To be a Wildflower

Chapter 19

Chelseaville March 1976

Hope imagined that after the blissful confrontation she had had with Harrison, and the fuzziness of summer hurtling around her, unforeseen circumstances would be only plain cruelty. It was not just the romance; it was the way she knew she could not leave as if the idea of it would be similar and absurd as asking her to live without a vital organ in her body. This terrified Hope as she knew to fend for herself being reared in a home where she wasn't the spotlight regarding her sentiments and sanity. So, when she pulled up to the driveway in her father's shiny Plymouth roadie after her shift at the Jug and Lion she was appalled to see her mother at the doorstep, with a glum look on her as if she was waiting for an impending apocalypse.

Hope got out of her car and followed her silent mother indoors all the way into their Victorian furnitured living room, where her father was seated on his leather armchair, regally, waiting for her. She knew something was not right and the look of excitement on her parents' faces made her blood curdle- she had never agreed with her father's idea of excitement.

Hope didn't have to wait for long as her father laid out in minutes how she had received the position as a press secretary for one of his business mogul friends back in Portland, and they could finally go back to the life they had. Hope heard her mother cheer around her, and words of excitement rumble out of her father, but all she saw was the life of hers at Chelseaville flash by right in front of her. Hope knew she could not rebel, her voice had never sounded loud enough at home, no matter how loud she screamed. But she refused to accept her father's request. She could not leave. There was too much tied to her to just let go.

"No. No I won't go." She interrupted the cheer of her parents in a sharp voice.

Mr. Mayfield and his wife turned to their daughter faces frozen in mid shock.

"I've grown quite fond of the town and we can't leave Grandpa Joe again."

"Hope, you're going," said her father without breaking a sweat, "and Grandpa Joe will be glad to see us off, he really needs that retirement more than the ranch."

"I'm old enough to know what's best for me, so I'm not going."

Mr. Mayfield stood up from his chair and glared at his rebellious daughter.

"You will not be welcomed home if you don't come with us." He said unwavering.

"It will be good for you to finally get out of this uncivilised town," her mother piped in, looking away. Hope switched glances from her mother to her father as they continued to remain unstirred and she knew then she was defeated a long time ago and it was futile to try again, even at all. She did not want to lose her family; it was her own weakness that clawed into her heart. Family always trumped over her very existence.

She nodded her head at her parents tightly, expressionless and rushed back out of the house in a storm, trying to hold back the tears until she made it out of the driveway. She could not drive as the sight of her father's car before her made think of angry thoughts she didn't want to.

As she stepped out into the afternoon, the sight of the town's people lifting their heads up from whatever they were doing to wave or smile at her made her heart fall. Hope's smile tightened at the thought of not seeing the regular faces she had begun to love in a year. With a sudden impulse that surged through her she ran towards the direction where the sun set and as she ran while the cold evening air whisked away her tears, she played everything she had wanted to do in Chelseaville: see Jack at the Jug and Lion every day and sing there till the people's hearts were content with joy, read her poems to Lucy Mirrors at the Diner, walk at Pebble stone river and start working at grandpa Joe's ranch next summer. But they would not matter to her father, she knew he would just bellow at her to stop living like a wood nymph. Hope always thought she would do anything else than fly off into the city and become a career woman who would lose her soul to the devil, but that too was a dream unheard of, a promise she couldn't keep to herself, because at the end of the day obligation triumphed desire in Hope Mayfield's life. Her lips trembling , she hurried her feet towards the Crawford ranch.