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Chapter 11 - Outed

Posted on 2011-09-21

Anne

"Anne! A-yyy-uuu-nnn-eee! Oh my God!" Mary's shrieks are the first greeting I get as I open my front door. Oh, no. Charlie must've been terrorizing Mary with the Kung Fu Panda figurine I'd given him as barter for carrying Flat Freddy, and she's probably going to ream me out for buying it for him.

Actually, it turns out to be worse. Much, much worse. Because as my eyes follow the direction in which Mary's fingers are pointing, there's ... Flat Freddy... propped up in an armchair in the living room...

"Anne... you ... have... a crush... on... Fred Wentworth? Don't you know he's Lulu's boyfriend? How could you? How could you?"

With the evidence sitting there staring at me right in the face, it's pretty clear that denial is absolutely futile. You see, ever since Tiffany gave me Flat Freddy, I've developed a new bedtime habit - every night, I take him out of the closet and in my mind, I tell Flat Freddy all the things I'd like to say to Frederick, and then I return him to his home in my closet in the morning. Which is all fine and dandy, except that my late-night excursion to the hospital last night was an unexpected disruption to this little routine; and Mary must've barged into my room this morning. And all this means that I'm massively delinquent in my promise to return Flat Freddy to Tiffany, I've been completely outed, and I feel positively naked.

"Mary, we don't even know that for sure..." I say, and with this valiant but doomed attempt at self-defense, I know exactly how those 300 Spartans who defended Thermopylae must've felt. "That Fred and Lulu are officially dating, that is... and Flat Freddy was a gift to me from Tiffany...and I don't have a crush on Fred... I mean, I do not have a crush on Fred Wentworth... we're just old college buddies, that's all..."

"What? Did you say ... Flat ... Freddy? You even gave that... thing... a name?" Mary's milking every minute of this with the way she exaggerates her expression of incredulity. "And about not having a crush on Fred Wentworth, you can knock it off right this minute. That thing was in your room, for God's sake! I thought I was gonna get a heart attack when I saw it! The things you do to me... it's a wonder I didn't die of shock right there and then..."

By this time, Charles, Hetty and the kids have come out to see what's going on and they're just standing there, frozen and dumbfounded; I'm not sure where Lulu is, but if Mary keeps on carrying on in this way, how would it be possible for her not to hear?

"My room? You were in my room?"

"Of course! What do you expect us to do when you were missing all morning? Where on earth were you?"

"I... I... I was out ... somewhere. Nothing important. And shush. She'll hear. I mean Lulu."

"You went out? Leaving us to take care of poor Lulu and poor Charlie all on our own? Wait... wait a minute. Fred Wentworth was supposed to drive you home, wasn't he, Charles? So have you been hanging out with him all this while? With Fred Wentworth? How could you do this to Lulu, poor, poor Lulu?"

"I was out on my own," I lie. "I needed some quiet time to myself. And if you'll excuse me, I'm going out for a walk now. And Lulu can have Flat Freddy if she wants." With that, I make an about-turn and flee out the front door, slamming it hard before I run full speed down the sidewalk away from our house, away from Fred's house, away from everything.

I keep running until I find a park and plop myself on the curb at the edge of the children's sandbox. Kids, scrawny little boys in oversize T-shirts and bermudas, are messing around on their skateboards, zig-zagging along the asphalt pathway and launching themselves down the half-pipe with varying degrees of proficiency. And I realize that Fred was probably right here, doing exactly the same thing, when he was a little boy more than twenty years ago; he spent his childhood in Plymouth after all, and he used to boast that he'd been to every single skate park in the whole of metro Detroit by the time he finished elementary school.

There are so many things I want to say to Fred, and the stuff I've ended up actually saying is only the very tip of the entire iceberg. And not all of it is bad - for starters, I want to tell him how proud I am of him for sacrificing his successful Air Force career all for the love of his sister and her precious little girl. To congratulate him on what a wonderful job he's doing in raising Tiffany, because I know firsthand how tough it is to bring up children in this day and age when they're exposed to so much media, marketing and technology; it's an uphill challenge to build up the right values in them when they're tempted by the promise of instant gratification at every turn. Yet Fred's managed to pull this off successfully with Tiffany in a way that's vintage Fred - by being a living model of how a person can be decent - more than decent, most of the time anyway - yet extremely fun all at the same time. He's Tiffany's swashbuckling hero, and so on the occasions when he does have to put his foot down, she's happy to do anything to please him; and the more time Charlie and Wally spend at Fred's house, the more they're getting to be that way too. And yes, I want to say thank you to Fred for helping me, because I now realize that that's exactly what he's doing; he's trying to give me some time to myself by sharing my babysitting duties, while also acting as a role model for Charlie and Wally. That's something I could've said, should've said, if I hadn't been so embarrassed about confronting him over the whole "Coach" thing in the first place.

I want to tell Fred about how I've kept track of every single milestone of his Air Force career, at least every one that he was at liberty to disclose to Tom and James, because I always catch up with my college girlfriends on the phone, Skype or GTalk every time after they meet up with the guys. That his performances with the Thunderbirds were spectacular and mesmerizing; and that if his aerobatics stint was the pinnacle of his prowess with the F-16, I felt honored to have witnessed it. I want to whisper to him that everything, all that I've sacrificed, it was all for the sake of his dreams, and so even if it was bittersweet for me, it was intensely gratifying to know that he brought those dreams to fruition in the end. Selfishly, I want to ask him whether he ever thought about me all these years, whether he ever asked how I was doing, and in my imagination, he does ask so that I can give him the answer: I'm doing fine. That's the answer I'll always give him, because that's what I want him to believe. Because, in my dreams, Fred won't be fine until he's made sure that I'm doing fine first.

Most of all, I want to remind him of the prodigy I saw in him; how he could achieve just about anything he set out to do, and dazzle the whole world while he was doing it. Of the core of integrity that stood behind all the fun, all the jokes, and all the swagger; that core which formed the basis of all my respect for him. Of how I hope that Fred will one day see that this is what he used to be, and strive to reach those heights again; I know that he can definitely do it since he's been there before. And because Messi, my idol, is all of these things too, using the example of Messi was the most powerful way I could think of tell Fred how magical he was - is, I mean, I hope - to me. So this is what I said to him, and even though it's only just the tip of the iceberg, to me it's the most important part of all of the above. All that's left to do is to cross my fingers, and hope he gets it in the end.

As the sunlight wanes and the kids at the park pick up their skateboards, trudging off one by one, I know it's time for me to start heading home to dinner, too. In fact, I'm actually late already; but when I slip into my seat at the dinner table, nobody makes any comment about my tardiness because Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove are preoccupied with something else.

"You've breached our trust in you, you know that?" Mr. Musgrove is saying to a tearful Hetty.

"All we ever wanted was for you kids to enjoy being young in a way that we never had a chance to ourselves," chips in Mrs. Musgrove. "Your dad's right; we placed a lot of trust in you to do the right thing and gave you a lot of freedom, but this incident shows you haven't exercised your freedom in a responsible way. Didn't we talk about this before you went to college? Didn't we tell you how dangerous it is to get drunk on your own on campus?"

"But Mom, everybody's doing it," Hetty protests. "And anyway, I stayed off the vodka because Lulu was drinking it. Remember, you told us it'd be so easy for somebody to just cart us off if we both got drunk, right? So we agreed we'd take turns to do the hard drinks and I stuck with just beer and wine at that party, just in case."

"You know, I used to feel that way too," I say quietly. "That everyone else was doing it, I mean. For me, it was the time when I was having my meals at a co-ed frat house during summer school my first year at college. There was one night when everyone was passing a joint of pot around, and it took all my willpower to keep myself from taking a puff. But I didn't, and I was a stronger person because of it."

"Anne, you're different. You're a nerd," Hetty says derisively, and then looks down into her lap in contrition. "Sorry. I didn't really mean that. But what about Freddie Wentworth? Was he there when that happened? And did he do those kinds of stuff? Drinking, pot, you know?"

"No, he wasn't," I say. "That summer, he was in Texas taking flying lessons. But anyway, he was always very strict with himself about these kinds of things. He knew he had to be that way, if he wanted to be a fighter pilot when he graduated." And I think to myself, of course we had some social drinks once in a blue moon, but only one drink a night and only after we turned 21; and the biggest motivation for me to regulate myself was that I didn't want to tempt Fred.

"Freddie didn't drink in college? That's really hard to believe. He's so cool. And you worship him, right? You even made an effigy of him. Besides, I'm sure lots of other people drink in college. Charles, I'm sure you did, didn't you?"

"Of course Charles drinks," says Mary, even though there's no way she could've known since Charles was done with college before they started going out. "Everybody does. But the trick is, you've gotta know when to stop; you don't drink yourself to death, and that's the real deal here."

"Mary, shush," says Charles. "Yeah, I did drink a little, that's right. But moderation, that's the key. And, legally at least, you're not supposed to be drinking till you're 21," he adds, but with a wink at me, because we both know the reality - that to most college students, this is purely an academic point anyway.

"And for the record, I did not make an effigy of Frederick Wentworth," I point out. "Flat Freddy" - Hetty stifles a snigger - "was a gift from Tiffany, over the summer. Fred and I were friends in college, but Tiffany doesn't know that. And that's all there is to it."

"What's a ef-fi-gy?" asks Charlie, looking up from the iPad that he and Wally are playing with.

"It's another word for a kind of doll," I say, just as Mary butts in with, "And don't you dare try binge drinking when you're in college!"

"What's binge drinking?" Oh, my God, not again. This one will have to be for Charles to answer, thank you.

After dinner, I drop into Lulu's room to check on her; although she's awake now, she'd stayed in bed all day and refused to come to the dinner table. From the looks of it, she's been spending most of the day crying; even now, her cheeks are still wet with fresh tears.

