her echoes within me | JENLISA

Chapter 3

The wedding is a small affair.

Five months to the day after she last saw Lisa, Jennie bears her dress and walks the aisle.

She had spent the morning trying her best to suffocate her thoughts of Lisa, scrubbing the tears from her eyes. She spent the afternoon fighting them too, holding herself as she studies her reflection in the full length mirror, face grim beneath her white veil, and fights them all the way down the aisle and while they exchanged rings, at the family feast, and during the cutting of the cake that she had made absolutely certain would not be pound cake. She spent the night surrendering to the inclination, and found herself floating alone with only thoughts of Lisa to keep her company, though she was overcome with guilt the next morn.

Still, time shifts on, and she grows a little more adept at swallowing down her memories and her yearning. Concentrates a little more on Joshua’s charming smile and the way he could sometimes make her laugh.

It’s easier when she’s around others. She sees her mother every so often, less since she moved to Ashwood with Allen Harris, but they exchange letters at least once a week. She finds Henry at the market every Saturday and wiles away the hours chatting to him, even occasionally helping him organize the cakes at his stall. She spends several days a week in the company of her friends..Helen, a kind girl married to Mond, a farmer from which they bought most of their meals, and Trisha, the giggly wife of Stephen, a bricklayer and Joshua’s dear friend. The women are pleasant enough, but they’re far too invested in trivial gossip about the other inhabitants of the town, and admittedly Jennie finds herself missing the sort of conversation she’d have with Lisa. She reads her books in silence and wishes she had someone to speak about them with.

She feels as though she’s in a constant state of waiting. Waiting for the overwhelming grief to subside, for the turbulence within her to stop crashing into her organs like the sea explodes against the lone lighthouse on Florence shores. Waiting for the yearning to fade, that incessant want that burns in her veins in every waking moment— she finds it oft takes her so much longer to fall to sleep than it does her husband, and she lay awake in the late hours, staring up at the ceiling, Joshua lightly snoring beside her, and revisits her memories of Lisa as she had in a myriad of ways. She wallows so long she can almost feel her there beside her, warm body heat and the sweet scent of their orchard, the taste of her honeyed lips— she feels her as acutely as she feels the press of the stars beyond her window. It’s not a comforting notion.

The brief illumination gives the hint of light but it is only the remnants of the fallout, the violent collapse...and the reality is nothing more than a cold, impossible distance.

She waits for her love to wither, but she knows it never will. She waits to learn how to live with it.

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Half a year after their wedding marks a full year since she last saw Lisa, and the annual return of the Belmont Fair marks the arrival. Like last year, Jennie attends with Joshua, and cannot bear the confounding mixture of hope and dread that amalgamates inside her at the possibility of seeing Lisa again.

But Lisa is not there. Jennie helps Joshua set up his stall and finds herself barely present, responding to his conversation with short vague responses, her gaze cutting every which way searching for a glimpse of the elegance and beauty she’s been denied for far too long, even!while she obstinately refuses to indulge in the question of what she will do when she sees her again, whether she should maintain her distance (and she knows she could never do that) or fall to her knees and beg for Lisa’s forgiveness for her cruelty, even while knowing it’s not something she can ever apologise for.

The anxiety has her responding to Joshua with a snap in her voice, and shame trickles through her at how he balks in the face of her aspersion. He shakes off her apology and kindly suggests she go choose them some lunch, and she does so with no fair amount of contrition.