She Needs Time

A few hours after the kiss that changed everything and at her brother, Tommy’s, coaxing, Maryanne called Keith and told him the truth about how she felt about Robert.

She was sitting at the table crying after Keith ended the call when the phone started ringing.

Maryanne and Robert watched as Tommy picked up the phone to say hello, and could see his face turn white as he listened to the other person speak. He turned to them as he dropped the phone on the floor and said, "Mom and Dad are missing."

They both said, "What?" as Maryanne jumped from the table and grabbed the phone from the floor. She spoke on the phone for a few minutes as Robert and Tommy listened, trying to digest what they were hearing. Maryanne got off the phone and told them that her parents had gone out in the boat last night to do some fishing but hadn't returned yet. People were searching for them, but they or the boat hadn't been found yet.

Maryanne and Tommy panicked, not knowing what to do, so Robert took the phone and called his mother. He told her what had happened, and his mother told him to stay where they were, as she and Betty were coming to pick them up and drive to the cabin.

They sat at the table for a few minutes discussing how they thought everything would be fine. Maybe they were just at someone else’s cabin sleeping and didn’t know people were searching for them.

Robert suggested they all get ready and go outside to wait for his mom and Betty. His mom left as soon as they hung up the phone, so Betty's car pulled in the driveway about fifteen minutes later.

They all piled into the car and were pulling away from the house when Robert's mom told them that the boat had been found, but nobody was in it, so several people were searching the shores of the lake for Tommy and Maryanne's parents.

The drive to the lake took a little over an hour, and by the time they arrived, everybody in the car had become consumed with fear. Betty had a cell phone in the car, so they tried several times to get in touch with someone at the lake, to no avail. When they pulled onto the dirt road that led to the lake, the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles appeared in the distance, increasing the tension in the car.

As they arrived at the lake, they could see firefighters and paramedics lifting someone onto a stretcher and carrying it to a waiting ambulance. Maryanne's neighbour, Bill, walked beside it with his hand on the person they were helping.

When the car stopped, Maryanne could see it was her father and jumped from the rear door and bolted to the ambulance, screaming "Dad" as she ran. Bill stopped her as she got close and said, "Wait, Maryanne, he's ok but hurt bad, let them do their work." She tried to get closer to him, but Bill held her back as she kept calling for her father. She could see that he had a large gash on his head, and the paramedics were working on closing it as they were loading him in the ambulance. Bill said, "He's unconscious, and they need to get him to a hospital as soon as possible."

Maryanne, shaking uncontrollably, started to fall as Robert got to her and caught her in his arms. Tommy got there at the same time as Robert and was screaming at Bill, "Where's mom? Where's Mom?" Bill told him that his mom was still missing, but at least fifty people were looking for her.

The scene was swarming with all kinds of people, from firefighters to paramedics and police and civilians, trying to help find her. Robert's mother and Betty took Tommy and Maryanne away from the chaos to sit and talk with a police officer trained in dealing with these situations while Robert joined in the search.

The lake wasn’t large, maybe five miles around the shore, with a small bridge at both ends. The searchers were organized into two groups and given red signal flags and whistles. They were to walk slowly along the bank, one group in each direction, and raise the flag and blow the whistle if they saw anything. They were told not to stop when they met each other but keep going all the way around so that the whole area would be covered twice.

The searchers took about four hours to walk around the lake, stopping a couple of times as people had found old clothes and an old abandoned rowboat.

Robert getting tired and hot from the sun as he was getting close to finishing the circle, could see Maryanne standing on the shore with his mother and Betty a few hundred feet ahead.

He stopped to splash some water on his head, and as he was kneeling beside the lake, he could see what looked like a shirt tangled underneath a bush overhanging the water. He tried getting closer but couldn't reach it, so he found a stick close by to retrieve the shirt. He lay on the ground and pushed at it with the stick, hoping to free it, but it wouldn't move. He decided to step into the lake and try to get at it from a better angle.

