Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 3

by Chautona Havig

  “We’ve booked Argosy Junction for the wedding.”

  Willow’s head snapped up. “The people that you got me tickets to?”

  “Yes. I just decided to see how much it’d be and when I found out, I realized if we all chipped in, it’d be completely affordable. I thought it’d help with the gift situation too.”

  “Mom—” Chad choked. “You didn’t have—”

  “Well, I assumed there wouldn’t be a rehearsal dinner, so really, you’re saving us so much money that I felt guilty not even trying. They’re very down-to-earth people.”

  Willow sighed. “That is almost the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. When Chad took me to that concert…”

  “Oh yeah. That reminds me,” Chad interjected randomly. “Wes Hartfield called. He wants to do engagement pictures before the middle of April. He said, and I quote, ‘If you aren’t done by tax day, I’m taking pics of you two with manure on your boots and straw in your hair for all I care.’“

  “Pictures it is then. Find out your schedule then let me know.”

  Marianne asked quietly, “Would you take some at the church there?”

  “Definitely, Mom. We’ll probably go several places.”

  Choking back emotion that Willow didn’t understand, Marianne took the discussion in an entirely new direction. “So what about dresses for Cheri and Aggie’s girls?”

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how we’re going to make that all work out; I also don’t know what to feed everyone.”

  “Chicken—”

  “No mom. I’m not dealing with a bunch of raw chicken and besides, with hers so nearby, it’ll be too close to home for most people. Let’s do something safe like pizza.”

  “No pizza. I’ll call Maître D’ and ask if we can come down on Friday and talk to them,” Marianne assured them. Winking at Willow, she added, “And I’ll make sure they know, no chicken.”

  Chad asked the question Marianne wanted to hear most. “Will we write our own vows or go traditional?”

  “Whatever Pastor Allen is comfortable with is fine with me.”

  “Sounds good. Mom said no rehearsal. Think that’ll work?”

  “Rehearse what? How hard is it to say ‘I do?’”

  “Well,” Marianne explained, “it’s more about showing everyone who comes in when and where, the order of things, if someone will sing or pray over the couple, the vows, the kiss—”

  Willow’s face drained. “Like at Aggie’s wedding?”

  “Well, yes!”

  Chad grinned at Willow’s discomfiture. “There’s always the age old, ‘You may kiss the bride.’”

  “I—but—”

  While Chad teased and grinned, Marianne frowned. Willow seemed truly distraught over the idea, which made Marianne concerned. “Honey, is kissing your husband really that terrifying or distasteful?”

  “Mom, she’s been daydreaming about that kiss in North and South for weeks. She’s not averse to kissing anymore, I assure you.”

  “How would you know?”

  Chad and Marianne stared slack-jawed at Willow’s irritated expression. “Well—”

  “I won’t do it.”

  Patience at an all-time low, Marianne took a breath and tried to understand. “Why not, Willow? It is one thing that people look forward to so much. Seeing that first—”

  “I’m not sharing my first kiss with two hundred people I hardly know,” she insisted stubbornly.

  “Chad!”

  “What, Mom? What did I do now?”

  Marianne’s laughter erupted unexpectedly. “I don’t believe this. I’ve been waiting for something like this—some part of the wedding where Willow says, ‘That’s it, I’ve had it, I’m not doing this, and no one can make me.’ I really don’t blame her either. It’s like going to Africa and joining a tribe and suddenly you have to be willing to drink fresh cow blood and dance topless in front of men or something. She’s done very well to try to adapt. But this—”

  Marianne wheezed as her mirth became nearly uncontrollable. Chad and Willow exchanged confused but amused glances but behind Willow’s twinkling eyes was a hint of stubbornness he’d seen before. “I don’t understand. Why is Willow being Willow so funny?”

  “I thought—” she panted and fought to catch her breath. “I thought she would refuse to kiss you all together. I didn’t expect to hear her complaining about how she hasn’t been kissed yet!”

  “That wasn’t a complaint, Mom.” A glance at Willow took some of the confidence from his voice. “Was it?”

