In six months, Gwen Johnston turns thirty, and when she does, she vows she'll have her life together. She'll no longer be jumping from one job to another, from one relationship to the next. A new, more mature, Gwen will have emerged. She's giving he...
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The next morning, Gwen is cuddled against me, and I'm both eagerly awaiting and dreading the inevitable knock on the door from my sister. There's no way she'll stay away once the St. Anthony whisper network has let her know I'm in town.
"Are you happy?" Gwen is tracing figure eights on my chest.
"Are you?" My instinct is still to deflect, but I know I'll answer in a minute once I've gathered my thoughts. Before the nightmares returned and my sleep suffered, there was no question I was happy. The happiest I'd been in a very long time. That's still true, but the happiness is tainted by dread, and I haven't figured out exactly what the dread is about.
Am I worried that something is going to happen to Gwen? Is it our impending separation? Am I not ready to go back to the DRC? Is it just simply the proximity to my family and childhood? My nightmares could be symbolic of all of it or none of it.
"Yeah, I am," she says, and there's hesitation in her tone.
"But?"
"It's a weird kind of happiness now than it used to be. The last few weeks, I've just been happy. The happiest I've probably been in a really long time. Knowing that it might be coming to an end is... Well, it's not just happiness I feel."
"Same," I say.
"I really think that there has to be a way—"
There's a knock on the room door, loud and insistent. It could only be one person.
"Blake, I know you're in there, and I know you got to town early. Don't make me have Kellen open the door," Angela says.
I throw back the covers and start gathering my clothes. If there's one thing I've learned about Ang, it's that she's persistent. When she wants something, her threats aren't empty.
Beside me, Gwen starts throwing on whatever she can find from her bag beside the bed.
Before Ang can head back to the front desk, I make it to the door, and I crack it open.
"Oh, my God. I haven't seen you in at least a year, and you're not going to hug your sister?" She holds out her arms for emphasis, and I try to keep the door somewhat closed with my foot before drawing her into a hug. She's only a bit shorter than me, and just as sturdy. "I was trying to figure out how long it's been last night, and I think it's been almost two years. Last time you were on leave, I flew to Vancouver for a weekend."
Which is how it's been between us since she was old enough to parse out what happened between me and our parents. If I'm on leave, and I'm in Canada, she's at my door at some point, checking in and checking up. As the youngest, her memories of our childhood are filtered through a different lens than mine.
I take in Ang's long dark hair that spills down her back, and her clear vibrant green eyes. Unlike my brothers, she never let the drink get hold of her. It's the main reason I've come to trust her, and she's never let me down. I'm not sure if she'd say the same about me.
