Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 5

by Chautona Havig

  Have I mentioned lately that you’ve made my life everything I could have ever wanted and more than I could have dreamed? Thank you.

  I love you,

  Willow

  “Lord, how many wives write their husbands a ‘quick note’ that takes up two and a half pages?”

  As he went to get his chili, Chad glanced out in the pasture to see if he could find the right cows, but either they were gone, or hiding well. He poured the bowl, grabbed a spoon, and stirred all the way into the house. By the time he sat down with a glass of “plastic milk,” his sandwich, his chili, and with Argosy Junction playing in the background, the chili had cooled perfectly.

  Idly, he reread the note, pondering what else might encourage his wife. “Come on, Lord. I need suggestions here. When you get a note like that, you want to show it was appreciated. What does she need done?”

  They’d never done anything to the kitchen—despite discussing it dozens of times. Outdated beyond anything he’d ever seen, even Willow knew it looked shabby. Those TV shows with their love of miles of granite countertops and stainless steel would cringe at the cheap laminate left over from a bad remodel and stained cast iron sink. On the brighter side, it was functional. He knew she loved her pantry. His eyes stared at the walls, wondering where they could add more counters and cabinets. Next to the stove. He frowned. That was odd, why hadn’t he—

  Chad walked to the kitchen doorway and started counting paces. He guesstimated around the couches and coffee table, and then frowned again. Opening the door to the library, he didn’t bother to count. It wasn’t possible. He’d seen cleaned out that closet—twice. It wasn’t deep enough to make up the difference. How had he not noticed it?

  Mentally comparing upstairs to down, he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. There was at least four to six unaccounted for feet between the kitchen and the library. Possibly more. The living room and dining room both had the same wall space—even if the stairs did take up some of it. The kitchen, although deeper, ran smooth along the side of the house even though the library and kitchen both should have jutted out a bit. Before he could go stare at the outside of the house, he heard the van drive into the yard and park.

  Eager to hear about the appointment, Chad jogged down the front steps, nearly slipping on a small patch of ice, and hurried to help Willow with the boys. “I’ll get him,” he insisted, taking Liam from her arms. “I hear you said Daddy today!”

  “Daa-yee”

  “And you doubted me,” Willow interjected smugly.

  “What about Lucas?”

  “Dumb as a post.”

  “I can’t believe you said that!” Chad stared at his wife, a bit stunned at the nonchalant dig at their son’s intelligence.

  “What? He doesn’t speak, therefore he’s ‘dumb’ as the proverbial ‘post,’ which obviously doesn’t speak. You act like I just said the worst thing ever.”

  “Well, people usually use that phrase to say someone is stupid.”

  Shaking her head, Willow grabbed the diaper bag and punched the appropriate button to shut the van doors. Carrying Lucas in the house, she muttered, “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how different things are than I always knew them.”

  “Speaking of which,” Chad began.

  “Can you speak of it after we get them in bed? Lily kept them up for me, but I think Lucas conked out for a bit until we hit the drive.”

  As she spoke, Willow carried her half-snoozing son upstairs, pulling off his shoes as she climbed. Settling the tyke in the crib the boys still shared, she reached for Liam, curled him beside his brother, and put on a blanket that might or might not stay depending on their level of sleepiness. They stepped out of the door, put the gate up in the bedroom, and escaped downstairs.

  “Ok, sleeping tots, check!” She winked at Chad. “Ok, so what is going to be different now?”

  “Well not going to be, I just was looking at the house today, and there’s a huge section of space there that doesn’t make sense. It’s like there is room missing.”

  “Where?”

  Chad showed her what he meant, but Willow shook her head. “That’s staircase space. Mother showed me once. There’s that closet in the library, the under the stairs storage, and then—”

  “It doesn’t add up. Look.” Chad walked her through the depth, width, and practical circumference of the room. “There has to be a minimum of six feet missing—maybe eight.”

  “Weird. I wonder if Mother knew.”