"Anne, tell me the truth," she says, pulling herself up to lean against the pillows as I sit on the edge of her bed. "You like Freddie, don't you?"

"Yes, in a way. But purely as a friend. We - he and I - were friends in college, but after graduation - he and I - lost touch. And I hadn't heard from him in ten years, not until he moved back to Detroit. These days, I hardly know if he's still the same person as he used to be," I finish lamely; never before has it been quite so unwieldy to avoid using the word "we" in a sentence.

"Really? You were friends, just like that? Mary doesn't think so. Hetty doesn't think so. And I don't think so. But I thought - I believed - I'm the one he likes, right? Charles said he came to see me in the morning, but he only stayed a little while. Why didn't he stay longer?"

"Because he had to work," I say matter-of-factly. "He had to prepare for his flight to Amsterdam, which departs tonight."

"OK, but couldn't he just call me, at least? He texted Charles this afternoon, to ask if I was OK or something like that. That's what Charles told me, at least. But he has my number, doesn't he? Oh, I just wish he'd call. I want to hear his voice."

"Well, maybe he just didn't want to disturb you. You need your rest after all, and you should be trying to get some sleep. Have an early night, yeah?"

"OK." Lulu scoots back down and curls up again. "But can you take that... um... likeness of him away? Please? It just makes me feel worse looking at it if he doesn't call."

Lulu shifts restlessly as I pick up Flat Freddy from where he's propped up against Lulu's wall opposite the bed.

"Anne?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you know where Freddie's gone to?"

"He mentioned it to Charles and me when he came to see you, that's all." OK, so this is a white lie. But people don't burn in hell for lies that don't hurt anybody, right? "Don't think too much about it. And good night." I go up to her bedside and smooth her hair one last time, before leaving the room and closing the door as softly as I can.

Charles is waiting outside when I come out of Lulu's room; he's got a confidential air about him as he leads me a little ways down the hallway.

"I didn't want to say this in front of Mary and Hetty, but I thought you'd want to know," he says softly. "Fred texted me today to ask about Lulu's condition, and he asked about you as well. In fact, he specifically told me to take care of you, to make sure you weren't too tired or traumatized by last night's incident."

"He did?" This is absolutely news to me, and together with Lulu's information, it brings a completely new angle to the entire situation.

"Yeah. But I didn't tell Lulu that part of it. That was on purpose. Because you know what? I spoke to Fred today about him and Lulu, and he promised me he'd take care of her as a friend and big brother. I didn't believe him then, but now it's starting to make a little more sense. The only thing is, I'm not sure if Lulu's in a frame of mind to be able to take it."

"Thanks, Charles." I give him a sisterly hug. "Thanks so much for telling me."

I decide to return Flat Freddy to Sophie on Tuesday morning before going to work; briefly, I toy with the idea of draping a black trash bag over him to conceal his identity during the short walk to Sophie's house, but it seems like a bad omen so I settle for carrying him with his face turned inwards instead.

Sophie's reaction to the whole business of Flat Freddy is a welcome contrast to what's been going on at home - there's no drama, no conjecture, no nosiness, and no hysteria. She just spends a few moments taking in my entire crestfallen countenance as she receives Flat Freddy from me, and then she hugs me with the arm that's not holding on to his stick.

"I'd like to tell you just two things," she says. "Number one: we never told Fred about Tiffany giving you Flat Freddy. And he hasn't asked about it, so he might not have noticed at all. And number two: Fred never asked Louisa Musgrove on any dates, not even once. And that's why I was so concerned all along about him making things clear to her. But you've given him a hint, haven't you? Fred's not dumb; he's capable of getting it for sure. The only question is whether he wants to get it or not. And like you, I hope he does."

Lulu's finally emerged from her room; she's there at the dinner table on Tuesday evening but Hetty isn't, because her dad took her back to campus in the morning, telling her that she should be catching up with school after having cut an entire day of classes already.

"He still isn't calling me," says Lulu fretfully, fiddling around with the food on her plate.

"Honey, he's travelling," sooths Mrs. Musgrove. "You told me he was flying to Amsterdam, right? And with the time difference and the cost, it'd be inconvenient and expensive for him to call you long-distance like that."

"But he likes me. And that's what guys do with girls they like. They call, no matter how much it costs. Besides, he can afford it for sure; he's got lots of money."

"Well, I'm not so sure about that," says Charles. "I mean, sure, he's earning a salary, but aren't we all? One thing I learned after I started working at the garage is that money doesn't come easy; and once we have it, we don't throw it away so easily either. And besides, it's not as if he hasn't checked in with us at all; didn't I tell you he texted me again today?"

I know there's still one more loophole to this entire line of reasoning - if Fred had really wanted to call Lulu, it wouldn't be that difficult or costly to accomplish; he could've just texted her to meet him on Skype or something like that. But everybody's not saying this, and so I'm not either.

"Lulu, hon, tell me something," says Mrs. Musgrove. "Did Frederick Wentworth ever ask you out on a single date? One to one?"

Lulu plays around with her food for a long time before mumbling, "No."

"Did he ever hold your hand?"

"Yeah, um - I mean -"

"I'm not talking about you holding his hand. Did he ever hold your hand? Or kiss you?"

Lulu silently shakes her head, looking down at her plate the whole time.

"So, is that the way a boyfriend treats his girlfriend? Has he ever behaved as a boyfriend to you?"

Lulu pauses, head hung, for a very long while before she mumbles, "No, Mom."

"Darling," Mrs. Musgrove looks at Lulu sympathetically. "I knew it all along, but I thought it'd be less painful if you got over it yourself and moved on, rather than for me to point it out to you. Didn't you think your dad and I would be worried if he was really going after you, when he's so much older and all? You'll find someone at college, someone your age, and then you'll get over this soon enough."

"I know, Mom. But it doesn't make any difference to how I feel right now. I feel horrible. Can I go back to my room?" Lulu gets up and slinks away from the table, shoulders hunched in defeat. And relieved as I am to finally have an answer that reconciles the whole situation about Fred and Lulu with his integrity, I also feel very sorry for her.

"Aunty Annie, I want you to tuck me in tonight," proclaims Charlie at the end of dinnertime. "Not Mommy."

"Charlie, don't you love your poor mommy anymore?" protests Mary, making a face; bedtime is always her sacred time where she smothers the boys with hugs, kisses and cooing, after Charles or I have gotten them bathed and into their p.j.'s.

"I love you, Mommy. But there's something I want to ask Aunty Annie and I can't ask you."

"It's OK, Mary," I say. "After I talk to him, you can come in and kiss him goodnight. That'll be OK with you, right, Charlie?" He nods.

"Aunty Annie, what's 'in love' mean?" Charlie asks when I tuck him into bed.

"Why? How did you know about the words 'in love'?" I want to tell him he's way too young to be discussing topics like love, but I bite the words off at the tip of my tongue; I'm not going to start being his grandma, I'm still too young for that.

"Because Mommy said you're in love with Coach." I don't get it at all, how Charlie can look so perfectly innocent while saying things like this.

"Well, people fall in love when a boy likes a girl, and the girl likes the boy back. When they like each other very, very much. Enough to spend the rest of their lives together."

"So I'm in love with Tiffany, right? Because she's my best friend, but Coach's not your best friend. So if you're in love with Coach, I'm in love with Tiffany."

"Charlie, you're too young to be in love. That's for grown-ups. And I'm not in love with Uncle Freddy."

"Gotcha," Charlie flops onto his pillow with a satisfied grin. "Coach said we can't call him 'Uncle Freddy' 'cause he's not our uncle. But if you marry him, then he'll be our 'Uncle Freddy'. And people marry when they're in love, right? First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a golden carriage."

"Who taught you how to say that?"

"Aunty Hetty and Aunty Lulu taught me. They told me Daddy married Mommy 'cause he loves her. And Tiffany told me she'll marry me, too. I asked her."

"You didn't! Anyway, you won't be old enough to marry anybody for many, many years. Can I bring Mommy in to say good night now?"

Mary's waiting outside already when I open the door, and I'm not sure how much of our conversation she might've heard. What I definitely don't expect, though, is for her to give me an apology.

"Anne, I'm so sorry I said all those things about you having a crush on Fred Wentworth. Charles told me your story today, and, well, I never knew. About the stuff that happened between you and Fred Wentworth, that is. And that's why I'm sorry."

"Me? My story? What did Charles say?" As far as I know, Charles' level of information is that Fred isn't in love with Lulu, and that he was concerned enough about me to ask after me in his text. And that's it. But the stuff that happened between Fred and me? That's pushing things a little, isn't it?

"Ooops!" Mary puts a hand to her mouth. "Charles told me not to say a word about it in front of Lulu, or to y- ... Sorry," she trails off.

"It's OK. And I'm not going to deny that yeah, some stuff did happen between Frederick and me, way long ago. But please don't talk about it to anyone else, OK? Because there's nothing to talk about, really; all that's been over and done with for more than ten years. It's ancient history. And that's all that I'm gonna say about it."

About the stuff that happened between you and Fred... That's not like Charles at all, to gossip and extrapolate; and ever since the summer of '97, I've never breathed a single word about Fred and me to anyone with the last names of Elliot, Stevenson or Musgrove. And I trust Charles; I know he won't spread stories about me to Mary, or to anyone else. But the mystery solves itself when Charles waylays me by the door as I get ready for work on Wednesday morning.

"Anne? Before you go, I just wanted to explain something. Mary spoke to you last night, didn't she?"

"Yeah. She said something about knowing my story. About Fred Wentworth and me. But there's no Fred and me; there hasn't been for years. It's exactly as I told her."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry I didn't speak to you first before she got to you. You see, after the whole hoo-ha about that Flat Freddy and all, I went to check up the ownership of that car you've been keeping in our garage. It's him, right? He's the boyfriend you had all those years ago when I asked you to be my girlfriend and you said no. And I told Mary, so she'd stop carrying on to everybody who'd listen about how you were having a crush on Fred, and I told her not to say anything in front of Lulu or you. But apparently she's taken my instructions a little too literally, because she yammered about it to the kids all day yesterday. Sorry about that." The look Charles gives me is full of sympathy and understanding.

