Birdsong and Sunrise

He had come back home just weeks before. This was never the plan he’d laid out for his life. But, one never does plan these things, really. Abigail had quickly taken to Jack upon their arrival. And over just the few weeks they had all been together, you could almost see Jack visibly softening toward her too. It was doing him well to have someone to look out for, especially out here in the tranquil, yet desolate, back woods. Abel couldn’t see the purpose in all the loss they had faced. But, in the aftermath, it did offer small consolations to see them loving one another as brother and sister. He supposed they might as well.

It had been two weeks now since he and Abigail arrived. Of course he had called ahead, but the look on Lucy’s face when they pulled up the gravel drive, limestone crunching under the tires, would have suggested otherwise. He wasn’t sure if it was astonishment or maybe even a hint of pain that he saw in her eyes. This was no surprise to him. They’d last seen each other almost twelve years before, and so much can change in that span of time. Yet, seeing her here, on the porch of his childhood home, slowly rising from the old rocker as he opened the car door brought about a deep pain of his own, and he felt it spread through his chest as if it might burst.

If his heart had indeed stopped at first sight of her, it quickly began to race, seemingly from nowhere. He had known coming home was going to be difficult. He’d avoided it, mostly, and each brief visit until now had been full of pain, grief, and sadness. The passing of his mother, followed by Ben’s own illness. And now, his father being gone, he had no choice but to return to handle the estate.

Lucy had been away doing field work when his mother passed, and he’d only come in briefly. Abel had asked how she was and Ben praised the good work she was doing managing the grounds and her role at the university. He spoke of her joy at being a mother as he beamed proudly at Jack, just three years at the time, racing Matchbox cars across the rug as the conversation turned to funeral arrangements and urns.

When Ben fell ill just later that year, it came as a complete blow to everyone. He was, in many ways, the backbone of it all, the farm, the business, the family, even though he and Abel had grown apart over time and disagreement. They had been close growing up, often seen racing the open roads on their bikes, whoever arrived at the baseball diamond first, winning the prize of pick on batting or pitching. Summers spent skipping rocks out across the lake, evenings spent catching fireflies, and staring up at the stars, wondering what lie beyond their home.

As Abel continued to walk, the remnants of an old fort came into view up in a tall oak. They’d worked so diligently that summer, calling in the reserves to help build what would become a central meeting place for their school-aged friends across town, and even for a few brave souls from around the other side of the lake. Word traveled fast here, for as far back as Abel could remember, and that summer was no different. They would show up on foot or by bike, hammer in hand, or with some other tool stolen from a father’s shed, eye brows raised in silent question, “Can I help, too?” That fort provided a common ground and served its purpose well into young adulthood as the meeting space morphed from childhood hangout to romantic hideout for two.

Abel laughed out loud, birds scattering from the branches above him, screeching their disapproval at the disturbance. A vision of Jimmy McDermott’s astonished face over the back of a blonde ponytail suddenly popped into his mind. He had climbed back down that ladder as fast and as silently as possible, taking Missy’s hand and heading over to sit at the lake’s edge to watch the moon rise. It was always good to have a back up plan just in case the fort was occupied. After that incident, they had all agreed on using a flag system of sorts, discrete and necessary.

The next time he came across that type of situation wouldn’t be for years, and in a very different setting where forts were traded for high rise apartments looking out over a city of flashing lights. In those later encounters, he found you’d often be met with a look of invitation rather than astonishment. He always declined, the gentleman that he was. Except that once, when he’d met Anna. He didn’t regret it either. He had loved her then, and he loved Abigail now. Their time had been wild and fast, a year of recklessness in the social scene of the big city by night and nose to the grindstone at work by day. This was all followed by the unexpected gift of two pink lines, and later that year, Abigail arrived. It felt like a lifetime ago. So many lifetimes ago. He wouldn’t change anything.

As he continued pacing the forest floor, leaves crunching underfoot, he pondered how they all got to this place and what this next lifetime would bring.