Wrecked (17 page)

“This is just wonderful!” Andrew exclaimed. “You have set me
free of wondering about my little girl
and
given me so much more.” And
then he added, “Where are the pearls?”

“Um… on the mantle over the fireplace,” Bess recalled.

Ethan ran through to find them, returning in just a matter
of seconds with the velvet pouch in his hand. He placed them on the table.

“They are yours now,” Andrew smiled.

Another tear fell and then another as Bess lifted the pouch
and held it lovingly in her hands. “They were your mothers.”

“They were. And now they are yours.”

“Andrew.”

Bess and Ethan looked at each other, the hairs on their arms
raised in awareness.

“Andrew.”

The voice came again and cold air cut through the room like
a knife.

“Andrew. Come.”

His eyes were closed as he listened to his name being
called. “Lizzie,” he whispered in hope.

Appearing before them all stood a beautiful woman – young
with glorious blond hair that fell in ringlets down her back. She looked
remarkably like Bess.

“It’s time for you to come with me now,” she said and took
Andrew’s hand.

He opened his eyes and looked at his love… his beautiful
Lizzie. “My love,” he whispered and brought her hand to his lips. “Have you
come for me?”

“I have,” she smiled and took his other hand in hers. “You
are finished here. It’s time for you to be with me now.”

Then, in a startling surprise, Lizzie turned and said,
“Thank you, Bess. Thank you for loving him and helping my love. He refused to
leave our child until he was sure she was safe and you have given him the
answers and the closure he needed so that he can come and join me.”

“It was my pleasure,” Bess sputtered between tears.

“And Andrew, thank you for loving Bess and helping her
realize how important she is. She needed to learn to love herself and allow
Ethan close to her so that they can find the happiness together that they
deserve. Your work here is finished. They are going to be just fine.”

Ethan reached for Bess’s hand and they held each other
tightly.

“I love you, Elizabeth,” the Captain smiled at Bess.

“I love you, Andrew,” she replied with all the love in her
heart she had for her grandfather.

“Be happy,” Lizzie said as she looked at Ethan and then at
Bess. “Love each other and treasure every moment you have together, for you
never know when it will be your last.”

And then, they were gone. Andrew and Lizzie, still clutching
one another, disappeared into thin air.

It had been two weeks since Andrew had disappeared with
Lizzie. Ethan had moved back into his old home, the home he now shared with
Bess. When discussing living arrangements, Ethan wanting desperately to spend
every spare moment he had with Bess, she had said she felt the same but
couldn’t ever imagine not living in the house where she’d met Andrew and
discovered her ancestry. The house meant more to her than she could put into
words. Ethan understood completely. She’d said it was where she wanted to live
for the rest of her life. Ethan had smiled and happily agreed. It left his
grandparents’ house empty, but it meant that Evan could come and go as he
pleased. Ethan secretly hoped that when his womanizing brother finally settled
down he’d end up living in the house, making the brothers next door neighbors.

When Friday evening came, and Ethan and Bess had arrived
home from work, Ethan had brought Chinese food with him, after stopping and
picking up takeout on his way home, they ate on the back porch, sitting on the
swing and listening to the waves crash against the rocks. The seagulls joined
them, hoping for a scrap thrown in their direction.

“This is where I first met Andrew,” Bess remembered.

“Outside? Here?” Ethan replied.

“Mmm, although I didn’t see him, just heard him.”

“What did he say?” asked Ethan between mouthfuls of chow
mein.

“Stop,” Bess said quietly. “He told me to
stop.
”

“Stop what?”

“It was a bad day,” she noted sadly.

Ethan put the box of chow mein down next to him, his
chopsticks sticking straight up out of the box and turned to face Bess. He
wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the story, but he sensed that Bess needed to tell
him. “What happened?” he asked.

“I felt so different then… so different than I do now. Now I
have
you
,” she smiled at Ethan and he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I
belong
. I have purpose and hope now. I can allow myself to dream of a
future. The day Andrew spoke to me for the first time I had
none
of
that. All I had was… well, nothing. I had
nothing
to look forward to. I
had nothing to hope for. All I had was a past that I couldn’t rid myself of.”

“What did you do?” Ethan hesitantly asked quietly.

“I was walking towards the edge of the cliff. I figured it
would be easy to just take one too many steps and it’d all be over,” she
shrugged.

“Oh, Bess.” Ethan was horrified.

“But I heard him yell
stop
. It was as clear as if he
was standing right beside me.”

“Maybe he was,” Ethan choked, still in turmoil over hearing
that Bess had considered ending her life.

“Maybe,” she smiled. “He saved me that day.”

“I wish I could say thank you,” Ethan murmured.

“He knows.”

“Yeah, he probably does,” he agreed. “You don’t feel like
that anymore though, right?” He hoped that she would answer truthfully.

“No,” she smiled at Ethan. “I am the complete opposite of
that day. You have brought me back to… well, that’s not true. This is a new
feeling for me. It’s all new. You have given me what I’ve never had. I love
you.”

“I love
you
, Elizabeth Marie Williams.” Ethan slid
from the swing onto his knee and pulled a velvet box from his pocket. “Will you
do me the honor of being my wife?” He opened the box to reveal a stunning
diamond engagement ring. “This is the
official
proposal,” he grinned.

