Dear Meredith

by Belle Kismet

  There, I've said it out loud at last. The possibility that I could fall in love again, find happiness in another man's arms. Janet looks at me for a long time, her blue eyes searching my face.

  "Do you remember what I told you, that very first time we spoke on the phone after Mike died?" she asks suddenly.

  I cast my mind back to that day, the ringing phone, as I lay on the bed in total numbed grief.

  "You said you will always be here for me, whenever I need you, for as long as you can," I say slowly, her words coming back to me.

  Janet smiles. "Yes. I also told you that this is a journey only you can walk." She pauses, continues deliberately and slowly, holding my gaze, "You will need to find a reason for living again."

  Her face wavers in front of me as my eyes fill with tears. A huge sense of relief cascades through me.

  "I don't know if Grant will be your reason to live again. It's too early to tell. But you deserve this chance to find out. You've honoured Mike's memory, we all know that. You know that, and Mike knows it as well. He'd want this for you, Meredith," she says softly.

  I wait nervously on my porch steps, staring down at my flip flops as I wait for Grant and Ginny to pick me up. I've agreed to go to the water park with them after Ginny stared at me with those huge blue eyes. "Please, pretty please, Meredith? We can go on the water slide together!"

  We have completed our swim lessons, all five weeks worth of it, and Milo actually teared as he presented me with the certificate.

  "I also framed it for you, because this is such a special day. I'm so proud of you, Meredith. You've gone from a sinker to a swimmer!" he said, squashing me against his rock hard chest, while the poolside moms glowered at me enviously.

  I had gone out for a victory drink with Milo, Laney, John and Grant, where we get staggeringly drunk. John, it turns out, is a pretty impressive drinker once he decides to commit, and I don't think I've ever seen Laney so lovestruck.

  "He read me Shakespeare after we had sex three times in a row!" she whispered to me furtively in a phone call from her bathroom the next night after they met, which I had to agree was quite a rare and exotic experience.

  Now, they pull up in a rattling Ford pick-up, Ginny shrieking my name excitedly through the window, as I hurry down the driveway. I feel little flutters of excitement as I exchange grins with Grant, his green eyes clear and open as he looks at me.

  Before I know it, we're at the water park, Ginny chatting away nonstop as she stares, rapturous at all the rides we have to go on. I look around me, seeing water, water, water, everywhere, roaring down in an artificial waterfall, flowing smoothly down the countless colourful slides, sloshing around roughly in the huge wave pool I see over in the corner.

  This is it, I tell myself. The ultimate test - and I am thrilled to discover my heart has quickened in mostly with excitement and not fear.

  Ginny, of course, chooses the tallest slide, a towering six-storey construction, which boasts hairpin turns and a long tunnel right before it opens out into the landing pool. Grant stares at it and I catch him muttering under his breath, "I've raised a monster."

  Suddenly, I'm at the top of the slide, with my tube under me, ready to push off. My heart is thumping with fear now, my brain screaming at me to desist. Grant has already gone down the slide, Ginny safely in his arms, and I see them whizzing rapidly down, disappearing under the tunnel and - to my enormous relief - reappearing with a splash as they reach the bottom.

  Right. Unexpectedly, I hear Laney's voice in my head. To a survivor, who is going to get back on her feet, kick ass and show the world who's boss.

  I exhale. "Okay, I'm about to kick ass." Then I push off hard, heart in my throat as I grip onto the sides of the tube for dear life. I swoosh down the slide so fast I barely feel my hair streaming back in the wind, my tube slipping from side to side with my momentum, propelled by the rushing water.

  Exhilaration rises within me and I'm suddenly laughing aloud in joy. This is what it feels like to walk side by side with fear, to respect it without letting it have power over me. As the tunnel rushes over me, my world turns dark, my senses filled with the sounds of the water and the rubber tube's friction against the plastic slide.

  Bright light floods my vision again as I finally emerge, seeing a huge pool of water rushing up to meet me and I fall into it with a great splash, my entire being submerged for an endless moment before I break through to the surface, one hand still hanging on to the gently bobbing tube.

  As I blink the water out of my eyes, I hear Ginny calling out to me excitedly, Grant by her side, and I splash my way over towards them. Without warning, he pulls me into a hug, telling me without words that he knows what an extraordinary moment I just went through. "You decided you wanted to be free," he says softly next to my ear. I pull away, look into his extraordinary green eyes. "So have I."

  When I finally reach home, the sky has set and my porch is shrouded in darkness.

  Grant and Ginny bid goodbye, his face no longer shuttered and closed, allowing me to read his expressions. There's a new kind of awareness between us, the sense that we've somehow fallen tentatively into step with each other, with no idea what's in front.

  It's enough for the both of us for now.

  I am bone-tired, but there's a deep glow of happiness within me. It has been a perfect day, one that will go down in my memory unblemished.

  As I trudge up the driveway, something starts tugging at my attention, a subtle difference in the way the shadows have fallen in my porch.

  I stop, frowning. Then I see something moving, and I take an involuntary step backwards.

  "Meredith."

  My heart stops, then slams back into action in double time. It can't be. But I know better, and I start walking again, unable to stop myself. "Jamie?"

  My brother's face emerges out of the shadows, unshaven and tired, an uncertain smile on his face. He looks older, I think irrationally, despite the knowledge that I haven't seen him in ten years.

  My gaze drops further down as he is revealed under the moonlight.

  In his hand, is a heavy cream envelope and I know that the scrawl of black ink on it spells out my name.

  Chapter 13

  "Jamie - what are you doing here?" I am rooted to the spot, my legs suddenly forgetting how to function after seeing Mike's final letter in his hand.

  His smile turns wry, as he holds it up. "I'm delivering your letter."

