6

We all carry weights around in our chest. Burdens of words we wish we'd never said, or didn't say at all. Things that happened to us. Regrets. Moments you want to take back. Years you feel you wasted, and even those you feel you're owed. Mistakes. Foolishness. Tragedies.
They sit, heavy, in a place quite near our hearts.

Evangeline was no exception to this all.

But she was a hardy woman, and hearty too. Her rebound rate was less than a day at the most. She had her own way of weathering the storms that blew about her. Kent knew that. He knew that because on her bad days, she would always walk past the rocking chair and go to sit in the window seat. And then she would knit. Slowly, rhythmically, with the clicking of her grandmother's needles, Evangeline would knit it all away.
Kent used to admire that. He had a respect for her calmness. He was in awe of her ease and grace while she handled any of the rough spots in her sea.

But not today.

It seemed to have all built up, and he lost it. She sat there in the corner, the sun bright and white on their walls, her hands working with a blush pink wool and purling it into a blanket for Garland's little girl, tear stains on her face from the argument and his lips still hot and full of the words he hadn't meant to say so unkindly, but maybe he had. It was then that he lost it.
He hated her.
He hated her weepy eyes. He hated her mess of hair.  He hated her sniffling. He hated her knitting. He hated her passivity, how he hated her passivity. He hated that she wouldn't sit in the rocking chair. He hated that he felt he already knew too much about her, and it had only been four years. He hated their lack of family-ness. He hated their home. He hated her sweetness. He hated her kindness. He hated how she was so patient with him, so forgiving. He hated her.
He was so out of love with her at that moment that the words that came out of his mouth next didn't really surprise him.

"I want a divorce."

She stopped knitting but didn't look at him. He stood behind the rocking chair with his hands grasping it till his knuckles were white with anger and his forearms strained from the pressure. He had built the rocking chair for her, as a wedding gift, all those years ago.
It seemed so long ago. So lost to him now. So pointless.

"I'm serious Evangeline. I don't want to be with you anymore. I want a divorce."

She bit her lip and turned to him, laid the pile of pink across her lap, gently.

"No," she said. And her voice cracked, just a little. That sound it makes and when you hear it you know that person is about to sob.

But he left anyway, and with him went his presence and anger and all the oxygen in the room. Evangeline felt her chest constrict and her throat close up as the man she loved more than anything walked out. This wasn't something she could knit away.

The weight of it crushed her.
The crack turned into the sobs.
And that blush pink?

It wasn't blushing anymore.

Three years later.

Evangeline stood there, nervous, her foot lightly tapping the dark-stained floors. She wrapped her scarf around her chest with fluttering hands and clutched the small sweater she had knitted and wrapped in white paper with a huge pink bow to herself. Kent came up behind her and put his strong arms around her. She felt his stomach tighten though, as they heard the voices in the hallway getting louder. She knew the knots in their guts matched.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Kent said, and pressed his forehead onto the back of her strawberry-colored hair and breathed. "What if she doesn't like me?"

"She's going to love you," Evangeline reassured him, her eyes still on the door.

He felt his wife's shoulders tense as the door opened and her foot stopped tapping. She had fought for this, all of this, for the last three years. And it all culminated into this one moment in this one room with this one man behind her, as he had promised he always would be.

She walked shyly into the room.
She was barely peering sideways at them. Her white dress was clean and pressed and accented by a pair of trembling hands gripping the bottom hem. Her dark hair was pulled up into a top knot and her face and arms were dappled with freckles. Evangeline heard Kent's breath catch in his throat. They had seen it in the pictures, but now it was all the more real.
Kent still had some of his own childhood freckles peppered across his nose, a remnant of his youth as a dark-haired, blue-eyed boy who was the spitting image of his mother.
Evangeline stepped forward out of her husband's grasp and approached the little girl.

"Therese?" She knelt down and pressed a hand to her chest. Perhaps to introduce herself, perhaps to still her frantic heart. "I'm Evangeline." She smiled and choked a little. "I'm going to be your mom."

Therese timidly walked the few steps towards Evangeline, but turned her gaze warily to Kent, who still stood behind. He hadn't breathed since she walked into the room.

"Who is he?"

He thought his chest was going to explode.

Evangeline smiled again. "That's my husband, Kent. He's going to be your dad."

She stared at him, considering him. Her small hands let go of her dress and she smoothed out the wrinkles in a dainty manner.

Never in his entire existence had he wanted someone to like him so much.

"Can I hug him?"

She looked at her to be sure, and all Evangeline could do was nod in reply. Kent felt himself go down on knee, as if he were proposing, which in a way, he was. He was proposing a new life to this girl. He was proposing to be her father.
He was asking her to be his daughter.
She wrapped her tiny arms around his front and he breathed.

He picked her up in his embrace and walked over to his wife and pressed Therese in-between the two of them. She turned and planted a kiss on Evangeline's cheek.

She loved them.

Of course she loved them.