Ben (The Sherwood Series Book 3)

by Lee Wardlow

  Jenny embraced our entire family down to the last Hatfield brother. She always had. She sat her cup down and I reached across the table and grabbed her hand, I lifted her palm to my lips and pressed a kiss to her smooth skin then I leaned on my knees and clutched her hand in mine.

  “Ben, what’s wrong?” She asked.

  “I’m exhausted,” I choked on the words, filling like an idiot for almost crying at telling her this.

  She chuckled. “Join the club of new parents with tiny human beings who are wrecking our sleep, but Asia is usually a good sleeper. What’s going on?”

  I shook my head and released her hand, so I could wipe my face. I leaned back in my chair and sipped on my coffee. The thick black mud she always made was just like Elijah and I liked it. She was a gem. My brother was one lucky man.

  “Thank you for ignoring me when I was being an ass,” I told her.

  She laughed. Her deep, melodic laughter filled the kitchen and made me smile. “You mean when you told him in front of me that you couldn’t believe he fell for me?”

  I nodded and wiped across my face again. She slapped my thigh. “It’s okay Ben. I know you were going through a rough time.”

  “I was scared.”

  “Ben,” I glanced up at her, “I imagine you were. Jasmine had lied to you about her age. Suddenly your entire life was being turned upside down by her and the thought that you were going to be a father with a woman you didn’t know well. Elijah and I were getting together. You wanted him to be there for you.”

  I nodded. “He was too.” I didn’t tell Jenny that there were so many more lies that Jasmine had told. She didn’t need to be disillusioned about Jasmine as I was.

  “He was, Ben. He loves you guys so much. He wouldn’t walk away from any of you no matter what is going on with us.”

  She was right about that. My brothers and I were close to each other and our sister. We were a tight knit group. “I love you, Jenny,” I told her, and I meant it. She was one of a kind.

  “I love you, too, Benjamin.” She caressed my cheek and I almost fell into her arms sobbing.

  “She lied to me,” I said so softly that I wasn’t sure she heard me. “Lied about so much more than you know.”

  “Ben,” she consoled me but didn’t ask for an explanation for which I was grateful. Her voice was filled with compassion. I felt so stupid for falling for Jasmine’s lies.

  “How do I trust a woman again?”

  Jenny pushed me back and took my hand and held it in hers. “Ben when the right woman comes along, it will be easy to trust her. You’ll know.” I think the right one had been staring me in the face for years and I screwed it up by sleeping with her cousin.

  I squeezed her hand. “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve been with Elijah your entire life.”

  “Not always. I had to wait on him to come around. I had to date a few others to get him to realize it should be us, together.”

  “Two peas in a pod,” I repeated Mom’s phrase for them.

  She laughed. “Now about Asia. Are you picking her up as soon as she cries?” She asked me.

  I glanced at her unsure of what she was asking. Jenny laughed at the blank look on my face. “Ben, move Asia’s crib out of your room.”

  I cut her off. “What about SIDS?” I asked terrified that something would happen to my daughter in the night and I wouldn’t hear her or know that she needed me.

  Jenny got up and went to the laundry room. She returned with an unopened box which she handed to me. “What is this?” I turned the box over and over in my hand.

  “A baby monitor,” she informed me. “Put this in Asia’s room and the other piece goes in your room. Put Asia’s crib in Elijah’s old room. She is the best baby at self-soothing. Quit worrying so much. You cannot anticipate every, single thing that will go wrong with your child but Ben nothing bad is going to happen. Stop worrying about what you can’t control.”

  “Wait, what does self-soothing mean?” I asked unsure of what most of the baby jargon I heard meant. I usually looked it up later.

  Jen chuckled at me. She forgot that I was a newbie at parenting. I didn’t know the catch-phrases or parenting jargon. I hadn’t read any new father books like Elijah had although at times that was a detriment to my anxious brother. He worried more.

