She is here.  Across the living room, doing something arcane with a tablet, with Maya.

April…or, Avril.   I should call her that.  It is, after all, her name.  Has been for most of her 11 years.  I am glad they did not choose a name far different from the one I gave her.  I am glad they recognized that she had been loved from the start.

There was a telephone call.  A clipped, very nervous adult voice.  Avril’s mother, she had to be worried about her daughter meeting me.  I was nearly mute with shock.  But I managed to give my address, and had it together enough to suggest she come over, and just see how things lay.

Then I ran to my bedroom and cried hysterically.

When the knock came on the door, I was surprised at my calm.  I opened the door to a kind looking couple, perhaps 15 years older than me, two small children, and her.

We stood staring at each other.  I tentatively reached out my arms, and she equally tentatively embraced me.  I said something banal, tripping over my tongue, and invited them in.

There was a moment of silence.   Broken by Paul.   He stared at Avril, then burst out laughing.  Puzzled, she did too.

“You are Abby…you are the spitting…”  And he shook his head.   It was true, she looked like some vision of me as a pre-teen, come again to try to do things better.

“You are my sister,”  that from Maya, bless her.

The rest of the evening past in a blur.  There were the difficult moments as I tried to both thank the parents for what they had done for Avril, yet not suggest I wanted to take her from them, and yet, wanting Avril to visit…the sad moment when Avril asked me who her father was, and I had to admit I did not know, and then tell the sorry tale of her conception…not a good time, that telling…made up for when I brought out the letters I had written to Avril over the years, but had been unable to send.  She and her parents, and Paul and Maya, too, it was a first for them as well, sat reading, very quietly.  No eyes were dry.  And at the end, Avril got up and came to me, and this time we hugged until we felt we were one body.

Then Maya brought me my fiddle, and I played The Dark Island, and April/Avril’s eyes went wide and she whispered “I hear that in my head at night, sometimes, it feels so nice.”  And I told her about singing and humming it to her as she grew inside me.

There was another meeting, over a Sunday brunch, and Avril said she wanted to stay.  So, while her family goes exploring around Whistler, Avril stays with me.

Not that I get much time alone with her.  She and Maya have obviously hit it off.  Every so often I see them looking at each other with a kind of mild astonishment  ..’you are really my sister…i have a sister.’

I have a wonderful sense of completion.

I sit, looking at them, trying to stay comfortable.

Paul sticks his head in the room.   “Hey Avril, time to call your parents.”

And the two girls get up.  Maya has chattered on skype alongside Avril.  They look over at me, then trot over, and the two of them lay their heads on my belly.  I put my hands on their heads and stroke them, while they try to detect movement in the sibling-to-be, Paul watching, grinning.

That’s right.  Good ole Paul.  We could have waited, but, we would have missed this moment.  Altho, at the time, we had no idea when this moment would happen.

I spent so much of my life waiting to find April, Avril.  You might ask…what now, now you have found her?

I tell a lie.   I did not spend all that time waiting for April.   She has always been with me.  And always will, only now, she has company, Maya, and Paul, and that all too energetic one waiting to be born.  And Rick, and Brion, and Gio, I feel them looking on, and my family, too, at last, at last.

Now they are gone, leaving me in this quiet room.  I pick up my fiddle, and put a mute on the strings, rosin the bow, and, as quietly as I can, play The Dark Island.

To those who have journeyed with me….slainte!