Hope by Ryn Shell

Author:Ryn Shell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Brush with Nature Studio

She sat on the edge of a cot, a small child across her lap, his body heaving. His breathing rasps through his windpipe. While her hands perform mechanical functions, the left cradling, and the right hand stroking, Rose’s eyes stared without seeing. Her mind was back in time thinking about the fight she had the last time she saw Bill. Even now, she could not make sense of it. It was over some trivial thing; where to hang the towel rail of all things. They were in love—so why had he up and left her, and disappeared without trace?

Her own deep breathing is heard over Ben’s as he fell asleep on her lap and she visualised herself in a paddock covered in Western Australian wildflowers with a blue sky overhead. Breathe in, breaths out—then relax. She willed herself to be strong in the face of yet another person she loved having deserted their family.

She stood with her sister’s son clutched in her arms, recalling the time, seventeen years before, when she’d comforted her two-year-old son, Carl, while her right arm clutched baby Helen to her breast. If she managed then, she’d cope now.

She cast her mind beyond the walls and visualised herself bent over the typewriter pouring out the thorns of her life into print. She’d write her feelings down. Turning those trials into print. Turning her ongoing search for her missing husband, and now her sister, into the blog that was the meagre income they survived on.

Freelance writing, for Rose, meant working fifteen hours a day. At least she could pack up the tools of her trade if she found a comment on her missing person's blog that appeared worth following up. Donations helped. It wasn’t always the relatives of missing teenagers who felt like paying her when she found and returned their hormone hostage affected teenager home. She also drew an income from well-wishers who had followed Rose’s story. These donors helped to minimise the quantity of paid advertising Rose added into the blog posts.

She allowed for one paid advertisement between two non-sponsored blog posts. That was the level of commercialism that sat comfortably with Rose’s ethics and her own teenager’s demands for those extras she tried to give them. Or, tried too hard to provide them with, as overcompensating for the family life they had missed out on, the love-filled family life with Bill that she’s missed, had her always seeking to give more than necessary to those she loved.

Rose lowered her sister’s grieving child to the cot. Stooping, she rubbed Ben’s heaving back as she’d once rubbed Carl’s.

The last time she’d been the support for a grieving toddler she had also been the sole caregiver for her and Bill’s newborn. This time has to be easier. Hot acid reflux hit her throat as she straightened. She swallowed and focused on her breathing.

Breathing exercises she’s learned in preparation for Helena’s birth had gotten her through the grief of Bill leaving them, and it would get her through this—that and her work.

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