  “You keep telling me, ‘I am a man’ like it’s the answer to everything I can’t understand. Well hear this one. I am a woman. A real live, walking talking, terrified-of-what-is-to-come woman. Libby told me last week that I was ‘still asleep,’ but you know, I can’t sleep forever, and it seems like everyone is either trying to wake me up with ice water or drug me into an indefinite stupor.”

  “You want me to kiss you?” Chad spoke as though he’d forgotten his mother was in the room.

  “Absolutely not. I’ve got more important things on my mind right now. Like dresses, and menus, and gifts for Cheri and Christopher…” she thumbed through a list of things from one of the bridal magazines and continued with things they all knew weren’t applicable, “passports, gyn-e-co-logical, no that’s not right…”

  “I get it. I get it.” Ignoring their maternal audience, Chad leaned across the table, reached for her hand, and smiled. “I promise you. You won’t share your first or second kiss with anyone but me.” He paused. “Well, and maybe a few chickens, a goat, or a sheep or two.”

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Sniffling, Willow crawled in a sleepy stupor from her covers, down the hall, and into Chad’s room. His occasional snores didn’t pierce her dream-like consciousness nor did he waken when she crawled under his covers, curled up under his arm, and continued sleeping as though she hadn’t moved. Seconds passed. Minutes. The clock downstairs struck the hour and still, with one arm curled around her, they slept.

  Chad dreamed of lavender fields and satin dresses with a face he couldn’t visualize in the distance of his subconscious mind. A shudder rippled over something beneath his arm and instinctively he wrapped his arms tighter around it protectively.

  One eye opened warily, and the sight of Willow’s hair forced open the other eye. He started to move away, but she rolled over, facing him, and curled her head into the crook of her arm whimpering, “Mother.”

  Rubbing her back, he tried to wake her. “Willow.” His whisper was anything but quiet, yet she still slumbered. He gently shook her shoulder, but the wince on her face and the agitation in her spirit hurt him. He couldn’t bring himself to force her awake like that.

  He lay praying, for several minutes, torn between the nearly overwhelming desire to hold her through her nightmares and forget how bad it looked and the realization that it’d only be harder for him in the future if he did. Never had he been so murderously furious at Solari than at that moment.

  He prayed. For several minutes, occasionally brushing her hair away from her face and amazed at how young she looked while sleeping, he laid praying and contemplating how to best extricate himself without causing Willow any more pain. His cell phone flashed signaling a text message waiting, and it gave him an idea.

  He grabbed the phone, dialed the house number, and waited. Christopher’s groggy voice answered nervously. “Yes?”

  “Dad, it’s me,” he whispered loudly enough to carry down the hall and into his father’s room without the cell phone.

  “What is it? Did you have to go in last night?”

  “No, I’m in my room. I need help.”

  Christopher sat up in bed waving his wife back under the covers and grabbed his robe. Stuffing his feet in his slippers, he padded down the hallway confused as to why he was talking on a cell phone to his son twelve feet away. The sight of Willow in his son’s bed curled against him answered the question.

  “
Do you—”

  “Shh!” Chad’s order would have been comical had the situation not been what Christopher considered to be very serious.

  “Mind telling me—” he continued in a quieter tone, “what on earth she is doing in your bed!”

  “I don’t know. I just woke up and she was here. I tried to wake her up, but she whimpers and calls out for her mother. It’s heartbreaking.”

  “You can’t just let her sleep there. Not even—”

  “Dad, trust me I know!” The look in Chad’s eyes told Christopher just how difficult this was for his son.

  “So what am I here for?”

  “Ideas. I need some fast. Preferably—” Willow stirred in his arms, rolled over once more and fitted her back perfectly against Chad’s chest before her rhythmic breathing continued as though uninterrupted. Chad groaned. “—something that doesn’t wake her up and embarrass her.”

  “Carry her to her room?”

  “I don’t know. Somehow I think she’d just come back.”

