Inspirational Women's Fiction Sampler

by April Geremia

Things changed unexpectedly that night after you were bathed and in bed. I went to the kitchen for a cup of tea, as I did most nights, and found Edith sitting in a chair waiting for me. I sat on the chrome and green vinyl chair and watched her cross and uncross her hands. Finally, she began a conversation that would alter my life irrevocably.

  “So,” she began. “He proposed?”

  Stunned, I drew my hand to my mouth. “How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  I nodded, not fully looking at her. Partially because I was embarrassed she had so clearly seen Leo’s intentions when I hadn’t, and partially because I tried to keep that part of my life separate.

  “And how did you answer?” she asked, tilting her pink, foam colored head and tightening her already sparse lips.

  “I said yes, of course.” I could feel the color rise in my cheeks. To this day, I don’t understand why I felt I needed her approval, but I did. I started to rise, using the excuse that I needed to check on you.

  “I wish you would sit,” she said. “Joshua is fine. You only put him to bed an hour ago. And I’d like to talk to you.”

  Reluctantly, I sat back down. I longed to brush my cheek against your curls and whisper sweet dreams in your ear, but instead I allowed myself to be drawn into a conversation I would later come to regret.

  “How well do you know this man, Leo?”

  I shrugged. “As well as any woman knows the man she loves.”

  “Humph.” Edith got up, put a kettle of water on the stove and turned on the burner.

  I knew even then that Edith’s next words were spoken to intentionally put doubt in my mind, to make me mistrust Leo, but at that time in my life, merely the hint of more tragedy was enough to make me close myself up in a cocoon of familiarity. You see, after your father died in the war I became afraid, scared to risk loss, and it was something I fought hard against everyday.

  Edith turned to me and leaned against the stove. “So then, I assume you’ll be leaving our employment.”

  “No,” I said. “Not for a year. We’ll wait to marry until Leo returns from overseas.”

  She poured the water into cups and handed me a cup of weak tea. “You foolish girl. Doesn’t it seem odd to you that a man of thirty has never married?”

  “Maybe he’s never been in love.”

  “Or maybe he’s not as reliable as you think.”

  I clinked down my cup, spilling the worthless tea on the garish green formica tabletop. “If you’re trying to say something, I wish you’d just come out with it.”

  She sighed loudly and sat down next to me. Then she awkwardly put her clammy hands on mine. “I’m telling you this for your own good, you understand. It may not mean anything, but a girl in your position has a lot more to consider than most.” She titled her top heavy head toward yours and my room. Then she withdrew her cold hands and scooted her chair closer to mine. “I heard that Leo proposed to another woman once before, about five years back,” she said conspiratorially.

  “I know. He told me things didn’t work out.”

  She stared at me, disgust spreading across her face. “Didn’t work out? Is that all he said?”

  I nodded hesitantly.

  “Well then, I guess I’d better tell you what really happened. Your Prince Charming practically left the poor girl standing at the altar. She went around town making all the arrangements, the flowers, dress, cake,” she waved her hand. “Oh, you know. Anyway, less than a week before the wedding, he changed his mind. Just like that. No explanation.”

  I sat silent, my brain fabricating and then discarding dozens of possible explanations for Leo’s behavior. The feeling of being left whooshed back into my body and did battle with the contentment and happiness that had been there only moments before. No matter how hard I tried to regain my sense of peace and hope for a normal life, the sense of dread, of the inevitable, beat down and trampled my joy, my hope for our new life.

  “There had to be a reason,” I managed.

  Edith stood and fussily gathered the full cups of now tepid tea. “Never said from what I hear. Just changed his mind.” She put the cups in the sink and flipped off the light on her way to bed, leaving me sitting in the dark with the seed of my lost future planted in my soul.

  By then I knew Edith would do anything to keep you there because she couldn’t endure losing another son, and in her mind, you were as much hers as mine. But the words she spoke that night refused to leave me and instead swarmed around my head, not allowing me to see things clearly. I was just so confused, between what I wanted to believe and what the evidence pointed to, what my heart told me and what my head said. And I knew that whatever decision I made about Leo would not only affect me, but you, and I couldn’t allow you to love someone who might leave you.

  I was deeply wounded when your father died and went through an adjustment and depression that is difficult for me to think of, even now. The moment I received the telegram that stripped me of your father, a piece of my soul left me and since that day, it has refused to return. The pain was so great I told myself I’d never allow myself to be put in a situation where something like that could occur again. Although I was certain Leo was solid and true, and felt deep in my heart he was worth the risk, Edith fully understood the depths of my pain that night in the kitchen when she tried to forever alter my ability to love. I should have been a stronger woman, listened to what my gut was telling me. I should have stayed true to Leo, but I allowed Edith to plant doubt in my mind.

  The next morning, I woke at my usual time. The sun, usually glowing with the expectation of another day, gloomily sulked behind the low, water weighted clouds. The solemn clouds crawled across the horizon in groups, enveloped in the mist rising off the water.

  I hadn’t slept all night, thinking and worrying about Leo’s abandonment of his former fiancée. What would make a man do that do a woman? I thought of his dreamy, far away eyes and slowly, sadly came to suspect that he was and always would be There, one step ahead of now. He would always live in the future of impossible dreams instead of the stable, constant today.

  I heard Edith’s voice inside my head—no way to raise a son—and my thoughts turned toward you snuggled deep in your pillow, dreaming of bright yellow days full of baseball and swimming. Edith was right, I decided in that fateful moment. I couldn’t put you or myself though loving and losing Leo. I couldn’t even take the chance.

  But then I would think of Leo and his warm smile, his gentle way of being, and I wondered what could have possibly happened to make him break his engagement like that. I thought back to our conversation at the beach when he told me he had almost been married, and I remembered his sadness, his inability to speak of it. In retrospect, I guess I knew Edith was twisting the truth, but how far I didn’t know. To hear her tell it, Leo had been cruel, breaking the engagement at the last minute, not even offering an explanation. But I knew him, loved him, and I couldn’t imagine him acting so heartless.

  But that doubt still lingered in my mind, the one that appeared the day he couldn’t explain why he’d broken things off with the woman, and that, combined with my lingering fear of loss, was enough to make me reconsider marrying Leo.

  Later that day, I received a bouquet of flowers from him, with a card that read,

  I can’t wait to begin our lives together.

  I love you, Grace McKeon, Leo.

  I ran my thumb across the face of the card wanting so much to believe in its message, but I also felt Edith’s words weighing me down, grounding me in my uncertain reality.

  I didn’t call Leo that night to thank him for the flowers, and when he called, I asked Edith to tell him I’d already gone to bed. That night, as I sank into my pillow, my despair, I wished I knew how to get past my fear and risk everything for our love. But the lump in my throat, the tightening of my chest, all signaled danger, and I’m sorry to say that the fear was stronger than I was.