“Sorry, you just seemed upset and…”
“I’m good. Gotta go. I’ll call when I get there. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
That was it. The door closed behind her with Aggie and Luke staring at it.
Tina says: I made it. Dad is in surgery. They had to do an emergency bypass. I’m scared.
Aggie says: We’ve been praying. How is your mom?
Tina says: A mess. His office manager is here—you know, the one who refuses to be called anything but a “secretary.”
Aggie says: Bombshell Babs?
Tina says: Yep.
Tina says: Aggie, I’m scared. He’s not saved and he’s in there with his heart in the hands of someone else who probably isn’t saved.
Aggie says: And that man’s hands are in the hands of the One who created him.
Tina says: Why isn’t that comforting?
Aggie says: Because you’re scared and fear messes up everything.
Tina says: From my internet research, I don’t think I’ll be home before New Year’s or even Valentine’s Day. You know how my dad is about illness. He takes it as a personal affront. He’ll be depressed for months and when he’s depressed, he won’t try.
Aggie says: Well, with you there, he’ll try harder. He responds to your bullying.
Tina says: Talk to me about something else. Anything. What are you doing about the ornaments?
Aggie says: We’re going to make them. I drew names and they’ll each do one for another.
Tina says: That sounds good.
Aggie says: You should rest, Tina. Talking to me about this stuff is a certain way to kill time, but he’s going to need you alert when he
comes out of it.
Tina says: You’re right. I’ll research kid ornament crafts and email them if I can’t sleep.
Aggie says: Night, Tina. Praying for you. I love you.
Tina says: I love you too.
Chapter Six
Projects
Monday, December 15th
The children chattered eagerly as they turned into Willow’s driveway. A dog stood guard at the corner of the house but did not bark. She hoped that meant that it was friendly. Her children poured out of the van, some stumbling, others racing to greet the dog. Aggie had to move fast before they disappeared into who knew what strange places.
“Whoa! Stop! Line up and don’t move.” She greeted Willow with a reassuring smile. If the look on the young woman’s face was to be believed, Willow Finley was ready to run screaming from her own home. “Can you give them the boundaries? Cans and can’ts and all that?”
Willow led the children to the barn. “You can come in and visit the animals, but you cannot go in the loft if you can’t touch the eighth rung without standing on something.”
Tavish immediately reached and stretched just barely to the eighth. “Ok, so me and up can go, but anyone shorter than me is out.”
“Right,” Willow agreed. “Now, out here,” she began as she led the children to the yard. “Don’t go in the chicken yard. Period. I don’t care if a chicken hawk eats every chicken in sight, do not open the gate.”
Aggie looked sharply at the twins. “Did you hear that? What did she say?”
“No chickies. Not at all,” Lorna echoed wisely, but a glimmer in Cari’s eye caught Aggie’s attention.
“And if I see you even touch the fence, you’ll come inside and sit on the floor with your hands in your lap.”
“Yes, Aunt Aggie,” Cari whined.
“Other than that, if you can’t see the house, you’ve gone too far. Turn around. If you see water, come back.”
Inside, Willow handed Aggie a cup of hot tea and a cherry-almond bar. “What about the dresses? What did you have in mind?”
Aggie hurried to the van, returning with two large plastic shopping bags. From within, she pulled chiffon and peach skin in several shades of pink—nearly to red. “I bought both the white chiffon to go over the pastel and the pastel chiffon. I didn’t know which looked best.”
“And a style?”
“I was thinking something like the shipoopie outfits at the end of Music Man. Well, actually, it was Vannie’s idea, but I like it.”
Willow’s blank expression sent Aggie into a frenzy of explanation, but Willow still clearly did not understand. “It’s a movie right?”
“Yeah—”
“I’ll get Chad to bring it to me. I’ll watch it. Meanwhile, why don’t you bring the oldest inside and keep the boys out until we get her bodice constructed. I’ll make the dress to fit the bodices once I know what it should look like. You’ll see.”