"Well, that's true," I tell Charles. "It was him. But whatever happened was over a decade ago, and there's nothing new going on right now. If anyone's speculating about us - Fred and me, that is - please make sure they understand that."

"Sure. I'll do that. Word of honor."

"And Charles, you know what?" I say as I step out the door. "You're the best brother I ever could ever have. Thank you."

Chapter 12 - Sensitivity

Posted on 2011-09-21

Anne

Ten years down the road, I don't know where this model is going to be. Maybe it'll be sitting on a bookshelf in the living room, and maybe by then, hopefully, I'll be sharing that living room with you. Or maybe it'll be on your desk in your corner office at Boeing… That was from the note Fred gave me together with the TriStar model, but where it's sitting today, more than ten years from that day, is neither of the above. It's taking pride of place at my desk in my cubicle, at my office at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. I may not be in a corner office yet, may not have attained the lofty heights that Fred believed I could reach; but nonetheless, this gift is still the best one Fred has ever given me. Because it's not just a symbol of how, on the threshold of graduation, we wanted to hang on to our life together, carrying it from our past into our future; it also shows how Fred remembered every single little thing about me. The Delta Airlines Lockheed TriStar is a symbol of my roots, how my entire love affair with aviation began; I'd first told him the story during freshman year, and this gift shows how the story still resonated with him even at the end of our college career.

It was 1989, and I was ten going on eleven, when Father brought all of us to Disneyland during spring break. Father likes to travel in style, but we've never been in the league that could afford the expense of a proper private jet. We've got a Beechcraft King Air propeller plane christened Kellynch to satisfy Father's pretensions to the jet set¹, but that's a separate story altogether and she doesn't have the range to make trips across or out of the country. So most of the time, we flew on first or business class for our family holidays. That particular trip was the first time I really became aware of aircraft types; Liz and Mary were squabbling, as usual, about where they wanted to sit, and Grandma said something about the airplane being "a DC-10". While all of them were yammering away, I picked up the safety card in one of the seat pockets and read the name on the top: Lockheed L-1011-500 TriStar. That was when I first became aware that the DC-10 and the L-1011² were somehow the same and yet somehow different, and it sparked my curiosity to find out how and why it was so.

A few months later in the summer of '89, a United Airlines DC-10 crashed in Sioux City³, and one day after school while I was rooting through Grandma's stack of Good Housekeeping magazines for want of something to do, I came across an intensely vivid and personal account by one of the crash survivors. That was the second time that year that I'd come across the term "DC-10" and it awakened my curiosity yet again; it was a reminder of how fragile the magic that keeps a heavy jetliner in the air actually is, and it made me want to find out more about the secrets hidden behind that magic; secrets which could actually save lives at times. These were the days before the Internet, and the information I found in Father's encyclopedia and the school library was woefully inadequate to answer all my questions. But the dearth of easily available answers didn't stop me from looking and asking every time we went to the airport, noticing the tiny differences between different types of airplanes and documenting them in my drawings.

My big epiphany came the summer I was sixteen, when Charles and I worked at the main office of the Musgroves' flagship garage outlet helping Mr. Musgrove to file papers and run office errands; Father and Grandma would've hit the roof if they knew, but we never told them. We made friends with everybody there ranging from the managers to the mechanics; and when I showed them some of the drawings I'd made, they'd told me that I ought to seriously consider going to engineering school. And that's how I ended up deciding to major in aerospace engineering at MIT.

Let's fast-forward now to fall '97: Father had spoken to me once during my summer visit home, telling me to end my "fling" with Fred, and I'd thought he was done with that; until the day he beckoned me out of my room as I was packing my bags to go back to college.

"Anne, there's one thing I want you to remember," he'd said. "You are a representative of the Elliot name and the Elliot reputation, and that means I do not want to hear of you consorting with that young punk, or any other of his kind, again. If you choose a man outside of our sphere, you will not be entitled to any of your inheritance. And all this is for your own good; it's to protect you, and to protect the Elliot family. I, Walter Elliot, am never going to allow anyone to take advantage of the Elliot family through my daughters like that."

Well, that may have been Father's stance about the whole matter, but the prospect of disinheritance didn't faze me at all. Wasn't it exactly the same when he refused to finance anything other than a liberal arts education for me and I took a scholarship to put myself through engineering school? By the time I started going out with Fred, I'd already experienced what it was like to be virtually disinherited before, and so the thought of Father cutting me off financially couldn't scare me again.

Two days ago, I was nervous at the thought of talking to Fred. Everything was so confusing, and everything was happening so fast. Previously, I'd thought he couldn't have feelings for Lulu and then it'd appeared as if he might. And as for me, throughout the spring and summer he'd been acting as if he could never see me as anything more than an acquaintance, or at most, a friend; only for me to find out now, in the fall, that he has actually kept and treasured the mementoes of our past in the same way as I have. But the past two days of revelation where all the secrets, Lulu's and mine, were systematically outed to our entire family have put paid to that confusion once and for all. It's a huge consolation to know that Fred's basic integrity is largely intact; and on top of that, I dare to entertain the hope that tonight might be the starting point for my TriStar to finally get to one of the places Fred mentioned in his note from so long ago. I guess I don't have to say it for you to know which one I'm talking about; it can't possibly be the corner office since I'm not at Boeing anymore.

Frederick

I'm coming home, I'm coming home
Tell the world I'm coming home
Let the rain wash away
All the pain of yesterday

I'm coming home, I'm coming home
Tell the world that I'm coming home

If I am not hip-hop, then I'm just not Frederick. I'm making no secret of the fact that my upbringing has been more "Ordinary Man" than "Renaissance Man", and that hip-hop is the beat to which I grew up; it's the most confessional genre of music there is, and it's the heartbeat and mirror of life in the 'hood. Life in the 'hood and out of it, in fact; because I'm the same Frederick Wentworth whether I'm living in Plymouth or 8 Mile Road or MIT or Texas or in the Middle East; the same Frederick Wentworth who's got Anne Elliot as the love of his life, forever and ever.

I know my kingdom awaits, and they've forgiven my mistakes. This is the wild card in it all, isn't it? Because Anne has hinted to me that I'm not the Messi she used to think I was anymore, and one of the last things she said to me before we parted ways on Monday was that she's disappointed with me. I don't know where exactly I came across the phrase "half agony, half hope", but for some funny reason it sounds really familiar; and I certainly feel a little like that right now. P. Diddy's got the antidote, though: "It's time to make your house your own, pick up your phone, come on!" And so I pick up my phone to text Anne, to tell her I'm waiting for her at the airside Starbucks café at the McNamara Terminal. When I moved back to Detroit, I came home to Sophia and Tiffany; now, I'm coming home to Anne as well.

Anne

I used to dream about this moment, time and time again; the moment when Fred and I would make peace with the circumstances under which we parted ways. In my dreams, sometimes we'd get back together again as a couple, and sometimes we'd end up living separate lives but remain as friends. But no matter what the final outcome, every single one of my dreams of Fred was populated by the same common thread: he'd acknowledge that despite our bitter breakup in '01, he had no hard feelings with respect to me all the same; and I'd be overcome by a surge of wild relief and joy at that moment of forgiveness.

It's been practically a wasted day for me at the office today; for the most part I've been distracted with wondering how this moment, the moment of my dreams, would play out exactly. And when I make my first tentative steps into Starbucks, I find, ecstatically, that there's one little detail about the real Fred who's waiting for me there that I never dared to envisage in my dreams - he still remembers every little thing about me, even down to the frap I used to like in college, and to leave off on the whipped cream. And he's taking this meeting absolutely seriously, to the point of reverence; it's evident in the way he pulls out my chair and faces me, making sure he's looking me in the eye, before he launches into what he has to say.

"Anne," says Fred, "I just wanted to say… thank you. And that I'm sorry for letting you down. Because you did it all for my sake, didn't you? When you… wished me well… and said we'd always be friends… all along, the only thing you wanted was not to add your problems on to mine, right? And if I'd stuck around, just stuck around and waited it out with you -"

In all my dreams about this moment, "sorry" was the magic word that I'd secretly yearned for but never got to hear; even subconsciously, I knew I didn't deserve to hear it. Deep down inside, I'd always known the breakup was entirely my own doing, my own fault; if I hadn't insisted on walking away from him, he'd never have walked away from me in return. Still, I couldn't help feeling angry at times during the years we were apart; not at Fred, but at the circumstances. At the unfairness of how the double whammy of Grandma's illness and disapproval made it impossible, in my eyes at least, for us to stay together. Just hearing Fred say the words "thank you" and "sorry" washes away all my anger and bitterness about the situation, just as it washes away all my residual feelings of tension with Fred too. It's as if we rewound our lives by eleven years, and we're meeting each other back again right at the exact same place where we left off, in that Detroit hotel room in the summer of '01.

"Fred, you don't have to say sorry for anything because none of it was your fault, not at all." My sense of conviction grows as I speak; the one thing I can do for Fred is to also try to take away the hurt I inflicted on him that fateful day; the years of hurt that I've inflicted on myself too. "When I walked away from you that day, it was the hardest decision I ever had to make. But at the time, I was… waiting for a time when we could be together, and at the same time hoping Grandma would stay with me for as long as possible… I just couldn't stand being torn in two directions like that, and… well, whatever I had to do… I guess it wasn't fair to you, but I just couldn't see any other way out. I was young, I guess. I was young, and maybe a little stupid."

