Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 5

by Chautona Havig

  Chapter 164

  Chad led her onto the porch and through the door, covering her eyes with his hands. She protested with each step, insisting that she wouldn’t see a thing until she got to the bathroom door anyway. “I don’t care. I want to make sure you see it all at once,” he insisted.

  Once in position, he ordered her eyes closed tightly and then hurried to stand beside the bathroom door. Gesturing like a game showgirl, he said, “And behind bathroom door number one…”

  Willow stood there, unmoving, unblinking, eyes tightly shut.

  “I said, and behind—”

  “I heard you.”

  “Then open your eyes!”

  “You didn’t tell—” She swallowed hard. “—me to open them.” Her eyes turned to Chad. “Oh…”

  “Don’t you dare cry.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Isn’t it? I don’t know how Luke managed, but—”

  She stepped forward, running her fingers over the hand-carved trim. The door looked as though it had always been there—blended into the wall as a natural fixture of the room. Willow turned to thank Chad and found herself alone. The boys.

  The doorknob—how had they found one to match the rest of the house? She turned it and pushed the door open. Nothing about the room felt familiar and yet it did. They had moved the tub and sink to different walls. She’d never open the medicine cabinet and picture that letter standing there. The cast iron claw-foot tub looked very different from the old tub and tile surround that had been in there. In fact, the bathroom was now identical to the one above.

  Liam’s babbles behind her made Willow turn. “I can use this.” The words seemed inane—almost rude, but she knew Chad would understand.

  Chad sagged in relief. “I hoped. I tried. Luke thought I was crazy. He kept saying, “Make it her dream bathroom. Give it all the features you know she’s love if she knew they existed or had a chance to try them.” He shook his head. “I just knew that you’d feel best with something that felt like it had always been part of your life.”

  “That’s why I married you. You know me—even when you don’t get me, you know me.”

  “You married me to find out what was so great about that North and South kiss and you know it.”

  A slow smile crept over her lips. “That too.”

  Her fingers toyed with her napkin as Chad read her notes. She had written every word of her speech—jokes and all—and now she awaited his opinion. He hadn’t gone far when he paused. “What are the asterisks for?”

  “I wondered if maybe I couldn’t have large prints made of photos of things to switch out at those intervals. Like this!”

  Willow jumped from her seat and rushed to find a few scrapbooks, talking all the while. “I thought maybe later when I talk about the changes to the farm and then scaling back again—showing before and after pictures.” She dropped the books on the table and flipped to a picture of the farm the day Kari bought it and then dragged out the ones she had recently taken. “See?”

  “Get me the negatives and the digital files I’ll make a PowerPoint presentation. You can just click it when—”

  “What is that?”

  “Ok, Cheri will take care of it. Just get me the negatives and names of the digital files. Once you see how it works, it’ll be easier if you ever do it again.”

  “So do you think it’s what Mrs. Lanzo wants?”

  “It is.” Chad smiled up at her. “I need to read this often.”

  “Why?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  Willow protested, “What? That’s—”

  “Come on, close your eyes and pretend you’re Cheri or even Mrs. Lanzo.” As she tried to relax, Chad read a section. It took a moment for her to quit anticipating the next words and just listen. “‘—live life as the gift of God that it is. This isn’t the avoidance of the mundane aspects of life but the embracing of them. To live life deliberately and enjoy it as a gift makes simple tasks such as cleaning a sink or peeling potatoes an act of art and beauty. It makes the choice between a walk at sunset or another half hour in front of a TV show or movie you don’t even like a non-question.’”

  “I was afraid people might think that I was condemning the TV show or movie, but Mom said that they should understand the ‘don’t even like’ to be what I mean.”

  “Well, and there’ll be a Q&A afterward, right?”

  “Q&A?”

  Chad nodded. “Didn’t you say they told you that there would be fifteen to twenty minutes of questions and answers?”

  “Oh, yes. I see. They’ll ask what I mean and I can clarify.” She sighed. “Chad, I don’t like it.”

  “What?”

  “My words. They sound stuffy. They don’t sound like me.” She dropped her head in her hands, her elbows leaning on the table. “I don’t think I’m any good at this.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What?”

  Chad took her hand, gazed into her eyes, and said again, “Tell me. Tell me. Just explain your life to me as if we’re having a conversation.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She sighed. “I feel silly. My brain refuses to come up with anything.”

  Chad stood to fill his glass with water, lost in thought. “Okay then write your talk as if it was a letter—or better yet, one of your journals. If you were writing to explain what Mother tried to do here and how it worked in the practical and philosophical senses both, how would you write it?”

  She reread several sections of the speech and then ripped them from the notebook, tossing them into the cook stove. “I know what to do, I think. You’re right. I need to keep it conversational instead of formal.”

  Her fingers reached for her pen and she started again. Chad stood over her shoulder, reading for several lines, before he sat down beside her and watched as she formed words. After a few minutes, she hardly noticed his presence. The words flowed freely and relaxed as the familiar overtook her.

