Honey Suckle

Part 18

About a month after I told Elizabeth that I'd marry her she asked me to go to dinner with her. By seven in the after noon she had set up a nice meal for the both of us. She lit candles and set the table. We even drank glasses of champagne from a bottle we'd never thought we would open. She was dressed in a beautiful blue dress what complimented her curves, and I wore a red dress that I had stored at the back of my closet for years because I never had a place to wear it to.

We went down stairs to the dinning table which had fancy china plates, and on them was a steak and a salad with vegetables that had just been freshly picked from our local town garden that Tasha had picked up for us. Elizabeth sat down in her chair before me, and I noticed she was wearing the pin I'd given to her weeks before. I sat down in my chair and scooted as close to the table and I possibly could have. "You look gorgeous." I told her and begin to pore champagne into our glasses. 

"You do to." She says. She was smiling at like she did the night I said I'd marry her. I remembered the light that filled her eyes, and I wished I could marry her. "Remember the day we met?" She asked.

I nodded. "Of course." How could I forget the day I met the love of my life? "You used to be such an odd girl." I said referring to when I saw Elizabeth dumping honeysuckles into the pond for absolutely no explainable reason. Elizabeth was still quite odd, but she forced most of her odd traits deep down inside when she married Charles.

She laughed a joyful laugh as she remembered all the fun times we had together. "Remember the time stripped down to our knickerbockers yelling, 'Free of oppression!'" 

Laughter filled the room as I remembered that incident. I laughed so hard my chest hurt. "And then when your mom saw us she chased us around the neighborhood, but she couldn't catch us." Elizabeth's mother ended up giving up after half an hour, but by that time everyone in neighborhood had heard about the two half naked teenage young ladies running around town yelling about oppression. When we got home our mothers weren't really mad and they didn't punish us tremendously. They just gave us a lesson on what was 'ladylike', and what was not, in that case running around in our undergarments was not considered to be so

As Elizabeth and I shared the stories from our childhood and talked about the time we almost lit the church on fire during choir practice we ate our dinner and drank our champagne. When we had both finished our first glass of champagne she took our glasses and filled them. Once they were full she handed it to me. "A toast to us." She said holding up her glass. 

I help my glass up with her. "To us." I said before drinking it. I finished my meal and wiped my face clean with a napkin. "That was really good thank you." I told her.

She smiled, and thanked me. She finished her champagne and sat the glass down slowly. Her smile began to fade and she reached for my hand. I took her hand and looked at her worried. "What it Elizabeth?" I asked her. She seemed sad like she was hiding a dark secret.

Elizabeth looked into my eyes. "Helen, I have something to tell you." She said. She seemed troubled. Almost lost. 

"What is it?" 

Oooo cliff hanger. Fun fact knickerbockers is what they called underpants in the late 1800s to early 1900s and then after that they shortened to knickers.