As he shut the car door, Cole reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a jewellery box and handed it to Abigail saying "Happy Birthday. This is a little something for you."
Abigail carefully took the box from his hand and opened it. Seeing the pendant on a delicate gold chain she looked at her grandfather, who was smiling, and had a second larger box in his hand. Has he passed it over he said, "This is also for you."
Abigail noticed a couple of tears escaping her grandfather's eyes, and said "Why are you upset?"
Cole shook his head, saying "I am not upset, sweetheart. Your grandmother always wanted to do this for you on your eighteenth birthday, but because she is no longer with us, I have to fulfill her wish. That just makes me wish she was with us, and of course I miss her so much."
Abigail reached over and wiped the tears away, before asking in a pleading tone "Tell me about my grandmother, please grandfather."
Slightly smiling, Cole said "Little did I know the day we met, which was the day we married, she was the love of my life. In a normal world, we would never have married, let alone met as her family was, at least to me at the time wealthy, although now we would say they were part of the middle class, and my family was extremely poor. My father, your wonderful and kind great grandfather, was a simple farmer who grew just a bit more than he needed to feed his family. Any excess we had, he always took and sold at local markets."
"As he tells me, because I was a baby at the time, on the way home from one such sales trip he stumbled on three men beating another. Without a care for himself or the little money he had earned by selling the excess we had, he dropped what he had and raced in to save the man being beaten. My father lost the money he sold, but as he always said it was worth it to save a life. He dragged the beaten man home, where my mother dealt with his wounds."
"As they told the story to me, the beaten man heard my cries and on spotting me, he told my parents that their son, being me, would marry his infant daughter when we were old enough to marry. My father agreed, thinking nothing of if. Three weeks after the man left, they were sent money which was more to replace what my father had lost stepping in to help. The only message was 'thank you for saving me and I hope this is enough to replace what you lost.' Every year on the anniversary of my father's action, we received a similar amount of money with the same message."
"Two weeks after I turned eighteen, we received a knock on the door. It was a lawyer, with a letter from your great-grandfather. His daughter, your grandmother was about to turn eighteen and he was ready to fulfil the promise he had made almost eighteen years earlier, marrying his daughter to me and asking to meet us at Civil Affairs on a particular day, ten days later here. At the time I was resistant, as I had a girlfriend and I was thinking about marrying her, but my father told me, that before we refused, we needed to meet this man."
"As we had little money to spare, we knew it would take us over a day to travel for the meeting, so two days before the appointed meeting, my father dragged me with him and we headed to here, for the meeting."
Cole paused and said "I remember the sight that I saw the moment we arrived at Civil Affairs, like it was yesterday. Your grandmother was standing with your great-grandfather, in a simple white dress that was between her knees and ankles in length, with that necklace around her neck, and wearing the matching earrings that are in the second box. Her hair was twisted and pinned up, but do not ask me what the hair style was called as I cannot remember. The moment she turned around, I saw her face and for some reason it captured my attention."
As my father started to speak, your maternal great-grandfather explained that he knew that arranged marriages were starting to go out of fashion, but he at least wanted the opportunity for your grandmother and I to meet, before I said no. For some reason, there was just something in your grandmother's look that told me, that while she was scared, she wanted the marriage. I asked to have a brief discussion with your grandmother standing outside civil affairs alone."
"The only question I asked her was what did she want. Her response was that she wanted to continue her education, but she knew that the only thing that awaited her was marriage, whether it was to me or to some business associate of her father's. The way that she answered me, made me feel that she was terrified of that prospect, and there was just something that was telling me that I should take a chance and agree to marry your grandmother."