Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  “I wasn’t there to seek her opinion, Caleb,” she countered, her voice beginning to rise. “I was simply there to find out if there was any sort of Amish rule against it.”

  “But why?” he volleyed back. “Why would you even let your mind go there? Especially after what happened to your family?”

  “My mind is there because of what happened to my family—because I failed them in ways I know Lydia won’t.”

  He held up his hands. “Did you not hear what I said last night? How it was an exact match of what you said to me? The accident that killed your family was not your fault, Dani. Please! Giving up your baby because of it is just . . . wrong. And-and crazy.”

  “You think it’s crazy for me to want this child to have a mother like Lydia? A mother who lets her kids be kids? Who enjoys the little moments with them?”

  “No, of course not. But I think it’s crazy you don’t see that you did the same things with your own kids.”

  It was her turn to stare. “You never saw me with my kids, Caleb. You know nothing.”

  “I didn’t see you with them, no. But I’ve listened, and I’ve heard.”

  “What are you talking about?” she hissed.

  “I’m talking about a mom who made her children’s birthdays beyond special. I’m talking about a mom who clearly modeled the notion of inclusion if her daughter couldn’t imagine not inviting the bad seed of the kindergarten class to her birthday party. I’m talking about a mom who clearly instilled such a gentleness in her son that a stray cat was able to pick it up. I’m talking about a mom who not only had the foresight to learn CPR before her first child was born, but to make sure she was current every few years, as well. I’m talking about that mom, Dani. I’m talking about you.”

  “That’s what?” she spat. “Four stories?”

  “It’s the only four stories you’ve shared.”

  “Four stories doesn’t make you an expert on what kind of mother—what kind of person—I was.”

  “Then share more. Tell me about Maggie, about Spencer, about Ava, about your husband, about your mom. It’ll do you good. Just like it did for Nettie in the barn the other day.”

  She raised his step forward with her own three steps back. “I-I can’t. It hurts too much. They’re gone. And those moments are gone.”

  “Not when you share them with someone, they’re not. That’s why, the four times that you have, you’ve smiled real smiles every single time, Dani. The kind that go from here”—he moved his finger from his lips to his eyes—“straight to here. ”

  “Caleb, please. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His eyes darkened. “You don’t think I’ve known grief?”

  “I’m not saying that; I’m just—”

  “You know about Rose. But what you don’t know about is my fiancée, Sheila.”

  “Your fiancée?”

  Again, he cupped his mouth, his gaze fixing on a point far beyond Dani. “I met her when I was out on a call as an EMT. Her friend was sick. Saw her again a few weeks later. We began dating and, about a year later, I asked her to marry me.” He shook his head at the memory. “One minute we were planning a simple wedding in her parents’ backyard. The next she was facing down a stage four cancer diagnosis. She died a month later.”

  “Oh, Caleb. I’m so sorry. I-I had no idea.”

  He stepped forward again, his eyes back on Dani. “I’m not sharing this to make you feel bad, Dani. I’m sharing this so you see that I get it. At least a little. And like you, I closed myself up when she passed. I didn’t want to talk about her, didn’t want to think about her, didn’t want to step foot in even so much as one place where we’d been together because it all hurt too much—the reality, the memories, all of it. I was literally misery walking.

  “Then, one day, we got a call out to a park I’d been to for picnics with Sheila countless times. Not going wasn’t an option. When we got there, we realized it had been a prank, but once I wrapped my head around that and really let myself look at my surroundings, it was like a dozen little visits from Sheila. I saw her on a picnic blanket near our favorite tree . . . I saw her swinging on a rope swing . . . I saw her running ahead of me on a path . . . I heard her laugh . . . And you know what? It made me happy, Dani. Really, really happy. Because, for those moments, in that place, she was there. The time we’d spent together and the memories we’d made were still there, still”—he smacked his hand to his chest—“here. And that’s when I realized she’ll always be with me as long as I let her be with me. Hearing you say that to Nettie the other day was simply a reminder.”

  She knew he was waiting for her to say something, anything, but the noise in her head was making it difficult to think, let alone speak.

