Be Who God Meant You To Be

"I'll get it," Meg says, quickly, when the doorbell rings.

She and her parents are sitting around the kitchen table, finishing what is, for them, a rather late breakfast. But Meg and her father had gotten back from the ball game in Toronto quite late last night, and some days you just have to sleep in a little.

(But not a lot. Not with company coming.)

She doesn't miss the amused look that passes between her parents before John says, "Thought you might."

There's something Meg might almost call relief on Alain's face when she, and only she, answers the door. He takes her hand to pull her out onto the porch. Meg shuts the door behind her. "Hi."

Alain wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her before he answers. "Hello."

"How was your trip?"

"Fine. With a very pleasant end," he says, kissing her again.

"This isn't quite the end," she says. "You still haven't made it into the house."

"It can wait a few minutes, right?" he says, and he sounds . . . nervous.

Meg leans back a bit, far enough to see his face. He looks nervous, too.

"You're nervous," she says. He's usually so collected -- it's kind of odd to see him nervous.

And kind of endearing.

Alain exhales something that's not quite a sigh. "Ma belle, I am about to walk into a man's house and say, 'Hello, Dr. Ford, I'm the boy who thinks he's good enough for your daughter.' Of course I'm nervous."

"So, you're not worried about my mother, just my father?"

Alain's eyes widen. "Should I be worried about your mother?" he asks.

Meg just barely keeps from smiling. "Sorry, that was mean," she says. "You shouldn't be too nervous, though."

"And why is that?"

"Because you have the complete and utter support of the daughter in question. And they both know it."

Alain exhales again and then nods. "All right. I will try not to be too nervous."

"Good. Come on, let's get it over with. The first two minutes will be the worst, right?"

"I hope so . . ." Alain says, dropping his arms from around her waist.

Meg takes one of his hands, and reaches to open the front door.

And then turns back to Alain, with a slightly sheepish expression. "Sorry."

"What?" he asks.

"I think I've locked us out."

Meg lets herself back into the house one hour and twenty-five minutes after she left, and isn't all that surprised to find her father still in his study.

"I'm back," she says from the doorway.

"How was the library?" John asks.

"Fine. Full of books."

John nods, and then says, "I called Kim."

Meg hesitates. "I know," she says, finally.

"You . . . know?"

Meg comes in and sits down in the chair that's not at the desk. "One of the doors in the library led me to Milliways. And I ran into Kim there. And she said you had called."

"Oh." John is quiet for a moment. "Meg, I'm sorry I didn't . . ."

"You have nothing to apologize for," Meg says. "Telling you that story was asking a lot."

"Still, I should have . . ."

"Dad, please don't worry about it, okay?"

John sighs. "All right."

The room is quiet for a moment, and then he says, "So . . . you talked to Kim?"

"Yes."

"How did that go?"

Meg thinks for a moment. "Better than it has in a long time. Maybe even good."

John smiles. "I'm glad."

"Me, too."

"Meg . . . are you sure about Montreal? I know you want to see people there, but you could go a week earlier or later, if you liked, and be here when Kim is."

"She asked me the same thing."

"What did you say?"

"That I was sure about going to stay with Sylvain and Ginette. Dad, Kim and I have a lot of walking to do before we try to run again. And a week us both here . . . would be kind of like a marathon."

"All right."

"Yeah. I think maybe it will be," Meg says.

Maybe not right away. But for the first time in about a year, all right doesn't seem outside the realm of possibilities.

"Meg, we need to talk to you about something," her father says.

Meg looks up from the magazine she's reading. "Sure, I guess." She's slightly puzzled by the look John and Deirdre Ford exchange before coming into the living room. "What's going on?" she asks.

"Nothing," says her mother. And then, after a slight pause, amends, "Well, we were talking to Kim." She pauses, clearly waiting for Meg to ask about her sister.

Meg doesn't.

"And," Deirdre continues, "she's going to come home to visit for a week in August."

"Oh," says Meg. She's not at all convinced anyone should still refer to this as Kim's home, but she gets the meaning. "I'm sure you'll be happy to have her here. Thank you for telling me."

"Meg," her father says, and then hesitates. "Is that really all you have to say?"

"Yes. I'll make arrangements to stay somewhere else that week. It shouldn't be a problem. I'm sure Carrie or Alain's aunt--"

"Meghan," says her mother.

Meg's shoulders tense. The use of her full name means nothing good is coming.

"You're not going to go away the week your sister is here. She's coming to see you, too."