Talking about that day in '01 brings all the pain vividly back to life again; I swipe at my eyes with my sleeve, vaguely conscious that I'm probably an unseemly mess of snot and tears by now. I'm ruining my best business suit jacket, but that's just a secondary point to me right now; money can buy me a set of new work clothes if I need them, but nothing, not even the most heartfelt of apologies and reparations, can ever buy forgiveness. It has to be granted; and now that it's been granted to me, I'll make sure I earn it by treating Fred as well as possible in the future, in whatever capacity I can; I will, every single inch of the way.

Frederick

To me, Anne isn't the one who was stupid that day; she might've been young, too young for the level of responsibility thrust upon her, but she faced up to it with much more courage than I showed in walking away from her. I hand her a paper napkin to dry her tears with as I confess to her my sorry tale of doubt and insecurity; thick-headed as I am, it took me eleven long years to figure out that everything that's happened was actually my fault, not hers as I'd used to believe.

"You weren't stupid," I tell her. "You were brave where I wasn't, and I can't forgive myself for being so unfair to you. I knew you were feeling terrible about your grandma, you had to be, but I didn't have the guts to look for you and try to talk things out with you one more time. I cared, of course I cared - but I was weak and cowardly, I guess. After all, what'd be the worst case scenario if I called you? If you'd really wanted me out of your life once and for all, you'd have told me, and I'd have to take it like a man and move on, and that'd be it. Remember all the times you used to tease me, telling me I've got an ego the size of Mount Everest? Well, I guess you're right after all.

"And I guess after we'd known each other for so many years, I should've trusted you more, should've known you didn't really mean half those things you said to me. Maybe if it had happened at some other time, things might've been different. But right after graduation, everything was changing so quickly. It was so easy to believe we could be together, living as equals, when we were on campus. But when I went for UPT and saw those guys who were married and how they lived, it really hit home to me that I was asking a lot from you. That kind of life isn't for everyone, and some of those pilots' wives, they grew up with a lot less luxury than you did and they still found it hard getting used to all the restrictions of living on a military base. So when you said you'd moved home to Grosse Pointe, and I didn't even know when that happened, I guess I just assumed the worst."

Everything just spills out of me as if I'm sitting in a confessional booth; I see Anne shaking her head slightly as I speak of my doubts of her ability to adapt to military life, and it just tells me how much of an idiot I'd been to let my own feelings of inferiority take precedence over my knowledge of her character. Anne had never been the type of girl to act precious in all the years I'd been with her; so why should things be any different just because we'd graduated and gone out into the world? I don't deserve her unconditional forgiveness and I shouldn't be making excuses for what I did to her, but I still can't help asking the question, a question I really ought to know the answer to without even asking. I should know; but I still ask anyway, because there's nothing I want more than to hear the answer from Anne herself:

"I still kinda hoped we could get back together, and I guess I was waiting for the chance to come back and comfort you. But I didn't think I could take it if you kicked me out again, and so I asked Tom and James to test water instead, to try to find out about you so I could come if you wanted me back. But if I'd come back myself, if I hadn't been hiding behind our friends, if I'd just planted myself there and stuck by you instead - if that had happened, would you have stuck with me too?"

"Would I!" From the way Anne places emphasis on the word "would", she needn't say more than that for me to understand her meaning, but she does anyway. "Of course I would. I'd never have the heart to turn you away."

"Then it's such a pity," I say; I'd deduced this already, but now that it's being told right to my face, the eleven years of hindsight and regret that unfold in front of me are clearer than ever before. "We wasted so many years being unhappy, and, well, I just want to make up for being so angry, for resenting you the way I did when all along you never deserved it, if it isn't too late for me to make up for it now.

"I know our lives would've still been far from perfect, even if we'd stuck together the first time around. Back when I first started pilot training, I never thought I'd end up fighting in an actual war; all I wanted was to be flying the fastest, most advanced aircraft around, and the more I learned about aeronautics, the more seductive that idea was. Can you beat that? How naïve I was? It's funny, isn't it, how your perspective changes as you grow older; Vietnam happened just a few years before we were born, but it used to feel like it was so long ago, the kind of stuff we learned about in high school history class or something. So with 9-11 and all that, if I'd stuck with you, then it wouldn't be just you adding your problems to me; I'd be adding my problems to you too.

"But you know what? Maybe I'm being selfish, but I still think the past eleven years would've been much happier for both of us if only we'd stuck together. We'd still have gone through the wringer anyway, but at least we'd have each other. We'd have been there for each other when we were going through all that stuff, instead of feeling alone like we did, and ending up as we are now, with, well, eleven years of baggage."

All these years, the wasted ones, Anne's probably had to dry her own tears too many times already; and as I speak, she reaches out to take another paper napkin from the table. Not any more, though; I edge sideways, shifting my chair closer to hers, and pick up one of the paper napkins myself. From now on, I'm going to be the one to dry her tears; I'll swear on it, word of honor.

Anne

Eleven wasted years. That's exactly what it was - eleven wasted years, for Fred and for me. When I made my decision to walk out on Fred and subsequently to stay away, I'd always imagined him having a happy life; that he'd find somebody else, someone who was at liberty to follow him while he chased his dreams and who wouldn't tie him down with family or financial problems. Little did I know that those eleven years were just as lonely for Fred as they were for me; if he hadn't come back to Detroit, I'd never have learned that my ten years of suffering prior to that were matched by ten reciprocal years of loneliness and misery on Fred's end as well.

"Yeah, you're right," I tell him. "And I see it now, in a way I couldn't have when I was younger. You see, at that age, I still believed in 'happily ever after', and I believed I was setting you free, creating a 'happily ever after' for you. I believed you'd have no trouble finding somebody; part of the reason why I stayed away, even after Grandma's passing, was because I wanted to leave you the chance of finding a girl who wouldn't tie you down the way I would. Because 'happily ever after' is supposed to be perfect, and I couldn't give you that; I couldn't give you the perfect happy life you deserved."

"And how about now?" asks Fred as he gently swipes away my tears. "You don't believe in 'happily ever after' anymore?"

"Actually, I do." In spite of myself, I manage a small smile. "I just believe in a different kind of 'happily ever after', that's all. I believe we each get to write our own 'happily ever afters'; even though life will never be totally perfect, it's up to us to figure out what's most important to ourselves, and how to shape that into our future in a way that's attainable. And for me, what's most important to me now is that I can finally be there for you in the way I've always wanted to be. We're friends again, aren't we? I mean, best friends; the best friends we could ever be in the world? Will you give me a chance; give us a chance, I mean; can we pick up from where we left off the last time? "

I don't really mean just "best friends", of course, but it's a start; what I'm trying to ask Fred, garbling myself because I don't want to risk asking for more than I deserve, is for a second chance to be a part of each other's lives again; a second chance for us to be the whole world to each other again, in fact. Because even if I haven't been the whole world to him, I just can't deny that, deep down in my subconscious, he's been the whole world to me all along.

Frederick

Best friends. At one level, that's what your partner is supposed to be; it just isn't possible to be a good partner to somebody who isn't your best friend as well. But what Anne and I had was way beyond that; it's indescribable, but the closest I can get to describing it, maybe, is that I'll never forget those years I was with Anne, when I felt as if I belonged to somebody even when my family was so far away. I suppose taking baby steps is the cautious thing to do when we've been apart for so many years, but if I take into account that I'd never lost Anne's support in all these years, that all the sacrifices she made were solely for my sake, then maybe the reality is that we've always been together, at least in spirit; and if that's the case, then there's nothing stopping us from being together again, in exactly the same way we used to be.

"Of course we can," I assure her, and then I barrel on, spilling out all these thoughts to her. "Even when I couldn't see it, you were still my best friend in the world, weren't you? Actually, if we want to pick up exactly where we left off the last time, we're more than best friends, way more than that. Remember what you said to me about Tiger Woods? It's funny, but the first thing I thought when you said it was, why did you expect me to be faithful to you when you'd been over me for so long already?

"And you know what's even funnier still? I actually was. Faithful to you, that is. I just didn't know it, that's all. Because I was never as close to any girl as I was to you, ever again; I guess I never trusted anyone as much as I trusted you."

Usually, I'm not a sentimental kind of guy; most of the time, I feel more comfortable with expressing myself in actions instead of with words, especially in situations where it involves some mushy kind of feeling. But now, I guess I need to say the words out loud; I'm convinced, and I know I need to convince Anne as well.

"So I guess, that means… I love you. In fact, I guess it means I've never stopped, all these years. Loving you, that is."

And you know what? Now that I've spit it out, it's priceless, the way Anne leaps up from her seat and launches herself at me as I stand up just in time to meet her halfway and catch her; the way I feel when I hear those words spoken back to me, sending me right into seventh heaven.

"Frederick," Anne says, hugging me tightly, "I never stopped loving you, too. And it's too good to be true, to have you back in my life again."

Just like that, I feel as if we've opened up a time warp and gone way, way back; back beyond where we left off in '01, back before I said goodbye to Anne and flew off to Texas. I'm back at Commencement Day now, more than twelve years ago, at the point when I felt ready to commit my entire life to Anne. And I know I'm winging it, but everything from here takes on a life of its own.

"Anne, you know what?" I say. "At the point where we left off, the exact point we left off all those years ago, I'd asked you two questions and you'd said no to both of them.

"Question number one: will you watch an Eminem concert with me? Maybe in Detroit this time?" This is the easy one, and Anne's got an easy answer too.

"That's easy," she says. "Of course. Why wouldn't I? I still remember I owe you that concert, way long ago."

And then I gulp before launching full speed into question number two, the big one, the loaded one.

"And question number two. Will you marry me? Because where we left off, we were practically like family to each other. I wanted to make you a part of my family. So if we're picking up where we left off, then that's what we are; family."

