Dear Celia

XIII

January

“Well, I think this is it,” Auntie Marie said as she slowed down beside the only house for miles along the rugged rural road.

I turned my face to the window and peered out at the snow-laden farmhouse looking as quiet and homey as my own house felt back in Forge.

Not that I’d been back there.

After three weeks in a hospital with therapists and psychiatrists, Auntie Marie had drove me straight out here saying I had an invitation for a “settling down vacation”. I had numbly agreed to it, having hardly any feelings towards being dumped in some stranger’s home for a five days. I didn’t have much of those nowadays, feelings. I didn’t even seem to care about whoever it was Auntie Marie was sticking me with.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked as I unbuckled my seatbelt and pulled my backpack out from the backseat.

“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to cause her any more trouble than I already had, even if it was something as simple as walking me to the door.

I began to open the door and step out when Auntie Marie suddenly grabbed my hand. I stopped and turned.

“I love you, Lucas,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes as she leaned forward to kiss my forehead. “Okay?”

My heart tugged and I managed to give her a flimsy smile. “Okay, Auntie Marie.”

She gave my hand a tight squeeze before releasing it and wiping at her tears. “Alright, have fun, dear. I’ll see you on Friday.”

I gave her a small wave before shutting the door and making my way towards the house. There was a mat at the foot of the door covered in a thin layer of snow with an owl perched on a tree beside the words, “Whoooo’s at my door?” and a colourful flower reef mounted right at the centre of the white wood of the door. Somewhere behind me, a cow mooed and I turned to see Auntie Marie’s car driving away.

Suddenly, the door swung open and I was met with a face I had hoped I would never see again.

“Lucas,” Celia said in a breathless tone as she stepped forward towards me and before I knew it, her arms were encircling my waist and her face was in my shoulder as she shook with tears.

I stared at the open home over her head in dumbfounded disbelief. How could I have been so ignorant? Celia’s uncle lived on a farm a few hours from Forge, of course Auntie Marie would drive me down here. She hadn’t read my journal, nobody had apparently, and the only thing she knew about Celia was our friendship, or lack thereof.

She thought this would help.

Celia sniffed and stepped away. “Sorry,” she said, laughing. “I’m getting emotional.”

I didn’t know what to say, and was saved when an enormous man suddenly stepped into view behind Celia and clasped his large, beefy hands on her shoulders. He wore a navy green baseball hate on his watermelon head, and his eyes narrowed in on me as he leaned closer. “So,” the man said in a gruff voice, “you’re Lucas.”

“I – uh … my name – um, yeah, I’m Lucas.” The man was intimidating to say the least, and I was shy enough already around normal-sized people.

Celia looked embarrassed and shook the man’s hands off her shoulders. “Stop it Uncle Henry,” she grumbled. She turned to me. “Lucas, this is my uncle Henry.”

“Hello,” I said. The man looked like he became a completely different person in the last few seconds and he stuck his large hand out, gripping mine and shaking it.