Out on a Limb (25 page)

“They look cruel,” Rosie says.

“They probably violate some international convention.” “Want to swing again?”

“Yeah,” says Bridget.“ It distracts me from my suffering.”

Bridget stays for the afternoon. She and Rosie swing and swing, and when they get too hot they swish themselves around in the stream.Drying off in the meadow,they describe what they see in the cumulus clouds. Bridget sees ayak; Rosie sees the devil in a tutu. At dinnertime Bridget calls home on her cell phone and gets permission to stay.They cook dinner by campfire and they blister their marshmallows over the embers. Bridget is escorted home in darkness, guided by headlamps.

I’ve often reflected on that summer day. Rosie’s day. It’s as vivid to me as if it were my own memory, although memory is a funny thing at my age. Things I’m told I did yesterday leave not a trace in my mind.

Clearer than my own memories are my dreams. Yesterday’s visit from Tavish is so clear. His laugh and his hand on my arm. It’s hard to believe that none of it was real, even though the obituary on my desk proves that he’s been dead nine years.

And clearer than my own memories are Rosie’s. I’m discovering the pleasure of adopting another’s memory as one’s own. That’s what I’ve done with Rosie and Bridget’s reunion. I’ve likely supplied a detail or two of my own, but the scene that plays itself in my mind is essentially what Rosie told me. It’s not one of my armchair dreams, I’m quite sure of that. After all, I often see the two of them from the turret, with my binoculars, as they flash out on the rope swing: the sweep of Bridget’s dark hair, alternating with Rosie’s strawberry blonde.

I might get to read Rosie’s notebooks now. I am going to ask her, the next time that she comes for tea. She doesn’t come for tea quite so often anymore, but I suppose that is as it should be. Sunny young girls are not meant to spend too much time shut indoors with gloomy old ladies. And I’m glad that Rosie and Bridget have managed to repair their friendship. Some things are more valuable, it seems, for having been damaged and repaired. I’m glad when my binocular lens finds the girls laughing. I am. I’m glad to watch them having fun. I welcome the thought of them swinging together over our meadow, for the rest of my days, and beyond.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to those who took a chance on this book. I’m honoured by your faith. In particular, thank you to my agent Carolyn Swayze, for letting me catch her much sought attention, and to my editor Linda Pruessen for her easygoing but great advice. And thanks also to my husband, for support expressed in so many ways.