Anne

Being back in Fred's arms again, a place I haven't been for twelve long years, I feel warm, safe, and protected; it's been such a long time since anyone ever took care of me the way he did. Sure, I'd been something of a lone soldier within my family since early childhood, but all the way, Grandma had been my unfailing ally. At least, that lasted until the time when I decided, at age sixteen, to study engineering in college. She hadn't objected, outwardly at least; but she subtly made her position clear by reminding me, gently but repeatedly, of Father's willingness to support my college education if and only if I chose an "appropriately feminine" field of study at a women-only liberal arts college. From ages sixteen through eighteen, I'd felt as if I was battling against the entire world; my school and college friends, however well they meant, just couldn't identify with my struggles about pursuing my field when they didn't have the same burden to cope with. Fred, though, was different; he'd been effectively fending for himself since junior high so he instinctively understood what I was going through; and anticipating my needs was second nature to him when he'd been doing the same for Sophia for years. Despite his fun-loving exterior, he was actually much more mature than many of my other friends; he was the one who thought of all the little practical things, things like finding summer storage for our stuff before our off-campus apartment leases began, and throwing my sheets in the laundry for me the time I had food poisoning and barfed all over them. In the time since I walked away from him, I've grown used to being alone and independent; as an adult, I've become inured to the reality that nobody will put me first except myself. But even though I know I can make it on my own, that I'm perfectly capable of being independent, it's still a wonderful feeling to be interdependent with someone again. To know that from now on, it won't be just me trying to hold up my entire world anymore, because I've now got another pair of hands, another pair of shoulders to share the burden with me.

And then Fred goes on with the two questions - and everything's moving so fast, it's almost as if a freight train hit me, except in a good way; or maybe I should say, it's as if I was being pulled along with said freight train, only it isn't a freight train anymore, but a bullet train that's whizzing along at over two hundred miles per hour.

"Wow." I'm in emotional overdrive, and I feel as if I've lost all powers of articulation. "But yes… of course… yes…"

Frederick

"You would?" I can hardly believe it; it's the same too-good-to-be-true feeling I had when Anne said yes to me the first time around. That time, we were spinning around on a lawn on campus; and now my world's spinning too, even if we're right in the middle of Starbucks and there's hardly any room to swing a cat in here. But even if we aren't physically spinning, the feeling's still the same, only better; and the hug and kiss we share is the best one I've ever had, better than any of the other ones before. And as we pull away and my world slows down again, I can't stop myself from babbling on and on.

"You know what's even better than the first time around? This time, I've actually got a ring, only it isn't with me right now. I got it at the airport before going into Detroit to meet you, that day back in '01. That's the ring I'd like to give you, to follow through with what I should've done way long ago."

I'm so proud of myself, I think I'm going to morph into the Cheshire cat; the grin's probably the only part of me that anyone can see right now.

Anne

There's actually a ring; Fred actually got me a ring when he headed back up from Texas after his UPT graduation. With this little piece of new information, the enormity of what I did that day hits me like a sledgehammer; I'm horrified, utterly horrified at just how callous I've actually been without even knowing it.

"Oh my God," I breathe. "You actually had a ring. Which means - I was so insensitive to you that day, and yet I never knew just how bad it was all the way until now. You were going to give me a ring, for God's sake, and I just walked out on you like that without even giving you a chance to say any of the things you wanted to say to me. How could you ever forgive me for that?"

Fred's face falls; he was so happy, so pleased with himself, until he saw how what he'd just said set me right off all over again. And I want to be happy, I actually do; it's just that I'd never known that in being cruel to be kind, I'd ended up being more cruel than kind to him when that was the last thing I'd ever want to do. But I'm not going to blubber over it ever again, not when we've got so many chances to make it up to each other in the future; and so, I take one last swipe at my eyes and blink the tears away.

"Hey. Baby." Fred hasn't called me that for the longest time; I lean my head on his shoulder and he strokes my hair with his hand. "I forgave you long ago, didn't I? And this is supposed to be a happy time for both of us; I just asked you to marry me and you said yes. So let's put the past behind us and go out there and be happy, yeah?"

"Yeah. Let's." I'm ready now, ready to be anywhere, especially anywhere in Detroit, making happy memories with Fred; because this place is now much more than just his home and my home. Now that we've promised ourselves to each other again, this place is going to be our home together too.

Frederick

I hand Anne my car keys for the drive from Wayne County Airport to Plymouth; we'll have to spend a few bucks on overnight parking for her car, true, but on this very first night of our reconciliation, we just wanted to have the feeling of going home together again. It's exactly the same as it was more than ten years ago; we were always going home together, even if we walked through different but neighboring doors at the end of that journey.

"Hey, Anne," I can't help needling her just a little. "You know why nobody could ever match up to you in my mind? I can't imagine any other girl who'd think I was like Lionel Messi. Magical. But I can't help feeling a little intimidated by that comparison; I'm still wondering how I could ever live up to it."

"Well, I could compare you to someone else if you want," quips Anne. "How about Tex Johnston⁴?"

"So now you think I belong in a flying circus?" I can't help breaking into a self-deprecating smile. "Well, yeah, I guess the Thunderbirds are like the 21st century equivalent of barnstorming. But hey, I'd like to think of myself as being a little bit more than a clown in a souped-up flying circus, you know."

"Hm. A souped-up flying circus. That's pretty apt," Anne laughs. "But that wasn't what I meant when I said that. Remember when we read about the famous barrel roll of the Dash-80 prototype? The first 707 ever built? Everybody thought Tex was being a maverick, gambling the aircraft and the entire company in a single swoop. But all the while, Tex knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew he'd be able to bring the airplane back safely for sure. And that's exactly like how you are. People who don't know you think you fly by the seat of your pants most of the time, but the risks you take are actually much more measured than they seem to be. And I understood that, all the while; that's the secret behind your magic."

She's right on the money, more so now than any other time before. I've asked her to marry me on the spur of the moment not just once, but twice by now; and that doesn't change the fact that without a doubt, we both know it's absolutely the right decision for us. So how could I not be head over heels in love with Anne, even more than I have ever been before, when despite all our years apart, she still understands me so much better than anyone else I know?

It's past Tiffany's bedtime when Anne drops me off at my house; Sophia says she's still waiting up for me to say good night, and so the first thing I do is to go to her room where I find that instead of using the top bunk I've generously offered her, she's still squished herself into the bottom bunk, curling her arms and legs around Walter.

"Tiffany, don't you want to sleep in the top bunk? You'll have more space up there," I tell her.

"Uncle Freddy, I know you don't like Walter," she says. "But I don't want to sleep up top, 'cause I don't wanna climb down the ladder when I have to go to the bathroom. I like sleeping here in my bed and I'm OK down here with Walter."

"Where did you get that idea from?" I ask. That's the peril of living with a kid, especially a Wentworth kid; kids never miss anything, do they? "That I don't like Walter?"

"You told me you give your bed to people you like. But Walter was there, and you took him out." Wow, eureka. She hasn't even turned six yet, but you've just got to hand it to her; she's a virtuoso at deductive reasoning.

"That isn't -" My knee-jerk reaction is to say it isn't true, but then, I wonder if it mightn't be better to tell her the truth instead. It'll be embarrassing, sure; but it's a good start to telling her about Anne, isn't it? So I eat my words and say instead, "Actually, there is somebody called Walter whom I don't like very much. But he isn't your rabbit Walter; and I guess I shouldn't be taking it out on your bunny like that."

"Who is he?" Tiffany sits up in bed; she's all perked up with curiosity.

"Well, Charlie's Aunty Annie, you know, he's her daddy. You've met him, the time he took us all out to dinner and you had to dress up."

"Oh." There's a flash of recognition in Tiffany's expression. "That boring old guy."

"Yup," I wink irreverently at her. "That's the guy. Did you know Anne used to be my girlfriend long ago, way before you were born? Well, her daddy Walter, he didn't like me very much, and so I didn't like him either.

"But now, I'm not gonna run away from Walter anymore. Because I asked Anne to marry me and she said yes, and so Walter's going to be a part of my life from now on, whether I like it or not."

"Yay!" Tiffany scrambles out of bed and jumps into my waiting arms. As I stand up carrying Tiffany, Sophia comes up to me too; she's been hanging around in the doorway all this while and she's heard every word I just said.

"Congratulations, Fred," she says. "Anne cares for you so much, and I'm really happy that you finally see it too."

"Yes, I do," I tell her. "Thanks for everything, Soph. I just wish I'd seen it sooner; I'd never known I was as blind as that." And then I turn to Tiffany again.

"Well, I guess I've got to learn to start living a life with Walter in it." In telling Tiffany this, I'm actually telling it to myself, too. "And that means if you want your bottom bunk back, I don't mind if you put Walter back up top again. In fact, I can do it for you right now."

Anne

Did I ever tell you before that bedtime's an extremely rubber concept in the Musgrove household? Well, it is. If I'd been in charge, Charlie should've been in bed long ago on a school night like this, but he's still up with tons of energy to burn; he scuttles over to me as I open the front door after parking Fred's RAV4 in the driveway.

"Aunty Annie! Why are you driving Coach's car?"

"Because," I say, pausing slightly for effect, "I drove Fred home tonight. He's going to be your Uncle Freddy for real, and his car's gonna be my car too."

"Coach's gonna be Uncle Freddy? So you're gonna marry him? I told ya, Mommy's right! She said you're in love with Coach! Mommy! Daddy! Did you hear that?" Charlie jumps up and down excitedly, and then runs right back into the living room, pulling Mary and Charles away from the TV and shouting it over and over again, right at the top of his voice.

"What?" If there's one thing that's 100% reliable about Mary, it's her ability to pounce on anything with the potential to even be a tiny bit sensational. "You're engaged to Fred Wentworth? You were engaged to Fred Wentworth before? When was that? Anne, you never told us! How could you?"

"Uncle Freddy and Aunty Annie." Someone tugs at the hem of my jacket; it's Wally, and I'm hardly surprised that the din woke him up and he's padded his way downstairs. "Coach's Uncle Freddy?"

