Autumn Years (a continuation)

This story was submitted to a writers cramp competiton and is the second part of what can be read as a complete story. The first part is called "A Ruby Wedding Anniversary" and is in my portfolio.
Thank you for reading!

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“I did it once. I’ll never do it again.” And then there seemed to be nothing left to say to this man with whom she had once had an affair.

A slight gust of wind lifted an oak leaf from its enfeebled mooring and settled it between them on the park bench. Linda picked it up. It was veined and leathery like a bat’s wing she thought. Why a bat’s wing? Derek wanted to say that it wouldn’t be like the last time. She was a single woman now, wasn’t she? But instead he said nothing and moved ever so slightly away. Linda held the leaf by its stem and examined it as intently as a botanist. The colours of the leaf shifted from dull brown through to gold, amber and red. Autumn colours. She’d read somewhere that the colours were simply a result of the tree cutting off water from the leaf so that it withers on the branch. They were the colours of its decay. Science spoils everything, she thought; knowledge takes the magic away.

What if that cruise ticket for the Norwegian fjords had been a prize in a competition? She could have kept that quiet. She could have sent it back or just simply ripped it up. But it wasn’t a prize; it was a gift from her children, a gift to their parents to celebrate their forty years together. There was no hiding that. They would turn up at the house, their faces beaming, proud of their gift, and chattering excitedly about the forthcoming cruise. No,  there was no hiding that, and so she had to tell him.

She remembered that morning when she told her husband of her affair all those years ago; how she had wrenched the words out of herself like a sinner in the confession box; how he had suddenly appeared frail, vulnerable and beat, like a priest that had lost his faith. He said he forgave her, that it was all in the past, but things between them were never quite the same. Whenever they had good times together, and there were good times, they never laughed quite as freely as before. When their eyes met and they stared into each others, she could see the unasked questions in his. He still told her he loved her like he had every day of their marriage, but to her it now felt more out of duty, a reassurance, and she felt those knotted ropes of guilt within her twist as she responded with her “I love you, too”.

He died three years later, taken by prostrate cancer. She was with him by his hospital bed when he died. She sat there and watched in silence as the colour drained away from his face. His lips pale blue and drawn. The colours of death again. She hardly recognized him.

The children don’t seem to come around as often as they used to do. They have their own lives to live now, she supposed. They had never understood the way she felt anyway. Affairs seem to be commonplace to the young, almost a part of life that is easily patched, covered up and forgotten. They shrugged off guilt as easily as shrugging off a coat on a warm, spring day. How she envied them.

“Will I see you again?” said Derek.

His voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

“I mean, just as friends ... if you like?”

Linda got up from the bench, stood before him and held his cold hands in hers that were colder. He leaned forward to kiss her. “Good bye, Derek,” said Linda as she withdrew.

Alone, Linda followed the walkway that gently curved ahead, bounded by the lake on one side and the park on the other.  In the distance a mother was calling to her son who was kicking up the leaves before him, left in a pile by a gardener, waiting to be bagged. It was odd, thought Linda, that she had been more faithful to the ghost of her husband than when he was alive.
.
She opened the door to her empty house. The absence of her husband was palpable, but she felt calm. A score had been settled. The guilt had been redressed somehow, and she felt those ropes start to unravel.