  “So tell me something. Share another story.”

  “Another story?”

  “Yes. Tell me something Ava liked. Something that made her happy.”

  Ava . . .

  Sweet, precious Ava . . .

  Wrapping her arms around her body, she stumbled backward. “I can’t. I just . . . can’t.”

  “Yes. You can. Just tell me one thing. One thing, Dani. One—”

  “She liked flowers! My little girl liked flowers!”

  “I like flowers, too!”

  Together, they turned in the direction of the excited voice and the equally excited face peeking out from a row of large sunflowers denoting the property between the farm stand and the farm itself.

  “Nettie! Does Mamm know you’re out here?” Caleb motioned to the child and dropped down to her eye level. “Because you’re not supposed to be wandering off, remember?”

  “Mamm is hanging the clothes. I asked if I could say hello and she said yes!”

  A wave from Lydia in the distance confirmed the child’s words and softened Caleb’s tone. “Okay, good. That’s important, remember?”

  “Yah!”

  Nettie stepped around her uncle and grabbed hold of Dani’s hand. “Where is your little girl?”

  She closed her eyes.

  Breathe in . . .

  Breathe out . . .

  Breathe in . . .

  “Dani’s little girl is with the Lord,” Caleb said.

  “Like Rose?”

  “That’s right, kiddo. Like Rose.”

  “What is her name?”

  Is, not was . . .

  Dani opened her eyes to the sky and swallowed. “Ava. Her name was . . . Ava.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She was three.”

  Nettie tugged Dani’s eyes down to her own. “What kind of flowers did Ava like?”

  Swallowing, she lifted her gaze to Caleb’s. Please, she mouthed. I can’t do this.

  Yes. You can, he mouthed back.

  “What kind, Miss Dani?”

  “Tulips,” she said, squeezing her eyes closed. “Ava liked tulips.”

  “What color?” Nettie asked, swinging their arms.

  “All of them—red, yellow, pink, and purple.” And just like that, she was standing at her bedroom window again, looking down at her little girl’s unexpected gift.

  “There it is . . .”

  She didn’t need Caleb to clarify what it was. She knew it was there. She could feel it just as surely as she could Nettie’s little hand inside her own.

  “I don’t know, Nettie,” Caleb teased. “Something sure is making a pretty smile on Dani’s face, don’t you think?”

  “Yah!”

  Then, “Care to let Nettie and me in on what you’re smiling about?”

  Slowly, she opened her eyes to first Caleb, and then Nettie, the curiosity on the child’s face guiding the answer from her lips. “Actually, I can show you, if you’d like. It’s at the house.”

  Chapter 26

  They were waiting for her at the kitchen table when she emerged from the bedroom, her phone clutched in her hand and powering up for only the third time in weeks.

  “You need your phone to show us?” Caleb lifted his chin from
its resting spot atop Nettie’s kapped head.

  Nodding, she glanced back at the lit screen. “Okay, good. It looks like I still have enough battery left; I’ll at least be able to show you real quick.”

  “I can charge that at my place for you if you’d like.”

  She waved off his offer. “It’s okay. There’s no one to call.”

  When the pass code screen came up, she punched in the six-digit number comprised of the kids’ birth dates and then waited for the album icon to appear across the bottom.

  “I took this picture before I came here,” she said by way of explanation.

  “I like pictures!” Nettie declared.

  Uh-oh . . .

  She looked from Nettie to the phone and, finally, to Caleb. “Is it okay to show her a picture without asking Lydia’s permission?”

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll see that it is.”

  Dani pressed her way into the album, her breath catching at the sight of some twenty thumbnail-sized photographs arranged in lines of four. All but one were moments she’d captured at Ava’s birthday party.

  Ava’s eyes filled with wonder as Jeff took off her blindfold to the ocean of balloons scattered across the sunroom floor . . .

  Celia, her neighborhood friend, pretending to swim through the balloon ocean . . .

  Dexter, her swim lesson buddy, holding his nose as he jumped onto—and popped—a part of the ocean . . .

