Chapter 4.5 - Arrivals and Departures

“Hey, um… Will?”

Willow turned around, almost hitting her head on the refrigerator door in the process.
“Felix! I feel like it’s been ages since I saw you! I’ve been wondering if you still lived here!”

Her smile faded when she saw the look on his face.

Felix rubbed the back of his neck. “Um… yeah. I need to talk to you about that.”

She nodded, feeling a slow trickle of unease. Felix hadn’t been himself since Marissa left,
but this… something was very wrong. “Ok, let’s sit down and talk it through-”

Felix didn’t move. “Is Flora home? She… she needs to hear this too.”

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So it came to be that when Flora got home from school that day, it was to find her two
favorite people sitting in the living room with serious looks on their faces.

She rushed into the room with her typical sunshiny exuberance, skidding to a halt just inside the door. “Dad! You’re never home this early, are you really here?”

She flew at her father, hugging him with all the strength a newly-fledged first grader could muster.

He smiled at her, but it quickly faded. “Yeah, I’m really here, Little Flower. There’s something we need to talk about.”

“What is it, Dad?” She was still smiling, and Felix felt like crying. He couldn’t do this if she was smiling at him. He looked at Willow, but she just stared back at him. Her eyes condemned him. This is what you get, they seemed to say, for being the most cowardly father imaginable.

He gathered himself for what he anticipated would be the most difficult speech of his life.
“Well, it’s good news, really. I found a job! Aren’t you proud of me?”

Flora nodded, and she really did look proud. His heart broke just a little more. “But… well,
you see… there’s a little bit of a catch.”

Flora’s eyes widened, and she suddenly looked a bit more wary. She was a smart girl, she knew those words were never good.

Felix internally braced himself. He didn’t think he’d be able to take it if she started crying.
Even when she’d been a baby, he’d felt so helpless whenever she cried. “I’ve been recruited
as a replacement back-up guitarist for Lithium Lexicon, you know them? They play on the
radio sometimes, they wrote that one song you like…”

Flora nodded. “It’s called Hurts So Slow.”

Felix wanted to laugh, but he thought he might start crying. “Anyway, it’s a really great opportunity, but… the thing is… they want me to go on tour with them. So I’ll be gone for a while, and… I’m really not sure when I’ll be back.”

At some point during this, Felix had looked away from Flora, and now he looked back.
“But I’ll still love you, no matter where I am. And we can talk on the phone, and text, and
video chat… but I just can’t stay here anymore.”

Flora was silent, her face full of an emotion so raw and complex that there was no way to
put words to it.

“You’ll be good while I’m gone, won’t you?” He held his breath, knowing that she would be
completely justified if she cried or screamed or told him she hated him. Plumbob, he hoped
she didn’t hate him.

But Flora didn’t do any of those things. Instead she hugged him, holding on to him with all her strength. “I’ll be good,” she whispered. And if his shoulder was a little damp when she pulled away, you would never know it to look at the girl who stood in front of him now.

“I’ll be the very best I can possibly be!”

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Willow was feeling down. Felix’s departure had been deeply upsetting, but she always felt the need to look at least calm, if not happy, for Flora’s sake. She was angry on Flora’s behalf and sad on her own and everything just seemed to be adding to her mood. Even the weather seemed bleaker than usual. So when the doorbell rang one day while Flora was at school, Willow was in dire need of some cheering up.

“Surprise!”

For a moment, Willow was frozen. She could hardly believe her own eyes. Then she snapped out of it. “Conor? Conor!”

As soon as he’d closed the door, she was hugging him, and then an impassioned hug
turned into a frenzied kiss, and then… well. It had been a long time since they'd last met.

At first, only the familiar had mattered. But now they began to look at each other and note
the differences from the people they had known. Conor was a bit taller, and Willow had
put on some muscle. Conor had cut his hair, and Willow had gotten bangs, and they were
both different people than they had been five years ago; but at the same time they were
still fundamentally the same. Willow still smelled the same, like fresh mint; and Conor’s
smile still tipped up just a little at one corner, in a way that made him look just a little
mischievous.

He gave her that smile now. “I’m really happy to be back.”

And something about those words and that smile and whatever magic power Conor had
always carried in his eyes made Willow break down. She began crying, sobbing with all
the burdens her heart had held alone since he had left. And he held her, and whispered
meaningless reassurances, and reminded her that she wasn’t completely alone in the
world. As long as he held her in his arms, the worries that usually weighed her down like
Atlas seemed feather-light.

“Shh… shh…” he murmured, rocking her gently. “You’ll be alright. You’re the strongest
person I’ve ever known, do you know that? Whatever’s upsetting you now, you’ll find
some way to overcome it. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

And everything came pouring out, interspersed with great shuddering breaths that were
still half-sobs. “They’re gone. Felix and Marissa, they’re both gone now, and they left
Flora, and I was so angry and I feel so guilty about it! Because obviously I was angry
because they were leaving Flora, and… who could do that to a child, Conor? Tell me,
who could look into their baby’s face and then leave them forever? Felix says he’s coming
back, but… I don’t really believe him, and when I think about it, I get so angry… but not
just because of Flora. Or rather, yes, because of Flora, but not on her behalf.”

She pulled out of Conor’s arms and stared out into space, silent for a minute. “I haven’t told this to anyone. People have probably guessed the rest of it, people probably feel the rest of it, because everyone can feel righteous anger on the behalf of an innocent child. But this… I’m not even sure I’d admitted this to myself until just now. I feel so incredibly… ashamed of it, ashamed that I could ever be this selfish, but… I love Flora so, so much, I can’t possibly imagine loving my own child more, but… she’s not my child. And when I decided to help Felix and Marissa with her, it was partly because I wanted to be selfless, because I’ve always believed in karma, believed that when an opportunity comes your way to make a difference in the world, even if it’s just for a few people, you should take it, because what you put out will come back at you. And now… I sacrificed so much for them, and they leave me with more burdens than anyone should have to carry. What happened to karma, to doing good things means good things will happen to you? I put my dreams on hold for their sake… and now it looks like that hold will be permanent.”

She turned back to look at Conor. “And even now, seeing you, being held by you, in some ways it just makes it worse, because it throws back in my face what I wanted so much and can’t have. I wanted to go away, to travel the world with you, to fill my life with love and adventure and a new family that would be stronger than the old. But instead… I’m stuck here.” She sighed. Then, surprisingly, she smiled. “At least I have Flora.”

Conor took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. “You have me too. I won’t lie to you, I came here to take you away with me. I had this idea that it would be like a fairy tale… I would sweep you off your feet and carry you off into the sunset.”

Willow giggled, even as she began to tear up again.

But Conor continued. “I guess life usually isn’t quite like a fairy tale. But as far from Prince Charming as I might be, I promise you can count on me to be there for you, even when I’m not really here. I still have a few more days left here before I go back, and even while I’m gone, remember - I love you.”

Author's Note: Sorry about the weird spacing, Blogger hates me apparently. Also, I just realized that Felix Doe has the same hairstyle, facial hair, and shirt, and remarkably similar coloring and facial features, as Felix Barker, who you might (or might not) remember as a petty thief who made a brief cameo in chapter 2.4. Any resemblance was entirely unintentional, but I thought it was funny. Next chapter, we're back to epistolary style! (It's already up, so you can go on ahead)