  “That means quit acting like Elijah and that she might whimper and cry for a moment. If after a few minutes she’s not stopped then get up and get her. Then Asia needs something. Otherwise, she will feed at eleven and not wake up again until three or three-thirty. Then you won’t have to feed her again until you need to leave for work if you get her back on schedule.”

  “Really?” I was amazed at this news.

  She nodded at me. “I am jealous of your child. My son is not so good. He’s up every two hours but he is breast fed and he’s a big eater with a little bit of colic.”

  I didn’t want to think about my sister-in-law’s boobs, so I didn’t ask any other questions. “Thank you, Jen.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied.

  We drank our tea and coffee then I headed home with my daughter and her supplies. Seth helped me move Asia’s dresser and bed into her new room. I needed to do something with it to make it more babyish, more girlie. Later, maybe, Mom, Danni or Jen would help with that. Then, I setup the monitor.

  Seth headed off to work while I searched for the diaper bag. Asia was in her baby swing. Another gift from my mother. My girl was sound asleep.

  I realized I must have left the bag at Disa’s apartment. I would have to call her tomorrow about picking it up. Tonight, Disa was most likely working at Ike’s with men, hitting on her. Touching her intimately. I had seen how they leered at her.

  Stop, I told myself. Just stop. This thinking was getting me nowhere and would drive me crazy.

  I started a load of laundry then headed to the kitchen to wash baby bottles. I was elbow deep in soapy bottles when I stopped and laughed at my predicament. A year ago, on a Friday night I would be heading out with Elijah and having dinner then he would sneak off to see Jennifer while I picked up a girl and went to her place.

  I never took anyone home to my trailer. It wasn’t that most girls didn’t know where I lived. Sherwood was a small town. We all knew where each other’s homes were. I just didn’t want girls invading my space. It was easier to escape them if I went to their apartment or house.

  Now, look at me. Washing bottles, changing diapers. Content. The most honest thing I could say was that I was happier than I had been in a very long time.

  A knock on the door surprised me out of my reverie. I wasn’t expecting company tonight. I dried my hands on a towel and tossed it on the counter. Then I headed to the door. Disa Riley was standing on the front porch, my diaper bag in hand. She wasn’t dressed for Ike’s which surprised me. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t you have to work tonight?”

  “No, your dad needed me on Sunday this weekend because Louisa couldn’t work on Sunday. She has a family thing, so he asked me to give up Friday, so I switched with her.”

  “Ah, want to come in?” I asked. She came over here to return my diaper bag. The least, I could do was to invite her in.

  “Sure,” she said but I could hear the reluctance in her voice.

  “I’m just washing bottles,” I told her.

  “Sounds like a fun, Friday night,” Disa teased me.

  I laughed at her then I led Disa to the kitchen where I resumed what I was doing. “Have you eaten?” I asked glancing over my shoulder at her.

  “Nope,” she replied. “I was actually going to pick something up and head home to watch a movie on my tablet.”

  I knew deep in my gut it was a bad idea. I knew in my head that the words coming out of my mouth were wrong, but I said them anyway. “Stay. I’ll make us a frozen pizza. We can watch a movie together.” I had a seventy-five, inch flat screen that was amazing to watch movies and football on.

  She had to think about it. I could see it on Disa’s
face when I glanced over my shoulder to see why she was hesitating. We had agreed to be friends and friends could have pizza together and watch a movie on a Friday night.

  “All right,” she finally agreed.

  “Good, let me just finish these bottles.”

  She chuckled at me. “That is the last thing, I ever expected to hear coming from Ben Hatfield’s mouth,” Disa declared.

  I smiled. “Honestly, I’m just as shocked as you, Disa but I love that little girl.”

  She pushed her hair over her shoulder. The lush, silver curls glistened in the bright lighting of my kitchen. Then she leaned against the counter near where I was washing bottles. “I can tell, Ben.”

  We talked while I washed and put the bottles in the drainer next to the sink. She told me about a few pieces she was working on. I wanted to see them when she was done.