“Yes!” Bess cried out. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

They both stood and clung to one another, deliriously happy
in the present moment, and looking forward to a long and happy life together.

*****

Bess wore the pearls on her wedding day. She was the most
beautiful bride the congregation gathered in the small church had ever seen.
She literally glowed with love and happiness. With Regina at her side, and Evan
at Ethan’s, Bess vowed to love, honor and cherish her husband. Ethan returned
the vow as he gazed at the woman who had taken his breath away all those months
before as she laid in a hospital bed. How far they’d come. They’d both arrived
in Port Lincoln unsure of their future. But there had been a bigger picture
that neither of them could see, and now they were part of it, with their eyes
open and excitement for what would come next.

The ceremony was simple and once they were pronounced
husband and wife, Ethan kissed his wife with a kiss that made her knees buckle
and her toes curl inside her white satin pumps. As they turned to walk back
down the aisle as a married couple, they both abruptly stopped, cemented in
place as they stared in awe at the back of the church. There stood the Captain,
looking elegant and handsome in his full Navy uniform, a beautiful
golden-haired Lizzie at his side. Their arms were intertwined and the smile on
their faces needed no explanation. Next to Lizzie stood a woman that Bess knew
without a doubt was Andie. She stood next to her husband, who gazed back at her
with adoration, and they were surrounded by more people that instinctively
Ethan and Bess
knew
were Andie’s and James children and grandchildren,
her great, great, great, great grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

Tears flowed freely down both Bess’s and Ethan’s cheeks, as
they saw the joy lit up in each one of the beautiful faces smiling at them.
They were all one family, and the bonds of death could never break that. Bess
was part of that family and would treasure them from afar. That is, until the
day that she and Ethan would join them.

Bess spent many hours in the upstairs bedroom at the end of
the hall. It was her second favorite room of the house, the family room being her
first. Sitting in front of the fireplace, even when it didn’t have a fire in
it, was one of the highlights of every day. After their honeymoon, a week spent
in Boston visiting historical sites that held significance to the Wentworth
family, Ethan suggested to Bess that they turn the upstairs bedroom into a
master suite. It was certainly big enough and there was already plumbing on the
second floor, so adding another bathroom wouldn’t be that difficult. She was
ecstatic at the idea and a contractor was hired right away.

All of the furniture was moved to the other upstairs bedrooms
while the work was being completed and Ethan and Bess stayed out of the way.
After all, Andrew was no longer inhabiting the second floor so there was no
reason to venture up there before the remodeling was completed.

But once the workmen left, the tools were all gone, the
carpet installed and the room ready for furniture, Bess and Ethan, hand in
hand, walked up the stairs and down the hall to inspect the finished suite. As
they walked past the first bedroom, Bess stopped as she saw the old wooden
trunk planted haphazardly just inside the doorway. She remembered Andrew often
looking at it with a sadness that she never understood.

“Can you open that?” she asked her husband.

“I’m sure I can,” Ethan said as he bent over to look at the
rusty old lock. He ran downstairs and returned a minute or two later with a
pair of bolt cutters. “I had no idea that these would come in handy one day,” he
chuckled as he broke open the lock. He pulled the rusty bits of metal away and
unlatched the lid.

Lifting it slowly, Bess peered inside. It was truly a
treasure chest to behold, holding a fortune much more valuable than gold or
jewels. Inside was an old, worn hand-made quilt and she wondered if it had
covered Lizzie’s bed, or lain on the floor so Andie could sit on it and play.
As she gently lifted it from the chest, appreciating the skill of the hands
that had made each stitch, laying underneath it was a dozen or so hand-cut
pieces of wood, little pictures of ducks and trees painted on each side.

“Andie’s blocks,” she whispered as she carefully and
reverently picked one up in her hand. “These are Andie’s blocks. No wonder
Andrew cherished this chest.”

Two years later, Elizabeth Andrea James – Lizzie - was born,
weighing in at four pounds, four ounces. Her brother, Andrew Ethan James, was
born two minutes later, weighing a hefty five pounds, two ounces. Ethan sat
next to his wife, holding her hand and kissing her cheek all through the
C-section delivery. It couldn’t have gone any smoother and Ethan was already
telling Bess how excited he was to have more babies with her. She just laughed,
kissed him and told him there would be at least a four-year waiting period if
they were going to have twins every time she got pregnant.

Mother and babies went home a few days later to a newly
decorated nursery in the room next to the master suite on the second floor of
their
cottage
on the cliff. On one wall a giant pedigree chart had been
painted, starting with Captain Andrew Wentworth and Elizabeth Jane Sherton
Wentworth at the top, and baby Lizzie’s and baby Andrew’s name at the bottom,
the paint still wet. Ethan and Bess’s twins would grow up playing in the house
in which baby Andie had been born, and they would play with the same blocks that
she had played with as she sat by the fire in the family room. Ethan and Bess had
vowed to one another that they would make sure that the twins knew where they
had come from and the sacrifices their ancestors had made. They were all one
big family, and, families are forever.

THE END

Born in Perth, Western Australia to English parents, AJ grew
up on the beaches in the summer and studiously studying English, music and
languages during the school year. Reading, dancing and cooking filled the rest
of her time. Moving to the United States as a teenager opened her up to not
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Charming as well. Instilled with the love of reading by her mother at a young
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Playing with her dog, Max, trying out new recipes and
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