  I struggle to process his words. "So you've been the one dropping my letters off?"

  He nods, and I realise he's feeling as awkward and uncertain as me. My heart gives a painful tug, I never expected to see my older brother ever again.

  Wordlessly, I walk up the steps and open the door, switching on the lights. I turn to him, a silent invitation to enter the house. His shoulders drop slightly in relief - I still know how to read his body language - and he comes inside.

  We stare at each other silently for a long while, and I notice how weathered he looks now, as though he's spent the majority of his time outside doing physical labour. But he looks unmistakably healthier - his collarbones no longer protrude out in sharp relief, the sallow, sunken look on his face gone from the last time I saw him.

  It had been our worst and last fight. I had just turned eighteen, old enough to move out on my own. Jamie was twenty-three, and despite refusing to admit it, I knew he was a drug addict. It had been ten years since he'd yanked me to safety in the swimming pool, and my older brother was no longer the hero I had blindly adored, my rock in an ever-shifting world of foster homes.

  We had fought over the missing one hundred dollars in my purse, money I had desperately needed to pay as a deposit to the landlord. I knew he had taken it, he had been walking around hollow-eyed for days, looking more and more desperate each day, snarling at me when I questioned the shaking in his hands and the way he constantly wore three-quarter length sleeves now.

  "Get out!" I had shrieked at last, driven to tears of anger and desperation
while he stared at me emotionlessly, refusing to admit his guilt. "You're no brother of mine anymore. I never want to see you again," I told him, meaning every word, exhausted from the endless quarrels, the worry about money. The knowledge that my brother, who was supposed to protect me, had betrayed me by stealing from me. He had left that very day.

  And now, here he sits before me, a new weariness and vulnerability in his eyes, the last ten years a huge stone wall between us.

  "Mike contacted me," he says at last. "Don't ask me how, but I got a call from him out of the blue one day. He told me he was dying, and asked if I'd like to see you again. I jumped at the chance - I'd been trying to look for you but it was like you disappeared."

  I say nothing. It is true, I had moved away soon after, unable to bear living anymore in the city that had brought me so much unhappiness. Only Laney had known where I'd gone.

  "He asked me to drop the first letter off a month after his funeral, and the second one another month later. The third, he asked me to deliver to you in person, two months later. So, here I am."

  I stare at the letter placed on the table between us. Mike's work again. I look up at Jamie, he meets my gaze steadily, although his hands are trembling slightly.

  "I'm sorry, baby sister. I was an idiot. I'm sorry for hurting you, for driving you away when it was just the both of us against the world. I'm sorry I wasn't around to meet Mike, to walk you down the aisle," he says, harsh guilt written all over his face, his voice faltering as I hold up my hand.

  All of a sudden, it doesn't matter anymore; the past ten years fall away as I understand that my brother is back, I've got my brother back now. I go over to him and we embrace for a long moment, our foreheads pressed together the way we used to do when we were children.

  There is a definite chill in the air now, a precursor of the cold months to come. My hands are shoved into my jacket as I trace my familar route through the graveyard, Bandit bouncing along beside me, oblivious to the cold.

  I drop down onto the grass, look up at the evening sky. It's a beautiful day, and I smile at the sunflowers placed gently against his gravestone. Janet must have paid a visit yesterday.

  His gravestone doesn't look so new anymore, weathered slightly in the past few months, and the grass is thick and springy underneath me. "Hi, Mike," I say, as I draw out the envelope from my bag.

  It seems fitting, somehow, that I read his last words to me here, where I feel his presence most.

  Dear Meredith,

  How are you, darling? As I write this, I am imagining you swimming towards me with strong, confident strokes, your green eyes glittering with happiness.

  I hope with all my heart that the swimming lessons were a success and that Candy Cane Brendan has been successfully banished from your mind forever. You have forgiven me, I trust, for springing such an awful surprise on you! I thought long and hard about it, and decided it was worth risking your anger and bewilderment if you managed to overcome this fear.

  Somehow, I have this feeling that you have.

  My last gift to you is Jamie. He's a part of you that's missing, although you would never admit it. He's a changed man now, and he wants desperately to be a brother to you again. I've wished often enough for a sibling to know how precious that bond is.

  As I draw nearer to the end, the words I want to say to you have become clearer in my head. There's no longer room for doubt, no more time to leave things unsaid, the way people so often do.

  When I first met you, I was struck by how you seemed completely unaware of how strong you were. All alone in the world, still heartbroken at the loss of your brother, you had nevertheless found a path for yourself, surviving on your own.

  And yet you never embraced this part of yourself, choosing only to see the good in others instead. You certainly brought out the best in me. Falling in love with you was the easiest - and best - decision I have ever made.

  Meredith, it's time now for you to really live for yourself. You owe it to yourself to bring out the best in you. I have the oddest feeling that you know this already.

  Lastly, I want you to feel free to love again. There's so much room in your heart - and there's someone out there who is deserving of it. I won't be jealous, I promise. After all, when someone has been loved the way you love me, that kind of love never really goes away.

  It's time to bid goodbye now. My steps on the path stop here and you must go ahead.

  I'll always be looking over you, from wherever I am.

  I love you, forever.

  Michael

  I know now what my dreams mean. I see again Michael standing just beyond the forest opening, his hand lifted up in a silent farewell.

  "Goodbye, my darling," I murmur now, a fierce throbbing in my heart.

  Thank you, I say silently, feeling him around me more than ever. Thank you for giving me the sense of self-worth I never had. Thank you for loving me so deeply that even death can't take that protection away from me.

  I fold the letter up carefully, replace it into my bag. As the sun begins its daily odyssey towards the horizon, I whistle for Bandit and turn to walk back towards my car, one step at a time.

  END