Relative Happiness (44 page)

Mom came over in the afternoon and Lexie invited her for dinner. She had a new recipe she wanted to try.

“As long as it doesn't have walnuts and saffron rice in it, I'll be happy,” Mom informed her.

Joshua sat looking out the window. Lexie went over and picked him up. “Wanna go for a walk, mister man?”

“Wak.”

Lexie put on his jacket. “I'm going to take Josh for a walk, Mom. Want to come?”

“Not today, dear. I think I'm getting a sniffle. You two go and I'll watch the casserole.”

So Lexie took Josh to the beach. The sky was cloudless. There wasn't any wind, which made it very pleasant. They roamed the shore. Josh ran after tiny sandpipers.

The water was a deep blue. It twinkled with sunlight and the waves came to talk to her. She loved her island, this piece of rock surrounded by water. Water protected her from the outside world. She would never leave this place.

Josh ran ahead of her. She saw him stop and point.

She looked. There was Joss. He stood at the edge of the bank.

Suddenly the only world she knew was the space that existed between them, the circle they made. She broke into a run. Joss slid down the bank as he tried to get to her. She laughed and cried at the same time. She picked up Joshua and kept going.

“Who dat, Mama?”

“That's your Daddy, sweetheart. That's Daddy.”

Joss ran to her, picked them up in his big arms and twirled them around. He let her go, reached for his baby and held him up in the air. Josh gave him a grin. His Daddy gave him one back.

“I love you little boy. And I love your Mommy.”

He put Josh down, took a step closer and put his arm around her waist. She had a hard time trying not to faint from pure delight.

“There, that's better,” he smiled.

She gazed at his beautiful face.

“So Lexie, are you here by yourself?”

She nodded.

“Were you waiting for me?”

She nodded again, as tears ran down her cheeks. He remembered.

He took his hand and lifted her chin.

“I always say, this is the best part.”

And then he lowered his head and he kissed her. She knew that kiss. It was hers alone. She couldn't think. She just was. He lifted his head and put his hand up through her hair pulling it away from her ear. He whispered against it.

“Marry me.”

Lesley Crewe was born in Montreal. She grew up and “played in the streets with kids who could curse in five languages, but spent every summer banging the screen door at a bungalow in Cape Breton.” She met her husband on that island, even though he lived just eleven miles from her home in Montreal. She's been married for almost twenty-nine years and has three children: Paul (23), Sarah (18) and Joshua, who died of SIDS in 1985.

Lesley became a columnist and features writer with
The
Cape Bretoner
magazine, but she says she knew she was a writer the day she got into a screaming match with her heroine on the way to Wal-Mart: “She refused to marry the guy I wanted her to marry and I told her she was a creep, because now I had to rewrite the whole damn book. She said, ‘tough.' I re-wrote it, and she was right.” Lesley has been writing ever since.

www.lesleycrewe.com