  “Don’t be here. Go sleep in Cheri’s bed.” Christopher was growing irritated. Chad was being overly accommodating, and he wondered if it wasn’t due to a desire to keep things exactly as they were.

  Chad’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea. Can you go get that big long dancing doll that hangs in Cheri’s corner? I’ll warm it up and wedge it between us before I get out.”

  “Son, you have issues.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  Willow stretched yawning. The bed was more comfortable than she’d remembered. Her eyes opened and she screamed. Chad heard her from the den where he conferred with his parents and raced upstairs. She sat with knees against her chest in the middle of his bed, staring horrified at the doll lying beside her.

  “How did I get here?”

  Stuffing his hands awkwardly in his pockets, Chad tried to appear nonchalant. “You crawled into bed with me sometime around three.”

  “I did what!” Mortified, Willow pressed her forehead to her knees and tried to remember her dreams.

  “I think you had a nightmare. You were whimpering—calling for your mother. I didn’t know how to help you.”

  “I can’t believe I—”

  “Well, I couldn’t stay there of course, so I let you curl up with Ginger.”

  “Ginger?”

  Chad pointed to the doll. “Cheri named her after Ginger Rogers.” He still hadn’t moved. The sight of her sitting tousle-headed in the middle of his bed was nearly as difficult as waking up next to her. “You ok now?”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  This snapped Chad out of his wanted but unwelcome memory. “Of course not. Come here.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she sprang from the covers, wrapping her arms around him as she did. “Morning.”

  His deep chuckle, the one she’d grown to love, made her smile. “Morning, Willow Annie.

  “Annie?” She shook her head. “It’s Anne.”

  “So I like Annie in the morning. Sue me. You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  All through breakfast and the marmalade process, the women teased Willow and Chad, good-naturedly, trying to calm highly charged air that hovered over the house. Chad left to buy more boxes of lemons and everything calmed. “I think he needed to leave earlier.”

  “What?” Willow glanced at the empty doorway almost sadly.

  “Didn’t you feel it? All the tension is gone.”

  “Well if you guys weren’t constantly talking about my most embarrassing—” She paused. A sudden feeling washed over her—one she didn’t recognize ever feeling before but one she liked. Security, tenderness, and something indescribable hovered over a vague memory.

  “What?” Cheri noticed the change in Willow’s demeanor.

  “I don’t know. It’s just—I think I remember what it felt like to be asleep with Chad there. It felt—safe.”

  “Well, duh! My brother is a cop! You’d better feel safe in his bed!” Cheri blushed. “Wait— that came out wrong.”

  “Nice one, Cheri,” Marianne commented dryly.

  “Well!”

  Willow’s face grew thoughtful. “I was so glad we’d decided on separate rooms. I hated sharing a bed with Mother. I thought it’d be the same, but it was comfortable, I think. My memory, what little that I have, says it was definitely comfortable. Maybe we can share a room. We don’t have to—”

  “Do not do that to my son,” Marianne said with an edge to her tone. “It’s cruel. Don’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  Cheri disappeared from the room. Willow and Marianne hardly noticed as she rinsed her hands, dried them, and slipped into the den, pulling the pocket doors closed behind her. Her mother’s face had been enough. This was going to get dicey and, Cheri didn’t want to be involved.

  Marianne heard the doors shut and realized what her daughter expected. “You can’t ask my son to sleep in your bed, hold you through your painful dreams, but somehow keep his own needs and desires stuffed away in a trunk somewhere inside him until you’re willing to unlock it.”

  “I’m lost.”

  “That’s clear.” The disappointed angst in Marianne’s voice was unmistakable.

  Willow’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what I did to upset you, Marianne, but I’m sorry. I’d never—”

  Chad’s mother felt like a heel. The girl had no idea what her warped mindset would do to Chad. She also realized that had she known, she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him, and at this point, Chad could handle almost anything but the loss of that marriage. “Willow honey, you’re just a little naïve sometimes.”

  “I know that. Chad’s always teasing me.”

  “Well this time your naiveté is going to hurt my son. Daily. I can’t keep my mouth shut this time.”

