Then Came You: A Bradford Sisters Novella

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by Wade, Becky




  Then Came You

  A BRADFORD SISTERS NOVELLA

  Becky Wade

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Wade

  Kindle Edition

  Cover Design © Jennifer Zemanek/Seedlings Design Studio

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who wishes to utilize brief passages in connection with a review or article.

  I’m grateful to the all-star team of women

  who worked with me on this novella.

  Editor Charlene Patterson, Cover Designer Jennifer Zemanek, and super readers Brittany, Beth-Anne, Tima, and Shelli . . . .

  Thank you!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Excerpt from True To You

  Fiction Written by Becky Wade

  Sign Up for Becky’s Newsletter

  About the Author

  Connect with Becky

  CHAPTER

  One

  Garner’s Journal Entry

  Sylvie left me today.

  When Glenna found out, she drove over with this leather-bound journal in her hands and compassion in her eyes. She encouraged me to write my thoughts and feelings in this journal. With a small, sad smile, she said she hoped that doing so might help me.

  Then Willow started to cry. So Glenna picked her up and rocked her and hummed a lullaby I don’t know.

  I watched them together, my sister and my four-week-old baby, knowing I should feel grateful and comforted by Glenna’s support. But I don’t feel the way I should. I don’t feel any of the normal things. Everything about me is lost. Beneath the numbness that’s covering me like a thick fog, only two things are registering.

  Devastation.

  And panic.

  It’s ten o’clock at night now. Glenna and my mom, who also came by today to help out, left long ago. Willow’s sleeping and I’m alone. Alone and frantic. So I’m going to try writing. I minored in English and received A after A on both research papers and creative writing assignments.

  That’s not why I’m writing tonight, though—because I need to be decent at something. I’m writing because Glenna said it might help and God knows I need help. I’m desperate to make sense of what’s happened to me. If I can use words to do that, then I’m willing to try.

  I’ve loved a lot of people in my life. My parents and Glenna. Grandparents, cousins, friends. But I’ve never loved anyone the way I love Sylvie Rolland. With every inch of my heart and body and mind, I love her.

  We met almost a year ago at a party. When I looked across the living room and saw her standing near the fireplace, my life fractured like a stick broken into two halves. Before. And after.

  Sylvie’s beautiful. Incredibly so.

  Think of the most stunning photograph you’ve ever seen of the most stunning model. A photograph you had a hard time looking away from. A photograph that captivated you and fascinated you. How you felt looking at that photograph is perhaps one-tenth of what I felt when I caught sight of Sylvie for the first time.

  She’s slim. Tall. She’s confident and very much at ease with her body. That night, she was wearing one of her long, patterned sundresses. She’d parted her long blond hair in the middle so that it fell down both sides of her chest.

  I asked my friend who she was, and he told me that her name was Sylvie, that she was French, and that she was a friend of Margo.

  Margo waved us over. Sylvie turned her porcelain face in my direction and her blue-eyed gaze affected me like a shockwave. We talked. She told me that she’d graduated from a university in France twelve months before, right around the time I’d been graduating from U-Dub. She was on the first leg of a round-the-world tour financed by her father. She explained that she expected her tour to last for years and that she was traveling with nothing but a hiking backpack.

  She’s an artist. Her trip was about adventure and independence, but also inspiration. She planned to admire works of art from many different countries and to create paintings of her own along the way.

  I was amazed by her bravery. She was so different from anyone I’d ever met that it seemed impossible that she’d entered the ordinary routine of my life in northwest Washington State.

  I’m an idiot. Because even as she told me that she didn’t plan to stay in Merryweather for long, I was already halfway in love with her.

  So on this awful day, I can’t even blame her. She told me within ten minutes of meeting me that she would leave.

  She was honest. I’m the one who told lies to myself.

  Sylvie was sexually experienced. A week after we started dating, she undressed me in her room at the Dorchester B&B. I wanted her with a physical passion that made it hurt to breathe. I still do.

  The lies I told myself inside her room at the Dorchester B&B: My Christian upbringing made me overly conservative. No one needed to know. My love for her was pure and real and I wanted to marry her as soon as she’d let me, and all of that justified the sex.

  Sylvie was impulsive. A month after we started dating, we were sailing on the Hood Canal when she asked me if I wanted to go swimming. Before I could say no, she stood, stripped her dress over her head, and dove in. She came up laughing. Later, after I’d pulled her back into the boat, I held her cold, wet face in my hands while we kissed.

  The lies I told myself on that boat: If she ever left Washington, she’d want me to go with her. I’d find a way to leave Bradford Shipping, the company I’d been raised to inherit, and I’d join her on her trip around the world.

