A few days after the call I received a huge bouquet of flowers. I had never received flowers before. I think my mother was even impressed. I didn’t lie when she asked me who they were from. She had made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want me to have any contact with Buddy again. I smiled and danced around the kitchen and the living room, holding my flowers. “He still loves me, he really loves me,” I sang. I saw my mother grin, trying to hold back her smile as she watched me, the happiest I’d been in a long time.
In my bedroom that night, she came in to talk to me. I had my flowers beside my bed, with Buddy’s picture and the rope.
“Can we talk Scarlett?” she asked. I sat up.
“Sure,” I said.
“You’re not planning on going back to the states anytime soon are you? Because first, I couldn’t bear it again and second, well I have a whole list of seconds,” she said. I was about to say something when she held up her hand to me.
“Let me talk. I know you love him and it’s obvious he loves you too , which makes me think that maybe he is really a sweet boy and not the monster I’ve made him out to be. I know that this is a decision that will haunt you for the rest of your life, either way you’ll lose something important. I don’t even know if you can work or go to school there, you’re so young. I think you should wait to make any decisions until you’ve at least graduated from high school. If at that time you still want to move, I have decided to support you,” she told me. I cried as I hugged my mother. She was right. I had to wait just another year.
“I have something else to tell you. I received a message yesterday from your father's employer. Apparently he's been missing from work for three days. His apartment turned up empty. They called me to see if he showed up here. I haven't heard from him in months but I wouldn't be surprised if he came back. I just thought I should warn you,” she said shakily. I could tell she was scared of his return too.
I never heard Willem's voice again after the flowers arrived. I tried calling him but his number was no longer in service and I never received another letter from him. He just vanished from my life, even though he promised we would never be over. He said that we would never end, but we did. It hurt but I accepted it.
At least now I didn't have to decide if I should tell him or not that I was having his baby. I poured myself into finishing my high school credits through correspondence. My son was born the following April.
I hadn’t realized I was pregnant at first, I thought I was sick from missing Will and from withdrawal, as I had made the decision to quit all my vices at once. It wasn’t until I was four months along that I noticed my stomach was bulging. My period still hadn’t returned, but I hadn’t had it in over a year so that wasn’t a signal for me. My mother took me to the doctor’s when I fainted at school. I kept it a secret until I finished my first term. I knew I would have to get the rest of my credits through distance learning. A pregnant student in a catholic high school was frowned upon. I mean I could be contagious.
I was grateful for my mother’s support. She knew life was not going to be easy for me anymore and there was an innocent little boy that needed us both. We never heard from my father again either. I think my mother kept expecting him to show up but I had a feeling he was gone from our lives just like Will.
“Are you sure you don’t want to tell him Scarlett, he has a right to know?” my mother asked once.
“No, he doesn’t need to know. He has a new life now. He’s escaped his darkness. Life has not been kind to him but he’s been given a way out. If I tell him now he’ll quit school and want to support me. I don’t want to live to see him resent me one day, I just want to live with the memory that once I was loved,” I cried as I told her, talking about him always hurt. I would never see him again and I had to accept it.
“Besides, I don't want a baby to be the only reason we are together. I know now that I was never meant to stay with him,” I said, hoping to end the discussion. I didn't want to talk about my baby's father again.
I buried my past. I buried Buddy’s picture, his rope, his dried flowers and I tried desperately to bury his memory. I wouldn’t allow him in my new life. We were both out of the darkness now. That time has gone and those people are gone. I still believed that we needed each other then and I wouldn't have changed a thing. We needed to be together at that time and in that place and in that pain, but it’s gone now.
When I finally graduated high school I went to college and then married Flynn. I can't help but wonder now if I had been rushing through life to avoid the pain or possibly the realization that I may have made the wrong decision. Maybe I shouldn’t have buried Willem so quickly, because now he has risen from that pit, deep down in my stomach and I