  A week later, Luke walked the perimeter of the house, the kitchen, the library, and knocked on every wall he could find. He explored the upstairs, downstairs, attic, and tried to estimate the amount of missing space. At last, he came into the kitchen, shaking off his jacket, and settled his hands on his hips. Willow, seeing he wasn’t ready to give his verdict, poured a glass of milk and handed him a pile of cookies. “Warm up, Luke.”

  “Thanks.” After his first bite, Luke asked for a piece of paper. Using a sheet of notebook paper, he sketched, using each line as if it were a foot. “Right here, it looks like there is plumbing in the cellar that doesn’t go into the kitchen. It’s close to the upstairs bathroom, but then there is plumbing here,” he pointed, “and here that would be unaccounted for. I think there’s a bathroom behind there.”

  Chad burst into the kitchen, grinning. “Did you tell her?”

  “Barely.”

  “It would take you twenty minutes to tell that many words. A bathroom, lass!”

  Luke nodded. “Either that, or a laundry room.”

  Willow folded her hands and nodded. “What’s your best guess?”

  “Bathroom. It’s so unusual for houses around here to have a bathroom on the upper floor and not the lower. Maybe the other way around, but…”

  “I think so too.” Chad seemed beside himself.

  “You want me to have to clean more toilets?”

  “Toilet, Willow. Just one more. Think about potty training kids! No rushing them upstairs to do their business when they had to go five minutes ago. No more waddling up there when you’re the size—” He swallowed hard. That wasn’t likely to happen at all. “Sorry…”

  “No, I get your point. If it’s there, it’s being wasted, so we should do it, I guess. If it’s not, I don’t want to invest in it for nothing.”

  “It’s there. We just don’t know what ‘it’ is for sure. Washing in the house would be nice for you though, wouldn’t it?” Luke sounded almost apologetic for finding missing space.

  “Do you think there’s room for a shower?”

  “Willow, are you ok?”

  Distress filled her eyes and masked her face, making her look utterly distraught. “Mother had to know. She gutted this place. Why—”

  “Maybe it was more than she could handle. Maybe she just walled it up so she didn’t have to deal with it.” Chad’s suggestions didn’t help.

  “Maybe,” Luke added, a warning tone in his voice, “this is a bit overwhelming for your wife, so I should go.”

  Later that night, Chad came to bed late after hours of playing with layout ideas for a new bathroom. Willow’s journal lay on the floor near the side of her bed, the pen nowhere in sight. She’d fallen asleep while writing and eventually pushed the book off the bed.

  February—

  It’s only two days until Valentine’s Day. I heard our new baby’s heartbeat, and if old wives’ tales are to be believed, it’s that of a girl. We’ll see about that. I don’t put much stock in them, but Dr. Kline says some of his patients insist that it was true for them. I think the next ten weeks are going to crawl past until I’m ready to go crazy.

  I think we’re going to put the child in Mother’s room. I thought about trying to move the craft things into her room and revamp it for another nursery, but that’s just ridiculous. If this is a girl, it’ll be extra special that she has Mother’s room, or perhaps we should move into there and let her have our room.

  Speaking of rooms, Chad and Luke have
determined that there was a room with plumbing next to the kitchen once. Based upon Luke’s drawings, I can’t argue with his conclusions, but I’m confused and to be honest, a little hurt. Mother had to know about it. Even if she didn’t want to deal with it, she could have at least told me when I asked. Was it too much work? Was she too exhausted from everything else to finish it so she just walled it up? Is there something horrible inside that we don’t want to find? I don’t know the answer to any of my questions and truthfully, I am beginning not to want to. It feels like the day we found those horrible journals and the gun all over again. I just wish Chad had never noticed the discrepancy in size.

