Susan Meissner - Why the Sky Is Blue

by Unknown

  When we got there, she smiled and handed me another present.

  “I didn’t want to give this to you downstairs because...well, because it’s kind of a special photo that really isn’t mine to give,” she said, clearly a little uncomfortable.

  Interest piqued, I opened the gift. The framed black-and-white photo was the one I had taken of Lara and Olivia on the day of the wedding. It is hard for me to describe the beauty of that photo. Lara’s dark hair, Olivia’s blonde curls, their smiling faces, the sunlight framing them both in a halo of radiance—it all combined to create a photograph unlike any I have ever seen. I could hardly believe I had taken it.

  I stood there completely transfixed by it, displaying neither awe nor gratitude, but somehow Lara knew I loved it.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “I am so glad you took it.”

  “Yes,” I said, not taking my eyes off it.

  We stood there for several moments in a silence that might have seemed awkward to someone else. But I was rather unaware of both the silence and the long moments, and Lara didn’t seem to mind either.

  The sound of Olivia calling for Lara broke the spell, and Lara called down to her, telling her she would be right there. She started to walk past me.

  I reached out and stopped her and she turned to look at me.

  “Thank you,” I said, longing to communicate how much I was coming to appreciate her and wishing there was nothing to hold me back from returning her love completely. As always, she seemed to understand it anyway.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, wrapping me in a hug.

  We spent the next day with Wes, Nicole, and Seth. They had returned late that morning from a four-day stay in Iowa where Nicole’s parents lived. Nicole tried out a table full of new recipes, including several dishes that the kids flat-out refused to try.

  Seth seemed moody and quiet, and when it seemed like a good time, I asked him how things were going.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered quickly and left the room.

  I asked Nicole about it later when we were alone in the kitchen with the dishes.

  “My sister doesn’t want him to come home yet,” Nicole said with a sigh. “He had always been under the impression that after the first of the year he’d be able to go back. He saw her on Christmas Eve, and she told him she’s not ready.”

  “What’s the deal?” I said.

  “I don’t think he’s ready to go back there myself,” Nicole said. “But I could strangle my sister for telling Seth she doesn’t want him back yet. You don’t tell a kid who is already down on himself that he isn’t wanted.”

  “Is she afraid he will go back to his old ways?”

  “She should be,” Nicole said bitterly, scraping a plate into the sink. “But that’s not what’s bothering her. She has a new boyfriend, and she’s afraid her needy son will get in the way.”

  “She didn’t say that to him, did she?”

  Nicole threw a sponge into soapy water. “She didn’t have to.”

  We had a quiet New Year’s Eve at my parents’ house. Mom convinced Cleo to stay until the second of January so she wouldn’t have to spend the New Year’s holiday alone. At the shop a couple of days after Christmas, I asked my mom if Cleo was fretting over being away from Ben or if she thought Ben was having a tough time without her being there.

  “Ben doesn’t even know who she is anymore,” Mom answered. “It’s been a little difficult on Cleo to be away from him, but she knows Ben hasn’t missed her. That makes it both easy and hard for her.”

  I also asked my mom what it was like to have Cleo as a house-guest.

  “She is a little brusque,” Mom said with a smile. “But Kate, she really does have a heart of gold. Rosemary saw that in her. Lara does too. And now I can. I guess sometimes you have to look deep to see what someone is really like.”

  Yes. That was something I was beginning to understand.

  On the second of January, Dad drove my grandparents and Cleo up to the Twin Cities, Cleo to catch a bus to Two Harbors, and my grandparents to catch a flight to Detroit where my Uncle Matt would be picking them up.

  Saying goodbye to my grandparents was hard. I again had that horrible feeling that time was running out for my grandpa. When my mom hugged him goodbye, she held him for a long time.

  “You have been the best father in the whole world,” she said to him, quietly, but I could hear it.

  “And you have been the best daughter,” he returned.

  “Goodbye, Dad,” Mom said softly as they parted.

  It was the first time I ever heard her call him that.

  31

  February arrived, and Mom, Lara, and I began spending cold and blustery nights looking through the pile of college brochures Lara accumulated in the six months she had lived with us. Somehow it didn’t seem right that we had to plan for Lara’s move to college so soon after bringing her here. Mom had of course told Lara she could live at home if she wanted and commute each day to the state college an hour away. I had done that and knew what a pain in the neck that was. Lara was genuinely appreciative of the offer, but I knew she probably wouldn’t go that route.

  Both Mom and I thought Lara had the talent to be a professional photographer, but Lara never seemed to think of her skill as anything more than just a hobby.

  “I want to do something that really matters,” she said to me one day at the Table, when we were in between customers.

  “Like what?” I said.

  “I’d like to do what my parents did,” she said quietly, watching me for my response.

  “You want to be a missionary?” I said, a little surprised.

  She looked away and nodded.

  “I loved what we did, Kate,” she said. “It’s the most meaningful thing I have ever done, and I was just a little kid.”

  “Where do you think you would want to go?” I asked, instantly remembering how I felt when I was twelve and Mom told me the Prentisses were taking Lara to Ecuador.

  “Somewhere in South America,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be Ecuador, but I do miss it.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say next. I knew what I wanted to say. I just wasn’t sure if I should say it. Then I suddenly felt a burst of boldness.

  “You might want to consider how that would affect my mother,” I said. Should I have said our mother? I wasn’t sure.

  She nodded, and I could tell I touched on something she had already labored over in her head and heart.

  “I keep praying about it and wondering if I’m being selfish, Kate,” she said, almost whispering the words. “I’m just not sure what I should do.”

  “She loves you so much, Lara,” I said, knowing it was true and unexpectedly feeling okay about it.

  “And I love her,” Lara said, turning her head toward me. “I do.”

