Page 45 of Memories of the Past

I couldn’t help but giggle. “No, Aunt Vi, the business is fine. Booming.”

“Well, it’s something,” she said, bringing her fingers to her lips in deep thought. “A boy perhaps, or should I say a man now?”

I blinked hard. How did she always do this, I wondered.

“You know, Trinity, I fear I may have been wrong all these years.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?” I questioned.

“Well, I taught you to just be happy with whatever you had. I also taught you that love wasn’t worth it, but without love in the middle…you have no stories to tell, you have no happy ever after either.”

I frowned. “Well, Aunt Vi, I’m more of a happily for now kind of girl anyways.”

“Trinity, you are only repeating what I’ve told you for years. I want you to listen to me, Trinity. It’s the end that really counts. If the middle leads you to your happily ever after, nothing else truly matters, but without it, you remain empty forever.”

Irritation flooded my body. The last thing I wanted to hear was something about some happily ever after. Besides, Aunt Vi wouldn’t know anything about that. She hadn’t gone after her happily ever after either.

“Aunt Vi, I…”

“No, listen to me. I never told you this. You may know it because you found that journal, so I’m assuming you read it, but years ago I, too, had my heart broken.”

“Aunt Vi, really I—”

“Listen,” Aunt Vi bit out, meeting my eyes with a stern look, silencing me just like she used to when I was young. “Like you, the man I’d fallen in love with left me. I wanted to die. Really, I did, and in many ways, I think I allowed myself to. I’d gotten pregnant, you see. When he left, I had a miscarriage. I never told Mama, your grandmother, or him. Only your mother knew. Years later, when I was in my late twenties, he came back to Willow Valley. He sought me out, only when I saw him, I pushed him away. I wanted nothing to do with him, and I mean nothing.”

Thinking back, I wondered if this was why Thomas had asked me to read the entire journal. I’d never known that Jed had come back to Willow Valley. The only thing I’d found was that letter, and I figured it had come in the mail.

“I was still so hurt, and just looking at him ripped at my heartstrings. He tried to get me to talk to him. He even wrote me a letter and everything, leaving it at the front door with your mother, but the damage had been done, and I decided that it was too late for us. I never wrote him back. Instead, I shoved that letter in that diary and never opened it again. I chose to live a very lonely life. I mean, I had you after your parents passed, so I wasn’t completely alone, but it was still lonely, not having anyone to love in the way a woman loves a man. I chose wrong, Trinity.”

“Aunt Vi…”

“Trinity, stop being so stubborn. You don’t want to end up like me. God is granting you both a second chance with one another. That is a gift that not many people get. You should be grateful. Let the anger go and realize what it is you are being handed. Sometimes, my dear, the road to the happily ever after isn’t paved, it’s rocky and bumpy, but that is what makes the relationship that much stronger.”

I looked at Aunt Vi, my eyes beginning to burn with tears.

“Second chances don’t come along often in life. I lost out on so many things because I didn’t take the second chance that was being handed to me. I let my anger and hurt get in the way, and the only thing it did was burn me.”

I looked down at my hands. They were folded in my lap, and without warning, tears rolled down my cheeks. I looked up at Aunt Vi, and she reached over and wiped them off my cheek.

“Just realize what it is you’re being given. Open your heart instead of keeping it in that proverbial locked metal box that I taught you to keep it in,” she said, softly smiling.

“But, Aunt Vi, he hurt me again,” I whispered.

“That’s because you’re still allowing what happened in the past to interfere with now. Stop, just stop. Forget what happened and open your heart to the new possibilities. He isn’t the same man he was before.”

I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her when a deep voice called out from behind us, “Knock, knock.”

I turned and looked over my shoulder to see Jed leaning against a walker.

“Jed,” we both said at the same time, only the shock that lined my voice didn’t line Aunt Vi’s.

“I’m not interrupting anything am I.”

“No, dear, not at all.” Aunt Vi smiled, patting a spot on the bench beside her.

I watched as Jed made his way over and sat down, then leaned in and kissed her cheek. A light blush fell over Aunt Vi’s cheeks, and I brought my hand up to cover my smile.

“I thought I’d come to see if you wanted any lunch. They are serving some pasta in the lounge, with some garlic bread. Strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert.”

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