The Knapsack...part 1

Alistair had had to stop and talk with another of the Glen residents and so didn't notice when Ahnna came out of the bathroom at the Meridius' New Year's Eve party. She'd seen him engaged in conversation, was glad, and quietly slipped out the kitchen door into the rear garden. He was too kind, too good, and all the damaged parts of her soul rose up, screaming at her that she was a fool for thinking about him the way she'd begun to.

She sat heavily on a garden bench, burying her face in her hands. Everything in her life had gone wrong. And she'd done it herself. There was no one else to take the blame. She would never get past it. There was simply no way. It was something she'd have to carry with her the rest of her life. You couldn't put something this big down. But, oh, how it weighed. Her back curved forward under the weight of it. Sometimes she thought it might crush her.

There were times when she looked in Alistair's eyes that she almost forgot about it. The clear beauty in them as he met her gaze did things inside her...until she remembered. Tonight had been like that. They were talking, everything was fine, then the memory of what she carried on her back welled up and she simply had to get away. She was too shriveled of a soul and his presence made her aware of that.

Her eyes screwed tightly shut, she tried desperately not to think of what she'd done. But it was there; it was almost always there. And it should be! She should suffer because of it. The rare occasions when she still encountered her younger sister, the look in those eyes affirmed that. Her sister was all she had left, and Marce would barely speak to her. She'd ruined Marce's life as well, sent her off into places that the mere thought of made Ahnna shudder. But she couldn't blame Marce. Her sister was right. She'd ruined everything.

She hoped to find some quiet, some bit of peace, working in the Greenery. But even there reminders came. She'd been looking at a pot that contained a small rhodendron plant, a yellow one, very, very rare. It had been her mother's favorite bush in the yard of the house where Ahnna had grown up in Armidale. She'd pampered that bush, watched over it like a hawk, and when it bloomed her mother was in seventh heaven. She photographed it endlessly, even keeping an enlargement of it on the wall in their breakfast room. Ahnna hadn't expected to find a small version of it in the Greenery. It was so rare and the Greenery so newly-opened. She'd been surprised to find it sitting there beside a golden azalea plant. Fingering its blooms, tears had sprung quickly, and memories flooded through her, all the yearning that what had happened had not happened, the irrevocable fact that it had. That had been the moment when Alistair had come up behind her, asking after blue iris.

Alistair. Something in her yearned toward him as she also yearned toward the life she had lost. But she didn't deserve someone like him. She was crippled inside, broken in a way beyond healing, and he was more whole that she'd imagined anyone could be. So she sat there alone on New Year's Eve in Joimus' garden, her face buried in her hands, not seeing how the brilliant light of the sailing moon tipped all the blossoms with silver light.

His conversation done, Alistair located Joimus in the kitchen. "Have you seen Ahnna," he asked, concerned over the manner in which she'd left him.

"A while ago." She nodded toward the kitchen door. "She went out that way, I believe."

Alistair opened the door and stepping onto the side patio, looking for her. The scent of the garden was almost heady and he inhaled deeply, lifted his eyes briefly to the irresistible pull of the moon, then headed down the flagstone pathway that led around a curve into the center of the garden. He stopped when he saw her there on the bench, the moonlight limning the top of her dark head. Quietly he approached, squatting in front of her, placing a hand gently on her knee.

"Ahnna, are you all right?"

It took a moment for her to lift her head and when she did, the misery he saw in her eyes clutched at his heart. "Oh, Ahnna," he breathed.

"You shouldn't have come," she whispered, her voice breaking. He was like some wave of light, breaking over her darkness, and the glow of him...hurt.

He smiled the barest smile, keeping his hand on her knee. "But I have come, Ahnna."

She knew. She just didn't know...why. There was no place for someone like him in the wreck of her life. She straightened, lifting her head toward the moon, her dark hair waving over her shoulders. "It...it's not right," she murmured, not looking at him.

"How can it be made right, Ahnna?"

She looked at him then. "It can't be, Alistair. There are some things that can never be made right. Ever."

"I'm not sure that's completely true," he said softly.

"For you, maybe. I can see that. But it is true for me."

"What is it, Ahnna, that cannot be made right?"

She gazed at his earnest face. No one ever spoke to her as he did. "It doesn't matter," she sighed.

"I think it must matter more than anything."

She closed her eyes. "It's too late, Alistair. Far too late."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." He stood then sat beside her on the bench. "I'd like to know what it is."

She stared at her feet. "No, you wouldn't."  No one who knew ever looked at her the same again. She couldn't bear to see that in his eyes, too.

"Ahnna. Please?"

She shook her head. "I ruined everything. You don't want to hear about that. Believe me, you don't."

"I do, Ahnna. Truly."

Turning her head to the side, she studied his eyes, reading a calm patience in them, a genuine concern. He was too beautiful. He wouldn't understand her ugliness.

Her hands were clasped now in her lap and he placed a palm over them. "Truly, Ahnna," he repeated.

Lifting her face upward again, she closed her eyes. "I killed them. I killed them all."

That wasn't quite what he'd expected, but he'd heard so many things in his pastorate that he didn't even blink.

 "Who, Ahnna?"

"My family," she groaned. "All of them except my sister."

He increased the pressure of his hand over hers. "Tell me, Ahnna."

"I had a new car," she said, her voice little more than a whisper, her head turned away from him. "I was driving them up to Brisbane for a day trip. We usually always went in my father's station wagon, you know, but my car was brand new and I absolutely insisted we had to go in that. Pop sat in the front seat beside me, and my Mum was in the back, between my two little brothers. I was so...happy...that morning."  She paused, breathing through her mouth. "Then I got all full of myself and started acting silly, doing stupid things with the car just to show off. " A ragged breath cut through her words. "Stalled it on the railroad tracks at a tight curve. Kept saying it would be all right, that I'd get it going again. Just stay in the car, I said. I can handle this. Then it came. Around the curve. Didn't know it was there until the whistle started to blow." She shuddered, the whistle still haunted her dreams. "I don't know what happened. It's all blacked out. But somehow I was standing there beside the tracks and my car was nothing but crushed metal, screeching along in front of the engine."

She turned to look at him. "I got out. Don't you see? I got myself out...and they didn't. I don't know how that happened.
But I saved myself and all of them died. Horribly. I did that. Me. I killed my parents and my little brothers and the weight
of it is killing me! There's no way to stop it! I don't deserve for it to stop! It's my fault. All of it." She made little gutteral
sounds in her throat. "I'm so ugly!" she gasped. She felt like a murderess. She felt like she'd defiled her spirit.

He licked his lips and slid an arm around her back, just holding her while she sobbed. After several minutes she quieted
and leaned her head wearily on his shoulder. He prayed silently for guidance as he held her, waiting quietly for the right
time, the right words. She was obviously being crushed. Often, he didn't know what he would say in a time like this,
but he had learned to rely on the passage that promised, "Open your mouth and I will fill it."

He started to speak, his voice low, even. It was a story, something he'd begun to see clearly in his mind as she cried.
Something Ahnna needed to hear, needed to know.

It took her a moment, but his voice was something she couldn't ignore and she stopped the last of her sobs, listening
with her eyes closed. He was saying: