Page 117 of The Singing Trees
Annalisa stuck out her hand. “Would you like to meet her?”
“More than anything in the world.”
They walked together toward the steps. “While we’re getting everything out,” she said, “there’s one more thing I have been keeping from you; it’s kind of serious.”
He sighed and mumbled something to himself. “Hasn’t there been enough for one day? I’m not sure how much more I can handle.”
She held a straight face, winding up the tension.
He stopped at the top of the steps. “What is it?”
She couldn’t hold back anymore. “The day I drove into Portland for the first time to meet Walt...”
“Yeah?”
She flashed her teeth. “I backed into Walt’s Belvedere with your Beetle.”
He smiled and then broke into a laugh. “If that’s the last of your secrets, then I think we’re going to be just fine.” He shook his head, still laughing. “Now I’m gonna go talk to my daughter.”
Annalisa followed him down the steps, watching him with a full heart. He took two at a time. When he hit the sand, he slowed some, showing a twinge of fear. Nonna and Glen stepped out of the way and let him take in his daughter for the first time. He crept up to her and dropped his knees into the sand.
Glen started back up the steps, knowing he didn’t need to be a part of this moment. Annalisa put her arm around Nonna.
“Hi,” Thomas said. “I’m Thomas.”
She babbled a long string of mostly incoherence.
Annalisa let go of Nonna and knelt down next to Thomas, putting her hand on his back. “Celia, this is your father. Say ‘Hi, Thomas.’”
Celia hit the sand with the driftwood and made a mark. Then she looked at her father. “Hi, Thomas.”
With his knees in the sand, Thomas crawled to her and drew a heart with his finger at her feet. “You’re an artist just like your mother, aren’t you? I’m not much of one, but I know a few shapes.”
Celia, who didn’t understand a word, looked at him and let out a smirk. Annalisa, on the other hand, burst into tears. Yes, they’d missed some time together, but there was so much more to be had.
Chapter 42
PEOPLELOVINGPEOPLE
May 1979
Davenport, Maine
Annalisa and Thomas had visited his mother in Davenport at least three times a year since they were married, but pulling up to the big white house on the water was different this time, as Thomas wasn’t in the car with her. Emma was back from the West Coast after being gone for years. Not having spoken to his sister since confronting her about the lies, Thomas had decided to stay home.
Annalisa didn’t blame him. Though she’d mostly forgiven Emma and had exchanged letters over the years, it had taken her almost six years to find the strength to actually face her in person. It was one thing to forgive and love from afar, but to actually set eyes on the person who took so much from them had required even stronger intervention.
In the end, it had taken the insistence of her now seven-year-old daughter to make her come around. Celia was desperate to meet her only aunt and kept prying. Each request pushed Annalisa further toward finding the strength in her heart to let a woman who’d done so much damage back into her life.
Then one day it happened. Annalisa woke with a clear vision, knowing that, for her sake—and her daughter’s—it was time to take thefinal step toward repairing her relationship with Emma. If she couldn’t teach her daughter about complete forgiveness and compassion, then what was she teaching her at all?
Emma had written dozens of letters from different places out west, begging for forgiveness, and though Thomas had refused to answer, Annalisa had always taken the time. Remembering that she’d once been in a similar plight, she knew that Emma needed to know that she was still loved. In fact, it was love that had turned the light on Annalisa’s darkness, sparing her from Emma’s fate.
When Annalisa looked at her happy and healthy daughter, so incredibly loved by Annalisa and Thomas and Nonna, and a host of family and friends, she was reminded that Emma had never been given such a chance. So maybe Annalisa wasn’t ready to face Emma or spend time with her or introduce her to Celia, but she’d decided responding to the letters—keeping Emma up to speed with Celia’s life, if nothing else—was a gift that she was happy to give.
In the past weeks, though, after Emma wrote to say she was coming home for a few weeks before moving to Morocco with the Peace Corps, Annalisa knew she had to do more. Especially considering her creative voice—her entire artistic raison d’être—was based onlove and the idea of people loving people. That notion could not and would not exist only on the canvas.
As she’d come to this revelation, she’d tried to convince Thomas to come with her, telling him that they had to move on, for Celia’s sake, if no one else’s. But Thomas had no intentions of overcoming his anger with his sister, and he had no intentions of ever speaking with her again.