As they worked, Willow and Aggie forged a new, if somewhat tentative, friendship. Willow told hilarious stories of her childhood on the farm and Aggie told even funnier ones of her children and their escapades. By the time they were finished with the dress mock-ups, the awkwardness was all gone.
However, Willow asked a perfectly normal question in such a way that made Aggie wonder what she meant. “How long have you known Luke?”
“Since the end of May or first of June—somewhere in there.”
“Wow, that’s fast. Do you mind me asking why you decided to marry?”
Aggie sat in Willow’s kitchen rocking chair, held her tea warming her hands, and observed as Willow added wood to the stove, put a chicken in the oven, and all while she talked. “It was fast, I guess, but it didn’t feel fast. When you see someone almost all day every day for months, it makes you feel like you’ve known them all your life somehow.”
“I know what you mean, and I haven’t seen Chad nearly that much. I thought it was because we’d worked together so much. It’s like I woke up one day and found Mother dead, but she gave me a brother that I never knew and have always known at the same time.”
Smiling, Aggie handed Willow her empty cup. “Maybe it’s just the Sullivan men.”
“Sullivan, Tesdall… not sure what, but there are similarities to them aren’t there?”
There seemed something not quite answered in Willow’s question, but Aggie didn’t know what it was. “So did you mean you wanted to know why I want to get married or why I want to marry Luke?”
“Well, I think why you’d want to marry Luke is obvious. He’s a good man and if you want to marry, a good man is a wise choice. I just see someone my age—almost to the day Chad says—and I wonder why you want to marry at all. What about marriage appeals to you?”
“Well, I don’t know. Don’t most women desire to be a wife? Most of my friends dreamed about husbands and our weddings—most of our lives.”
“Are men like that too? Do they dream of marriage and wives and their wedding days?” Willow asked very quietly.
The whole conversation seemed strange, but Willow was obviously bothered by something. “Why do you ask? I mean, I don’t know about guys—I’ve never been a guy, but I’m pretty sure most don’t dream of their wedding day—wedding night maybe not their wedding,” Aggie teased trying to lighten the somber mood that suddenly filled the room. “I think most guys probably grow up expecting it, but I don’t know that they spend as much time dreaming of it that women do.”
“I just don’t understand. At first, I thought Mother’s experience warped her perceptions, but she had nineteen years or so with her parents. You’d think—”
“I’ve never been through what your mother went through, and maybe I’m being a bit naïve, but I think there was more to her rejection of men than marriage. Luke mentioned something about her giving birth here all alone.”
“She was,” Willow agreed, whispering. “It was raining and she was afraid to walk to town for help, so she stayed alone. She was terrified.”
As delicately as possible, Aggie tried to explain that Kari’s experiences probably magnified the horror in Kari’s mind until it was blown out of proportion. “I’m not sure that your mother was anti-marriage, but rather that she’d been so deeply scarred by a man. Physically she endured the attack and then a horrific labor after
it. She had no support—no one to tell her she wasn’t crazy when she wanted to kill or maim and no one to encourage her. Labor alone is so intense— my sister used to say she couldn’t make it through labor without her husband. She said once that if he even left to use the bathroom she felt like she was going crazy.”
Willow stood and stoked the fire, her cheeks pink. “I like watching Chad’s parents. They remind me of this couple I saw in a restaurant right after Mother died. They didn’t talk much, but the way they interacted—it was… harmonious. The Tesdalls are like that.”
Aggie smiled. She thought she knew where the conversation was going and she was excited. “I know the whole family is hoping you guys will get married.”
A visible shudder washed over Willow. “I hope they keep those opinions to themselves. Chad and I have a wonderful friendship and I don’t want to lose it because all the pressure makes him think he’s giving people the wrong idea.”
