It was after one o'clock in the morning when Amelia stopped at a motel on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia to sleep. She had stopped only for gas and bathroom breaks in eight hours and after a busy morning at work she was forced to stop and sleep. She got her suitcase after she paid for her room, and climbed the stairs to her room. Once inside, she locked her door and immediately went to the bed. She pulled off her pants, turned off the light and crawled into the bed. She fell swiftly into a deep sleep.
A semi-truck's engine roared to life right outside the door and she was instantly awake. She eased up stiffly to look at the bedside clock. It was after nine in the morning. She sighed and hugged the pillow securely to her head. She had slept so well but with clarity of mind she remembered why she was laying in a motel room and she tried to drive the images of Jack and Samantha out of her mind. No such luck, she thought in frustration. She sighed, resigned to the ache that formed in her heart and she realized what she wanted. She wanted Jack. Jack could always make her feel better. Her heart ached to think that might all be over now and she rolled out of bed to get moving.
She quickly showered and changed clothes and straightened up the bed. She repacked her bag and was ready to go. The last thing she picked up was her phone on the night stand. She had not turned it on since she had called work on one of the bathroom breaks that she had taken the day before. There were waiting messages on her phone from Jack and Meredith and Carrie but she couldn't deal with them right now. She was sure that the minute she heard Jack's voice she would want to talk to him. She wasn't ready to face that moment yet.
For once she didn't worry about work. She wasn't even sure she still wanted to work in her current position. Her supervisor had been angry that she had left so suddenly and threatened to fire her if she didn't return but Amelia had managed to convince her that she was in an emergency situation. Could there be a bigger emergency than this? Amelia thought, woefully. She had ended her conversation with her supervisor with a promise to return as soon as things were resolved and that she would keep in contact once she got to Camp Camilla. The supervisor still wasn't happy but Amelia was past caring being considerate to a woman who showed no consideration for her.
After her miscarriage being in the Mother and Baby Unit was difficult for her. It felt like a cruel irony to be surrounded by babies and mothers all day long. She did miss her co-workers on the floor. They always had such fun together. The only available opening had been on the recovery floor in the main part of the hospital and her new supervisor had made her work life unbearable. She was constantly on her about the time that she spent talking with patients claiming it made her less efficient than the other nurses on the floor though she finished her paperwork and other charting just as quickly as the others. She had plenty of sick days and vacation days that she had never used. She had put in so many long hours at her job for years and hardly ever took vacation so she had at least three weeks coming her way. It would be good to get away from the stress and the physical toll of daily nursing duties.
The hospital also reminded her of her loss. The first nine weeks of the pregnancy had gone so well she was not concerned about spreading the word of their first child to everyone she talked to. They had waited so long and gone through so many treatments that she had stupidly shared it with everyone on the floor and every patient she saw. In some ways she knew better than to do it but her excitement at the prospect of a new baby was too much to contain. In the 10th week she had started bleeding while she was at work which prompted her visit to her doctor. She went to her doctor on her lunch break and it was there that she had the ultrasound that confirmed that the baby's heart had stopped. Through tears she called Jack to come and be with her and the doctor performed a D&C later that afternoon when the bleeding did not stop.
She slipped her phone into her pocket and scanned the room for anything she might have left and then headed out the door and to her waiting car. The messages would have to wait until she could get to the right place in her mind. She pushed the longing in her to hear her husband's voice away and carried her luggage to her car and headed out on the road once more.
The road through Richmond was busy but traffic moved well. She hadn't been on this road for a number of years and she noted the beauty around her as she drove through Virginia. She used to despise road trips mostly because she and her mother had moved around so frequently when she was young. Her thoughts turned to Meredith and the happy memories of Lake Camilla. Memories of her early days there were sad ones but also marked the first stable home she had ever experienced. They were among the first people to show her all encompassing, life changing, unconditional love.
Her feelings for her mother, Anna, were still complicated. There were many things left unsaid between them. Not that she had ever had much of an opportunity to speak with her. After years of therapy she had come to realize that her mother had loved her the way she knew how to love. She loved her with the maturity of a sixteen-year-old single mom. After her experiences with friends and especially with Meredith and Jack she knew for ceratin that her mother didn't know the first thing about what it meant to really love someone. Her mother's father had kicked them out when she told him she was pregnant. Her mother lived with her boyfriend who made Anna very uncomfortable and with no other stable family of her own she moved in with a steady stream of friends and boyfriends throughout Amelia's childhood. Amelia's life was very unstable until she started school. Her mother made sure she was enrolled wherever they were living from the time she could qualify for preschool. Education was the one thing that her mother approved of. In her adulthood she wondered if it was the schooling or the free child care for six hours a day that was more attractive to her. School didn't stop her from taking Amelia in and out of schools and through countless relationships and living situations but it gave Amelia a place to be and a place to belong for the majority of the year.
Seven states and many moves later they landed in Upstate New York where her mother was a housekeeper at Seasons Bed and Breakfast in Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks. She had just broken up with her latest boyfriend and had decided to swear off men and get her GED. A friend of a friend was a housekeeper there and got Anna a job there also. It was the first full-time job that Anna had had and the pay was enough for their basic needs. The best perk was that it also offered an apartment of their own.
The apartment was small and consisted only of a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. There was a foldout bed in the living room that her mother slept on and she let Amelia have the bedroom to herself. For Amelia, who had no experience with a space to call her own, it was heaven on earth. Amelia did her best to keep the whole house very clean. It was ironic that a housekeeper would have such messy habits but Amelia didn't mind tidying up. It was the first place she that felt like home instead of borrowed space. Amelia spent a lot of time alone in her room because her mother would be out with friends most evenings. It was very comfortable and quiet and after years of never having her own space, the solitude was refreshing.