  Disa had changed her shirt before coming over. This one was soft and pink and touchable. I was having all kinds of trouble not reaching out and seeing if it was inviting as it appeared to be. She was still wearing the clingy shorts that were hanging low on her hips.

  She scooped her hair together in a ponytail and pulled it over her shoulder. Her eyes like her curls stuck me dumb. I stopped talking and gazed at her. I watched as her long, black lashes touched her cheek as she lowered her eyes to avoid looking at me.

  “All done,” I declared then cleared my throat. “Why don’t I just put the pizza in the oven.”

  I went to the freezer and grabbed one pepperoni pizza then put it on the pan. I sat the oven for four hundred and waited on it to heat up.

  “I love it out here,” Disa said. “Instead of a movie, could we sit on the back porch and talk?” She asked.

  “Sure,” I replied as I shoved the pan in the oven. I left the patio door slightly ajar, so I could hear Asia when she woke. I followed Disa through the doors to the covered part of the patio.

  Since, coming home this afternoon, I had followed Jen’s advice, giving Asia a few minutes to sooth herself before grabbing her right up. When Asia was hungry or needed a diaper change she didn’t stop crying. Then she needed me.

  It was hard. I even had to stop Seth from going after her immediately. It had worked but nighttime would be the true test.

  We sat in the chairs that faced the woods. Disa stared over the lands that belonged to my grandfather and now Elijah and Jenny. “I used to run through these woods with Danni,” she told me.

  “Me too,” I teased her.

  She shook her head at me. “You don’t know how lucky you were growing up like you did,” Disa said.

  At times, we didn’t feel so lucky having Rachel and Simon Hatfield for parents. At times, it was tough being their child, but outsiders didn’t know what we knew. Mom had her hands full. Dad was strict and by strict, I mean he used his belt on us because that is what his father did to him, so he saw nothing wrong with it.

  I turned and looked through the glass doors at my daughter asleep in the chair. My daughter would have time-outs like Matt did for Justin. I don’t think I could ever raise my hand against Asia as punishment.

  Dad did what he thought was best. His punishments were doled out in the middle of the night when he got home from work. He woke us from a sound sleep, whooped our ass and sent us back to bed where Matt consoled us.

  My brother Matt was a good father because he had years of experience fathering his younger brothers. He was a good man. I looked up to Matt. One day, I wanted to be half the man that he was which is why it sucked that Layla had done to him what she did.

  “Where are you?” Disa asked.

  I turned and smiled at her. “Thinking about Matt. What a good man he is. What a good brother he was to all of us.”

  She smiled at me. “How is he doing since Layla left?” She asked. Of all the people who asked about Matt, she wasn’t doing it because she was being nosy. Disa was genuinely concerned about my brother.

  I shook my head at her. “I don’t know.” Then I gazed out into the woods. “You know Matt. He keeps it all to himself. He’s broken, Disa. I know that much, not that he would tell us that in so many words.”

  She smiled at me, but it wasn’t a happy smile. She was sad for Matt. For Justin too. “I still can’t believe that she left him,” she whispered as if the woods had ears and someone might hear her.

  “I know. We’re all in shock.”

  Disa sighed. “I wonder why people do half the things that they do.”

  She talked about her parents. God fearing people, she often called them. They didn’t sound like good Christians to me. They were mean and spiteful. They had cut themselves off from most of the town.

  They lived in a compound on the outskirts of Sherwood where others who participated in their church lived. No one outside of their religion knew what went on inside the fenced in walls of that compound.

  “Their beliefs are deeply rooted in the fact that only they are saved,” Disa told me.

  I nodded unsure of what to say so feeling it was safer to say nothing at all. Sure, I believed in a God that existed somewhere. In the clouds above? Not really. I believed in Jesus Christ as the Savior. I didn’t give religion much thought after that.

  I lived my life believing that someday it would be more important to me than a passing thought. Right now, or at least before Asia was born I was more important than anything else. I was trying to curb my selfish ways.

  “Why did you leave them, Disa?” I asked.

