, the fog lifting and visibility reaching safe levels...I finally took the road home.

***
Willa finally returned home this Christmas week, a sight I had started to believe was a fairytale saved for books and movies, a reality I didn't think I would ever live to see. Willa Jameson arriving at her parents home, the very ones who threw her to the curb. She entered the house as if she had not been gone so long, like she had stepped out moments ago for milk.
I ran from her up the stairs, hiding away as she visited below... the insufferable sensations of both anger and relief trying to smother me. When I finally gathered myself to face her, Harper would tell me she had left the house, she had gone for a walk. I would find her, minutes away, in our clearing, and I would feel everything all at once and not know how to even act with her... Angry? Relieved? Loving? Maddened? How did a person react to it... the return of a soul from the dead? The resurrection of a great love.

"Where have you been" I ask her, my hands cupping her face, trembling as the cold catches me off guard. I had run from the house after her, with no thought of the snow falling, or the cold that nipped at my flesh like small stabs. I had just had to find her, to see her, to hear it, her excuse for leaving me here... her reason for this absence. I had to look her in her eyes and see... if she still looked at me that same way... was I still worthy of her gaze? Did my heart still beat wildly on sight of her?

And the answer to my question, was yes, yes it beat wildly. My heart beat her a tune only she could ever hear, a collection of erratic thumps that called her home to me, a morse code only Willa herself had knowledge of, and her heart the only thing to decipher it.

"Why did you leave me" I ask, shaking with the cold and my overwhelming need for her to answer the question. A question I had asked myself every night as the sun would set.

Her eyes filled with tears, spilling down her cheeks, and my heart ached at the filling of her hazel eyes, her beautiful eyes, revealing more than words...she was just as pained to finally be here, confronting the loss we had both been trying to survive.

"Willa... talk to me" I beg, as tears steadily run down my cheeks. I search every inch of her face, taking her in for the first time in five years, as if it would be the last time I would get the chance, stealing every detail to squirrel away into my memory in case she dare leave me again. She removes my hands, and I am infuriated... don't do this again I beg in my mind.