A New Beginning

Chapter 30: Fresh Start

Chapter 30: Fresh Start

The house is empty when she gets home from work. She goes to the kitchen and gets herself a glass of water. It's been a long and tiring day at the office. Nothing, but paperwork and she ended up skipping lunch to finish up some more case files. And still, through everything, no one has heard from Peter or anything about Sybil, either.

Emma sits down at the kitchen table and lets a few tears fall from her eyes. It's been so hard for her for the past week and a half. Running a business and trying to maintain a household with only one arm, her strength drains to zero very quickly. And without her husband to support her and her baby sister's smiles to come home to, her depression is evident and faith in life overall is low. Lying in her bed at night, she was wide awake, without Peter's arm around her and not waking up to her sister's happy squeals, making Emma feel more alone than when her parents died. When she did go to sleep, her nightmares were worse than the ones that she had had on Titanic. She ended up lying awake until the sun rose in the morning and the cycle started all over again.

Now, her house is merely a hollow place of memories. Her kitchen is where her mother taught her to cook and always smelled of delicious goods, the living room is where her father would sit and read the paper with a glass a whiskey in one hand and herself laying next to him by the fireplace. The front yard where Emma and Peter shared their first kiss and where Emma would sit with Sybil on a blanket and play with her. It was the house that Emma had grown up in and where she wanted to make some more happy memories when she and Peter started a family and as Sybil grew up.

Emma goes into her sister's room, which has laid untouched since they left. Her crib and toys lay all around the room ready for her sister to love and play with when she got home. If she ever came home. The young girl was searching constantly for her husband, but no one has seen of heard from them. She knew that they were alive, but in such a big city, there was little chance of finding them. For now, her baby sister's room stands empty, like a ghost town, frozen in time, waiting...

The room is also very drab. Her parents never got the chance to paint the nursery and make it the way they wanted it to look like. Her father was swamped with work at the time and with her mother's pregnancy being so complicated, she had to stay off her feet and they never got around to it. The room was a spare, one of many and had drab, beige colouring. The family basically just stuck a cradle, some toys and then a crib in there, they never really had a chance to prepare the room for like they did for her. Compared to how she grew up, Emma feels that Sybil is being neglected and almost unloved. Emma knows it wasn't her fault, but compared to Sybil, Emma's childhood seems spoiled.

Emma gets an idea at that moment.

It's never too late to start over again...

She comes up with a plan, an extension of what she had intended to do before the disaster. To have a fresh clean start, part of that scheme was to marry Peter before they got back to New York and the other was to make the most loving home she could for her sister.

She grabs some old paper and begins drawing again, something that reminds her of Jack a little bit. A lump forms in her throat, thinking of Rose and Jack, she hopes they are in heaven together and finally free from society and Cal's wrath. Emma shudders at what Rose's ex-fiancé had done to them and partly wishes, even though she feels bad about it, that the evil tycoon also went down to the ship. His actions were unforgivable. She hopes there is justice in the next life and he is dealt with properly.

Over the next few days, Emma gathers the supplies she needs for her plan. She buys fresh paint, new furniture, a few new toys and other small little accessories for her sister's room. She draws out what she wants to create and traces them out all over the room. She sees the walls as a blank canvas, ready to be given new life...a fresh coat and a fresh start.

She does get some help since her arm is still recovering. Mrs. Jamieson and their eldest daughter, Daisy, who is a few years older than Emma, come over and help her with her project. Emma uses the painting as a form of exercise for her arm. It is still quite sore, but she begins to move it more and more each day, even taking off the sling. Mrs. Jamieson and Daisy do the big jobs like coating the walls and ceiling, but Emma does the details. She takes her time, often late into the night to design and paint her ideas on the walls. She goes for a nature like feel, with a willow tree in the corner and a field filled with her and her mother's favourite flowers. Birds fly close to the ceiling and small animals peer out of the long grasses springing up from the floor.

As she does this, she feels more relaxed, the stress seems to leave her body and her grief often subsides temporarily. Much like her sketching helps her, the painting helps her too. She sees it as a form of therapy, allowing her to focus on the positive once more. Create something new and exciting, distracting herself from her current predicament of work and her missing husband. There is comfort in her work and just taking the time to do things her way. Emma feels more like herself when she's decorating.

...

By the end of two weeks, the room is done and it looks beautiful. The room seems to come alive again and looks almost like the nursery she had when she was a baby. Bright colours, layered across the canvased walls, creating a nature scene. Her designs she stenciled out seem to come to life and dance across the wall. The furniture is clean and everything is arranged as she wants it. The crib is freshly painted, the bedding is soft and there is a mobile canopy overhanging the bed. A rocking chair in front of a painted bookshelf and a toy chest that once belonged to her, now residing in one of the corners.

Emma feels a great amount of pride. She even tears up thinking about how she was fulfilling her promise of starting over, creating a loving family for Sybil to grow up. She also felt that she was slowly coming out of her depression, transitioning into someone new. The disaster had changed her, but perhaps it wasn't all bad.

The only problem was, where was her sister to enjoy it?

...

The next day, Emma is sitting at her father's old, heavy oak desk, reading through a new case file that Mr. Jamieson brought in for her. She had to give her approval and then there was a budgeting meeting she had to attend, all this and she still had paint between her fingernails. She felt less distressed today, probably because of her completed project. She was beginning to have plans to spruce up other rooms in the house. She doubts she and Peter would ever move into the master bedroom, there were too many memories there, but she could re-paint the room that she and Peter intended to share...if he ever came back into her life.

She hears loud voices coming from outside her office, she wonders if there is an upset client or some other dispute. She rolls her eyes, not wanting it to ruin her relatively good mood and then one of her father's family portraits rolls off the desk when she moves some papers. It smashes on the floor. Emma groans and goes around the desk to start cleaning it up. Her back is to the door when she hears it open. She expects it to be Mr. Jamieson or some other employee.

Someone gasps and Emma stops abruptly.

A very familiar voice yells out.

"Oh, my Gawd...Emma?!" she hears behind her.

Emma turns to see blonde hair and blue eyes looking at her, wide in shock and in happiness.

"Peter!"