Tuesday, December 16th
Aggie worked with Vannie on a Steampunk styled ornament for Tavish. It was the most pathetic thing she’d ever seen, but Vannie seemed content. That was what mattered, wasn’t it? “What if we wrap it in tinfoil first and spray with black spray paint? That might make it look less—”
“Stupid? It looks stupid. I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you said it…”
“I’m sorry. I am not very good at this stuff.”
“Hey, you’re letting me do it myself instead of doing it for me. That counts. I’ll get the aluminum foil.”
Against her better judgment, Aggie ignored the sounds of demolition and chaos around her. The twins tattled on each other and everyone else at least two dozen times. Her only response was to holler, “Keep it down to a dull roar,” or “Behave yourselves!” They ignored her, and though she knew better, she did nothing about it. Aggie knew instinctively that she’d regret turning a blind eye to the bedlam; unfortunately, she had no idea of just how much.
What she’d expected to be a forty-five minute project took nearly three hours, two trips to the hardware store, and one absolutely demolished house to complete. They called Tavish in to see the results and the delight on his face was worth the hassle. Well, worth it until she saw ribbons shredded all over the living room, heard the running water upstairs, and discovered a trail of jelly along the hallway.
Had it been the first time, she might have had a more reasonable reaction, but everything seemed to converge on her at once—the work, the failures, the loss. She had gotten used to having Tina’s eyes—and so had the children. Shaking with repressed anger and burgeoning despair, she turned and climbed the stairs, a wavering rendition of “Haven of Rest” faltering on her lips with every other step. Vannie called after her, or so she thought. She wasn’t sure, but Aggie didn’t bother to find out. It felt like the clock had turned backward and she was now back in her sister’s house in those first days when nothing she did was right.
The door to Aggie’s bedroom stood ajar just as it had in the old house in Rockland. Unlike that room, it was clean, the bed was made, and the style suited her rather than her sister or her house. Something about that seemed to buoy her spirits. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them slowly, taking in every detail that Luke had put into it for her. It was beautiful. As was the rest of her home. And now was the time to go back and face the ugly rather than run away from it.
At the bottom of the stairs, it just looked worse from all angles. Toys were scattered from the front door, down the hall, and across the living and dining rooms. The washing machine was thumping madly, a signal that someone had tried to help—again. Just as she reached it, and managed to shift the sheets equally around the agitator, a crash sounded in the kitchen followed by the utterly delightful tinkling of breaking glass.
The scratched record of her life reverberated in her mind. “Delightful sound my eye,” she muttered, racing to make sure that there would be no geysers of blood adding to the day’s nightmare.
“Aunt Aggie, we—” Vannie lowered her voice at Aggie’s appearance in the kitchen. “—have a problem.”
“I see that. Get out.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Get. Out.” A vague sense of self-recrimination told her she’d regret something later, but Aggie couldn’t concentrate. She had one thing to do—clean up four destroyed baking dishes before it became Aggigeddon in the kitchen.
“Can I help—”
“No. Just get out, Laird. Go. I do not want to see a single child’s face until I am done with this. Got that?”
“Yeah.”
Shattered glass seemed to multiply with contact to the floor. How Vannie had managed to break all four at once made no sense. The last time she had dropped a dish, it just bounced off the wood floor without even a single chip of glass, but this…
Box. She needed a box. Glass would slice through plastic trash bags, right? Of course it would. Box. Where—basement. Cleanup took twice as long as necessary; Aggie’s brain refused to cooperate. Every move she made had to be considered and decided. Four times she swept every inch of the kitchen, and each one revealed a new chunk or shard just waiting to slice open a foot in the dead of night, necessitating a trip to the clinic. Now there was no one to stay behind with the kids; there could be no leftovers.
She grabbed the mop. It took an hour to sweep and mop without any evidence of another piece of the glass. The children were ominously silent, but Aggie didn’t have the emotional strength to search them out and discover why. She finished cleaning the kitchen—desperate for one spotless room before she headed into the living room. Ribbons, wrapping paper, and tape seemed attached to every surface. Starting at one corner, she began wadding and rolling, trying to get every bit up off the floor and furniture, hoping that the result would give her some confidence that the kids could finish by picking up the toys.
