The Revelation

It has been a few days since I have seen the Captain. I have heard noises in the night and when I have gotten up and walked to where I felt the sound was coming from, I would see a light shinning under a door and go to open it and find that it was put out. I have heard footsteps walking down the hall and disappearing into nothing. This is becoming worrisome for me, I worry that something is wrong with the captain and I want to talk to him.

Looking out from the patio I can see where the Celtic cross stands and the burial grounds of his family. Off to the right the Captain is standing and looking at the cross and laying flowers on the grave. 

I hurry down the stairs and run to the graveyard and I have gotten there before he can disappear. I startled him, he must have been deeply in thought not to notice me. I called out to him to please not leave.

He stayed just as he was and I approached him. I could see a sad look on his face and I wondered who this person was that he had come to see here. This gravesite was very well kept and flowers placed carefully at the base of the cross. I looked at him and waited to see if he would say anything.

After what seemed like an hour, he finally spoke. "This is the grave of my wife and child." "She died giving birth to our son while I was away on a sailing trip to India," he said. "The baby was not supposed to be born for three more months and I didn't want to leave, but she made me go and assured me that she was fine and that I would be back in plently of time for the birth of our baby." "So I left and was gone for two weeks. When I returned, she was gone."  "I was enraged and stormed out of the house yelling her name into the night." "They said that she had fallen down a flight of stairs and started to hemmorage and lost the baby and because of a lack of blood she died also." "She was 18 years old. " "Sometimes I feel that if I had been here this would not have happened and she would have lived and my son would have lived." "I have blamed myself for her death all my life." "After she died , I didn't come back here for a long time. " "It was many years afterward that I returned and moved all her things and the things she had made for our son into a room on the third floor."

I asked him if the portrait of him and the lady in the bedroom on the third floor was of her. He replied that it was and that he couldn't bare to see it every day in the master bedroom, so he placed it in the best room on the third floor. He said that every once in awhile he did go there, but of late, he had stopped.

I asked him why he had been gone these last few days and he just looked at me and said that he needed time alone and time to think. I could see by his expression that he would tell me no more, so I let it go.  He had a right to his privacy too.

He asked if I would walk with him down to the cove and sit and watch the boats with him. I agreed, and we set out for the cove silently. Every once in awhile he would look at me as if looking through me and into my soul.  I realized than that I had feelings for this man. This very special and caring and protective man. A man that wasn't afraid to show his love for someone and talk about it.

We sat on the hill overlooking the cove and watched the boats coming and going and never said one word. Just looking and each of us thinking our own thoughts.  His I am sure were sad ones of his lost wife and child, and mine of my new life and my new feelings for a Captain that it was impossible for me to have, or was it?