  Ava and Spencer working together to open the treasure chest . . .

  Maggie watching Ava blow out the cake with no less joy and excitement than she’d have for her own birthday . . .

  Row by row, Dani skimmed her way through her last full day with her family, the sudden heaviness in her chest pushing her down onto the bench opposite Caleb and Nettie.

  “Dani? You okay?”

  “I want to see the surprise, Dani!”

  “Nettie, shhhh . . .” Caleb whispered.

  “But she said she wanted to show us something.”

  “Nettie—”

  Willing her gaze down to the last thumbnail in the last row, she tapped it into full screen view and pulled it to her chest. “Last fall,” she said, her voice quiet, raspy, “Ava and I decided to plant a tulip garden in the backyard. I thought it would be something fun to do together, and since she loved flowers so much she was all excited.

  “We made a bit of an event out of it by stopping at the hardware store the day before and getting our bulbs, some dirt, a pair of gardening gloves for her and for me, and two shovels—one for me and a kiddy one for her. The next afternoon, when Maggie was off at school and Spencer had gone to a friend’s house after half-day kindergarten, we got to work. We dug, and we planted, and we watered. After a while, I had to go inside to check something real quick, and when I came back out all of the bulbs that were left when I went inside not more than two minutes earlier were gone. When I asked Ava what happened to them, she pointed at the patch of dirt she’d been working in and told me she’d planted them all. Seeing as how it was time to pick up the kids so I could get Maggie to her scout meeting in time, I just let it go. I figured, come spring, there’d be a dozen or so tulips in one confined area and a lot of emptiness everywhere else. No big deal.”

  Caleb grinned. “That’s not what you got, is it?”

  Glancing down at the phone still clutched to her chest, she shook her head. “Later on, during the car ride to pick up the kids, Ava told me she made a flower surprise for me. Since I was just pulling into the car pool line and there were kids walking everywhere, I didn’t pay it much mind. Until one morning . . . after the—”

  She stopped, slowed her breathing to a more manageable level, and made herself keep going. “I heard this little bird chirping away outside my bedroom window. I almost ignored it the way I ignored everything else those first few weeks, but I didn’t. I walked over to the window, peeked outside, and I saw this.”

  Pulling the phone away from her body, she looked down at the picture, felt the instant smile it brought to her lips, and then turned it so Caleb and Nettie could see.

  “That’s a smiley face!” Nettie said, clapping her hands together.

  Caleb’s laughter filled the space between them. “Yes, yes it is. The circle of pink tulips for the face, the two yellow tulips for eyes, the one yellow tulip for the nose, and the four yellow tulips in a curve for the smile . . . Wow. I’d say Ava very definitely made a flower surprise for Mommy.”

  “She sure did, didn’t she?” Dani whispered, smiling at Caleb through tear-dappled lashes.

  “Who is Spencer and Maggie?” Nettie asked, peeking around the camera.

  She pulled the phone back, exited out of the picture of Ava’s tulip surprise, and scrolled through her album until she came to a picture of her children—together—hugging on the front step as the last of Ava’s birthday guests pulled out of the driveway. Her hand shaking, she turned the screen back into Caleb and Nettie’s view. “Spencer was—is my son. And Maggie is my daughter.”

  “Are they with Ava and Rose, too?”

  Caleb tightened his arms around his niece. “Yes, Nettie, they are.”

  “Rose has a lot of friends in heaven!”

  “She does, indeed, Nettie. She does, indeed.” He looked from the photo to Dani, his smile tender. “They’re beautiful, Dani.”

  Unable to speak, Dani hurried a nod instead, and pulled the phone back against her chest.

  “Did Spencer and Maggie give you a surprise we can see?” Nettie asked, wiggling off her uncle’s lap and onto the bench beside him, her eyes wide with hope. “I like to see surprises!”

  “You mean like the flowers?” she asked.

  “Yah. Something I can see!”

