Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 5

by Chautona Havig

  He began reading, trying to make sense of the journal.

  Think I’ve just blown it. This life I’ve crafted for myself is probably gone. They’ll take her away from me. I hated him so much. Feared his father even more. I saw myself as better than they are, but am I? Not hardly. I hate going outside. I hate hearing cars out by the road. Every motor sounds like the death march of our life. I hate what I’ve done, and it’s all my fault.

  And my work has exploded exponentially. I must work faster than ever. I’ll never get everything done for winter now, but I have to. I don’t want to make it too easy on me just to order wood delivered or to turn on the electric—especially after I tore out all the baseboard heaters. I’d have to buy a room heater for every room and that’s insane. I’d have to cook in the barn and then come back in—it’s all too crazy. I need to start carrying more food back on my trips to and from town.

  None of this makes sense. I don’t even know why I’m writing it. I guess because I’m scared again. I don’t want to lose my child. I don’t want her in foster care. Should I leave a note somewhere—a note that tells people where to find my family? But then, wouldn’t that make the news? Foster care would be better than death or worse, kidnapping. Would they want her? I doubt it. But if for some reason they did, they could just kill me and take her. No one would know about it until much too late to do anything about it.

  The weight of all I’ve done crushes me. I’ve put my parents through what is probably their worst nightmare. I’ve let them believe a lie. I’ve accepted money from a criminal. I am living off the money of a man who I believe would and has murdered for his own convenience. And, now I’m guilty of more—so much more. I don’t even know what else to do. So many innocent people hurt because I was flattered that THE Steven Solari asked me out. How stupid can I be?

  The rest rambled even more, showing Kari’s fragile mental state as she talked about things that only made sense because she knew what she wrote and why. From his perspective, none of it made sense, and from the look on Willow’s face and the confusion she’d shown, she didn’t understand either. He reread a few sections, shaking his head and trying to decipher something from it all.

  “Lass, I don’t know what she’s talking about. I think she’s probably under some pretty heavy PPD right about here, and she’s seeing everything she’s done in the worst light, ignoring the fact that she made her decisions out of protection for you. Right there—” he tapped the page again, “it shows that she’s worried about her parents and is irrational.”

  “I don’t know, Chad. I don’t know how to explain it, but this means something—something horrible.”

  “Even if it does, it doesn’t affect us now. That time is gone. What we need now is for you and the lads to get well so that we don’t have to cancel on our guests. That’s what we need.”

  He couldn’t believe it worked. She stared at him as if he’d said the most brilliant thing she’d ever heard, stacked the journals, and stood. “I’m going to go take a hot shower. Can you get Iris to make me some ginger tea? I’ll drink and go to sleep. I have too much to do tomorrow and I can’t ask her to come again Thanksgiving week.”

  A bang awoke Willow sometime late that night. She glanced at the clock, but her eyes refused to focus enough to read the numbers. Engine—she glanced toward the window—lights. Chad was off to work. Must be nearly two. She’d have until six to work. Once awake, she knew she’d never go back to sleep. The only times she’d been awake all day were whenever Chad brought one of the lads up for a feeding. Tentative pressure on her chest told her it hadn’t been long since the last. How did she not remember that?

  As she stepped from the room, she hesitated. Wasteful to take another shower—oh how she wanted one, though. Two seconds after she shut the bathroom door behind her, she jerked it open again and retrieved a towel. She’d skip an optional shower someday to make up for it. It sounded too relaxing to forego.

  The longer she stood under the hot water, the better she felt. The achiness had almost completely disappeared, and though her nose had been full, the steamy air seemed to help clear it. She dressed quickly, brushed her hair, stuffed her feet into warm slippers, and hurried downstairs. The living room and kitchen woodstoves had been banked recently.

  Pies—she could make her pies now. Willow built up a good fire in the woodstove, letting it blaze for a few minutes, and then began pulling ingredients from her hoosier. As always, her heart swelled at the amazing piece of practical furniture. She’d never been more surprised than when Aggie admitted she never had put flour in the hopper.

  “Crazy girl. She could save herself so much time,” Willow muttered as she began measuring flour, salt, and lard. Her hands worked automatically, cutting the lard into the flour, mashing the teaspoons of water into it, rolling, dusting, rolling, and filling several pie pans. Cherry, apple, and of course, pumpkin. She carried the pumpkin to the summer kitchen. The mess that greeted her nearly made her dump the pan and all into the incinerator. Still, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie.

  With one eye on the clock, and shivering from the cold, she began putting everything back where it came from—everything but the journals and the gun that now sat in police custody. Judith had assured them that a cursory glance showed one basic style of print over the whole gun. “Of course, the laser might show something else, but I doubt it,” she’d assured Willow.

  That had been a relief.

  The boy had done a good job. She’d have to tell him. Only the gaping hole in the drywall hinted that anything had gone amiss. Willow stared at it for a few long seconds before she shoved the boxes of candles into the cupboard and ignored it. Chad could decide what to do about that later.