"Yes, I am," Meg says, evenly. "I have nothing else to say to Kim. And if you want her to visit, I certainly won't do anything to hinder that. But--"

"Meghan, you're being ridiculous," her mother says.

"Dee," says her father, "maybe not now."

Meg's eyes narrow. She is not being ridiculous. She's trying to be rational and mature about a mess of a situation that never gets any less messy. If Kim and their parents want to spend time together, that's fine. It's their choice. Meg, however, will opt out. And suspects everyone will have a better time if she and Kim don't try to spend a week under the same roof, anyway.

"Yes, now," her mother says. "This has been going on for almost a year."

Meg, whose new approach to anything like this is to simply walk away from it, picks up her purse and heads for the door.

"Where are you going?" Deirdre asks.

"Out," says Meg.

"We're not done talking."

"Yes, we are," Meg says.

"Meghan--"

"It's Meg, Mom."

"You're acting like a child."

Meg pauses at the door. "No, I'm acting like Kim. Which is what the whole damn world has been telling me to do for nineteen years. Well, this is what acting like Kim looks like. I'm going out because it feels like what I need to do right now. And the fact that that's a remarkably useless non-explanation, well, at least there's a family precedent for it."

The door closes firmly behind her, cutting off her parents' objections.

The train rolls west, a steady rhythm and blur of rails and stations, and Meghan Ford sits stiff-backed straight in her seat and stares out the window and wonders why the sky is clear.

There should be clouds.

This is, after all, the eye of a very large, very violent storm -- a deceptive moment of stillness that all but dares you to think that the worst is over.

It's not. Meg knows that. Whatever storm she and her sister have unleashed here isn't anywhere near done doing its damage.

Even knowing that, though, there's nothing she said in Kim's apartment that she wouldn't still say if she had it to do over again.

Meghan is not surprised to see her father sitting on a bench on the platform when the train reaches her stop. Whatever Kim had said, there was no way she hadn't called their parents after Meg left.

The conscientious big sister to the end.

There's a part of Meg that would very much like to just stay on the train and keep going west and west and west.

But, then, even if that were a choice, it's not the one she would make. So she gathers her bags and she steps onto the almost deserted platform, where both her father and the storm are waiting.

"Kim called," John Ford says, by way of greeting.

"I thought she might," says Meghan, though what she means is, I knew she would.

"She said you had a fight."

"I'd have said argument but fight is not exactly wrong."

John sighs. "Meghan--"

"Dad," she says, "can we please not have this conversation in the middle of a train station?"

Her father sighs again, takes half of his daughter's bags, and heads for the car. Meg follows just far enough behind to make it hard to talk. It's a fairly futile gesture, though, since if you want to trap someone for a conversation, it's hard to beat the front seat of a moving car.

"What happened?" John asks, eyes darting briefly from the road to his daughter.

"What did Kim say happened?" Meg counters. Partly because she wants to know the lay of the land here. Mostly because she thinks her parents deserve to hear Kim's news from Kim, even if Kim has told her to tell them.

"That she told you she was taking a job in England and you fought about it."

"Then I guess that's what happened."

"Meghan."

"What?"

"I was hoping for a more detailed answer. And I wanted your answer, not Kim's."

Meg crosses her arms. "Kim told me that she's moving to England. Next month. She's already done all the paperwork, and had it approved. The apartment is already almost empty, she's worried about giving sufficient notice to Toronto General, but telling us about it was pretty far down the To Do list. And I told her that I was tired of being lied to, and kept in the dark about . . . well, I left."

"Oh, Meg," says her father. They've stopped at a red light, and he turns his full attention to her. "Meg."

Meg doesn't say anything for a long moment, and it's not a comfortable silence that descends. Then she says, "The light's green."

John drives though the light, then turns into an empty parking lot and turns off the engine. "Meg," he says, again.

"What? What was I supposed to say? That it's all right that she's decided to just . . . just abandon us, without so much as making a show of discussing it with us? Again?"

"Meghan, you are not being fair."

"I'm tired of being fair."

"Did you talk about why she decided to move? Or why she waited to tell you?"

Meghan opens her mouth to reply and then stops. It's the first time she's realized that they didn't.

"Just . . . she just said that it was something she had to do."

"I see," says her father. "And did you give her a chance to explain what that meant?"