Kids. She should look for them. A glance out the dining room window answered that question quickly. They stood on each side of the fence that separated her house from Murphy’s and listlessly threw snowballs back and forth. What might have pricked her heart only hours earlier, infuriated her. Did they really think they had the right to feel put out? They destroyed the house—knew better and did it anyway—and then had the audacity to get their little feelings hurt because she wanted them out of the way while she cleaned up a dangerous mess?
She grabbed another wad of wrapping paper and stuffed it into the already overflowing trash bag. A sponge scrubbed off the jelly from the walls, and two laundry baskets contained the floor mess within the space of about fifteen minutes. Work seemed to dissipate her anger. Aggie stared at the baskets, debating whether it would be a kindness to put away the toys or a bad precedent.
On her way down the stairs after putting away the first basket, the children traipsed into the house—through the front door. A mud trail led from the door to the mudroom, along with mittens, scarves, and both of the twins’ jackets. She blinked. The freshly restored room looked like a mud tornado had left a swath of destruction in its path. The walls were decorated in finger painted mud streaks—likely compliments of Ian and the twins. What had been a sticky mess less than half an hour earlier was now a dirty nightmare.
The little composure she’d managed to achieve dissolved on the floor along with the snow that had coated the children’s outerwear. She turned, without saying a word to them, and sang repeatedly under her breath, “…careful little mouth what you say. Be careful little mouth what you say. For the Father up above is looking down in tender love so be careful little mouth what you say.”
~*~*~*~
Laird burst into the house on Cygnet gasping for air. “Luke!”
A voice called from the garage. He started to run across the room, but hesitated and then removed his boots at the door. His socks slid on the floor, but he managed to make it into the garage without falling. Flinging open the garage door, he stopped at the sight of the water heater dismantled on the garage floor.
“What’s wrong?” Luke hardly glanced up from his work.
“It’s Aunt Aggie. I don’t know what happened, but she’s not right. She’s crying and won’t talk to any of us. Vannie broke some dishes and she wouldn’t even let us help clean it up.”
Indecision tumbled through Luke’s mind. He had to go. There was no doubt about that, but the inspector was due the next morning. If he went now, he might not be ready. Luke set down his tools and stood. “Come on.”
They climbed into Luke’s truck while Luke called the inspector’s office. “Hello, Mr. Farley. This is Luke Sullivan at the house on Cygnet. There’s been a potential emergency here and it means I might not have everything ready tomorrow as planned. If you think we should reschedule, that’s fine. Just give me a call. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t reschedule that appointment.”
“I can’t for this year. The inspector goes on vacation on Friday until after the first.”
“That’ll set you back another two weeks!”
“Yes.”
Laird waved his hand. “Just let me out and go back. I’ll figure out a way to calm her down. I can call Aunt Tina or—”
“No. Thank you, but I’ve got to do this. You know that.”
“It’s not your job yet. Not really. Even if it was, you can’t just come home every time Aunt Aggie has a bad day.”
Luke allowed the truck to idle at the corner while he spoke. His eyes sought understanding in Laird’s face, but it wasn’t there. “Listen. Family always has to come first. Now, sometimes that means that I can’t come home when someone needs me because I’ve got to provide for that family. Other times it means that I have to choose people over money. Today, I need to choose people.” He flipped on the blinker and turned the corner. “Now, tell me more. What happened from the time you got up this morning?”
Laird’s story didn’t seem to help much. Aggie had managed an entire house renovation, multiple injuries, and an epidemic of chicken pox. Additionally, she had endured the negativity of the sheriff’s deputy and a mother-in-law as a single woman. She could handle a bit of glass, paper, jelly, and mud.
Here We Come (Aggie's Inheritance) Page 9