  By the time she had the room looking well, she had only twenty minutes before the pies should be done. After checking on the kitchen pies, she hurried back into the summer kitchen and dragged the turkey from the fridge. She rubbed it with butter and herbs, but there was no time to mix stuffing. Frustrated, she dashed for the house, irritating Portia with her sudden appearances and disappearances, and pulled out the fruit pies just in time.

  Satisfied, she rushed back to the barn and closed the door behind her, shivering again. The minute the pumpkin pie was done, she pulled it from the oven, set it on the top of the stove, and carried the turkey to the house. It took a couple of trips to gather ingredients, but with sage, cornbread crumbs, celery, onion, and crushed pecans, she mixed stuffing and filled the bird with it.

  Thanksgiving smells slowly filled the house. Chad arrived for his lunch break to find the hoosier covered in flour, some on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, and Willow asleep in her mother’s rocker. Smiling.

  She didn’t sneeze, even when he woke her and insisted she go back to bed. Just as he started to close their bedroom door behind him, she called out, “Chad?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can you baste the turkey and stick another log far away from it?”

  Chapter 151

  Chelsea Vernon sat in the Tesdall kitchen and watched as Willow basted a turkey in a wood-burning oven. The room, so warm and smelling so delicious she thought she could taste each scent. Her mouth salivated as turkey, bread, pies, and mashed cranberries melded together into one scent that sang of Thanksgiving. The babies crawled around Willow’s feet, but the odd fencing gave them protection from the hot stove.

  Willow’s voice startled her out of her reverie. “Ryder says you want to go to nursing school. So what about nursing interests you?”

  “I like a lot of things. I want to go into geriatric nursing. I’m really close to my grandmother, and since she’s been in the assisted living home, I’ve gotten to see what is involved. It’s so cool to listen to them talk about living stuff that I read about in school because they were there!”

  “Will you work at the place here in Fairbury when you’re done?” Willow sounded genuinely interested—unlike most people of Chelsea’s acquaintance.

  “I don’t kn
ow. There are a lot of places to work in Rockland, but it’s more expensive to live there. I could commute from home, but I’ll probably want my own place by the time I graduate. They’re adding an assisted living part to that eco-community in Ferndale. That sounds really cool. I’m totally into going green with everything possible. They even do green burials there.”

  “What is green?”

  Chelsea looked at her hostess in shock. “You know—eco-friendly.”

  Reaching down to pick up Liam, Willow moved to sit in the rocker and tried again. “Okay, what is eco-friendly?”

  “You know, like you have here—living off the grid, organic farming, small carbon footprint…”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but okay. It sounds interesting anyway.”

  Passionate about the planet, Chelsea grew animated as she tried to explain. “Oh, you know, working to keep our planet sustainable. People are destroying it with excessive waste, fossil fuels, and the abuse of chemicals and stuff. The impact on our environment is catastrophic. First they were worried about a greenhouse effect, but it’s actually worse. Scientists are seeing that the real problem is climate change. We’re shifting from over warm to over cool.”

  “But the earth has done that for centuries—millennia. I remember reading about ice ages and then warming trends that later reverted back to ice ages over hundreds or thousands of years. Why is it any different now?”

  “Because man is just trashing the place.”

  “But if the result is the same thing that has always been happening, how can you claim that the trashing of the planet is the cause of the climate change?”

  “I thought you’d be environmentally conscious. I so didn’t expect you to be an anti-environmentalist.”

  Willow stared at her guest, stunned. “Why must I be against the environment simply because I don’t understand the logic behind a climate change theory?”

  Before Chelsea could answer, Ryder and Chad came stomping into the kitchen, laughing about some football play they’d heard on the radio while working in the barn. Unknown to her guest, Willow watched, concerned, as all of the girl’s attention focused on her boyfriend the moment he entered the room. In Willow’s opinion, the relationship seemed awfully intense on Chelsea’s part.

  “Hey, dinner is almost done, why don’t you guys set the table, and we’ll be ready to eat?”

  The table conversation revolved around environmental activism, conservation, and the effects of politics on science. Though she carried her end of the conversation when her lifestyle seemed to conflict with her political views, Willow spent most of the next hour watching the interaction between Ryder and Chelsea. A nagging concern hovered in her heart, until Willow thought of a way to test her theory.

  All through the meal, she fed bits of meat, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes to the boys and waited. She argued against legislation, dipped her potato covered fork in gravy before feeding Lucas the bite, and served pie to overstuffed guests, all while biding her time. Being too obvious would ruin everything, and she knew it.

  She cleared the table, filled containers of food for Ryder to take home to eat over the weekend, did the dishes, mopped the floor even, and then went to join everyone in the living room. Chelsea, trying to be a thoughtful guest, brought a wrapped Apples to Apples game as a hostess gift and explained the rules as Willow took the boys upstairs for their naps. Though tempted to put her plan into action, she sat down and tried to throw her whole heart into choosing Charles Manson as a perfect definition for “gentle.”

  An hour later, she made hot chocolate and put homemade candy canes in each mug. From the fridge, she pulled a sprig of mistletoe and smiled. It was time. Chelsea looked restless, and if she read the girl well, their guests wouldn’t stay much longer. She wanted to test her theory before they left. Putting the tray on the coffee table, she pulled the sprig from it and dangled it tauntingly over Chad’s head. “I think we need to change our tradition just a smidge.”

