Surviving Amelia

by Rand, Naomi;

  A young man had come up to Samantha Barry. He tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, registering surprise, then pleasure. He’d brought her a present, and she was being urged to unwrap it. Inside was a first edition of Amelia’s own first book. On the title page was an inscription, “For Winston, may your life always be a grand adventure, AE.”

  AMELIA SHUT HER eyes. It was odd, she could see further and further. She saw their future. Love, marriage, success, children, sadness; there was always that, too. Always sadness. Always loss to balance out the pleasure. The girl, Lucy, had arranged for the boy to show up. His name was Michael, and he was the one Sam would marry eventually. They’d have stops and starts, date other people, argue, break apart, but in the end they’d end up together. As for Lucy, she would thrive as well, becoming a professor of philosophy out in California. She would find love and lose it enough times to decide that there was only one way to mother, and adopt a child. A boy. Samantha would become a doctor just as she’d planned, she’d have her own children, two, no, three. Winston would write about music, he’d make a name for himself and leave home for good. Brooke Barry would find a good man but it would be too late, the cancer already consuming her. She’d die, and Winston would take her gallery of photographs home with him to San Francisco. Katherine would be gone long before all that. She wouldn’t have to suffer the loss of her only child. But she and Brooke would be friends again, that friendship beginning here, on this very night. Katherine would loosen the purse strings a little, but more importantly, she’d resist blaming her daughter. She’d learn to be temperate and kind to Brooke. She’d grow old gracefully. Dead, she’d lie next to her late husband whose own wishes had been ignored. Winston Manning had wanted his ashes dumped at sea, but Katherine had stuck him in a graveyard in Maine. As for Muriel, her future was unclear. She was too close, Amelia thought. Or perhaps she had her own secrets, which was as it should be. They were sisters, after all.

  For the rest, she hoped the future held something that passed for happiness, however fleeting. It was what one got if one was lucky. I was lucky. Still, she wanted more. She wanted to stay. Just a little longer. Please, only a little. It was all so fleeting. Above her head the North Star shone, bright and constant, a reminder of what she might find yet, if only she tried. There were worlds upon worlds out there. She told herself she’d always been a gambler, she’d always believed that anything was possible. Then, lifting her arms high above her head, Amelia let the wind take her.

  Naomi Rand is the author of three mysteries featuring divorced criminal investigator, Emma Price, they are The One That Got Away, Stealing For A Living, and It’s Raining Men (all from Harpercollins). She has stories in two great collections, Crime and Music (Three Rooms Press) and Hard Boiled Brooklyn (Bleak House Books). Her fiction and literary criticism has appeared in The Flexible Persona, Other Voices, Melus, Cutbank,The Florida Review, and The North Dakota Quarterly. Her non-fiction has appeared in many national publications including Redbook, Parents, Ladies Home Journal, and The New York Times. For longer than she cares to remember she was a non-fiction book reviewer for The Boston Globe. She is the recipient of a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for her fiction.