Never Apart

         I met Fionnuala on a Friday the thirteenth in the township of Perth. She was beautiful but it was her smile which reached out to my soul. Then I discovered her last name she was a Shea. The Shea's it said had airs and hated the common folk like farmers and  favoured trade. Her family hated me not only because they thought that I had no future but because her brothers had tangled with mine and mine had bested them. 

        Despite all that we met in secret and fell in love. We spent every moment we could together. Our passion was carried away and we slept together in the barn two weeks ago resulting in the news that 
 Fionnuala told me two days ago.

 “I need you to take a deep breath.” she’d said and then she told me the good news she carried my babe. 
Fionnuala and I had decided,we would run away to Toronto, away from Patrick Thoron, the rich brute, her father bade her marry; away from my family who also disapproved . My distant cousin who worked in a factory had offered me a job and a place for us in Toronto where they couldn’t reach us. We were to meet at Grand Bend cliff to run away tonight.

     Night fell and still Fionnuala didn’t appear. I searched for her entering her father’s house. I felt a pain in the back of my head and  when I awoke I found the house empty devoid of furniture as if she’d never existed at all. Finally I went back to the cliff hoping against hope that somehow she reappear. Night fell and as I took one step towards the edge of the cliff, I heard, “Frederick, my love you’ve finally come.”

She looked so different. Her hair had turned white overnight and her face was lined with wrinkles. What had they done to her?

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Waiting for you,” she said.

Fionnuala smiled, and the air around me swirled with pinpoints of light until it became all encompassing. Time had no meaning. I looked at her seeing once again the woman I’d first fallen in love with and I realized that this was what I had been waiting for all this time; for we were now together for eternity at last, no one could ever keep us part.

©Sheilagh Lee July 23, 2018