  Sylvie took everything lightly. Three months after we started dating, we were eating breakfast in bed together on a Saturday while rain drummed against the roof. “I’m pregnant,” she told me in her French accent. Then she looked at me teasingly, almost as if she was challenging me to figure out whether or not she was joking.

  I slowly swallowed my bite of pancake and syrup, hoping with everything in me that she was joking. We were both twenty-three. I hadn’t spent much time thinking about having kids, but when I had, it had always been something that might happen when I was older, long after I was married.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Are you really pregnant?” I remember asking. Even more, I remember the hollow way my heart pounded.

  She laughed. “I am.”

  The reality of our situation moved through me in an agonizing spiral.

  She told me she could have the baby or have an abortion. Then she shrugged and took a few more bites of breakfast. She asked me what I wanted to do. I told her I wanted what she wanted. She said it might be fun to be pre
gnant, but that it was early yet. We didn’t have to decide immediately. A lot of early pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

  A hundred thoughts spun in my head.

  We weren’t ready for the responsibility of a baby. We didn’t know anything about babies. We weren’t even engaged yet. We were completely independent for the first time in our lives and neither of us was ready to give up our freedom. The people at church would judge us. The people in my hometown of Merryweather would never see me the same way again.

  My father would be furious, my mother deeply disappointed. My parents raised Glenna and me in church. Many times during my high school and college years, they’d lectured me about the importance of abstinence and the dangers of premarital sex. Already, they disliked Sylvie. A pregnancy would throw fuel on that fire.

  I didn’t want a baby . . . so was I supposed to pray for a miscarriage now? Until that moment, abortion, miscarriage, pregnancy, and fatherhood weren’t words that applied to me.

  I haven’t eaten another pancake since that day.

  The lies I told myself that morning while rain pounded the roof: There was no sense in worrying about a pregnancy at that point. Everything would work out fine.

  Sylvie was noncommittal. She chose to have the baby—I think because she viewed pregnancy as a new adventure worth experiencing. However, she refused to talk about marrying me or about what would happen after the baby arrived.

  Daily during Sylvie’s pregnancy, I told her I loved her. In response, she’d smile or kiss me or run a hand through my hair. But always with an air of sympathy.

  The lie I told myself during Sylvie’s pregnancy: At least now I can be sure that she’ll never leave Merryweather.

  Sylvie was independent. When Sylvie started having contractions, I felt stupid and terrified and still 70 percent sure that I didn’t want this baby. Sylvie wasn’t afraid and she wasn’t unsure. She communicated her wishes to the doctors and nurses clearly. Never once did she reach for my hand. She didn’t need me.

  After they placed the newborn in her arms and the delivery room was mostly quiet, she told me she wanted to name our daughter Willow. I agreed. She insisted I choose her middle name, so I chose Elizabeth, after my mother.

  I watched Sylvie sweep her finger down the baby’s cheek. She touched Willow with an air of sympathy I recognized.

  The lie I told myself in the delivery room: Motherhood will change her.

  Sylvie was restless. After we brought Willow home to my apartment, her discontent grew. During the daytime, I had to go to work to support us. Whenever I was home these past four weeks, though, I did everything I could to help Sylvie with Willow.

  Even so, Sylvie slipped further and further away from me. She stopped focusing her full attention on me. She stopped giving me her bright, flashing smile. My anxiety multiplied.

  The lie I told myself after Willow came home: Sylvie’s going through the same emotions a lot of women go through after delivery. She’ll get over it.

  Then this morning, a Saturday morning, I walked into our bedroom to tell Sylvie that I’d fixed oatmeal for breakfast and found her placing her clothes in her backpack. The sight struck me like a punch to the gut. I struggled to draw breath. Willow lay swaddled in the bassinet beside our bed, beginning to cry.

  When I asked Sylvie where she was going, pity creased her forehead. Pity.

  “I always told you I wouldn’t stay long,” she said.

  “We have a child together.”

  She told me that it wouldn’t be right to take a baby along on such a long trip. That traveling would be too upsetting for poor Willow.

  I fought down panic and told Sylvie that there was no way she could leave Willow with me.

  She straightened, patted my chest, and told me I’d make a wonderful father. I tried to explain that Willow couldn’t survive without her, without a mother. I tried to tell her how much Willow and I needed her.

  “I’ll always be Willow’s mother,” she said. “No matter where I go.” She lifted Willow, kissed her head, and handed her to me. She reminded me that she’d already stayed in Washington far longer than she’d planned.

  She carried her backpack into the kitchen, where she stopped for a few bites of oatmeal and two sips of coffee. She told me she was going to Canada with some of Margo’s friends. That she’d decided to hitch a ride with them just the night before.

  The whole time, my body was turning dark. The locks closing. The Open sign flipping. I followed her outside, holding Willow against my chest. A van waited at the curb, engine running.

  I asked her how I’d contact her. She doesn’t believe in technology.

  She said she’d write. Or call.

  I asked her when. When was she going to call?

  She had the nerve to shrug. “Someday.”

  When Sylvie reached the van, she looked back. She gave me the old, dazzling smile I hadn’t seen in weeks. She waved, blew us a kiss, waved again, then climbed into the van. The door shut behind her with a bang.

  These are the lies I want to tell myself today: Sylvie will change her mind. Sylvie will miss Willow and me so much that she’ll come back.

  I’ll find a way to convince her to marry me.

  However, I no longer have the luxury of telling myself lies.

  Here are the truths I don’t want to face: My love for Sylvie wasn’t enough to hold her. Willow wasn’t enough to hold her. I’m twenty-four years old, I work full time at Bradford Shipping, I’m clueless about newborns, and now I’m the only parent Willow has left.

  Worse, far worse, this is all my fault. My love for Sylvie cracked my integrity and my common sense.

  I can’t defend the choices I’ve made except to say that I loved—that I still love—Sylvie.

  CHAPTER

  Two

  Card from Margaret to Her Daughter, Kathleen

  Congratulations on your college graduation, darling. At long last, you can now move back home to Snoqualmie where you belong. I’ve already put clean sheets on your bed.

  Love,

  Mother

  Phone Message from Kathleen to Her Mother, Margaret

  Thanks for driving down and taking me to lunch yesterday after the graduation ceremony. And thanks for the offer to move home. That’s nice of you, but I’m going to stick with my plan to stay in Spokane through the summer. Grandpa Burke gave me a big check as a graduation gift, so I’ll be able to pay rent on my apartment and pay for groceries and all the rest of my expenses until I find a job.

  I’ve sent my résumé to several companies and have three interviews scheduled, so I hope to have good news to share with you soon. Talk to you later!

  Postcard from Kathleen to Her Father, Dillon

  Daddy,

  Here’s another postcard for our collection. The dog on the front wearing sunglasses on the beach pretty well sums up my happy, summertime state of mind. My graduation certificate may as well be my Emancipation Proclamation! What I’ve been able to see and experience of the world up until this point feels WAY too small.

  Nothing against the most excellent Gonzaga University. . . . It’s just that it was hard to feel completely free there these past four years, seeing as how Mom picked it for me and seeing as how it’s just a four-hour drive from home.

  From now on, the choices are all mine!

  I’m praying that Estée Lauder in NYC responds to the application I sent with an interview offer.

  I love you,

  Kathleen

  Phone Conversation between Kathleen and Her Friend Rose

  ROSE: I’m so sorry about Estée Lauder.

  KATHLEEN: My heart dropped into my stomach when I read their polite rejection.

  ROSE: It’ll happen for you one day with Estée Lauder, I just know it. Remind me again what grade you were in when you read that book about Estée Lauder?

  KATHLEEN: Fourth.

  ROSE: You wrote a book report on it, right?

  KATHLEEN: Right.

  ROSE: Well, I have faith that t
he girl who’s studied everything there is to study about Estée Lauder and her company will one day be offered a job there.

  KATHLEEN: I was just really hoping I’d be offered a job there now. You know? I was already dreaming about the cute coat I’d buy for the New York winter and trying to figure out how to find a roommate with an apartment near a bagel shop.

  ROSE: I’m mourning the cute coat and the bagels.

  KATHLEEN: I can hear a “but” in your voice.

  ROSE: But I’ve learned that those of us who just graduated have to take what we can get. It’s not like putting treasurer of a sorority or junior class vice president on a résumé counts for as much as actual job experience. My big dream isn’t a nursing job back home in Snoqualmie. But a job in Snoqualmie was what I could get. So here I am.

  KATHLEEN: I hear you. I think I was overly optimistic about the job market. I’ve been looking for work for a month now and I only have one offer to show for it.

  ROSE: You’ve been offered a job? What job? Where? You should have told me this first.

  KATHLEEN: The company’s called Bradford Shipping. They’ve offered me a position in their Customer Service Department. You don’t think that means I’ll be sitting in a cubicle wearing a headset, taking calls from complaining people, do you?

  ROSE: No, no! The Customer Service Department sounds very impressive. I’m imagining you sitting in a corner office with your business degree framed on the wall.

  KATHLEEN: I don’t know. . . .

  ROSE: What’s keeping you from accepting their offer?

  KATHLEEN: Bradford Shipping is headquartered in Shelton and you know how much I want to move somewhere new and different. If I live in Shelton, I’ll be even closer to my mom than I’ve been in Spokane. She’ll be able to drop in on me anytime and guilt me into coming home on weekends.

  ROSE: How good is the offer?

 

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