Like nervous parents, Bill and Lee sat in the waiting room at the physical therapist’s office. They flipped through magazines, examined the detailed pictures of muscular structures, and in general, avoided eye contact at all costs. For an hour, they stared at every feature of the room without meeting one another’s eyes.
“She’s late.”
“They’re teaching her how to do things at home—it’ll take longer than a simple hour session,” Lee retorted.
“If she lived here, that wouldn’t be necessary. I hope she takes that job.”
Lee’s face fell. “I do too, but she won’t.”
“You want her to take it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Lee questioned indignantly. “It’s an amazing offer! To design for one of the most popular and exclusive boutiques in Rockland? Who wouldn’t want to do that?”
“So why are you trying to stop her?”
She stared at him as though he’d taken leave of all of his senses and a few other people’s as well. “Who’s trying to stop her? I drove her back so she could get her sketches.”
“But at her house—”
“I pointed out what she was saying. I backed her decision. It is her decision!”
Bill’s voice escalated slightly. “What decision! I didn’t hear her say—o”
“Having fun you two?”
Willow’s arrival stopped the heated discussion. Leaning on Bill’s arm as they left the building, she told Lee about the exercises her therapist had shown her. “It’s just like I’ve been doing. She said it’s ok if it hurts but not if it feels like it’s tearing.”
In Lee’s car, Willow sank into her seat exhausted. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to Boho. I’m so tired.”
Bill forced himself to be silent. He wanted her to talk to Suki face-to-face, certain that if Willow could see the job and all it entailed, she’d see what a fascinating opportunity it was and accept.
That night, alone on her porch swing, Willow mulled over her options. Suki wanted an answer immediately. Her excitement over the sketches was stimulating. They’d talked for over an hour about fabrics, styles, and the necessary pieces to create the collection they wanted for next spring.
On her bed, a stack of the proposed spring fabrics waited for her hands to convert from a flat sheet of nothingness into three-dimensional clothes. Though anxious and eager to start sewing, the cool, breezy night tempted out to the porch where the crickets chirped and the frogs sang their last songs of summer. The empty seat beside her squeezed the breath from her as she fought back tears—another favorite memory, gone.
Headlights slowly advanced up the driveway. It must be after ten, she thought to herself as she saw Chad’s pick up pull into his accustomed spot.
“Hey, what are you doing out here?”
“Freezing. Easy night?”
Chad reached inside the door, grabbed a hand knitted afghan from the back of the couch, and brought it to her. “Yep. Beat ended at nine, I caught up on paperwork, went over to the Jenkins’ and told Alton to go to bed or I’d run him in, and then the night was over. B-O-R-I-N-G.”
He unbelted his gun belt and set it inside, disappearing long enough to bring back glasses of water. “Drink up. I know that therapist said you weren’t drinking enough.”
“How’d you know that? Did Bill call?”
“No. But anyone can tell your skin is looking dry and your lips are getting chapped. It hurts to walk, so you don’t get up.”
“Observant.”
“Occupational hazard. So Bill was there? I thought Lee took you.”
Willow nodded. “She did, but Bill met us there. Something about insurance and billing. I don’t understand it, but I’ll have to look at it when I don’t have painkillers in my system.”
“I thought you weren’t taking them anymore?”
“Only for actual physical therapy sessions, but I assumed it’d take a long time for them to get out of my system. We went to Boho too. She sent home fabric.”
“Oh.”
Thankful for a captive audience, Willow plunged into a discussion of the fabrics, designs, and expectations of the store. “I brought it home—I’ll make them because it’ll be fun but—”
Chad shifted. “But what?”
“I’m going to have to turn down the job offer.”
“Why?”
Her eyes snapped to his face at the sound of relief in his voice. “Because they want an answer now, and I can’t do that. I cannot decide something that affects the rest of my life in the matter of a week or two.”
“Well, if you didn’t like it, you could always just come home.”
She shook her head emphatically. “That’s just it. I can’t. If I left tomorrow, half the food I need to survive wouldn’t be picked, stored, canned, butchered, and in every other way, ready for winter. If I don’t let some things go to seed, I won’t have seeds for next year—”
“You could buy your food and seeds—” Her deep sigh cut off his protest. Tucking the blanket in around her feet, Chad shrugged and said, “You know what you’re comfortable with. I don’t want to influence you either way.”
“My life here isn’t just playing at farming. It’s about survival and living life to the fullest. We have our own corner of Walden here, and I can’t just give that all up because I have a wonderful opportunity to do something different.”
“I still think they should let you do it here.”
“That’s my goal. I’ll bring my finished garments to the store and submit a proposal. They’ll either accept it or reject it.” Her hands rubbed together at the thought of making the clothing.
“What will Bill think?”
Excitement dissolved. “He’ll think I’m crazy. He’ll probably stop coming out here to see me, and he’ll work even harder to make my money grow to make up for it.”
“Why would he stop coming? So you don’t move to Rockland. That doesn’t mean you guys can’t—”
“Yes it does. If I’m not in Rockland, there is no “us.”