At first her mother bought groceries and attempted to prepare meals for them but as she got busier with friends and leaving at night to party she would sometimes forget to go shopping and would get annoyed when Amelia would mention it. There never seemed to be enough money coming in according to her mother so Amelia ate what she could and did her best to keep fed. She went hungry for many nights in a row.
Raquette Lake is a tourist town, busy during the summer months but slower in the winter and the people knew each other well. Her teacher at school noticed that she ate with gusto at lunchtime. Most of the kids barely finished their food but Amelia would carefully eat every morsel of food on her plate and sometimes look longingly at the food that others brought with them. She wasn't one to complain but she started getting headaches in the afternoon and after much coaxing she told the school nurse about not having much to eat at home. The nurse called home and her mother was defiant, yelling that she got plenty to eat and that she just liked to complain. The nurse found out where she was living and secretly arranged a raise for Amelia's mother to include meals for Amelia and her mother to ensure that she was properly fed.
It was a relief for them both. Her mother had never been good at things like sitting down for meals so from that time on Amelia ate in the kitchen at the B&B for every meal. Her mother would join her on Sundays and occasionally for dinner during the week but even then she ate like a bird and complained about the food. It was ironic because the cook at Seasons was well known for her prowess in the kitchen. Her name was Carolynne Devine and she took a shine to Amelia right away and made it her business to ensure that she had three square meals for the first time in her life. Carolynne was known all over the Northeast for her delicious food and Amelia couldn't help but love it, too. She ate everything she made for her without complaint. She was a lovely woman with great skill and was so kind and loved to talk so much that Amelia had to say very little. Amelia had never been apt to speak much as a child and had grown quieter still the older she grew, especially around her mother. She loved to listen to Carolynne's stories and they both benefited from the other's company. She had her favorite saying painted in large scripted letters across the main wall of her kitchen. It read:
Well-fed hearts and stomachs = JOY
Words to live by.
The winters could be harsh at times but it was nothing a cozy fire in the kitchen couldn't fix and that first winter she spent a great deal of time at a little table in the kitchen with Carolynne. Amelia was shy at first but gradually started telling Carolynne about her day at school and the books she was reading. Amelia loved to read. She didn't have many friends at school, preferring to spend her lunchtime in the library. There was one boy she sat with sometimes but they rarely talked. Over the years she had forgotten even the boy's first name.
Part of the problem was that she didn't really like what other 14-year-old girls were interested in and discussing it with other girls got her strange looks and whispers. They teased her for not wanting to talk about boys. The way Anna talked about her father and her boy craziness in high school made Amelia want to stay away from boys even more. She had seen Anna in enough screwed up situations with men. It wasn't that she didn't find boys attractive but she had no desire to date one. She had enough to worry about thinking that they could be leaving town anyday.
She loved science, nature and literature and read her way through everything she could put her hands on. Her mother frequently asked her about her friends and if there were any boys she liked. She also made fun of her for reading so much but Amelia tried her best to ignore it. Her mother's behavior was growing more erratic and Amelia didn't like the way she spoke sometimes. She made offcolor remarks about boys and it embarrassed her to the point of tears when Anna would call out to them on the street when they were together shopping. At 14, she felt older and more mature than her mother and it was exhausting. She hoped that they would stay in Raquette Lake and she was afraid every day that Anna would come in and tell her that she was ready to move on.
When summer came Amelia was enlisted to help with all of the cooking and baking. Carolynne gave her an apron and set her to as many tasks as she could find for her. She taught her how to make the perfect pie crust, knead and separate the perfect bread and rolls and many delicious dishes. It was the first time she had any kind of cooking instruction and she took to it like a duck to water. She learned to make so many things that she decided to cook a meal at home. She was disappointed when her mother didn't like it and complained that the ingredients cost so much to buy even though Amelia had used her own money to pay for it.
She wasn't old enough to work at the B&B officially but with her mother's permission, Carolynne started a small fund for her and added to it generously throughout the summer out of her own pay. At the end of the summer, Carolynne took Amelia on a trip to Utica to buy new school clothes and shoes. She also got her first real haircut. A simple layered bob that complimented her thin face. It was the first time that she looked in the mirror and liked what was there. Carolynne told her she was beautiful and for the first time she realized that it might be true. She looked like her mother who she knew was beautiful. She was still very skinny with knobby knees and elbows and stood awkwardly in front of the mirror but the new clothes fit her well and accentuated all of her best features. Carolynne couldn't stop talking about her new look, so impressed with the change that she made her sit for some pictures with her at the photo booth in the mall in Utica. Amelia still kept those pictures in her journal to remind her of those days.
Amelia loved her new things. They were the first new clothes that she could remember. They actually fit her frame. She was growing fast and up until that year she had been able to wear her mother's hand-me-downs. But her clothes were worn and all of her pants were too short. She was able to cut some of them off for the summer but she was grateful to have these new things. Her mother liked the new clothes but complained there was not enough money for her to buy anything new. She asked Amelia if she had any money left. Amelia gave her all that she had left but there were never any new clothes.
Life was looking better and it was only the start of the changes that were about to come. Remembering those day during the drive in the present day that took her steadily north toward home her mind turned to Meredith and the island. The nurse at school and Carolynne were two of the first kind strangers that had entered her life but they were definitely not the last. Remembering those times now gave her a homesickness that she hadn't felt in a very long time and she sighed aloud, impatient to return to her favorite place on earth and the people she loved so much.
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