"Yes, that's right," I tell Wally as I bend down and pick him up. "I promised to marry him, so you can start calling him Uncle Freddy again. And Charlie, I'm sorry I lied the other day, when I said I wasn't in love with him. Because I am; I've been that way for a long time. I just didn't want to say it, that's all; not when I wasn't sure he felt the same way too."

"So you lied to us about Fred Wentworth, huh?" says Mary. "Well, I'm not letting you off until you tell me how you landed yourself with such a hunky boyfriend, and how you could possibly let him go after that. And then now you're back together, huh? It wouldn't have happened without us looking after Tiffany, right? So you've gotta thank me for that, for being your matchmaker all this while. And I still can't believe you never said a word about it all for years; how, how, how could you ever do this to me?"

"I would've; I would've told you." If there's anything I've learned from all these years of living with Mary, it's the art of maintaining my sanity in the midst of a houseful of hysteria. "Things just happened to go wrong before I got around to telling you, that's all. And of course I'll tell you the story. In fact, I could tell you everything tonight, but after we've put the kids to bed; it's a school night, isn't it?"

Charles picks up Charlie, and comes up to me with a grin. "Good for you," he says, "because if anyone deserves to find happiness in life, it's you for sure."

My family's never been one for the kind of group hugs Sophie and Tiffany give to Fred; I do edge closer to Charlie and bump foreheads with him, though, and Mary, after giving us a little jealous pout, comes up and envelopes the boys and me into a hug. The makeup of our household may seem a little odd to other people; but at the times when it really counts, we're still a family just the same.

Disclaimer: "Coming Home" is a song by P. Diddy, featuring vocals by Skylar Grey. There's also a reference to Eminem's "Till I Collapse" in this chapter.

¹ The King Air is a propeller aircraft which is popular in both private and military usage. The smaller models of private jets, such as the Learjet models, for example, start at above US$ 5 million; and larger jets can go up to US$20-30 million or more. In contrast, a King Air would be about US$2-3 million, or even if new and well fitted out, in the ballpark of about US$5-6 million. Of course, the King Air is a far cry from a private jet in terms of stature, luxury and glam factor; hence the Elliots are pretenders rather than truly belonging to the private jet set.

⁴ Alvin M. "Tex" Johnston (1914-1998) was a test pilot for Boeing during the period when the 707 was developed, and he is famous for performing an unauthorized barrel roll with the first 707 prototype (which was called the Dash-80) during a demonstration flight over Lake Washington on 7 August 1955, which scandalized Bill Allen, the then-president of Boeing, but ended up becoming the catalyst that drew commercial attention to the aircraft. This is the barrel roll Anne is talking about, whereas Frederick is making a reference to Tex's history as a barnstormer (which is what aerobatics stunt pilots were called in the 1920's) in his early years of flying.

Chapter 13 - When He Shines

Posted on 2011-09-27

Anne

Every time I tell Mary anything, it'll be guaranteed to make the rounds of all three generations of Musgroves within 24 hours; that's happened before with news of much lower shock value than my engagement with Frederick, so I'm not at all surprised when I find that I've been totally pre-empted in the announcement I make at dinnertime on Thursday.

"That's my girl, Annie!" says Mr. Musgrove heartily. "You sure took a long time to catch 'im, but you've got 'im good now, haven't you?"

"Anne, dear," Mrs. Musgrove says, the tears welling up in her eyes, "you've always been almost like a daughter to us, and I'm sure your mom and grandma would be so proud and happy to see you becoming a beautiful bride, if only they could be here today."

Lulu catches my eye with a shy, embarrassed look, but doesn't say a word to me throughout dinner; after I've finished helping Mrs. Musgrove clear the table, though, she pulls me aside by the adjoining door to Charles' half of the duplex.

"Anne? I'd really like to feel happy for you," she says quietly. "But at the same time, I feel horrible about myself too. I feel stupid."

"Lulu, having a crush on somebody, well, it's just a normal, human thing that everybody goes through," I tell her. "I used to have a crush too, a huge one that lasted for years. Want to hear about it?"

"A crush?" Lulu perks up immediately at the improbability of it all. "Anne, you've always been so sensible; I can't imagine how you could ever have a crush on anybody. Who was he, anyway? Was he Freddie? Before you guys got together?"

"No," I'm smiling, thinking about how small my problems really were in those days of early teenhood; when the damage Liz was doing to my popularity status in school and an impossibly ridiculous teenage infatuation with an actor were the only concerns I had in life. "From seventh to ninth grade, I used to have a huge crush on River Phoenix. I watched a rerun of Stand By Me when I was twelve, and then Dogfight when I was thirteen, and I was completely and irrevocably hooked from that time onwards. I thought he was cute, and my friends at school did too. And then when he died, I hid in the bathroom with my magazine cutouts of him for an entire day, crying my eyes out. I was in boarding school by then, so there was no way I could possibly cut a whole day of class like that without being tracked down; by the time lessons were done, everybody knew exactly where I was and what I was doing, and Liz and her friends laughed at me for weeks after that."

"River Phoenix? Isn't he, like, some hippie kid or something?" Lulu giggles in spite of herself. "Anne, you're so ancient."

"Guilty as charged." I actually grin; most other times, I'd take immediate umbrage at the twins' perception of me as an old fuddy-duddy, but now nothing, absolutely nothing, can pierce through my euphoria at being granted a second chance with Frederick. "Lulu, will you do something for me? I think Fred will want to talk to you, to apologize for the misunderstanding and make sure you're OK about the way things are, about us being together. He'll be coming by on Sunday afternoon before you go back to campus; will you talk to him then?"

Lulu hesitates for a long while, and I try to make my expression as encouraging as I possibly can.

"Well," she finally says, "I guess I can't be any dumber than you were about River Phoenix. At least, I believed Freddie could actually like me back, but River Phoenix's a film star, there's no way he'd ever even talk to you. And so OK, I guess, I'll talk to Freddie when he comes."

Frederick

It's time for me to tell Louisa I can't be her "Superman"; she knows it already, but it's still my basic duty to clear the air with her anyway.

"Louisa, I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea," I begin awkwardly. "I guess - if I misled you in the past, I ought to take responsibility for it now."

"Freddie," Louisa looks down shamefacedly, refusing to meet my eye; there's a trace of hurt and accusation in her voice as she addresses me. "I suppose you must be thinking I'm really stupid. But you never said anything about you and Anne, and you could've told me I was nobody to you."

"You aren't 'nobody' to me," I counter. "I do respect you as a friend; and as a sister, because in a way, that's what we're going to be. And from now on, you can always count on me to be just that to you; a brother." And, I resolve, that's exactly how it's going to be in the future, even though it hasn't quite been so up till now.

"Thanks," Louisa glances up tentatively. "Friends?"

"Friends," I keep my expression perfectly serious, even though I feel a little like smiling; I don't want her to think that I'm mocking her. "And all the best for your classes this semester; and don't let this incident stop you from enjoying college life, because college is simply the best - you've got so much freedom, and yet you don't have to face the real world out there just yet. Just be careful, and stay safe."

"OK. I will. And… congratulations." She's still wavering, but the resentment is gone from her voice.

"Thanks. You take care, OK?" I guess I can smile now; I've made my amends, and now I can fully concentrate on looking forward instead of looking back.

Fall 2012
Frederick

We're past the age of having to seek Walter Elliot's consent to marry; I know that. In fact, we were already above the age of parental consent the first time we got engaged. But still, I get a perverse sense of pleasure in showing up at the Elliots' condo in Palm Beach with Anne to inform him - not to ask him, but to inform him - of my plans to marry Anne.

"A young upstart of an airline pilot," says Walter, appraising me with his face, his eyes, and his entire manner; his voice is every inch as smooth, cold and impersonal as his Botoxed skin. "Well, I suppose you'll have to do, when it's only Anne that we're talking about. You're of the professional class, at least. Of course, if it were Elizabeth, I'd have higher expectations."

"Excuse me, sir," I meet him eye to eye and match him word for word, tone for tone in deliberate, measured hostility. "Anne has never been only Anne to me; in fact, she's the most important person in my entire life. She's the person who shaped me into who I am; she's been behind everything I achieved, right from the day I first got to know her in freshman year at MIT. That was sixteen years ago, and I believe I've waited long enough - in fact, much too long - to pledge my life to her."

"You say you knew Anne at MIT," Walter's impassive mask melts a little as he drifts into a few moments of introspection, and a wave of recollection takes over his face. "For your information, Anne never got involved with anyone when she was at MIT. I wouldn't allow it; she was strictly forbidden from consorting with any man outside our circle. There was this time when some young punk - a gas station attendant, I believe - tried to have a fling with her and I put a stop to it the very minute it was drawn to my attention."

"Father," Anne cuts in; her voice is perfectly calm despite the anger and defiance in her eyes. "That man you're calling a 'young punk' is none other than Frederick, and I'm not going to accept it if you ever call our relationship a 'fling' again. It's unfair, and it's untrue. And when you told me to end it that summer - my relationship with him - well, I didn't. We wouldn't be here if I did."

"I was indeed a gas station attendant, if you wish to call it that," I say, deliberately infusing every word of my reply with biting sarcasm. "When I was at MIT, I spent my summers refueling private jets at various FBO operations to pay my way through flight school. And I was also the valedictorian of my class, and nine years later, I became a Major in the Air Force. Do you need me to fax you my resume? Not that it's going to change the outcome, anyway."

Walter faces off with me in perfect silence, like boxers facing each other off in the ring before an epic showdown. He doesn't flinch, and I don't flinch either; it's a contest, a lengthy, protracted competition to see who caves first. And finally, after what seems like an eternity, it's Walter who breaks the stalemate.

"That will do," he says, with all the imperiousness of a monarch. "I suppose you will look more than presentable beside Anne, when we next choose to extend our hospitality to you. And you may go now. Good day."

