Eternal Journey (12 page)

Anna, still shaken by the experience, just sat and watched him walk down the beach, around the cliffs, and out of sight. She
looked again at Kevin’s letter, reading it another time or two, and became aware of a very gentle breeze softly stirring around
her. With the wind kissing her face and ruffling her hair, Anna slowly closed her eyes, feeling and tasting the sea breeze
and salt spray. She very carefully folded her letter and slipped it into the pocket of her parka. Taking a deep breath, she
got up from the rock and readied herself for the hike back up the beach.

Retracing her steps in the sand, Anna was overcome with emotion. Was it that she felt so alone after the solace of his company?
Or was it exhaustion from feeling her pain and her grief?

Anna reached into her pocket for a tissue, and in that same instant, she saw Kevin’s letter fall to the sand. Stunned, she
watched it skip along the water’s edge. She quickly ran to grab it, but just as her fingers grasped at its edge, the letter
was caught in a gust of wind. The paper soared up into the sunlight.

As if in a trance, Anna felt the muscles in her arm and hand tense as she reached for those words that had so touched, yet
pained, her heart. Kevin’s letter rose even higher toward the clouds, far beyond Anna’s grasp.

With a moan of frustration, Anna sank despondently to the sand. She sat there staring at her letter, helplessly watching as
it gently drifted to the sea below. The paper first rode the swells, then surrendered to the rhythm of the ocean. Anna stood
up and wandered into the water, oblivious to the cold waves pounding at her feet. She watched as Kevin’s words disappeared
into the sea.

As the letter slowly faded from her sight, a very strange sensation came over Anna. She felt the wounds that had just reopened
in her heart slowly close, then permanently fade away. And, once the raw shock of this revelation had sunk into her awareness,
she experienced a peacefulness that made all the pain disappear.

It wasn’t until she was on her way back on the North Road that she realized John had walked toward the lighthouse, not the
road.

Anna pinched her arm more than once on that ride back to Tisbury. Exhausted from the experience, she began to focus on all
the questions she wished she had asked John. She should have asked about Beth. Of course, she wanted to know a lot more about
Kevin. She had questions for Father John Duffy, the priest. Or were they questions for John Duffy, Ph.D., the theologian?
Questions for a theologian she could entertain; questions for a priest were too much for her exhausted mind to handle.

She gave herself permission to relax and not think about any of it. She would call Becky in a few days when she had sorted
things out, and find out how to reach John. He, too, was going to want to stay in contact with her now—she was certain of
that.

Anna checked her watch as she pulled onto State Road. It was close to one o’clock. She’d be cutting it close as usual, barely
making her flight, but this time she had an excuse no one would believe. This is a story that is mine and mine alone to keep,
she thought, missing Beth more than ever. For a brief, fleeting moment Anna actually wondered if she might be losing her mind.
She then looked down at the bruises that were beginning to appear on both arms, examined her reflection in the window, and
smiled.

“No, Annie, you are not losing your mind,” she heard Beth say. “This weekend has just been an experience that your mind is
having difficulty accepting.”

Grief does strange things to folks, Anna thought, and accepted that feeble explanation so she could focus on getting packed
and to the airport in time for her flight.

Pulling back out onto State Road, Anna remembered that she had never checked the answering machine. Well, it was probably
Becky or Chris, and if it was important enough, they’d get in touch with her later. She looked at her watch and saw that she
had miraculously changed clothes, cleaned her muddy shoes, and packed in time to be on her way by 1:55. She was grateful it
was November and not the summer tourist season as she noticed that her Explorer was the only vehicle on the road.

As she drove down the country road toward the little airport, she remembered the stories her mother had told her about women
whose lives had changed in an instant. Women who had lost husbands or children, in a time when it was not all that unusual
or unexpected to suffer such a loss as part of life. Families were so much bigger then, Anna thought, and certainly much closer
in a physical, if not an emotional, sense. Not that that was comfort to the survivors; the losses were still tragic and forever
changed people’s lives.

On Anna’s street back in the fifties and early sixties, there had been close to a hundred children of all ages, and all the
families had two parents, except for one where the father had died. All the mothers were at home, hanging wash, talking to
each other over backyard fences, and creating all sorts of good smells in their shiny white kitchens. The sounds of children
filled the long, hilly street from dawn to dusk during the summer, and the block came alive by four-thirty every afternoon
during the school year. Everyone knew everyone else.

When school started each September, a little parade of sorts would start about seven-thirty in the morning. Children of all
sizes and shapes used to march to the top of the hill in maroon-and-white uniforms. Every once in a while you could see a
splash of color, when the kids who were off to the public school joined the parade. The Catholic school kids all walked the
three or so miles to school, while the “publics” caught a bus at the top of the hill. If they missed their bus, they would
join the parade until they reached the next corner. Smiling, Anna remembered how she and Beth had been in the fifth grade
before they realized that being a “public” wasn’t the only other option in life. That was the way her world was back then,
“publics” and Catholics, all playing together and living together in the little town outside Baltimore.