Getting as close as he could to the bush, he reached underneath and pushed hard. Feeling it come free, Robert bent down to reach it just as Maryanne's mother rolled over in the water, her unseeing eyes looking directly into his.

He scrambled back out of the water, holding the flag high and blowing the whistle as hard as possible.

Two policemen standing close to Maryanne could see Robert a few hundred feet away blowing the whistle and waving the flag in a panic and took off at a sprint towards him. Maryanne seeing this happen, followed them, running as fast as she could. The police got their first, with Maryanne coming close behind them, and told Robert to stop her as they stepped into the water with the body. When Maryanne got to them, the police were on their radio with paramedics running in their direction.

Maryanne recognized the clothes and was screaming, trying to get in the water, as Robert held her back while trying to block her view. She started hitting him and screaming, "let me go, let me go," but he wouldn't let her see her mother like this," Please, Maryanne, no, don't look, please."

He pulled her tight to his chest as she screamed and fought against him until she stopped fighting and collapsed in his arms, sobbing. Robert held her like this for several minutes before pulling back and looking at her face. She was sobbing almost to the point of convulsions, looking destroyed as she stared into his eyes. He hugged her tight again, and as she cried in his arms, his heart broke for her.

Maryanne's father recovered from the injuries he suffered that day rather quickly but never recovered from losing his wife. He blamed himself for what happened because he was the one that wanted to go out on the lake after dark. His wife had protested that they would have trouble navigating around the many rocks that stuck out of the water, but he had assured her that he knew the lake well, as he'd been fishing here since his teens, plus they had lights on the boat.

They fished close to the cabin for a while, with no success, before deciding to try a different area. Maryanne's father started the boat and turned to head across the lake with his wife reeling in when her line got snagged on something and pulled the pole out of her hands. He had his hand on the outboard motor's throttle when this happened and reached out in reflex to grab the pole before it sank into the lake. When he reached for the pole, the boat turned sharply to his left and smashed into a rock sticking out of the water. As the boat hit the rock, it flipped on its side, and they were both thrown into the lake. His head smashing against the rock was the last thing he could remember before waking up in the hospital.

Maryanne had to be taken to the hospital that day in an ambulance, as she wouldn't speak and just kept staring ahead. The paramedics said she was suffering from shock and needed help. Tommy's neighbours put him in their car, as Robert went with his mother and Betty and followed the ambulance to the hospital.

When they arrived at the hospital, the doctors informed them that Maryanne and Tommy's father would be okay and took the kids to be with him in intensive care.

After the doctor took them away, Robert paced in the waiting area, worried about Maryanne and Tommy, not being able to get the memory of their mother's face to leave his mind.

They waited for what felt like hours before a doctor came to speak with them. She told them that Maryanne’s father was stable and sleeping but would have to stay for a few days. Roberts’s mom asked, “What about the kids?” The doctor told them that the kids were given sedatives, as they were both in shock, and would be kept overnight for observation. She told them that they should go home and get some rest.

When they were pulling into their driveway twenty minutes later, Robert, overwrought with the events of the last twenty-four hours, didn't see Keith and Wanda standing beside the house until his mother said, "Your friends are here." He looked up to see them looking towards the car and thought, I can't deal with this now. They got out of the car, and as Robert's mother and Betty greeted Wanda and Keith, he could see that they had been crying.

He didn't know what to say to them as there were no words he could use that would change the effect of his betrayal on them. He felt Keith's pain as he asked about Maryanne and Tommy's well-being as Wanda stood beside him, trembling and crying. Robert told them what the doctor had said and that they were going back in the morning to check on them. Robert asked if they wanted to go with him in the morning, but Keith said he didn't think that would be a good idea.

He stared into Robert's eyes for a few seconds before saying, "You had better not hurt her," and turned and walked away. He watched Keith walk away from him, knowing he had just lost a friend, before turning to Wanda and, seeing her tears said, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you." She thought for a second before saying, "I know that, but you did hurt me, Robert; you hurt me more than you know."