With a single wave of his hand, we are dismissed. And Elizabeth, who was as still and silent as a statue the entire time I was speaking to Walter, bats her eyelashes and pouts flirtatiously at me as we walk past her to the door. Anne acknowledges her with the barest tilt of her head, but I don't even bother; I want her to see that to me, she might as well not exist at all.

Anne

As we drive away from Father's in our rental car, Fred blasts rap music on the stereo; at the volume it's being played, the song, an unfamiliar song to me, simply reeks of rebellion:

Knowledge will begin until I finish this song
'Cause the rhyme gets rougher as the rhyme goes on…

… I want you to hear this perfectly clear
Catch, what you sayin', you get the idea
I hope you knowledge the beginning 'cause I'm finished this song
The rhyme gets rougher as the rhyme flows on

"Fred, tone it down," I say, wearily trying to raise my voice above the music. I want to reach out and touch his arm, but I know better than to do that while he's driving. "It isn't worth it, getting mad at him like that."

As the last echoes of "Pump it up, homeboy" fade off, Fred turns the stereo knob; he must've heard me, but he's just doing it mechanically as if he's someplace far away.

"This song, it's from way back when I was in grade school," he mumbles absently. "I used to blast it whenever I felt like rebelling against somebody. Sometimes that was when Dad and Sophia used to ask me why I couldn't be more like Ed, or during those times some of my teachers said to the entire class that we'd never amount to anything much when we grew up. Or later on, when kids in the 'hood roughed me up because they said I was being high and mighty, acting like I was too good for them, just because of the grades I got in school. Every time I played this song, it was as if I was throwing the words 'If I wasn't, then why would I say I am' right into their faces, challenging them to believe I was something different because they'd never see me as anything other than what they believed me to be.

"I was maybe about eight or nine when I first played this song in the house; I thought I had myself covered by putting blankets under the boom box and closing the door and windows in my room, but the sound still carried and I still got into trouble for disturbing Mom anyway. So after that, I always took my boom box outside.

"Actually, I thought I'd outgrown blasting this song by the time I finished high school; until now, at least," he concludes wryly.

"Frederick." This is the first time I've ever heard this story; before this, I'd believed that Fred had gotten past all his youthful insecurities years ago. "Father always had a sharp tongue; that's just part of his nature, and he probably won't change for the rest of his life. But you're not the kid you used to be; you're mature, successful, a military hero. You shouldn't let Father's words undermine your self-confidence, especially when he behaves like that to just about everybody."

"I know that," says Fred, "but it isn't his insulting behavior to me that's making me angry. Walter can put me down a hundred times and I won't give a damn, but the way he treats you - who do you think will be paying for the 'hospitality' he'll condescend to give us? It isn't fair; not to you most of all." And it doesn't escape my notice that, for the first time ever, Fred doesn't refer to Father as "your dad", but as "Walter"; apparently, Father has crossed an unspoken but significant line in his relations with Fred by dint of his cold reception to the news of our engagement.

This is exactly the heart of the matter; the problem that will never go away regardless of whether I marry Fred at age 24, 34 or 44. With Fred being as sharp as he is, he couldn't possibly have missed the way Father and Liz sponged off me the time they visited Detroit; and now that Fred's going to become part of the family too, I'm pretty sure that they'll probably start targeting him as well if I don't do anything about the situation.

For the longest time, people - Grandma, Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove, school friends who've gotten married and set up their families - have been telling me that it's a natural process for your aspirations and goals to change as you grow older; but with my life remaining static as it was, I never could bear to let go of my college bucket list, the old dreams of my youth. Now that I'm back with Fred, though, I've got to actively start thinking about the future, and I can't escape the fact that I have grown older, even with all those years when my life seemed to be standing still. Fred and I have grown roots now; we're simply not the idealistic, footloose youngsters we used to be in college anymore. That doesn't change the fact that I love him, and that my first priority is to keep him in my life sustainably; the operative word, though, is sustainably; and to do that, I'll need to challenge my assumptions about myself and my limitations. So when we get home, I'll have some major sorting of my bucket list to do.

"It isn't fair, that's true," I tell Fred. "And we've got to do something about it. We've got to find a way to draw the line with Father and Liz; to make them understand that the way they're spending is neither sustainable nor acceptable to us, especially if they think they can tap on us to finance that lifestyle.

"When I gave you up the last time, I wanted to protect you from all of this, from a life where they'd be taking advantage of us every now and then, making you miserable and making me miserable too. So now that I'm not going to give you up ever again, I have to find a solution. And that means I'll be going back there to talk to them - after I've figured out what I can do about ELMSCO."

"Are you sure you really want to be doing that?" asks Fred. "I thought you always said your life was in aviation, and you weren't interested in taking over the family business."

"I wasn't," I admit. "But now, things are different. I've got you to think about, and I'm willing to fight, to challenge myself, for the sake of your happiness as well as mine. For the longest time, I've been bellyaching about everything that's wrong with ELMSCO and the Elliot way, but I never thought of doing anything about it. Maybe that was OK when I was just fresh out of college, but now that I've chalked up enough leadership experience at work to realistically be able to make a difference, I guess it's high time I started to try."

"Well, as long as you want to do it, I'm behind you all the way," Fred replies. "I have every faith in your ability; you were my mentor, remember, when you told me what I could bring to the table with my valedictory speech? Even then, you already had it in you to be a good leader and manager. But just promise me one thing, OK? If you find that you're really not happy in it, don't force yourself to stay there just because you think that's the only way to hold things together for them and for me; I'm sure we could find other ways out if we think hard enough and talk about it."

"Sure, I'll do that; I promise," I assure him. "If it really doesn't work out, I'll discuss the alternatives with you for sure. But this is something I've got to do not just for you, or for them, but for myself. For years, I've been content to just stay in the background, to think a lot but never speak up. And I used to limit myself, saying I'm good as a technical person but weak as a leader; too weak to drive any meaningful change in the company. So this is a chance for me to prove that I'm more than just that timid good girl I used to think I was, or that other people still think I am. It's a chance for me to get the Elliot family back on our own two feet again. And that's a challenge I can't walk away from, not when I was born as an Elliot daughter after all."

At the end of that little speech, I'm sitting up a little straighter and holding my head a little higher already. I still don't buy into Father, Liz and Mary's version of the Elliot pride, but I've just discovered a different sense of family pride that's all my own; I want to show everyone out there exactly what the Elliot name, especially when it belongs to Anne Elliot (or Anne Elliot Wentworth), is capable of. I want to make it worthy of respect, for the first time in over a decade at least.

Why do you do it, Anne? That's the question I ask myself every single time I have to make a choice between doing what I want for myself and doing what's good for the family, or for other people in my life. And the same answer always comes back to me: Because from those to whom much is given, much is also expected.

I guess I've got to thank the Musgroves for inculcating in me a sense of noblesse oblige; through hanging out with Charles at the various Musgrove repair garages, I got to know people from all walks of life, and that made me more aware, more sensitive of just how fortunate I was to be born into a family of affluence. I realized that there were kids, even a few of the kids at my school, to whom some of the creature comforts I took for granted - like having a car to take me to and from school and being able to go on holiday several times a year - were the height of luxury. And because I knew that I'd been conferred so many advantages just by an accident of birth, I always felt that I had no excuse not to pay it back; if I was in a position to help anyone - family or friend or stranger - I didn't just want to or choose to; I was obliged to.

But as far as taking care of Charlie and Wally is concerned, I'm no longer in a position of plenty, am I? Fred and I may have decided to live in Plymouth, but I'll have my own household to take care of; and if we have the capacity to help anyone with babysitting, Sophie's got to take priority because she's got fewer backup resources to tap on. And I suppose it's time Mary became more aware of the real world; ever since childhood, neither she nor Liz ever had any friends from a different background, and that's probably why they can subscribe to a distorted sense of Elliot superiority whereas I can't.

Even Charles, by the time he started befriending and then dating Mary in earnest, was a different Charles from the easy-going boy I grew up with; four years of college had left him with enough finesse to know that lying on garage floors looking at the undercarriages of cars was probably not the best way to go about courting a girl, and besides, his main mission was to bring some cheer into Mary's life and give her a respite from the morbid atmosphere pervading our household with Grandma's illness. Effectively, we've been wrapping Mary in cotton wool ever since the day she was born; to all of us, Charles included, she was always the little girl who'd grown up without a mom, who had a reason to be insecure and who needed to be protected. Well, she's thirty this year, and I suppose it's high time we eased her out of little-girlhood, even if I feel slightly guilty about being the one who's got to do it.

"Mary," I say, "you know, Fred and I are looking for a house in Plymouth. Remember when I first moved in with you and Charles, how I said I'd move back out on my own after Wally gets settled in kindergarten? Well, I guess I've got to shift that plan forward by a couple years now, and I wanted to talk to you a little, about how things would change because of that."

"Anne, of course I won't begrudge you moving out with Fred," says Mary. "You're getting married, so why shouldn't you have a house of your own? But you'll still be living nearby, and we'll all still be seeing each other very often. So why would things be any different?"

"For starters, I'd like you to do something, or rather, to think about something; not so much for my sake, but for the sake of Charlie and Wally, and Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove." Even though it's a little bit of a pep talk, I try to be as gentle as possible. "When we were growing up, we never had to do any chores and neither did Father nor Grandma, but the kind of help we had was a real luxury; very few families have that these days. And even though they aren't poor by any means, you know Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove don't believe in fancy spending; it just isn't their style to live like that. So after Rosa retired and Wally was born, I stepped in because I thought it just wasn't fair to leave all the responsibility of looking after both boys to Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove; they've brought up Charles and Hetty and Lulu all on their own, and they're already putting in a lot of time and effort watching the kids in the daytime.