  “This time?”

  “Let’s sit down,” Marianne said rinsing her own hands and tugging on Willow’s sleeve as she led her to the couches in the living room. “We need to talk.”

  Willow listened, eyes wide and a myriad of emotions running through her mind as Marianne explained the one side of men and marriage that Willow had so studiously avoided. Knowing clinical information and vile misuses of that had so warped her thinking that she’d never been able to comprehend that there were people who truly looked forward to a more intimate side of marriage. Of course, her mind knew it. If she thought about it she understood that books and movies, and even her friends and Chad’s family embraced an attitude that she knew instinctively was healthier than her own.

  “Am I irreparable? Why am I so dead—”

  “You’re not. You are not dead to this. I think when you feel the same emotions any woman would feel, you translate them as fear and flee them. It’s been programmed into you for so long that this is something to avoid and reject that you don’t let yourself relax and examine it.”

  “Why do I have a feeling,” Willow began nervously, “that you are going to try to convince me to change my mind?”

  “I am challenging you, Willow. I am challenging you to trust my son. Trust the Lord. Read Song of Solomon and Corinthians. Marriage isn’t supposed to be about camaraderie alone. But,” she continued with a trace of her earlier edge still hovering near her words, “do not put my son in a position to have to suffer because he loves you. I’ve always said I wouldn’t be an interfering mother-in-law, but I will step in if that happens.”

  Willow’s head hung dejectedly. “Maybe this marriage thing was a bad idea. I don’t know, I—”

  “If you break my son’s heart because of your lack of trust in him and the Lord, I’ll know you weren’t the young woman I thought you were. Don’t be selfish. My son is giving so much. Give him something to take now and then.”

  They sat ruminating for several minutes before Willow glanced up at Marianne, embarrassed but curious. “Truly painful?”

  “Physical torture, honey. Don’t.”

  “Wow.”

  As Chad returned to F
airbury, he relived his conversation with Cheri.

  “Mom really let her have it.”

  The anger welled in his heart as he heard of his mother’s rebuke. Willow didn’t know. How was she supposed to know? He’d made his choice, it was his to make, and his mother had no right to interfere. “I can’t believe Mom—”

  “They talked for a long time. I don’t know what she said exactly, but Willow and she seemed fine once it was over.”

  “That probably explains Willow’s distance though. She seemed afraid to talk to me.”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Cheri argued. “I think she’s still processing.”

  “What did she say exactly that made mom get so upset?”

  Cheri hadn’t planned to tell him. Why put him through the memory? However, one look at his face and she couldn’t keep quiet. “She remembered how it felt sleeping with you—well not sleeping with you but—”

  “Yeah, I get it. Go on.”

  Cheri blushed as she stumbled over her faux pas. “Anyway, she liked it. She said something about sharing a room and just skipping the—”

  His laughter surprised her. The longer he laughed, the harder it grew until he clutched his sides and tears ran down his face. “Oh that’s rich. Poor mom. Poor Willow.”

  Cheri stood staring at him for several seconds and shook her head. “Whatever. I’m just glad you’re not mad at them anymore.”

  Now, alone in his truck, Chad smiled again. “I can’t believe it was that easy,” he murmured to himself.

  As he sped toward Fairbury, Chad planned. He’d have to be careful— treat her exactly as he always had. He’d be warm, affectionate, and in the days leading up to their wedding, he’d add in that kiss. She’d grown impatient for it, but he wasn’t going to make it too easy. Where was the fun in that?

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Two hundred fifty sparkling mini jars of lemon marmalade later, the Tesdall women collapsed on the couch, exhausted. Willow, on the other hand, decided to take a trip into the city and purchase fabric for Cheri and the little girl’s dresses. Armed with a list of fabric stores in the safest areas of the city, she took the bus to Rockland and hailed a cab. As if she’d taken a few steps backward, the towering buildings and the strange ways the cabs zipped in and out of traffic felt stifling again. Determined to overcome it, she rode to the first store and eagerly stepped inside.