As he searched to find the words to express how he felt about her and how sorry he was, she came closer and hugged him tight while she cried before pulling away and saying, "Goodbye, Robert," and walked away.

********

The next morning after breakfast, he went back to the hospital with his mom and Betty. When they arrived, Maryanne's father was awake, and she and Tommy were in the room with him. Entering the room, they could see Maryanne standing beside the bed, holding her father's hand and crying as Tommy sat in a chair beside them with his hand on her back.

Tommy seeing them come in first, walked to Robert and hugged him tightly, and Robert asked if he was ok. As he hugged Tommy, he could see Maryanne blankly looking at him. Robert couldn't understand, but it seemed she had fear in her eyes as she stared at him without moving. Tommy told Robert that he was ok but concerned for his sister. He said, "She will break down and cry uncontrollably for a while and then just sit and stare at nothing for a long time."

Maryanne wouldn't accept that her mother had died and kept pushing the memory of seeing her body as Robert held her back, out of her mind.

Seeing Robert walk into the room bought the memory close to the surface again, and she couldn't handle it. When he tried to hug her, she pulled away crying and said, "I can't, I'm sorry, I just can't do this," and hurried to the washroom door.

They stayed for another twenty minutes before leaving the hospital, and Maryanne never came out of the washroom the whole time. Her father told them that she was having a tough time, as she and her mother had an extraordinary bond. They were much more than mother and daughter; they were best friends.

Robert didn't see or talk with Maryanne again until the funeral several days later.

She felt on the verge of breaking down again, as she did several times a day when Robert came to her and asked if he could help her somehow. They walked to a small stand of trees a short distance from where her mother would be laid to rest and sat on a bench in the shade. He watched her as she looked towards the gravesite with tears in her eyes, not knowing what to say.

They sat like this for a long time, not speaking, with Robert holding her hand in his before she looked at the ground and said, "I can't do this, Robert." He thought she meant the funeral and squeezed her hand a little as he said, "It'll be over soon; I'll stay beside you if you wish."

Robert felt something break inside him when she looked up from the ground and said, "I don't mean the funeral, Robert, I'm talking about us; I can't do this now; I have nothing inside to give. I need some time." After speaking, she stood and looked at him for a few seconds before saying, “I’m sorry, Robert," and walked back to the gravesite.

Robert sat on the bench after she left, thinking that everything in his world had changed at once. He had lost his friends and the girl he knew was the love of his life, so suddenly that he felt like his life was over.

Robert tried calling Maryanne a few times in the weeks that followed, but she never came to the phone. He spoke with Tommy from time to time, who told him that she was still dealing with the loss and, as school had started, spent all her time concentrating on finishing high school with honours.

He only saw her one more time before high school finished. Robert got a part-time job at a local pizza store, and while arriving for his shift one evening, he recognized their car as he walked through the parking lot. Robert stopped and looked towards it and could see Maryanne sitting in the car with her father, looking at him. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and then she turned and said something to her father before he looked at Robert and pulled out of the parking area and drove away.

******

He started classes at trade school that summer, studying machinery building. He stayed there for the next year and a half, taking every class he could, finishing with the best marks in the class. Betty's friend gave him a part-time job, after school each day, in a machine shop, on the dry dock at the harbour, and he loved it. In April of that year, he turned eighteen, and his workmates took him out for dinner at a local pub; he looked older than he was, so he wasn't asked for proof of age.

At the pub that night, a couple of the guys who were a little older told him they were offered full-time jobs that paid good money by a friend they knew in Toronto, and Robert joked and asked them to take him along. They told him that if they got a chance, they would try to get him a job there, as he was the best guy on their crew at the dock.

Robert didn't think about the job in Toronto for the next several months until he received a call from one of the guys two months before his nineteenth birthday, offering him a job in Toronto at twice his salary. He talked to his mom about the job offer that night at dinner, and she said he should take it as it was a great opportunity.

Two weeks later, Robert flew to Toronto and started his new life on the "Mainland."

It would be almost nine years before he saw her again.