Chad stared at her slack-jawed. “I think you’re underestimating him, Willow.”
“Hey, those are his words, not mine.”
“He actually said that if you didn’t do it his way—”
She shook her head. “No, no. He said that he couldn’t live out here. He said that for an “us” of any permanent kind, it’d have to be in the city. He’s afraid out here.”
Chad didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” she countered. “It’s just how it is. It was flattering but…”
“But what?”
At first, she didn’t know how to explain it. Everything that came to mind seemed inadequate, but at last, Willow smiled as she said, “But I can’t change my life or who I am just because I respect someone. Even if I loved him, I couldn’t change me to please him, because eventually we’d both regret it. How much worse would it be to do that for someone I may not grow to care about?”
The swing creaked as they rocked. The crickets still chirped; Saige snored in the corner. Minutes passed—indefinable. Those minutes, hours, seconds melded into one homogenous passage of time. Thunder cracked overhead. Rain slowly dripped from the sky in intermittent and gently falling drops.
Willow’s mind was several years in the past when Chad’s voice dragged it to the present. “Do you think you’ll ever marry?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“You know, I always dread this retreat. When Chad asked if I could stay it was a huge relief.”
Willow passed Lily Allen a bowl of peeled apples. “What about your children? They were welcome too…”
“They go up with Tom for the first four days and then Caleb drives them back home. They’ll come here and at least say hi when they get into town.”
Lily had a million questions she wanted to ask. Why was Chad spending so much time on the Finley farm? How had Willow brought him out of his shell? What about that handsome guy from the city—the one from the funera
l—was he part of the picture or not? She didn’t know how to begin or where—or even if.
“What made you decide to get married?”
The bluntness and abruptness of Willow’s question threw Lily off guard. “What?”
“Chad asked me the other night—” peeling apples kept Willow from noticing the stunned look on Lily’s face, “—if I thought I’d ever get married.
Curiosity and disappointment mingled into an indistinguishable expression. “Whatever brought that up?”
“Well, I’d just decided not to move to Rockland, and he knew that meant I wouldn’t be seeing Bill much—”
“The man from the city? The one who was here for the funeral?”
“Yes. Anyway, we talked about my life here, and I guess I made him curious, but really, he made me curious. Why do people get married anyway?”
That was a question Lily hadn’t expected. “Well—”
“I mean, I know why some do,” Willow stated matter-of-factly. “After all, as Shakespeare said, ‘the world must be peopled.’”
Lily wanted to sink into a hole. Her mind raced frantically to find an answer that would satisfy without sending it into awkward directions. Chad had been staying with her. Surely—no. He wasn’t the kind of—and he’d tried to get people to come help. Life was busy. Even she’d said no at first. Bentley had—Bentley!
“Well, there are lots of reasons of course. Friends become closer and don’t want to live apart. People fall in love and marriage is a natural result of that. But then, there are people like Bentley and Greg—” Lily paused. Their story wasn’t hers to tell.
“That’s not really what I meant. I was wondering how people decided marriage in general was a good idea for them—personally.”
The question confused her. Marriage was normative. Those who didn’t marry, in her experience, didn’t because they never met someone to marry. She didn’t know anyone, who simply decided not to consider marriage. Of course, she’d heard of missionaries in dangerous places or people who felt called to singleness, but nothing like Willow’s question. “I guess scripturally, most people see marriage as a way to—”
Chad burst in through the door. “Lily, let’s go. The elementary school is flooded. We need all the bodies we can get to help clean up the mess. I got the call just outside of Brunswick so I stopped.”
Willow stood but Chad glared. “I don’t think so. Make your butter or whatever you’re making. I’ll bring her back later.”
“I’ll take my own car. Go change, Chad.” Lily’s assertiveness surprised both Chad and Willow.
Chad dashed out of the summer kitchen and raced for the house. Lily winked at Willow. “He lives for these times. He loves the action. We’ll lose him to Rockland someday.”
She rinsed her hands, carried a few more buckets of apples in from the barn, and then stood in the doorway looking to see what she might have forgotten. “I guess that’s it. Are you sure you’re ok without me?”
“I’m fine, but are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”
“You can stay here, finish your canning, and pray for the school board to know how to handle this. Insurance should cover it but…”
Willow stood at the stove slowly stirring the apple butter and humming the chorus to “Concert Garden.” For a moment, Chad leaned against the doorjamb and watched as she tasted the mixture, wiped clinging tendrils from her temple, and adjusted the heat on the stove. She lifted the pan away from the heating element to cool it slightly. Against both his professional and childhood training, Chad stuffed his hands in his pockets and let her do it. The weight of the huge pot didn’t seem to affect her in the slightest.
With both a smile on his face and a sigh in his heart, Chad slipped from the barn unseen.
“Lily will come back tomorrow afternoon sometime. She went home to shower and get some rest, but she’ll be back at the school in the morning. It’s bad.”
