Reunited, part one

Every time she heard an automobile, Leta rearranged herself. Most of the time, she sat quietly on the sofa dressed in her Sunday clothes, gently tapping her hand on the right arm of the piece of furniture. The August air was heavy with humidity, but she didn’t seem to notice until and a trickle of sweat rolled down the back of her neck. She gently rubbed her neck with her handkerchief. The cotton and lace cloth drank in far more perspiration than she had anticipated.

“You doing all right there, Leta?” her husband Bob asked. He was sitting in his easy chair with a cigarette in one hand and the newspaper in both, occasionally dropping the paper to check up on his wife.

Leta sighed. His voice was calming. “Yes,” she answered.

“They’ll be here shortly.”

“I know,” Leta said. “It’s just been so long. What if we don’t like each other? What if we don’t know each other?”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Bob cautioned and returned to his paper.

At any moment, her sister Louise, brother-in-law Ellsworth, niece Leta and sister Mabel would pull up. Mabel had just arrived into town from Vancouver, British Columbia, where she had been living for nearly 40 years. When Mabel left, Leta was four years old.

It wasn’t a happy decision. But those weren’t happy times for Leta’s family. While Leta was too little to remember, her older siblings shared bits and pieces with her. Like many families, they didn’t like to talk about things that weren’t very nice. In one instant, the family had been uprooted and altered. Mabel learned she had a different mother, and more scandalously, her birth mother was her own mother’s sister. The revelation broke a delicate peace in the household, with both brothers Aaron and Fred leaving in disgust and Mabel herself fleeing West with a traveling family that needed a girl to help with the housework and children. In the meantime, their parents Julia and David divorced, Julia and the girls moved into a smaller house in Toledo, and David disappeared for several years. Eventually, Aaron returned to rejoin the family, but Fred and Mabel did not. Fred continued to wander in California and Colorado, sending an occasional letter to their sister Nellie. Mabel married a man with two children in Canada. David also returned and reunited with Julia for a time, but that was also not to last. Shortly before Louise’s trip to visit Mabel, they learned that their father had died in California.

But now Mabel had returned for a visit, and Leta did not know how their reunion would affect her. All that she remembered, for she was a small child when her family dissolved, was that she was happy and then terribly unhappy. Now, she was anxious.

The slam of a car door broke into her reverie, and Leta started.

“They’re here,” Bob said, matter-of-factly, and they both stood.

Leta nervously patted her hair and smoothed her dress.

“You look fine, my love,” Bob assured her.

A quick rap on the door sent a flame through her, and she stopped breathing. A moment later, her estranged, formerly beloved sister appeared in the living room.

To be continued.