Emma

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟒𝟐

“Emma my dear, can you hang up the laundry outside, please? I’m quite busy with preparing lunch.”

“Of course, Aunt Caroline,” Emma responded to her aunt, making her way towards the bathroom. She took a hold of the laundry basket where the freshly washed laundry was neatly folded and put in, then carried it to the backyard. The weather was beautiful, a perfect summer day and the sun was shining warmly on the sky, not even a single cloud was to be seen.  Emma loved days like this. It changed her mood to a better one. And now that war had taken place, she needed a little distraction even more.

She walked through a sea of different flowers, feeling them brushing her uncovered legs and the touch left a comfortable sensation behind. When she arrived at the hanger, she placed the basket on the ground, bent down and grabbed the first piece of clothes and hung them up, attaching it with two clothes pegs. As she continued doing her task, her mind easily drifted to the young man that she loved with all her heart.

It was not a long time ago that he left off for war but for Emma it felt like a whole eternity. Living without him for a special amount of time was a deep agony. She missed him being around her. His smile, his eyes, his hugs and even his terrible jokes. When Ben told her and his family that he was going to fight against the Germans, it crushed Emma’s heart. She knew letting him go was a huge risk, he might never come back to her, safe and sound. And they were very close with each other.

Emma had been so excited to finally settle down with him, living a life as a normal brother and sister. But Ben was needed, she was aware of it, every young man in the village they’d been living in was needed there to help their French brothers. And Emma could do nothing against it. She knew pretty damn well that if Ben wouldn’t leave, people would talk about them behind their backs, even shaming them that their children had to fight but Ben was not.

Aunt Caroline took the news more badly than Emma. She fainted right after Ben made the announcement and when she woke up again, it took all of their strength to calm her down. Emma couldn’t blame her for it, she raised her nephew after all and if Emma was a mother, she would have probably reacted the same way. She promised Ben that she would stay with the family as long as she could to take care of them and support them, but he had to promise her that he would come back home to her.

“You have to!” she forced out crying, clinging onto his body. “You have to come back to me. Otherwise I wouldn’t know how to live without you.” He kissed her deeply as a promise for his return.

“I’ll see you hopefully soon,” he told her before he left the house.

Not a long time ago she had received his last letter. He told her that he was alright and a heavy stone fell from her heart. He described the hard times he went through and how many times he had faced death but still was alive. “For you,” he wrote. “I’m alive for you, my darling sister.”

Emma couldn’t remember how many times she read all of his letters with tears in her eyes. Reading his own words felt like he was still there with her, whispering them into her ear. This was the only way she could calm down for a while. Plenty of times she had raised her hands up to the sky, praying to god that he would send Ben back to her. She knew Ben was strong and willing to fight. He had the heart of a lion. 

She had read in the newspaper that three hundred thousand soldiers were saved and made their way home to their families. If Ben was among them, she couldn’t know. They had fortunately not received any bad message of his death. So she hoped whole-heartedly that he was in one of those trains that carried him back to her.

Emma pitied the fallen soldiers. Their families were waiting for them like she did, but the only thing they would be confronted with would be an announcement that their son couldn’t make it. She respected their braveness, and she would always keep them in her prayers.