  I did the math on the beef cows. We made a profit. I am stunned, to tell the truth. With all we spent getting them, feeding them, the two vet visits divided by their portion, I was sure we’d barely break even. I’m not sure it’s enough of a profit to be worth it for just a few animals, but keeping a dozen rotating, I think it’ll work. Chad says we’ll raise the price per pound another quarter, and it’ll yield another hundred to hundred and fifty dollars per animal of pure profit without burdening the average purchaser. If they buy half the cow, they don’t pay the extra. I guess that makes sense because then we don’t have to pay to freeze any of it. He also wants us to cook one steak out of each animal we butcher so we can ensure the meat is good for each animal. I’ve got that on a list in my butchering journal. I just think he wants an excuse to eat more steak. Why he’d need one, I don’t know, but there you have it. Usually we won’t be butchering in winter—mostly fall. A few just weren’t quite plump enough for good marbling, or so Clyde told us.

  I have a sinking feeling that my kitchen is going to get a big overhaul when Chad starts messing with the bathroom idea. I should be happy, I know, but it means the electricity is on, the noise is atrocious, and I’ll have to keep the boys out of the way just in time for a new baby. I really don’t want to think about it, but Chad has always hated that there’s only one bathroom. He gives up so much for me, I can suffer through the mess of one for him, right?

  Then again, the idea of a new kitchen—what an amazing thing. We could put cabinets all the way to the ceiling and have shelves on the wall next to the stove. I could have pretty colors. I’ve always hated how ugly the kitchen is. Maybe Chad could put butcher block counters in there and maybe two sinks!

  Oh, Adric’s Jael is working on arranging Mother’s journals for publishing. She found a way to do it so that we don’t have to order a bunch at a time and so we can keep them in color. She has someone she knows in the publishing business that she wants to try to get to publish a series of them, but she says we should try to see how many sell first to demonstrate interest. There’s a women’s day thing coming up where several ladies from area churches are sharing how they do what they do best, and Lily asked me to consider showing Mother’s and my journals to the ladies and talk about what they mean to us. Jael says we could probably sell copies there.

  I don’t know if I want to make a habit out of teaching journaling classes. I think that sounds kind of silly. However, there’s something about this idea that won’t go away. Every time I pray about how to turn it down, I find myself asking the Lord for wisdom in the best way to explain just how amazing it is to continue a life Mother started for me because she laid it out there.

  The boys are quiet now. Chad is downstairs with his Bible, praying for our family and the best decisions he has to make for it. I am blessed to have such a man. He’ll be down there until he feels confident of an answer—even if that answer is “Later.” That’s just who he is. Meanwhile, those boys will be awake before I’ve got the biscuits going so I should sleep. Maybe I’ll reread this. How will it sound to my children twenty years from now? Will they be as blessed by the unimportant things I write about now as I am about Mother’s little insights into our life, or will they think it’s silly? I wonder.

  Chad’s heart squeezed as he read her words about him praying. First, he’d spent the last half hour or more of that time playing around with layouts when she thought he was praying. It felt deceptive. However, he had spent the first hour or so after Willow went to bed praying for wisdom. He hadn’t realized it, but that’s exactly what he’d seen from his father so many times. He’d come downstairs for a drink of water and find his father asleep in a chair, the Bible over his chest, and the most serene look on the man’s sleeping face. It was one of the most comforting things he’d ever seen as a child. He’d have to thank his father for the example. Christopher Tesdall’s faithful prayers and attention to God’s Word had paved the path for his children to follow. It was a heritage, much like Willow’s mother’s journals. He needed to make sure it was preserved for his children.

  Chapter 15 6

  After much deliberation, Luke and Chad decided that the dining room wall, behind the chaise, was the most logical place for a doorway to what they assumed was a small bathroom. Measurement wise, Luke was sure it was a full sized bathroom, but Willow disagreed. Compared to the upstairs room, it wasn’t possible to fit everything in what looked like too small of a space.

  While Luke measured, tapped on walls, and made an educated guess as to the original doorframe, Willow ran her hands over the wall and pointed out to her son the hand painted stripes and flowers that she and her mother had painted so many years earlier. “See, Liam? Those flowers were the first things I painted in this house. Mother painted the stripes, and I painted the vines. Then, when she had all those little dots painted, I came back and did the flowers.”