As she drove, Anna studied the same barren trees she had barely noticed just forty-eight hours ago when Patrick had been at
the wheel. The weekend had resurrected memories that filled her now open and accepting mind. Where to go from here? Anna mused.
As she was mulling this question over, Anna adjusted the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of her reflection; she began
checking her face and hair. Suddenly Anna recalled the story her mother had told her about Mrs. Dougherty. Over the years,
Anna’s mother told many stories as the two would stand side by side in the kitchen doing dinner dishes. But Anna never forgot
the story about Mrs. Dougherty and her twins.

Mrs. Dougherty lived at the bottom of the hill with her eight children. She was the nicest lady on the street once, her mother
told Anna, a fact that Anna verified with the older kids on the block. There were two sets of twins among the eight children,
a very big family for such a young woman. Anna never thought of Mrs. Dougherty as young, and when she asked her mother about
the sadness in the woman’s eyes, Anna’s mother told her why it was there.

Mrs. Dougherty had beautiful, shiny black hair that would fly in the wind as she walked with her twins up the hill to the
park. One day, the older set, a girl and a boy who had just turned six, took off on their own and went down the hill, and
got lost in the woods. There was a creek in the woods where all the little kids were forbidden to go. Someone later vaguely
remembered seeing the children walking hand in hand into the woods about midafternoon.

They found the children at dinnertime, facedown in the creek. Their bright blue windbreakers had drifted to the water’s edge
and were tangled in the branches of the thick growth lining the riverbank. Mrs. Dougherty was never the same after that. The
neighborhood children would whisper nervously as they passed her in the park. There she would sometimes sit, staring with
empty eyes and clutching shredded scraps of faded blue fabric, remnants of a happier past.

Anna’s mother had to turn her head and look out the kitchen window. And that, Anna’s mother had said, was why Mrs. Dougherty
had white hair at only twenty-eight years of age.

As the years went by, Anna learned more of the tragedy from which the once vibrant, beautiful, young mother never recovered.
Colleen Dougherty’s crowning glory, her shiny black hair, had turned white that night she lost her eldest children, her first
set of twins, to the rippling creek in the woods.

A lone tear trickled down Anna’s left cheek as she turned by the sign with the arrow and little plane on it. Anna looked over
at her reflection in the rearview mirror, checking to see if her hair might have gone white.

It was five minutes after two. Anna parked the Explorer, locked the keys inside for Patrick to pick up later, and hurried
into the building to board the plane.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Carroll. It’s good to see you. I hope you had a nice weekend. Looks like it’s just the two of us again.”

Anna forced a tepid smile at the cheery young flight attendant and took her seat. The sun was high in the sky, shining so
brightly it gave Anna an excuse to hide her eyes under dark sunglasses during the flight. While she was gazing at the peaceful
clouds, Anna accepted a glass of water brought by the attendant.

The flight was smooth and the skies were beautiful. Anna took sips of her water as she admired the heavens. It wasn’t until
the pilot announced that they were approaching La Guardia and the young woman came over to collect the glass that her earlier
remark actually hit home.

“Excuse me,” said Anna, “but I was quite tired on Friday and was not paying attention on our trip out to the island. What
did you mean when you said a little while ago, ‘Just the two of us again’?”

The young woman smiled. “Don’t you remember, Dr. Carroll? You were the only passenger on the plane. I made some comment about
it, and thought maybe I had offended you in some way. You never even looked up during the trip, even when I refilled your
glass. You seemed lost in the clouds, or deep in thought, the entire way, so I just kept to myself, though I really wanted
to talk to you. That’s why I was so happy to see you this afternoon. I was hoping maybe I could talk to you today, but I can
see that you still have a lot on your mind.”

No other passengers? Anna fumbled with her sunglasses. She needed distraction. If she fully grasped the words she was hearing,
she would start to panic. She was already more unsettled and off balance about her dream of Beth, let alone the revelation
on Gay Head, than she cared to admit, even to herself. Now this.

Anna somehow answered. “Yes, you’re right, I have a lot going on right now. I did have quite a weekend, thank you. But we
have a few minutes before we land, so tell me, what would you like to talk about?”

As the young woman began to speak, Anna breathed deeply, convincing herself that the imagined companionship on the plane on
Friday was not significant. That tap on her shoulder had been the flight attendant gently waking her from her reverie. And
outside, well, she must have been so anxious and preoccupied that she had wished for the offer of assistance and confused
it with the real thing. No big deal, Anna reassured herself as she tried to focus on the young woman. The rest of the weekend
was real; she had the bruises on her arm to prove it.

“… and so, Dr. Carroll, that’s why your book helped me so much. After our flight together on Friday, I went to the bookstore
and bought your latest one. I bought two copies, actually—one for me, one for my mom. Could you please autograph them for
me?”

Anna’s logical internal dialogue had had the desired effect. She felt cool and calm. With her most professional author’s aplomb,
she took one of the books from the young woman’s hands and asked, “How should I inscribe this one?”

“Well, my mother’s name is Leah. Why don’t you write in her book first?” Anna wrote and signed the inscription.

As the plane continued its descent toward La Guardia, the bright light of the sun began to fill the cabin. At first, Anna
was almost blinded by the light as it reflected off the shiny window casings across the aisle. Slowly, however, the brightness
faded and a soft white light radiated throughout the cabin. Anna felt a warmth and presence all around her, which relieved
all remaining remnants of anxiety and confusion. It was only for a split second, but Anna could have sworn she saw Beth, sitting
in the row across from her, smiling in her direction as she faded away.