Cutler 04 - Midnight Whispers

conversations always wove their way back to our days at The Meadows. One summer we even went back to visit Charlotte and Luther and Homer. We took Jefferson with us and when Homer set eyes on him and he saw Homer, it was as if they had never parted, never missed a beat. Homer took him off to show him where a fox had given birth.
    "What ever happened to that Fern?" Luther asked me when we all sat down to dinner.
    "She eloped with someone after I put an end to her allowance. But it wasn't the man she was with here," I said. After a pause I added, "I don't miss her."
    "Neither do we," Charlotte said and we all had a good laugh. We had a wonderful time. I played the piano for them and when we left, we promised to return as many times as we could.
    In the summer of my nineteenth year, I was enrolled in a three-week program that would take me to Paris and then to Vienna. It was a concert tour and I was looking forward to it very much. Gavin came to see me off and we took a walk on the beach.
    "I'm going to miss you, Christie," he told me.
    "Every time I leave you or you leave me, something in me dies, and every time I see you again, something new in me is reborn."
    "It's the same for me, Gavin," I told him.
    "I'm jealous of your music," he confessed. "It possesses you the way I wish I could."
    "Don't be jealous," I said, smiling. "It does fill me with great joy, but I will share it only with you."
    "Promise?"
    "For ever and ever," I said, but I stopped walking and stopped smiling.
    "What is it, Christie?" Gavin asked. He followed my gaze. There was a fish lying still in the water. My heart felt so heavy and sad, but suddenly . . . its tail fluttered and then it fluttered once more and the fish turned over as if it had been faking death. It dove into the next wave and disappeared.
    And as clearly as the day she had stood beside me on the beach, I heard Mommy ask:
    "Can you believe in the fish, Christie? Can you believe in the magic?"
    I could believe; I could believe for ever and ever. Thank you, Mommy, I thought. Thank you for your gift of faith.
    "Are you all right?" Gavin asked with concern. "Oh yes, Gavin. Oh yes."
    Off in the distance, a seagull floated toward the setting sun. I drew closer to Gavin and the two of us walked on ahead of the shadows toward our own special, bright new day.