  Slowly, with Nettie’s words playing in her head, Dani pulled the phone away, looked down at the picture of her children, and then set it down on the table next to the pile of balled-up paper she’d still yet to clear away. “No I don’t—Wait !” She sat up tall, swung her legs over the bench, and stood. “I do have things I can show you from them.”

  “With stories?” Nettie asked.

  She nodded—once, twice—and then disappeared into her room, her heart leading the way for her feet. When she reached the wall to the right of the dresser, she carefully peeled Maggie’s picture from the wall and carried it out to the kitchen.

  Again, she sat at the table, and again held the memory to her chest as she set the scene. “My Maggie, at heart, was a quiet little thing. It’s not that she minded people being around—because she didn’t—but she liked to observe, often giggling off in a corner about something funny her brother and his friends were doing on the other side of the room. She was also a girly girl in every sense of the word. She loved dolls, playing house, wearing pretty bows in her hair, that sort of thing. She loved books—and I mean loved books. She’d read every chance she could. She loved looking out at the stars and making”—her voice faltered—“wishes.”

  “What’s that say?” Nettie asked, pointing Dani’s attention back down to the paper pressed against her chest.

  “It doesn’t say anything. It’s a picture Maggie drew of us baking cookies together. See?” Dani set the paper on the table in front of Caleb and Nettie and gently, reverently, smoothed it flat. “She even drew the radio in the background with music notes coming out of it, see?”

  At Caleb’s nod, she added, “We kept it turned down really low so we wouldn’t wake Ava from her nap.”

  “I like to make cookies with Mamm!”

  She smiled, her lips trembling. “I’m sure you do.”

  “What do the words say?” Nettie pushed up onto her knees and pointed toward the drawing. “Can you read them to me?”

  Dani dropped her eyes to the drawing she really didn’t need to see to know. The table, the rolling pin, the mixing bowl, the bag of—

  “Oh ! It says flour,” she said, pointing at the rectangular bag Maggie had drawn to include the brand’s blue stripe and company logo. “Your mamm uses flour for cookie
s, too.”

  “Not those words, Dani. The other words.”

  This time she let her eyes lead her around the drawing, continuing from where her memory had left off. Maggie grinning, the can of—

  “Oh. That says icing. See?” She moved her finger from the icing can to the pile of decorated cookies on the counter behind Maggie’s drawing of Dani. “We decorated the cookies with icing and sprinkles.”

  Nettie listened closely only to shake her head when Dani finished. “The other words. The ones back there.”

  She followed Nettie’s slowly inching finger along its path toward the corner of the paper and flipped it over, her eyes coming to rest on seven lightly penciled words she’d failed to notice until that moment—seven words Caleb read aloud for Nettie.

  “ ‘Mommy makes the best wishes come true.’ ”

  Jamming her fist against her ensuing gasp, Dani sank forward against the table. “I-I had no idea that was there,” she whispered. “How . . . how could I not have seen that?”

  Caleb set his hand atop Dani’s and squeezed. “Because now was when you needed to see it most, that’s why.”

  “I-I . . . don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything, Dani. Just feel. Let yourself know the love Maggie felt for you when she drew that picture and wrote those words. Because whether you sat and listened to her wishes as much as you wish you had, it’s clear you’re the kind of mommy who knew them, anyway.”

  Nettie planted her elbows on the table and bookended her cheeks with her hands. “Do you have a surprise to show from your boy, too?”

  “His name is Spencer,” Caleb reminded his niece.

  Dani forced her eyes off Maggie’s carefully written words and onto the expectant face staring back at her, waiting.

  “Do you have a surprise to show from Spencer?” Nettie amended.

  “I do, actually. Wait here.” Again she headed into her room, and again she made her way toward the simple wooden dresser next to the window, her gaze seeking and finding the wooden pencil box with Spencer’s name spelled out across the top.

  She carried it back to the kitchen table and sat down, her fingers gravitating toward her son’s name as they did every night. Only this time, instead of drawing them back at the last minute as she always did, she allowed herself to trace each and every letter—letters she’d filled in with dozens of pictures she’d painstakingly shrunk, copied, cut, and glued into place.