In the Woods When First We Met

166. What May Come

Someone from the diaconate board had visited. Gilbert knew as soon as he'd stepped through the door, because there was a bright bouquet of flowers on the table in the parlor and a hot casserole ready to eat on the kitchen table. Gilbert greeted his dad, asking, as always, if he needed anything, and then washed up for supper.

He and his dad sat down together- a rather lonely pair- and after praying briefly over the food, they began to eat. Gilbert asked about his dad's visit, but he wasn't fully listening. ...He'd only just left Anne and he already missed her. He wished she was here, sitting across the table eating the lumpy green bean and ham casserole with him.

His dad talked through most of dinner, telling Gilbert the news he'd heard during his visit- well, all of the news except for one thing he'd heard from his visitors- but Gilbert was quiet, his mind in another time. As they were finishing up dinner, Gilbert said suddenly, "Hey dad, let's have pancakes in the morning." Pancakes would make him feel like Anne was here again.

His dad watched him carefully. "With confectioner's sugar?" he asked, more to that question than met the eye.

"Oh, no, I only got that out for Anne. I'm fine with butter and syrup."

Gilbert smiled to himself- a small, private smile meant for no one to see, his eyes sparkling in a way that they never did unless Anne was in his thoughts.

"You're thinking about her, aren't you?" his dad asked him.

"What?" Gilbert asked, coming back to earth.

"Anne."

"Oh, no, I just-"

"Son," he said. "I know you too well."

Gilbert blushed and looked down. "She's just a friend, dad."

"So you keep saying," Mr. Blythe commented with a bit of a smile.

"She is," Gilbert said a bit defensively, picking up their plates to take to the sink.

"Let's go sit in the parlor and have a chat, why don't we." His dad said. It was not a question.

Gilbert had a feeling he was somehow in trouble, even though he was never really in trouble and hadn't been for years. He was too grown up to get into schoolboy scrapes, and he always kept his word. 

He settled into the parlor and nervously waited for whatever it was his dad wanted to say.

But his father began coughing and it was several tense minutes before he could speak again. Gilbert did what he could and tried to push down that dreadful feeling he got whenever he was reminded again of his father's frail health. When Gilbert got his father a glass of water, he noticed blood on the handkerchief his father had covered his mouth with. He turned away, upset, and went to stir the fire, as if making the room warmer could somehow fix anything.

Eventually he sat down again, his father next to him on the sofa, and Gilbert found himself longing to be young again- just so he could be back in those innocent days in which a child believes that his father is the strongest man in the world.

But his father was thinking of the future, not the past. It was a long moment before he spoke. And then:

"There are things I'd have told you about life, son. About marriage and family. The kind of advice a father ought to give his son when he's found the right girl and is ready to settle down and start a life with her. If you were twenty or so...well, I'd have saved these words for then. If I had those days... But I don't have those days. These are the days I have, so I need to use them."