Ordinary Man

 

Adjustment, adaptation, conformation, those we’re all words that described the several months that had passed since Will’s homecoming. Being only words, they only scraped the surface and left the man himself to deal with the emotions and changes he‘d not expected.

The same words of changes stood for his family, people who had lived their lives while Will had been put on hold.

Elizabeth had undertaken the education of Liam on their arrival from England - the island they’d made their home didn’t have a school - and after a few months, the word had spread there was a woman teaching her son the things one could only learn at a proper school, and Elizabeth was approached by some of the town’s people, asking her to teach their children as well. Soon she was occupied with her very own single room school, sharing whatever she could of writing, grammar and cipher, receiving shipments of more books and equipment as her students’ knowledge, slowly, but surely, grew.

Making a sufficient income from what she charged of her services, adding to what her father had left behind, and managing her household and raising her son, Elizabeth lead an unordinary, independent life. Before she’d made it perfectly clear that she was not widowed, many offers of marriage had been made by the plantation owners on the island, some of them widowers themselves, some never married before family obligations had demanded their attendance at the occurrence of death. Some of the offers had called for un-lady-like actions and carefully chosen words, but in the end, Elizabeth and Liam had been left in peace.

On this particular day one of the plantation owners had invited Elizabeth over to discuss the future of his daughter, and whether she should be sent to England to complete academic studies in the fields in which she had proven to be unparalleled. Excited about this opportunity the young woman had ahead of her, Elizabeth had kissed Will good bye and asked him to see that Liam behaved while she was gone.

Not that there was any reason to worry about that, since the boy was laying on his stomach on the kitchen floor, feet dangling in the air as he concentrated on the book under his nose, only sighing in boredom every other time he turned the page.

His father sat at the dinner table, also with a book under his nose, but Will’s concentration was even more distracted, consumed, even, by a small black box.

Will poked a finger on the path of the compass needle to stop it from lolling around aimlessly, then released it again, and returned his eyes to the writing, only to find himself staring at the compass again.

He remembered the day he’d come ashore from the other side, his gratitude and the love he had been surrounded with. He remembered how the first waves of nausea had washed over him only a few minutes after he felt the ground firm under his feet, and he could remember the world rendering dark around the edges just before he’d collapsed and heaved up his stomach’s contents when the land sickness had begun to take its toll.

He stopped the needle again, just to see it halt.

Will remembered the first time he went to the market with his family, how his wife had bought a basket full of fruits, how Will had reached for the basket and accidentally hit Elizabeth’s hand while she had been taking it too.

The needle swung again.

Suppressing a groan, Will remembered the look on Elizabeth’s face, when she’d quickly apologized and drew her hand away, blushing at the awkwardness of the situation.

He closed his eyes around the memory of the evening when he’d helped Elizabeth with the dishes for the first time. How Elizabeth had given Will coy, seductive looks between their light prattle, wiped her wet hands, wrapped her fingers around Will’s neck and told Liam to run on an errand… How he had felt lost - like a child - shy of the woman he called his wife.

Somehow his family had cleared enough room for a father and a husband to fit their lives during the past months, but Will knew it was a far removed from what any of them had expected.

Will also knew the compass wasn’t broken like he’d first suspected.

Poke.

It had pointed to what Liam had wanted when Will had given the box for him to see - the needle had arrowed straight toward the door, before he’d gone back to his book, glancing longing looks out the window, obviously wanting to join his friends outside.

Will didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse that he could now remember everything, like a shutter had been opened and memories flooded through the opening, too small for it all. As it wouldn’t have been enough that while the rest of the world turned with the ebb and tide, changed, forgot, Will remembered and had not aged a day.

Another round of the steady, unwavering circle of the needle, and Will clapped the lid shut, told Liam it was enough studying for the evening and gave him the permission to go out, bit his tongue for sounding like a captain of a ship giving out an order, and saw the eager boy out before grabbing his own coat and leaving the house.

A few steps out the door Will realized, with a hollow, sinking feeling, that he finally, fully, understood his own father for the first time in his life