Hello Again

Chapter 9

Anne rested on her side, thinking about the way the wallpaper was peeling in the corner of the room. She had already tried to imagine how the story she'd picked out of the library might have gone if she'd ever had the chance to read it, but that didn't happen. Instead it was another minute away from her loved ones and locked up by people who were supposedly helping her. Let me out of here! That would be the best medicine.

The door squeaked open, and Anne opened her mouth to plead with the Doctor once again to send a message to Aunt Josephine herself, although she wasn't sure why Marilla hadn't come yet. She should be here any day now to weep at her bed side and bemoan the the fate that has befallen her precious daughter. At least Anne could imagine all of it in her mind.

But the doctor didn't come through the door. Instead it was Jonsey's sheepish face, hat held between his hands. "Anne."

"Get out!" She started yelling, hoping to get the attention of someone. "Get out!"

Jonesey rushed up to her shushing. "Just hear me out and then I'll go. I've put you through too much, and I know I need to go my own way. I'll do what ever I can for you, but just listen to me for a minute."

She looked up at him with an expectant look. "You don't have much time before I start screaming again."

Jonesey pulled a chair up to the bed and sighed. "I'm sorry Anne. You can't imagine how sorry, or what life's been like for me. I just mean that I've been through a lot and it's not an excuse for making bad choices, but I did. Then with you I saw what could have happened if I might have made the right choices and I just ... I wanted it so badly. I wanted to take away all the mistakes I'd ever done and start over fresh. I'm so sorry Anne. Please forgive me."

This man didn't deserve forgiveness. He'd committed a heinous act against the whole town and it was the epitome of evil that inhabited the hidden places of the human heart.

But a tear fell from his eye and maybe it was the quiet of the moment, the stillness of the sun through the curtains, but Anne's imagination caught her in a peculiar way. She imagined she could see into the hidden places of Mr. Dunlop's heart and yes there was the hard and evil portion that thought the world was his to conquer and take from irregardless of others. But there, behind those horrible expectations was something pure. The child like innocence that Jonesey was required to bury all those years ago when the world turned him away, when he couldn't find the shelter that would have told him he was wanted and loved, that the world was a good place if you let it help you.

In that place Anne saw a mirror and she asked herself what she would have become without the Cuthberts?

Reaching out a hand she placed it on Jonsey's shoulder and whispered. "I forgive you Mr. Dunlop."

The quiet weeping of the man filled the room.