A Time of Changes

For three days she sat in the big soft chair he had bought for her, keeping her weight off of her feet and resting her back as he moved around and unpacked their worldly goods. He was in the kitchen and she was walking around and soothing her tummy when the knock came at the door and he moved toward the front of the house as she went to answer the door. He chuckled a bit at the thought of her heading anywhere quickly. She had punched him in the arm when he had affectionately referred to her hurried pace as a 'Power Waddle' and the nickname had stuck. He paused at the end of the hallway as he heard her speak, and then froze as he heard a familiar voice.

"Hi there, can I help you?" Jill asked.

"Umm, I hope so. I'm looking for Pen Nielson." Came another female voice, one he hadn't heard in five years.

"I'm his wife, Jill." Jill replied. "Is it something I can help you with?"

"Wife..." The other speaker said as Pen finally got himself moving again. "Sorry, maybe I should just go." She said just as Pen came into the room.

His mouth was dry as he saw her turning. She was the same, but a little different. Her hair was longer, down past her shoulders and loose in the breeze and she was a bit softer, a bit more round in the face and hips. She was dressed in simple clothes with sunglasses over her eyes and she was holding a little clutch purse.

"Are you Candice?" Jill asked her and she stopped and looked back. "You are, aren't you?"

Candice nodded and then saw Pen standing behind Jill and smiled, a mixture of pleasure and pain on her face.

"Yes. I am." She nodded and Jill turned to see Pen, and then held out her hand to him.

He took her hand and Jill smiled at him lovingly before she turned back to Candice. "Then please come in, Pen has told me all about you."

Candice looked from Jill to Pen and back again, her face colouring a little. "Umm, I don't think..." She began and Pen shrugged.

"Please, come on in. I'd love to talk with you again." He said.

Candice smiled and removed her sunglasses, anxiety clear on her face as she turned to the black rental car parked at the street and waved for someone inside to join her. Pen expected a man to open the passenger door, the husband or lover Candice had found since she left him. But the back door of the car opened and Pen felt his breath stop. A little boy got out, he was dressed in a light jacket against the late October chill and carrying a wrapped box. He had his mother's eyes, but otherwise he was a spitting image of his father at the same age. Pen should know, he still had the pictures. The boy came and stood in front of Candice and she rested her hands on his shoulders.

"This is Michael, my son." She said in a soft voice as she looked from Jill to Pen. "Our son."

————30————

They sat at the kitchen table while Michael played in the living room with a few toys he had brought with him. Candice nursed a mug of coffee that she hadn't touched and she watched the boy for a bit before turning to Pen and Jill. They were holding hands and she smiled to see that. It was good to see that he had found happiness.

"I'm sure you want to know why I turned up out of the blue after five years." She said and Pen shrugged.

"It was your decision to make. I'll admit that the way you left hurt, but I understood it." He said.

She smiled in thanks at that but he could see that she still felt shame at what she had done. "I wasn't ready to commit to anything, Pen. I'm still not, I probably won't ever be again. Gavin hurt me too badly and there are still days that the hurt comes back. And when I found out that you had bought a ring..."

His fist clenched at that and Jill placed a hand over it. "How did you find out?" He asked and she shook her head.

"That doesn't matter, it never will. I didn't know if it was just a gift or if it was meant for something more..." She began.

"It was something more." He said softly. After five years she finally knew and that hurt more than anything.

"I had just been through a very bad divorce, and if you had asked me it would have been a very bad end to everything. I wouldn't have said yes, and it would have forced me to do what I did that day in a much less pleasant way." She said with a shake in her voice. "I wanted things to end on a good note, and I had planned a little party to say goodbye to you, I had wanted to take you down onto the beach one last time and..." She glanced over at where Michael was playing and smiled softly.

"But then I started feeling ill in the morning, and I missed my period that last month so when we went into Miami that last weekend I went to see a doctor and he confirmed what I had already known. I knew that I couldn't say what I had to if you proposed to me, not the way I was then. So I left; I bought the ticket and made the arrangements and I was gone. When the sun rose I was in Toronto and when it set again I was on the west shore of Vancouver Island and that's where I stayed for the last five years, in a little house looking out over a different ocean and I cried all the time. I felt like I had walked away from something that might have been salvation for me, and I felt like a fool. I almost called you every day for the first year that I was there, but I never had the courage. I was sure you hated me after the way I left." She said with pain so clear on her features that he could feel it acutely.

"I don't hate you, I never have." He said gently and she smiled in thanks at that.

"I wouldn't have blamed you if you had. I know I hated myself a lot after I left and the only thing that kept me from killing myself some days was the little life I could feel growing within me. Then I had a baby to take care of and Michael took all of my time and energy. When he was old enough to go into day care I got a job at an electronics company, working out of my house and telecommuting three days a week. I got a lot done, filed a few more patents and felt good when I left there after three years to pursue other interests. Michael can't get a good education in that little town, so we moved to Montreal and when he started asking about his father..." She looked at her son again and the painful questions that had come from him had made her cry a lot of nights. "So I looked for you. He deserves to know his father and you deserve to know your son."

The three of them talked for a long time at the table. Pen learned that Candice had never taken another lover after him, and that was the most tragic thing he could have learned. He remembered how eager and playful she had been while lovemaking, how creative and energetic and the thought that she hadn't had sex once since leaving Miami that night hurt more than her leaving actually had. She learned that he had trained his replacement a year or so after she left and he had taken a job flying charter planes for a tour company in New England. Stephan had not wanted him to go, but there had been too many hard memories on the resort for him. He was happy in his job and that was where he had met Jill. She was one of the tour guides and they had hit it off fairly well. They dated for a few years and when he asked her to marry him she had laughed and showed him the ring she had bought to ask him the same thing. They had flown down to Calabri and gotten married on the beach and he took her out in the catamaran and told her all about his winter with Candice. He had dropped the ring he had bought for Candice in the same trench she had dropped her brooch and the newlyweds had made love in the boat.

They vacationed on the island and then gone back to their lives. Three months later Jill had been shaky and afraid as she showed him the positive test, but he had been ecstatic and they had started making plans and getting things ready. When he had bought the little house last month it had been the culmination of one of their dreams. They were happy and she was happy for them. When Pen went to play with Michael, he left Candice and Jill alone at the table. Jill turned to Candice and smiled warmly.

"Thank you for bringing Michael here." She said with a little smile. "Pen looks happy and it sets some of my fears to rest." She rubbed her swollen tummy soothingly and Candice smiled.

"I hope this isn't out of place, but you look huge." She said and Jill laughed a little nervously.

"It's my first, and the doctor says the baby is healthy, but large." She was a little afraid, but Candice rested a hand over hers and smiled.

"Michael was almost ten pounds, his head was huge. I think you'll do just fine." The two of them bonded in that moment and a strong friendship was formed that would last for years. They chatted about babies and pregnancy and about their diets and what Jill could expect after the pregnancy was over while Pen and Michael bonded and played together on the floor. And for the first time since she had been divorced so abruptly, Candice was at peace. She wasn't finished healing, and she might never be, but it was a start.

That night Pen took Michael trick-or-treating with other children in the neighbourhood while Candice helped Jill pass out candy to the other kids that came around ringing the bell. It was Samhain, the beginning of the darker half of the year, and for the first time in more than five years Candice felt like she might someday be whole again.

The End