No, but Meg doesn't want to admit that. She's tired. She's tired of a lot of things -- not only of being fair but also of trying to be accepting and understanding about things she doesn't really know how to accept or understand. Things she doesn't really want to accept or understand. She's tired of trying to see Kim's side, of trying not to upset things, of feeling lost and alone and overwhelmed. She's tired of feeling ambushed and attacked. She's tired of having to work -- hard -- at a relationship that came as easily as breathing for the first 16 years of her life.

"Fine," she snaps. "Take her side. You always do."

"Meghan," says her father, firmly, "I am not taking anyone's side. I just want you think about this. I hate to see you decide at eighteen that you don't want your only sister to be a part of the rest of your life."

"She decided it first," Meg mutters.

John looks at her, but doesn't respond to that latest comment. "Kim said she'd be visiting soon. Maybe you two can talk about all this then."

"I have plans that day," Meg says. Whatever day it is.

John Ford sighs again. "Well, maybe they will have changed by then."

"I don't think there's much of a chance of that," Meghan says, and turns to look out the side window.

John waits a moment to see if she's going to say anything more, then starts the car and drives them home in silence.

In the west, clouds begin to gather and the wind picks up.

It's going to be a hell of a storm.

Nine years.

Kim Ford was nine years old when her sister was born.

Those nine years are the reason that Meg not only doesn't remember a life without her sister, she doesn't remember a life without her sister being in charge, at least part of the time. Because by the time Meg was old enough to remember anything in a coherent, linear way, Kim was old enough to be left to look after her sister when their parents were out.

Meg was never worried if Kim was there. It may have begun just because Kim's room was closer than their parents', and when Meg was four and afraid of nightmares or thunderstorms, it was easier to find the courage to run across the hall than all the way down it. And somehow, when Meg was too scared or (on a few occasions) too sick to go anywhere, or even to call for help, Kim always seemed to know to come and check. And nothing bad could possibly happen to Meg if Kim was there; Kim wouldn't let it.

As far as Meg was concerned, Kim could do anything. And so, when Kim dreamed dreams, or set grand goals for her future, Meg never questioned it. Even when she was old enough to understand that most people don't get to do good in big ways, she didn't doubt that her sister would be one of the few who did.

Her whole life, Meg had teachers who called her by her sister's name. Had family friends told her how much like Kim she looked, or how much she reminded them of her sister. And it made her smile. The only goal Meg ever had was to be like her sister.

Nine years.

Meg Ford was nine years old when her sister left home for the University of Toronto.

It's the reason Meg never kept a diary; she never needed to. Her sister got long, incredibly detailed letters, three and four times a week. And once she'd written it all down for Kim, there was no reason to write it all down again, at least, not that Meg could see. And when Kim was home, talking eliminated the need to write anything about her life. Meg took endless notes on almost everything else, in scores of neatly labeled blue notebooks, but her life was simply confided to Kim.

And so Kim always knew anything there was to know about Meg, because Meg told her. And over the years the secrets shifted from the small sins of childhood, to crushes that left Meg pink-cheeked and giggling, to the half-formed ideas of a girl trying to find the woman she'll be. But it never, in sixteen years, occurred to Meg to keep things from her sister. And she probably wouldn't have succeeded if she'd tried.

And maybe that's just not fair, to ask any one person to be hero and savior and role model and confidant and confessor, best friend and older sister. Because who could possibly live up to all of that? What ending could there be but the bitter resentment of disillusionment?

Because now, with nine years more gone, Meg keeps secrets from her sister, and they fill the pages of the diary she started on her seventeenth birthday. And she no longer smiles when people tell her how much like her sister she is. And thunder is just the collision of air masses, and no one has slept in the room across the hall for a year and a half.

And Meg is capable of taking care of herself.

And she's lonelier than she ever would have thought possible.

Meg Ford is on her front porch, saying good night to Derek Laundon, and has been for the last three minutes. It's their fourth date, and the good nights have somehow involved fewer words each time.

"I should go in," she says, finally if reluctantly, pulling back from him just slightly.

"No, stay," he says, hands sliding up from her waist to her back, pulling her towards him again, picking up where he left off.

Meg turns her head, laughing. "You're going to miss your curfew, Derek."

He sighs and shakes his head, but he's smiling. "This is what I get for dating a girl who cares about rules, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"All right," he says. "I'm going." He leans in and kisses her one more time. "Call me?"

She nods. "Tomorrow. Now, go. Before you get grounded."

She stands under the porch light, watching as he heads off up their street, and waving when he turns back to look at her.

And then lets out the breath she's holding, and eyes mostly closed, lets herself into the house.