"The biggest reason why I came was to lighten Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove's load; and after I'm married, I hope you'll help carry on where I leave off, to think of them and pitch in a little too - with the kids, and with the house. Bringing up a kid is about much more than just kissing and hugging them goodnight, and playing games with them in the day; there's also a lot of practical stuff, the things our nannies used to do when we were little. But even though we don't have the benefit of nannies anymore now, I'm sure you'll learn how to manage - looking after them is already easier than it was a year or two ago now that they're both a little more independent, and it'll only get better as they grow up and go to elementary school. Can you promise me that? That you'll give it a try?"

"But I'm an Elliot," Mary protests. "Father won't ever hear of us doing chores, would he? He'd say it's beneath us."

"Mary, doing something to help ourselves can never be beneath us." As I say this, I realize that although Fred embodies this very value, I'd already learned it from somewhere else before I even met Fred; somewhere much closer to home. "The Musgroves are doing better than we are right now, and they got there building up the business from scratch; even today, there are times when Mr. Musgrove still gets involved in the garage work at the ground level just to keep himself in touch with what's going on in his business, and Charles is starting to learn how important it is to stay in touch with the ground too. If they can do it, why can't we? There's no shame in honest work, no matter how hands-on it is, if you're able to help yourself and help others by doing it."

"What? Did you say the Musgroves are doing better than us?" It might be a simple fact; but Mary's reaction shows just the extent to which she - and Liz too, I'll bet - have been living in a bubble that desperately needs to be punctured by reality. "But that's not possible! We're the Elliots, and we're the richest of all the families we know, aren't we?"

"Well, they are doing better than us," I tell her matter-of-factly. "Auto repair might not be the most glamorous business out there, but their garage chain is profitable and growing, while ELMSCO hasn't been making money for many years. But even though they've been financially better off than Father for quite a while now, they don't go splashing around and flaunting it; being rich doesn't mean you have to be flashy, just as being flashy doesn't necessarily mean you're rich."

"I never knew -" Mary stops short; I guess all this is new to her, and it's starting to sink in. "Wow. Henry and Lucy, they're richer than Father, but they never - looking after Charlie and Wally, they've been doing that all this while... Say, d'you think we could afford a nanny? If the garage is really doing so well, then getting some help should be no problem, right?"

"Maybe you could discuss that with Charles." I'm just relieved that part, if not all, of my message has finally gotten through to Mary. "And whichever way you choose to do it, whether you get help or not, I believe you can be a good mom to Charlie and Wally; as long as you truly love the kids, and you love Charles and his family too."

December 2012
Anne

"Are you sure you're OK with celebrating Christmas early?" Charles is planning to invite Sophie, Fred and Tiffany to celebrate Christmas with us this year, but unfortunately, Fred's got to fly on Christmas Day itself.

"Of course," says Charles. "What would Christmas be if we couldn't celebrate it with you and Fred? It's your first Christmas as a couple, and our first Christmas as family. So things wouldn't be quite as meaningful if we couldn't all be here."

Just as we've been doing every year, we shift the living room furniture aside to create an impromptu dance floor, and I take up my usual position as the resident spin doctor with the computer, speakers and projector. There's something for every member of the family on my playlist tonight: the Beatles and Elvis Presley for Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove; Scorpions and R.E.M for Sophie; swing music for Charles and Mary; Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus for the twins; and just about every cartoon song there is for the kids.

With kindergarteners in the house tonight, I regretfully can't give Fred his favorite numbers by Nirvana, Korn and Eminem; but I've got a special little surprise lined up for him just the same. It doesn't take long for Fred to ask me if I need help with the DJ-ing so I can enjoy the dancing, to which I tell him there's no reason why I can't DJ and dance at the same time; and just before he leads me to the dance floor, I flip up the track I've got ready for this specific moment to the top of the playlist:

This man's a child, this man is old
Sometimes he's mild, sometimes he's bold
This man I love, sometimes in spite
Of wishing he'd stick to his guns or abandon the fight

But when he shines, oh when he shines
Yes when he shines, he shines so bright

Somewhere along the way, I can't help singing along, articulating all the things I want to say to Fred out loud as we're out there slow-dancing. I've known Fred for so long that I'm more than familiar with the myriad sides to his personality; how he's the swashbuckling Captain America and Jack Sparrow to the kids; a loyal buddy to Tom Harville and James Benwick, and now, to Charles as well; and a right-hand man to Sophia, helpful and considerate to his siblings at every turn. And to me, he's the Tex Johnston to my Bill Allen - his personal style is flamboyant where mine is conservative; he's always ruthlessly down-to-earth where I've got my head in the clouds from time to time; and he's sometimes hot-tempered where I'm a peacemaker. We're opposites in so many ways, and yet, paradoxically, we always had - and still have - so much in common: the way we dare to dream; our affinity for the road less travelled; and how we never say no and never say die once we commit to something we believe in, never mind the bumps, hits, sweat and tears that come along the way. I don't deny that there's the Slim Shady side of him - the kid from the 'hood who's constantly trying to prove he's cool, the kid hidden inside who still hasn't outgrown South Park, rap and off-color jokes; and that some people, like Father, won't like him because that's the only side of him they see. But I love him so much precisely because I've seen the many personae that make up Frederick Wentworth and I've come to embrace every single one of them, warts and all; if I do judge him, it's by his finest moments, and that's exactly what I'm telling him with this song. As the music fades, I keep my fingers interlaced behind his neck, and I stand on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

"This song's for you, Frederick," I tell him. "I love you."

Frederick

I end up wresting the controls for the playlist away from Anne, but she still keeps me company by the computer anyway and I don't mind at all; who could ask for a better co-pilot than her, ever?

It's been years since I last listened to Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly; in fact, it's safe to say I never played that track again after the time she gave me the CD single as a farewell present. And as a dance number, it isn't exactly very useful; the attraction of the song's in the lyrics and the guitar riffs, and it's definitely more of a listener's song than a dancing song. But I dig it up and put it on the playlist anyway, because I want to do a number that's specifically for Anne, for her alone.

And would you know, when I do that, it turns out there is indeed something you can do with that song at a party, unlikely as it may seem. Because Tiffany bounds right into the center of our makeshift dance floor and starts playing air guitar, and after some slight hesitation, Charlie goes in and joins her there as well. Wally doesn't take very long to follow them, only he's still too little to really get the concept of air guitar yet; instead, he turns round and round doing the dancing baby's moves from Ally McBeal.

Anne elbows me with an amused chuckle. "I was the one who taught him how to do that," she confides in a whisper. "After all, there were times when I used to feel like I was Ally McBeal, and I could sure use a dancing baby."

"Well, you're definitely not Ally McBeal now," I tell her. "Not when you've got me. But if we do end up having kids, you've definitely gotta teach that dance to all of them. It'd be fun."

When I first put this song on to play, I didn't expect anybody to appreciate it, nobody except for Anne and me. But as the kids prance around hamming it up, the twins start cheering and the adults break into an appreciative round of applause as everything wraps up and Tiffany takes a theatrical bow, standing between the two Musgrove boys and holding each by the hand. So by this time, the song's not just about Anne and me anymore; everyone's made it their own, in all their different little ways.

I'm not sure what's up with the gift Anne's gotten me for Christmas. It's been a long time since I last bungled around in a jewelry shop, but I was pretty happy with myself for getting a really decent present for Anne - a diamond necklace to match the ring I'd given her. I must say, everyone was pretty impressed when she opened it; and then, what did she give me? A black Hello Kitty T-shirt, with another matching one in red for Sophia, and a pair of Hello Kitty sneakers for Tiffany. Petty as it is, I can't help being a little disappointed; she knows I don't even like Hello Kitty, so hey, what's the deal here?

Well, we're packing up the presents, and I'm picking up the fragments of torn wrapping paper the kids have left strewn across the floor, when Anne pounces on me from behind and pops her head over my shoulder.

"That Hello Kitty T-shirt was just a decoy," she says mischievously. "And I don't mind if you never wear it at all. Here's your real Christmas present, to be opened in private after you get home."

The box, wrapped in shiny paper the color of ivory and tied with a gold ribbon, is almost the same size as the one I'd given her many years ago, when we were about to graduate from college, with exactly the same instructions: open in private. It's a collector's scale model of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, painted in the Boeing livery; the perfect addition to my collection of aircraft models. But what's even more exquisite than the model itself is the card that comes with it, a mirror and complement to the card I gave her with the TriStar model practically half a lifetime ago:

Dear Frederick,

As I write this, it is more than ten years to the day that you gave me a very special gift, which I still treasure to this day. As I write this, I'm looking forward to the day the TriStar you gave me will finally land at one of the destinations you named in your note - the living room that we'll be sharing before too long.

You were absolutely right, not just in deducing that the TriStar was my favorite aircraft then, but also in your spot-on analysis as to why it is so. But the aircraft that I'm giving you now has surpassed the TriStar in my opinion, and I hope, in yours too. Remember how when we were in college, I thought the new generation of aircraft designs were sadly lacking in aesthetics and bold innovation? Well, I'm more than happy to be proven wrong now, more than a decade later.

In many ways, the Dreamliner is an even bolder aircraft than the TriStar; this is, after all, the very first aircraft to make use of composites as a major material in its body. Its design cues marry functionality and aesthetics in a way I haven't seen in decades of aircraft design - not since the de Havilland Comet and the early 747s. And it embodies environmental consciousness in a way that can only belong to this day and age, the 21st century. That's why it gives me so much joy to bring you the opportunity to be a part of the action when this aircraft comes into our fleet; it's a fitting start to the rest of our life together.

Just as you gave me the TriStar as a symbol of our past, the nostalgia of the youth we shared together, I'm now giving you the Dreamliner as a symbol of our future, the optimism of the years we have ahead of us. And when we display them in our new home, side by side, we'll know we've come full circle; we've come back to each other at last.

Love,
Anne

Disclaimer: "When He Shines", the song that gave this chapter its title and is reproduced in full here, belongs to Sheena Easton. "As the Rhyme Goes On" belongs to Eric B. And Rakim, and the idea of this song being a song of rebellion originally came from Eminem.