Love Always Wins

Chapter 6-Please Come Home

CHAPTER 6
Naomi and I had decided to keep in contact anyway we could. Even if that meant we'd have to mail letters like in the eighteen hundreds, and that's what we did. It worked at first. We kept sending back and forth letters, and every week I waited for it. Excited to read about what she wrote in her letters, and I always wrote back. But then months went by, and her letters got shorter and shorter. I didn't know why, but I still tried to look forward to her letters. It almost seemed hopeless, so I stopped replying. I didn't know what else to do. Sometimes I thought that maybe what I did had upset her, but what else could I have done. No phone, and her grandmother didn't have internet. This was the only way to contact her, and she doesn't want to write as much anymore.
A few weeks after I had stopped sending the letters, she did as well. Though I was upset that I wouldn't be hearing from her anymore, I realized that I wasn't truly hearing from her for a long time. The short letters scared me. I figured that maybe she didn't consider me a priority anymore. Then the stupid thought came to my head that she'd found someone else.
Soon her eighteenth birthday came up, and my nineteenth birthday passed. I waited the whole day for her return. I even slid out my window and waited on her the whole day. I sat and sat hoping that a car would drive up the long driveway covered with trees, and she'd get out. I sat on the roof for five hours from the moment I woke up, but she never came. I finally went back inside to eat again, and spent the rest of the day lying in bed.
I rolled over and curled up in fetal position holding my pillow. I cried, and I cried myself to sleep. Until a knock on the door woke me up.
"Who is it?" I raised my voice.
"Your mother." Mom called through the door. "May I come in?"
"Whatever." I said burying my face in the pillow, and she opened the door and came in.
"Honey?" She sat on the bed and put her hand on my arm.
"She was supposed to be here today." I wept. "Why isn't she here?"
"I don't know." She answered, rubbing my arm. "Maybe she couldn't make it today. She'll be here, Lydia. You know that."
"But she said today, momma. She was never late for anything. You remember that. Don't you?" I said now sobbing into the pillow.
"Lydia. Sometimes people are late. Even when they've never been late before." She pointed out. I could hear the catch in her voice. "Though Naomi said she'd be here, that doesn't mean she meant today."
"But it..."
"It is her birthday, and you can tell her that when she gets here. Though it may not be today." She said, and I sat up. I looked at her, and she lifted her right hand to brush the hair off my face. That's when I noticed something on her hand reflected the light of the lamp. I grabbed her hand and looked at the giant ring on her finger. It was just a thin silver band with a giant diamond on it.
"When?" I asked.
"Last week."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Well... honey I was going to wait until Naomi got back. I didn't think it fair to you that..."
"What?"
"Nothing." She stood up.
"That it wasn't fair to me alone because of Naomi not being here?" I asked looking at her shocked. Then I sobbed. "I'm so happy for you."
"Awe Lydia, I'm so sorry honey." She walked over and sat next to me. Then she wrapped her arm around me and held me close to her, and we started rocking side to side.
"Do you think she's even going to come?" I asked sniffling.
"I do." She answered. We sat there in silence, rocking side to side. It was one of the longest silences mom and I had in a long time. I softly cried into her shoulder. "She'll come eventually."