  “What—”

  Before he could ask questions that made it look like there was no tradition, Willow took the sprig and hung it on the little hook over the front door. “Thanksgiving should be the first day we put up the mistletoe, not the day we put up the tree, don’t you think?”

  Swiftly, she changed the subject to Black Friday sales, shopping trips, Christmas traditions, and anything she could think of to keep Ryder and Chelsea relaxed and comfortable. When everyone had emptied their mugs, she refilled the tray and carried it to the kitchen, calling for Chad’s help once she disappeared around the corner. “I think the stove is getting low in here, and I have more bread ready to go in.”

  “We’re going to have to be going soon. Her parents expect us at seven for their dinner,” Ryder called from the living room. Chelsea’s affirmative murmur and the shuffling sounds she heard told Willow it was time. She grabbed the containers from the icebox, counted to ten, and then strolled nonchalantly into the living room.

  As she expected, Ryder and Chelsea were plastered against each other under the mistletoe. “Excuse me. Sorry. Don’t forget to take these home.”

  Embarrassment flooded Ryder and Chelsea’s faces, but Willow forced herself to act as if nothing unusual happened. She’d have words with Ryder the next afternoon. Now wasn’t the time to embarrass him any further. “Thanks, Willow. I appreciate it. No one cooks like you— especially my mom!”

  “Lass?”

  “Hmm?” Willow glanced at her pattern, eyebrows furrowed as she worked a large circle of yarn into what looked to him like a doily with arms.

  “What was up with the mistletoe this afternoon?” His wife’s constant industry was wearing off on Chad, and he’d spent his evenings for the past few weeks sanding, gluing, staining, and oiling an unusually shaped guitar that he called a renaissance guitar. Just as Willow consulted her pattern, Chad followed the instructions for adding a string to the tuning pins.

  “Well, other than the obvious excuse to break it in early…” She sent him a flirtatious glance that might have distracted a less determined man.

  “Yes, other than that…”

  “I saw something in their relationship, Chad. It scared me. I think Ryder is looking for respect and approval anywhere he can get it, and if he gets it from an adoring girl, there could be trouble.”

  “So, because you’re concerned that they might get too physical, you put up an invitation to do it in our living room?” That train of thought was illogical even for Willow’s unusual thought processes.

  “I’d rather that than the alternative?”

  “Which is?”

  “Get physical where there is no chance of getting caught and therefore the freedom to go too far.

  He had to admit, it made some sense. “Are you going to talk to him?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow while you’re at work. Iris is coming to clean and watch the boys so I can do some work in the greenhouse with him. I’m hoping maybe it’ll come up naturally.”

  “Willow, he’s not a Christian.”

  “I know that. What does that have to do with anything?” From his vantage point, it seemed that Willow had figured out her pattern and the needles flew again.

  “You can’t expect the unsaved to act saved.”

  “Hogwash.”

  Stunned, Chad’s reply was less than eloquent. “Come again?”

  “Hogwash. God expects it, why shouldn’t we?”

  “God doesn’t expect sinners to do anything but sin.”

  “Then what’s the point of hell and damnation if He expects nothing of humanity?”

  Leave it to Willow to see things from a different angle that redefined what he said. “What I meant was, it is futile to expect those who are not saved, to see the value in following the Lord’s commands for us. Those who are not washed free of sin cannot help but wallow in it.”

  “I’ll concede that point.”

  “If you need a non-religious reason to be careful, ask if she’s underage.”

>   “She is, surely! Ryder’s under age and she’s a year behind him in school.”

  Chad shook his head. “No, Willow, under the age of legal consent. It’s eighteen here. If he’s over and she’s under, he could end up on a sex offender registry for the rest of his life if her parents pressed charges.”

  “Registry?” The confusion in her eyes was only slightly less overwhelming than the stunned expression on her face.

  “If she’s not eighteen, then any sexual activity can land him before a judge.”

  “Wait. The schools can push their birth control and their ‘safe sex,’ but the kids who take that as a license to use it are only allowed to be stupid with other underage kids? If they’re intimate with their seventeen-year-old boyfriend all year, the minute he turns eighteen, they’re supposed to dump him for someone younger if they want to keep up their extra-curricular activities? That’s insane!”

  Amused, Chad listened as she tossed aside her knitting and ranted at the illogical programs that trained young people to behave in ways that would later make them criminals at the turn of a birthday. She had valid points. As an officer, he’d seen the life of a young man shattered by the very scenario she proposed. Vindictive parents didn’t try to put a kibosh on their daughter’s relationship when her boyfriend was under eighteen. They simply waited for his birthday and then had him arrested for statutory rape. On the other hand, he’d gone to school with guys who took great delight in stripping as many girls of their virginity as possible and was thankful that at least something put a stop to it.

  “It’s a flawed system, lass. I’ll give you that. However, the flaw is in the presupposition that teenagers cannot control their sexual impulses. A married man is expected to be faithful to his spouse, even if separated by months, but a teenager cannot possibly be expected to save himself for his bride. We reduce young people to animals anymore. It’s wrong.”