  Willow slid the notebook across to Chad. “Is that part better now?” She stood over his shoulders, reading as he did, one hand on his shoulder in hopes of feeling his response before he spoke it.

  Many people have told me about their desire to embrace a “simple life.” I didn’t realize, at first, that they meant my life—that they considered my life simple and “easy.” My life, while simple compared to the busyness of so many that I’ve observed, is anything but easy. I work hard for most of every day and I have for my entire life. Even before my husband and I expanded our operation, I had full days of hard work. It is a beautiful, rich existence. It is all I know, but it is not easy despite its simplicity. We create beauty in work because to do otherwise is to exist in the mundane rather than embrace it and transform it. I cannot avoid peeling potatoes or scrubbing floors, but I can choose to see them as the brush strokes of a life lived in pursuit of beauty and deliberate living.

  “That’s it, lass. That’s my Willow. That’s the spirit of this place. Write the rest of your talk like this and either read it until you know exactly what you want to say or memorize it or even—” he hesitated before continuing. “No, don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Willow, I think this is the real problem. Write this out so you have an outline for yourself—so you’ll have an idea how much information you can convey in the amount of time you’re given. After that, print this out and hand out to the women there, but don’t read it on the platform. Just talk to them as if you were giving them a tour of the farm and explaining your life. One on one—just you and each individual woman. You’ll be great.”

  Marianne stood close, one hand reaching out for her half a dozen times a minute. “Now don’t be nervous. They’re excited to hear what you have to say.”

  “Shh… did you hear that woman? To lose every memory and have to start over with a family who knows her when she doesn’t know herself—doesn’t like herself. Wow.” Willow strained to hear the next words, but rousing applause filled the auditorium. “Will she have a question and
answer session too?”

  “I assume so. Then we break for twenty minutes and it’s your turn. Would you like a snack?”

  “Probably. But would you go out and ask a question for me?”

  Marianne nodded. “Sure. What question?”

  “Ask her if she could go back and have all those memories back would she do it?”

  The moment Marianne stepped from the room, Willow sagged in relief. She pulled out her phone and called Chad. “It’s like the wedding all over again. She keeps trying to reassure me that my nerves are going to make it.”

  “Not nervous?”

  “Not really. I’m just telling people what they asked me to tell them. Why should I be nervous?”

  Chad laughed. “Remember how you felt when you first saw Rockland—the buildings towering over you?”

  “Yeah…”

  “That’s how a lot of people feel when they see a sea of faces out there.”

  “I was picturing them as a garden, but okay.” She glanced up and saw Cheri with a boy on each hip. “Oh, Cheri’s here with the boys. I’m going to try to feed them before it’s my turn.”

  She pocketed the phone, smiling at her husband’s bungled reassurance that all would be well with her lack of nerves. Even he didn’t understand. What had been annoying became amusing as she fumbled with her shirt. Liam toddled to her knees and looked up at her, expectantly. “Hungry, lad?”

  “I doubt it. They’ve been munching on everything in that bag,” Cheri muttered. “I couldn’t keep Mrs. Majors from feeding them absolutely everything.”

  “They’ll survive once.”

  By the time each boy ate, she had less than five minutes to adjust her clothes, brush out her hair, and flip through her set of index cards. Those single word prompts had restructured her entire talk. She fingered the borders she’d drawn on each card, traced the outline of a maple leaf from one corner, and smiled at the word “Daisies” written in her best penmanship and with the “I” drawn as the flower.

  Show the cards, lass. They’ll understand you better from those simple cards than a thousand words can express. Maybe that’s what they mean by, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

  Chad’s words echoed in her heart as she waited for the call to the podium. Marianne took the boys from Cheri as her sister-in-law came to join her. “Ready?”

  Willow nodded. “Excited. I love what you and Chad did with the pictures. They’ll help me not to talk too fast, too slow, too much—perfect.”

  “Be sure you don’t forget to turn on the mic or people will only hear the music.”

  From the auditorium, Willow heard her name called. “—pleased to welcome, Willow Finley Tesdall of Walden Farm.”

  The applause startled her. Considering the applause she’d given and heard for the other speakers, it shouldn’t have, but Willow hadn’t really considered herself an “official” speaker. She stepped up to the podium, smiled, and fumbled for the mic. “I know it’s here somewhere.”

  Cheri laughed and punched the button for her. Leaning close to the little mic pinned to Willow’s blouse, she said, “Willow and technology—scary combination sometimes.”

  The room erupted in chuckles. Willow smiled and waved her cards. “I am under orders from my husband to tell you about these cards. So before Cheri works her magic with the laptop, I thought I’d tell you a little about them and why they are what they are.” She frowned. “You know, I should have thought about making spares or taking pictures or something. I could have just passed them around the room.”

  “Willow!” Cheri’s hiss behind her caught her attention.

  “Yes?”

  “Give them to me as you’re done with them and I’ll take them down.”

  “Oh, my sister-in-law has an idea. Let’s get started then, shall we?”

