This Was Meant To Be

“Anna?”

He pressed the intercom button and called his assistant.

She materialized as if by magic.

Everybody dressed casually at his company – except for Anna, who was pushing fifty and always dressed as if she could go to church. And, possibly, take you to church.

“Yes, Mr. Bloom?”

She was also the only person who called him Mr. Bloom. It was a very strange feeling, especially since he hadn’t grown up getting used to anybody being called that.

Being an orphan could do very odd things to a person. It could creep up and grab you at the oddest of moments, even when you were all grown up and supposedly past all the trauma.

Anyway, it wasn’t even like he was the stereotypical orphan – if there was such a thing. He was one of the lucky ones.

After his parents had died in a tragic car crash, he hadn’t known what might happen to him. He’d just been ten years old.

But Martha Wells had come home to break the news, along with people in crisp suits who intimidated him. She had explained to him, simply, what had happened, and he remembered how she had struggled to fight back tears even now.

Then she had asked him a simple question: ‘Do you want to come home with me, Harrison?’

And that had been that. She had taken him home, and that had been home.

Well, maybe not that simple. He knew, now, how much they’d had to do to make sure they could keep him, since his parents hadn’t appointed legal guardians. Apparently, they’d assumed that they would live forever, much as he had.

But then, what child ever expects his parents to die, except in nightmares? He had imagined his own parents to be invincible. They had been everything to him. He had never cared about not having grandparents because he’d had them. He hadn’t needed more.

The worst happens when you don’t expect it. At ten, the worst had been if he couldn’t go to the arcade and shoot a few aliens. Until the worst really happened, the day his parents died.

He could still remember the numbness that had crept over him when he was told that his parents had been in an accident.

They’d tried to break it to him gently, of course, but it hadn’t worked. It just didn’t occur to him that they might not come back.

The worst he could imagine happening to his parents… Well, maybe a broken bone or two.

Death had been something he had never even considered.

He hadn’t understood, not really. Not the kind of understanding that makes you feel like your heart is being frozen and you might never feel again.

The Wellses had done more for him than even they realized. He knew that.

They had helped him feel again, when he’d thought he would never feel anything again.

They had given him everything he needed, without ever trying to make him forget his own parents. They’d never insisted that he take their name. He had always been Harrison Bloom, and the Blooms had always been honored in that family, but he had also been one of the Wells.

And of course, there was Leigh.

If anybody could crack through a frozen shell of hurt and sorrow, it was Leigh. She was sweetness and light, with an irreverent sense of humor and a spine so strong she would never break, even when she was just eight years old.

Her parents had told her to give him some time, and she’d managed to give him all of two days before she slipped into the room that was now his and sat down next to him. It was so easy to go back and remember it, as if it were yesterday. The grief had dulled over time, but everything he had felt that evening was still fresh.

He could remember the scent of orange blossoms that wafted in through the window. He remembered the slight murmur of conversation during dinner, which he hadn’t been interested in, at all.

He remembered the kindness in Martha’s eyes when she had nodded, squeezed his shoulder gently and told him that they were there for him, whenever he was ready.

He remembered every single detail of that evening, because he had felt as if he couldn’t breathe, because he was being suffocated by grief… And then, Leigh had happened, and he had breathed again.

Sliding back to that evening was as easy and as tempting as slipping into a hot tub after a long, difficult day.

“Hey, Harrison,” she said.

Harrison hadn’t said a word.

“I saved you dessert. You didn’t eat dinner, so I saved my dessert, too. You can have dessert for dinner.”

Her smile was so infectious that he couldn’t stop a little bit of his heart from opening.

“Mom made apple pie because you always eat triple portion of it when she makes it. It’s really nice. I got ice cream, too. It’s chocolate. I think chocolate ice cream on apple pie su*ks, but you like it.”

She pushed the plate in front of him, placing it on his lap as he sat on his bed.

He’d been sitting on that bed, staring at the wall where his posters had been put up.

“You could have Joe, if you like. Joe makes me feel not alone when I’m afraid.”

Harrison looked at Leigh.

“But you never let me even touch Joe.”

Leigh shrugged.

“I think I’d be being very selfish if I didn’t lend you Joe. Joe likes you, he told me so.”

Joe, the six-year-old teddy bear, was Leigh’s most favorite person in the whole world, and she would’ve scratched anybody who tried to tell her that he wasn’t a person.

“I’d like Joe,” said Harrison, finally.

“If you’re not sleepy, we could read. I got a couple of new books. They seem pretty nice, and I was saving them up to read with you, anyway.”

Harrison didn’t smile, but he could feel that weight of sadness lifting, just a little bit. It wasn’t weighing him down so much anymore.

“I guess we could do that,” said Harrison, finally.

He hadn’t wanted to talk to anybody – not the grief counselors, not the police, not the Wellses, even if they had been so good to him.

But Leigh was different. Leigh knew, even when she was eight years old, how to lift him up a little, share his load without asking that he share it.

“I don’t know some of the words, though. You’ll have to help,” said Leigh, practical-minded as ever.

Harrison nodded slowly.

She turned to go out of the room, and paused, turning back to him. She looked like a little doll in her starry skies pajamas, her hair tumbling all over the place in wild curls, her eyes huge and mysterious.

“I know they’re angels now, Harrison. I know they’ll look over you and take care of you. I know they will. They’ll be so sad that they had to go, but they knew you’d have us. They’ll be there with you, always. You shouldn’t forget that.”

And she slipped out and into her room, to get the books she’d promised. But she had already begun to do what only she could do. She had already begun to help him heal, and he knew, in that moment, that one way or the other, Leigh would always be important to him.

Always.