The Potter's Daughter - A chapter each week - Complete Novel Available on Amazon

Chapter 16

On that long restless night the Bellen family came together again.  Abby found herself in the lake room peering out the bay window at the darkness and the glowing grey blanket of the lake hovering within.  There were no phantoms floating in the mist before Abby yet her mind was clouded with the ghost of what Will had said.  Of course he would have told her brother the many things needed to carry the Bellen legacy and had the cancer not taken her mother there would have been so much more her mother could have shared with her.

A father has his son and a mother has her daughter, or so was their family dynamic.  Will loved his daughter, the Bellen family was full of love, Abby however was under Emily’s wing.  Will and Abby did not know how to be alone with each other.  Abby was never daddy’s little girl.  Abby was in her teens when her mother passed and was in college when Michael was killed.  Will and Abby had essentially lived separate lives.

Abby felt she knew why.

Outside the window Abby could not help notice, large in the dim lit sky, the silhouette of her mother’s weeping willow haunting the horizon.  Her eyes fixed upon the tree and thought went to the time Abby spent with her mother before she died.  Abby knew that Emily would not want Will to continue on his downward spiral.  She knew not just because her mother had instilled in her the same compassion and gentleness that her mother held within herself.  Abby knew because of a promise that was made that had already been broken once with Michael.  As the cancer ate away at Emily, she asked Abby to watch over her brother and father.  After Emily passed Abby took the unrealistic request seriously.  The request was not taken so seriously by her brother, he thought the need ridiculous, or by her father, distancing himself from Abby because she reminded him of her late mother.  The request was the essence of Emily reflecting the glue that held the family together, the concern for each other’s well being.  Michael and Will had rejected that compassionate concern.  Abby felt she failed Michael and now was not sure how deep she would have to go for further compassion if Will rejected what she had available for him.

Gradually the sky above the horizon began to illuminate with the first glow of the coming day.  Outside of the bay window some shadows dissipated while others took form.  In the height of the tree the branches of the willow were now clearly etched in the horizon and at the base of the tree the first morning light revealed a figure on the split log bench.  A man sat with his arms wrapped around himself rubbing his sides.  Abby had not seen Will go out of the house yet she knew he was the man on the bench.  “He could have been out there half the night,” she thought.  Abby continued watching Will through the bay window as the morning brought more light.  With the morning light Abby was able to see Will clearly.  Will was talking to the tree.

Abby was not sure how long she had watched her father down by the frozen lake.  Some time had passed and the sun had fully risen to a vibrant day.  The golden light refracting from the morning sun created shimmering diamonds on the icy snow and small animals and winter birds were moving around.  Abby stood up and stretched her arms from her sides.  She decided that she needed to go out and speak to her father.  Abby did not get dressed.  She put her coat and boots on, wrapped a blanket around herself, and tromped out to the lake.

“Good morning,” said Abby.

“Oh, Good morning.”

“I saw you out here.”

“I was here, here I am.”

“I mean I couldn’t sleep either.  I watched the sun come up from the house and saw you were out here, early,” said Abby.

“Oh yeah, well you know, you get old, you’re up early.”

“I saw you talking to the her willow.”

“I’m a crazy old man.  I mumble I guess.”

“I came out here to ask you something, if it’s alright?”

“Ask away.”

Abby turned to her father and then toward the lake and asked, “What do you talk to her about?”

Will looked at Abby then toward to the lake.  He pulled out his pack of cigarettes.

“You want to know what I tell her.”  Will paused and lit a cigarette.  “I know you probably think I tell her that I am mad that she is gone, that Michael is gone, that I should be gone instead of the both of them.  I don’t tell her that.  I used to, years ago but not anymore.”

“What do you tell her then?”  Abby looked back at Will.

 Will turned his head so that their eyes met, “The same thing I’ve been telling her for forty years.  The answer to the one question she’d ask me every morning.  Hell, the one thing I know she wants to know, that she ever cared to know.  What are the colors of the sunrise as I see them?”  Will shifted his eyes back to where the sun had risen as if the sun were rising once more, “And today the colors were green, cyan really, with streaks of vermilion and magenta.”

Abby followed her father’s eyes to where the sunrise had been.  With Will, Abby saw a sunrise that existed only for them.  “She’d want to know that,” said Abby.

“Every morning for forty years,” said Will dropping his head.  Will lifted his head and gazed out onto the lake one final time and then turned and took a step toward the house.

“You know,” said Abby.  Will stopped, their backs to each other, Abby was beginning to tear, “she’d want you to tell her tomorrow.”  Without turning around, Will reached back and placed his hand on his daughters shoulder.  He held her for a silent moment and then started into the house.  Abby stood in the snow with the blanket held tight around her shoulders, holding still as long as she could before her watering eyes washed the invisible sunrise away.

* * * * *