Chad stood outside on the back porch unwilling to come indoors. “I’ll stain up everything. If you can just bring me a change of clothes…”
Several long minutes later, Willow handed him a towel with his clothes wrapped in it. The time it took was a testimony to how hard it was for her to move even after all the physical therapy. He saw weariness in her eyes and started to suggest she rest, but she pointed across the yard.
“In the barn, there’s a hook over the back door. Maybe if you hang the hose over it, you can use it as a shower. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“Thanks.”
Chad found the hook, and as he opened his towel, found a fresh bar of soap. “She thinks of everything.”
After his “shower,” Chad took his filthy clothes to the washing machine and stopped short at the sight of forty-eight half pint jars along the counter, each one beautifully labeled. “So that’s what she’s been doing with the colored pencils. How does she get it all done?”
He found a sandwich on the kitchen table. A bowl of cobbler and a glass of mint tea sat next to it. He grabbed the dishes, juggling them carefully as he inched through the front door and stopped in his tracks at the sight of the empty swing. Where was she?
“Over here! Eat first, you ninny. You must be starved.”
The rumble in Chad’s stomach couldn’t be denied. He sat on the step, ate his sandwich, and watched as she carefully cut long stalks of lavender and placed them in a flower basket. He’d never actually seen one of those baskets, but it was such a natural action for her that it took him until half way through his cobbler to realize that most women don’t spend their late summer evenings cutting lavender like someone from a hundred years ago.
“How come those still have buds on them?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never seen them last so long, so I thought I’d dry more.” Her eyes roamed around the property before she pointed to the winding dirt lane that led to the house. “We’ve always talked about growing lavender along the driveway... I think I’ll do it next year in honor of Mother.”
Chad jumped to his feet and hurried to help as Willow tried to stand. “You tell me when you want to do it. I’ll dig the pipes.”
“Pipes?”
“To water them while they’re getting established.”
She smiled indulgently at him. “We don’t use pipes. We use the garden cart and water barrels, but thanks.”
“That’s so much work!”
Her expression clearly asked, “And your point is?” but she said nothing. She hobbled to the step each step growing more confident than the last. “My foot feels asleep.”
Concern filled Chad’s face. “Isn’t that one of the things you’re supposed to watch out for? Maybe you should call Dr. Weisenberg.”
“Wrong foot. It’s asleep because I was sitting on it awkwardly so my other leg didn’t hurt. I’m fine. You’re being silly.”
“Inconceivable!”
He held the door for her and carried the basket in as she hobbled awkwardly on a sore leg and a numb foot. At the kitchen table, Willow spread out the flowers, pulling all fragile stalks from the bunches and setting them aside. He helped as much as he could, but Chad felt in the way until Willow asked him to add the leaves to the kitchen table.
The bundling of each fistful of lavender was a fascinating process. Willow wound a rubber band around each one, attached a loop of twine, and then pulled a step stool from behind the open door. Chad intercepted the apparatus before she could climb.
“I don’t think so. You hand them to me, I’ll put them up.”
As they worked, Chad noticed the exhaustion reflected in her eyes. It quickly turned to pain and then something he couldn’t define. The last few bunches were ruined by the time she shoved them into his hands. Uncertain how to help and uncertain if help was even necessary, Chad resorted to sage advice from his father.
“I’ll be right back.”
When he returned from a quick trip to town, Chad found the house empty. He called her name, but no answer followed. No lights anywhere unnerved him. He’d
left her with a lamp lit in the kitchen and one in the living room, but now, nothing. He called again. No answer came.
He dashed upstairs, swung his body halfway into her room, swung back out, and then returned as a dark lump registered in his consciousness. “Willow?”
“Go away.”
“Can’t do that. I come bearing gifts.”
“If you don’t want that gift shoved into your gut, you’ll leave me alone,” Willow growled.
He stepped inside the door, “Something’s wrong.”
“Your genius is underwhelming. Go away.”
Her sarcasm surprised him. He took another step toward her and saw that she was curled in fetal position with her back to him. Praying that it was the right decision, Chad set a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup beside her. As he did, he felt a kick to his gut and flew across the short space to the wall beside the bed.
“I told you, I don’t want anything,” she warned. “What is it?”
“Re-” Chad gasped trying to catch his breath. “Reese’s. Chocolate and peanut butter. Good. Eat.”
“You risked bodily harm for chocolate and butter?” Are you crazy?”
Chad slid along the floor, out of range of her foot, and slipped a tentative hand to her back patting it awkwardly from his odd angle. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m ticked.” She kicked but missed.
“I noticed. What’d I do?”
“Nothing.”
The word hung over the room like a swinging axe over the cord that held—what? Each second that passed seemed to increase the tension until Chad couldn’t stand it any longer. He stood, ready for her foot this time and caught it mid swing. “I’m not your enemy, Willow.”
“But you’re here—safe.”
Oh why did that school have to flood today? he groaned inwardly. I need Lily!
“That may be true, but don’t take it out on me. Let it out on me if you need, but I’m not your whipping post.” He prayed firmness is what she needed, because the tenderness that would have worked with Cheri had already failed. “What’s going on?”
Past Forward Volume 1 Page 36
