Disclaimer and Notes
The next morning, when Una awoke, she glanced at her desk. And nearly fainted for the second time in her life. For where her letter had been, there were instead two flowers, fresh, still be-gemmed with dew. A white, delicate tea rose, the tips of the petals flushed gently pink like a face after a lover's kiss. Intertwined with a blood-red, cup-shaped Flanders poppy.
Neither flower bloomed anywhere this time of the year in the Glen, and everyone at the manse wondered how it was that Una had, in a vase on her desk, not only flowers that could not possibly have come from anywhere close by..the poppy was native to the lands where now the red of spilled blood replaced the red of flowers..but by how, whenever they faded, Una would always be able to acquire new ones the next day. Una was not one to solicit some hothouse florist, and she did not any beaux. When asked about it, she simply smiled her shy, meditative smile and said nothing.
She never did see her letter again, but Una had somehow found peace. Years passed by one after the other. The war ended. Jem and Faith, Nan and Jerry, Rilla and Ken...all were happily married. Carl, Shirley and Di, too, found love and had happy families. Una never married, but made her life useful to all her kin, much to the joy of her man adoring nieces and nephews. Life went on, and she lived to see Rilla's son Walter Owen Ford take for his bride Carl's daughter Una Rose Meredith.
The groom, a tall, handsome fellow of 27 with dark hair and eyes, looked with love- filled eyes at his lissome bride, radiant in her joy, her sea-blue eyes and flushed cheeks glowing even behind her white veil. The younger Una had Carl's eyes, the eyes of his dead mother, and they shone with happiness. Now, as the 25-year-old young woman spoke her vows softly, raptly, Una looked at her namesake with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes. The celebration was long and merry that night, and laughter rang out in old Rainbow Valley. Finally, after the jubilant groom and bashful bride had left for their honeymoon and everything had been cleaned up, Una headed home to the manse. Reverend John Meredith and Rosemary had been dead long ago, but Bruce Meredith had succeeded his father as the minister and had his favorite half-sister stay with him and his family. As Una went up to her room, she felt a strange, unearthly peace. She kissed the fading rose and poppy on her desk, flung open the window, and gazed out. It was autumn, and there was a chill to the wind. She gently threw the flowers away to the winds.
Usually, due to her delicate health, Una would have not left the window open on a cold night when she slept, but she did not close the casement this night. She climbed into bed and closed her eyes. The last image she saw was that of a smiling young man, no older than 20, his gray eyes shining with love, holding out his arms to a slight, dark-haired girl of 18, sad sapphire eyes alight with rare joy.
~ ~ ~
The next morning, when Bruce's wife Sharon went to see if Una would come down for breakfast, she saw Una, lying on her bed with her eyes closed, a smile of contentment on her face. A letter, yellowed with age, lay on her desk, written in Una's fine hand and addressed to a Walter Blythe. Sharon carefully opened up the letter, and two petals fell out. A white tea-rose petal faintly blushed, and the crepe-like crimson petal of a Flanders poppy.
No one knew the exact hour that Una had died in her sleep. But white tea-roses and red Flanders poppies continued to bloom on her grave, and they somehow knew that she had died happy.
~Fin~