  Cheri started the presentation. Faint music whispered through the auditorium as the photos on the projection screen slowly faded from one to the next. Willow spoke of life on the farm, life with her mother, and faith at the root of every aspect of that life. She spoke of the journals her mother had left and how she now made chronicling her days a priority. “I never knew how much I would treasure Mother’s words and wisdom. As a child, it even annoyed me when she’d sit down and write endless lists about when to cut the hay or how much soap we would need before spring and summer.” She laughed. “You cannot imagine how much soap we go through on the farm! My mother-in-law says if she had to buy the soap we use, she’d be bankrupt.”

  Her stories continued through each of twelve cards. Work. Beauty. Joy. Peace. Life. Breath. Daisies. Card after card passed from her hands and into the hands of the audience. She heard the song coming to its final close and changed the direction of her speech.

  “I promised to tell you about those cards and then I didn’t. I think the most precious gift anyone has ever given me was a yellow colored pencil—the exact golden yellow of a manila envelope. Do you know the color?”

  Heads nodded all over the room, but the expressions on those faces told her that she’d made the right decision. This was important.

  “You see, part of that beauty is in the simple things like manila envelopes or index cue cards for a speech.” She smiled. “Chad says he’ll never forget the day I pulled out one of our decorated envelopes that held tax records. We always color them—make them beautiful. It’s part of who we Finley women are. I expressed an interest in white envelopes when Chad mentioned them but dismissed it almost immediately and because of only one thing.” She paused. “I didn’t want the tops of the white envelopes to be different from the tops of the manila ones. It would bother me seeing them in a box all mixed up like that.”

  A smile crossed her face. “That is why the pencil my husband bought me is so precious to me. The day he brought it home is the day I saw that he not only loved me—he accepted and loved the life that we have. I never truly saw that until that day.”

  Chapter 165

  Ida and Becca worked to fill the fifth wheel with Becca’s things. Dishes, clothing, bedding, books, laptop, and few bags of groceries slowly turned a large trailer into a small home. Willow and the boys slowly walked across the property once Becca sent a text that she was all moved in and ready for company. By the time she arrived, Ida sat relaxed on the sofa with a glass of water in her hand. “This is so nice! I can’t believe how much room is in this thing.”

  “So, are you going to move out here with me now, Gram?”

  Willow laughed as Ida shook her head. “Not until I see how you do with a winter in this thing first. June is one thing. January is quite another.”

  “I thought Josh was coming.”

  Becca sighed. “He is…just not until later. Had to work after all. That Marie is getting more and more undependable, and they always call him when someone doesn’t show.”

  “I’m hoping he’ll wake up and—”

  “Gram, please!” Becca looked miserable. “She’s convinced that Josh will come rushing out here, begging me to marry him.”

  “As nice as that sounds, I’d miss my helper and I haven’t even gotten to use her yet.”

  Becca shook her head. “I already told Josh that even if I hate it, I’m not quitting without three months’ notice.”

  “Why that long?”

  Ida interrupted before Becca could answer. “He needs to know there are consequences to waiting.”

  “Gram!”

  “It’s true! I don’t know what is wrong with that man.”

  Hoping to diffuse what seemed to be a sore subject, Willow decided to speak her mind. “I think he is scared. He made a decision once—the wrong one—because someone told him something about himself that wasn’t true. He has to live with that choice every day. I think it’s hard to risk being that vulnerable again because it means he has to ask someone else to live with it with him.”

  “Well, he has time to think about it now. We’ve known each other for two years and if he needs more time, that’s fine. I’ll even wait. I�
�m just going to do something I love while I’m waiting in case my entire life becomes a matter of waiting.”

  Something about Becca’s words didn’t fit the Becca Willow knew. She remembered what Josh had told her and added one last encouragement before diving after the boys as they tried to climb the cabinets. “He once asked me to make sure you knew that he has no doubts about you. Whatever slows him down—it’s not you.”

  Josh walked beside Chad around the square, up Market Street, down Elm, and back again. “I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know. She—that farm. I know it’s your home, but do you have any idea how opposite we are in this? She loves it. I cringe at the dirt on my shoes or the smell of manure. Can you believe she stopped the car the other day when we drove by a house that had just spread manure over the lawn? Manure! She said, ‘Man that smells good.’”

  Chad laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think Willow would say it smells good. She’d pull out the lavender and crush it, sprinkle powder through the house to try to combat it. But she wouldn’t get rid of the cow.”

  “I can’t even get a job in Fairbury. There’s nothing here. I looked.”

  As Josh described his job at the fabric store, the inspiration it gave him, and the frustration he felt when he couldn’t act on that inspiration, Chad began thinking in a new direction. “You liked carding, didn’t you?”

  “Carding—oh the wool. Yeah. That spinning wheel was fun too. And the loom. See, I could do that all day.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  Frustrated, Josh threw up his hands. “It’s called living. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” A pedestrian gave Josh a strange look, making the man lower his voice. “It requires money for things like rent, insurance, food, clothing, and gas to see your girlfriend sixty miles away.”

  “If she was your wife, you would only need enough to cover your insurance. The rest—food, shelter, money for clothing et cetera would be covered.”