Crossroads by Wendy Saunders

against a huge Realtor advertisement. She stared up at the grey sky and released a deep sigh. What was she doing? Everything felt as if it were going wrong and she was being swept along, caught in a riptide unable to catch her breath. Unable to find anything to anchor herself to, or she thought grimly no one to anchor herself to and with that realization came the brutal truth, she needed Theo. Nothing made sense without him, she didn’t know when or how it had happened but he had become as necessary to her as the air she breathed, he was her rock, her anchor. Through everything that had happened since she had returned to Mercy he had been the one holding her together even when she hadn’t realized it.
    God she missed him; she closed her eyes, squeezing them shut against the sudden onslaught of images. She missed the way he looked at her, like he couldn’t quite believe she was real and the way he smiled at her, content to just sit and listen to her waffle on about history as if it was the most riveting subject in the world. The way he touched her, how it felt to have his fingers trailing down her skin burning even as it soothed, the way he tasted and the feel and shape of his lips against hers. The way he would fold her into his arms and hold on and when he made love to her it felt as if the whole world had faded away and they were the only two people in existence.
    She let out the breath she was holding and leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees and cradling her head in her hands. She could feel the tide of grief and loss rising up in her throat, howling to get loose. She hadn’t even told him she loved him. He had been pulled to God knows where thinking that she didn’t care, that she was angry with him. She’d been selfish and ungrateful, she’d yelled at him and told him she couldn’t trust him. He must hate her, she thought miserably.
    ‘He’s not angry with you, you know’ a soft, comforting and painfully familiar voice spoke quietly next to her.
    Olivia jolted in shock and sat up, her hands dropping limply to her thighs and her mouth falling open in stunned silence.
    ‘Aunt Evie?’ she whispered after what felt like an eternity.
    ‘Hello Olivia,’ Evelyn West smiled crossing her legs and resting her arm along the back of the bench comfortably.
    ‘Why are you here? How are you here? What…?’
    ‘I’m just visiting from,’ she pointed upwards to the cloudy sky, ‘up there.’
    Olivia was lost for words, she sat numbly staring at the aunt she had spent most of her late childhood and teens thinking didn’t want her.
    ‘You looked like you needed a little support’ she smiled sympathetically, ‘feeling a little lost right now aren’t you?’
    Olivia nodded, her eyes filling with tears and when Evie held out her arms Olivia hesitated for a second and then leaned forward into the familiar embrace. She was immediately transported back to her childhood, to the aunt she had loved, with whom she had shared a tight bond and an affinity for the woods.
    ‘There there sweetheart,’ Evie rocked her gently against the hot flood of tears, ‘it’s really not as bad as you think. You’re tired and your heart is sore but soon things will start looking up.’
    Olivia couldn’t speak, it was as if a dam had broken and everything came flooding out, even things she didn’t know she had stored deep inside her. She cried for them all, her Nana, her mother, her father, her destiny, Theo; it was like a purge that came crashing out in a flood of tears and anguish.
    Evie held her shaking and exhausted body until her harsh sobs finally slowed. She soothed her hair and crooned to her softly until her tears were no more than a few hiccups and a shaky intake of breath.
    ‘I guess I needed that,’ Olivia croaked.
    ‘I’d say,’ Evie tucked her hair behind her ear, just as she had when Olivia was a child. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so in need of a crying jag as you. You hold too much in Olivia, there’s