  “We’ll be careful, lass. We will. Luke won’t tear up anything he doesn’t have to.”

  “Chad’s right. Your mother walled this up correctly, but I can still find where the studs are off. Listen.” Luke tapped the wall from the smaller end of the staircase over to where he thought the door was, making note of each solid thud where he thought a stud would be. “The studs are exactly sixteen inches apart until here. Then there are these four in a row and they’re much closer together. I think that’s the door frame and two studs to fill in the hole—a bit of overkill, but it’s my guess.”

  “I know,” Willow assured them. “I just can’t watch. Liam and I are going to go see if Ryder has picked out the heirloom house.” She glanced back. “Just don’t let Lucas get whacked in the head.”

  Luke gave Chad an amused smile and started to cut a hole in the wall. “She is so matter-of-fact about everything, isn’t she?”

  “That’s Willow. I always think I’ll get used to her quirks, but I never do.”

  “That’s probably half of her charm, eh?” Luke pulled an eight by eight chunk of drywall out of the wall. Reaching in, he began cutting on the other side of the wall. “What is the heirloom house?”

  “Ryder has done such a good job propagating heirloom seeds that Willow is letting him built a new greenhouse so that they aren’t mixing pollination or whatever it is that plants do.”

  “Aaah. That makes sense. Are you going to have separate gardens too?” Luke popped another section out from the other side of the wall and withdrew his hand. After peeking through the holes, he looked at Chad with a grin. “This is it. I see a sink and where a window used to be. It’s just sided right over without moving the window or anything.”

  “Well, cut out the rest of that section. Can we get through there?”

  Luke shook his head. “There’s only maybe ten inches. It’d be a rough squeeze. Let’s see what we find at the top.”

  While Chad blew raspberries on his son’s belly, Luke sawed the entire section from the wall. “Hey, grab me that Phillip’s screwdriver, will ya?”

  Chad grabbed it from his cousin’s tool belt on the floor. “If you had that thing on—”

  “Then I’d certainly be unable to squeeze through. It looks like Kari Finley added these boards with L-brackets.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “That woman,” Luke began as he removed the screws that held the board in place, “was obviously a very sensible woman. Aggie has help
ed with all kinds of renovations, but I doubt she’d think of L-brackets.” He started to push on the board, but then realized there were screws in the stud holding the drywall to it. Taking his knife, he cut the drywall across the stud and then used his saw to go back down the other side of it. “Here goes nothing.” Luke kicked and the stud jerked out of place.

  “Yay! Look, Lucas! Uncle Luke did it!”

  “Do you think we’re going to confuse our kids by using uncle when we’re not brothers?”

  “That is exactly what Willow asked,” Chad said, shaking his head. “But what else do we do? First names seem a bit too casual, ‘Cousin Luke’ seems too formal, and what else is there?”

  “That’s what Mom says, but it still seems weird.” With a final jerk, Luke pulled the board from the opening and carried it out to the front porch. While he was gone, Luke peeked in the hole, unsure what kind of critters he’d find. Willow would happily pulverize him if he took her son in a vermin or critter infested room.

  “Looks like you were right. Willow owes you cherry almond bars. I see a tub, sink, toilet, and even a small cupboard.”

  “Aren’t you going in?” Luke stopped next to Chad expectantly.

  Chad passed his son over to Luke and stepped inside the room. A layer of dirt covered everything. Mold grew around the window, and the musty stench revolted him. The toilet had no water, the sink faucet, when he turned the handle, didn’t work. He pushed the shower curtain aside, coughing at the dust it stirred, and frowned. “Hey, Luke. Can you put Lucas in the playpen and come look at this?”

  As he stepped through the door, Luke frowned. “Why is there concrete in the tub?”

  “That’s what I wondered. I didn’t know if it really was or not.”

  He ran his hand lightly over the rough surface of unsmoothed concrete. “I don’t understand. It isn’t even smoothed.”