  “My father wanted me to marry, Elder Ron,” she explained. “A man in his thirties. I was only twenty-one.” Her voice was soft and held that far away tone that told me she was sad, thinking about it.

  “What happened?” I knew that something had prompted her departure from the compound.

  “I left. I told my father no. You don’t tell your parents or an elder no.” She sighed. “I stopped wearing the ugly, ankle length skirts that I always had to wear to be modest. Got a job at Ike’s and was exiled from Babylon First Church of God and from my parent’s lives. As I walked out of the compound, they struck me from their lives, their hearts and their minds.”

  I chewed on my lower lip knowing that what she was saying was not good. “What does that mean?” I asked unsure that I should have asked that question because it brought a rush of pain to Disa’s face.

  “That means, I am dead to them. I am a ghost. If they see me in town, which has happened, they look through me.” I reached across and took Disa’s hand in mine.

  “Which is why it was important for you to have Jasmine in your life?” I asked feeling more regret because I had taken her from Disa.

  She nodded. “It was.” With her free hand, she wiped away some tears that I knew she didn’t want to cry, not in front of me. “Jasmine’s mother had walked away from the compound like I had. They warned me I would be just like her. Having children without the sanctity of marriage,” Disa explained. “I look like my aunt, she’s a sister to my mother. Funny how things turned out. Jasmine and I look alike but she has her father’s coloring my mother said, where I’m blonde like her mother. She had a child out of wedlock, not me.”

  I gazed at the woman sitting beside me. I took in her features and her mannerisms and I noticed not for the first time that she was too much like Jasmine. I should not have been with her cousin.

  The thought floated through my subconscious and I frowned. It bothered me that it might have been the only reason I was attracted to Jasmine. She reminded me of Disa and I couldn’t have her, so I settled on Jasmine. Someone I could have.

  Those thoughts had been tickling my brain for weeks. I had been trying to ignore them and push them away. I released Disa’s hand and leaned over on my knees. Staring into the woods, like she was. “What’s on your mind?” She asked me.

  I glanced in her direction. Those damn eyes of hers. I felt like they were reading my thoughts. Seeing in my soul, the loneliness that I felt, and I wanted to run from.

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  Then m
y daughter rescued me. She started crying. We both got up and headed inside. Asia needed changing. “I’ll do it. If you don’t mind?” Disa suggested.

  “I’ll never turn down the offer for someone to change her diaper.”

  She laughed at me. Disa went to the living room while I went to the kitchen to check on our pizza. I could hear her talking to my daughter. Her sweet voice a comfort to me as much as it was to Asia who calmed the minute Disa picked her up out of the swing, while I took the pizza out of the oven.

  I turned off the stove and found the cutter then I sliced up the pizza and put it on plates, carrying it to the living room. I laid them on the coffee table and headed back to the kitchen for drinks.

  “Bottled water okay?” I shouted from the kitchen not that I needed to. My open floorplan didn’t have walls to block sound. She could have heard me just fine but Disa made me nervous.

  “That’s fine, Ben,” she replied.

  I returned carrying two bottles of water. I sat on the sofa now where Disa was cradling Asia in her arms. She was talking to her like my baby knew everything she was saying. She was good with kids.

  “Do you want children?” I asked.

  She gazed at me for a moment then she nodded. “I do. I love kids.”

  “Just not with that elder guy?” I asked.

  She laughed. “No, he wasn’t a bad looking guy, but he was at least ten years older than me if not more. I couldn’t imagine becoming a wife to a man who was that much older. Someone I didn’t love,” she explained. “I wanted to experience life a little, outside of the compound. My parents told me if I left they would disown me which they did.”

  “You don’t regret it?” I asked her.

  Her eyes, so mesmerizing I couldn’t look away met mine. “No, Ben. Not one bit,” she replied. “Elder Ron was kind of creepy.”

  “Good,” I said. I knew it couldn’t be easy, making it on her own.

  “I didn’t become my aunt. I don’t go from man to man like she does. I’m a good woman, Ben. A good person.”