  In that moment—I don’t know if it was God prompting me or not, but it sure felt like it—I suddenly knew what I should say to her.

  I looked her in the eye, waited until I had her full attention, and then told her what Rosemary had said to me on a similarly cold day.

  “You know, there was a time in my life when things seemed pretty cloudy and I was very confused,” I said. “You weren’t born yet and my parents were making decisions about you and our family, and I didn’t think they were the right ones. Rosemary told me something one day that really helped me, Lara. I’ve never forgotten it.”

  Hearing her mother’s name pricked her heart, I think, but she never took her eyes off me.

  “What did she say?” Lara asked.

  I looked away for a moment. I was only just beginning to understand how sometimes love leads you down paths you never expected to travel. It seemed I was the least qualified at that moment to give advice about making wise choices. But I told her anyway.

  “That everything usually turns out for the best if you let love lead you,” I
said.

  Seth continued on his depressing downward spiral in those first two months of the new year. His grades, which had risen remarkably in the fall, began to plummet again. It seemed even Lara couldn’t bring him out of his blue mood. He didn’t spend as much time at our place as he did before Lara came. And at first I was a little put out. But he was a grouch most of the time and constantly had to be told to watch his language. I didn’t want Olivia and Bennett to be around him.

  He spent many evenings over at my parents’ house. I think it was my mom and Lara who kept him from failing his second semester classes. Between the two of them they managed to motivate him enough to keep his grades at just below a C average, not a pretty sight, but enough to keep him in line for graduation.

  When Lara and he first became friends, he went with her to every youth group event at our church and seemed to really enjoy being around kids his age who had fun and didn’t drink. I think it was a first for him. But he stopped going to those youth events after the first of the year. Wes and Nicole insisted he attend Sunday morning services with them, but he sat in the pew and scowled the whole time.

  It was depressing for all of us to watch.

  Lara and I talked about it several times, but neither of us could put a finger on what had really sent Seth on this horrible spin into despondency. It seemed to be more than just his mother’s decision to have him continue living with Wes and Nicole.

  If I could have seen the future, I would have tried harder to figure him out, because in the end it mattered a great deal. But I don’t suppose anyone could have predicted what was going to happen on one chilly night in March.

  I came home from the Table at about four-thirty in the afternoon on that crucial day and found Olivia and Bennett wide-eyed and clinging to Lara when I walked into my kitchen.

  Both of my kids ran to me. I looked up at Lara for an explanation.

  “Seth just left,” Lara said and I could tell she had been crying.

  “What happened?” I said, anger and fear mixing together in my head and voice.

  “Lara told him to leave because he was being naughty!” Olivia told me.

  “He yelled,” Bennett said. “He said bad words.”

  I needed to talk to Lara alone. I sent Olivia and Bennett upstairs to watch television in my room—a special treat usually only reserved for times when we had company.

  “What happened?” I asked again when the kids were safely out of earshot.

  “He came over here when we were outside playing with Bogart,” Lara said, wiping her eyes. “And he was angry about something. He wanted to talk to me alone, but I told him I couldn’t leave the kids, that it would have to wait until I was finished babysitting. He just got angrier and started saying ... saying things he shouldn’t have said in front of the kids.”

  “Had he been drinking?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Lara said, choking back a sob. “Maybe.”

  “Go ahead and go on home, Lara,” I said as gently as I could, because I didn’t want her to think I was mad at her. But I was mad. I was mad at Seth. “I’ll call Nicole.”

  She nodded and picked up her backpack.

  “Will you tell the kids goodbye for me?” she said, tears welling in her eyes.

  I told her I would and then watched as she drove away. I checked on the kids without letting them seeing me and then came back downstairs to call Nicole. I got the answering machine. I didn’t know if Seth was there and listening to my message so I just said I wanted Nicole to call me back when she got home.

  Then I hung up.

  I went upstairs to reassure my kids that all was well.

  I really thought all was well.

  I was so very wrong.

  It was about nine thirty that night when Mom called. The kids had been in bed for an hour, and Michael and I were eating a bowl of popcorn, watching television, and unwinding from the long day.

  When the phone rang, I thought it was Nicole finally returning my call.

  “Can you send Lara home?” Mom said after we had exchanged greetings.

  I paused for the slightest moment.

  “Lara’s not here,” I said. “She left hours ago.”

  “She’s not there?”

  “No,” I said. “Have you been out?”

  “We had a farewell dinner for that veterinary assistant who’s moving to Des Moines. We just got in. When did you say she left?”

  “Mom, were Wes and Nicole with you?” I could sense that my voice had risen in pitch.

  “Well, yes. Kate, what’s wrong?”

  I told her what had happened that afternoon. Even as I told her, I knew. I knew something bad was happening. Or had happened. I knew that Seth had waited for Lara until she left our house. That he had followed her or convinced her to follow him. That was five hours ago.

  “Hang up. I am going to call the sheriff,” Mom said.

  “I’ll call Nicole. Then I’m coming over, Mom.”

  She clicked off.

  Before I could dial Wes and Nicole’s number, the phone rang. It was Nicole.

  “Hey, it’s me,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Nicole,” I said urgently. “Is Seth there?”

  “Well, we just got home. I think he is. His car is here,” she said.

  “Is Lara’s car there?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Why?”

  I quickly told Nicole that Seth had come to my house earlier that day, presumably drunk, and been verbally abusive to the kids and Lara, and that Lara had left the house at four-thirty but apparently never made it home.

  “Please go see if they’re in the house somewhere,” I pleaded.

  I heard the sound of the phone handset being lowered and Nicole yelling Seth’s name. Her voice got farther away and then came nearer again.

  “Oh, God, no!” I heard her say, and I felt my heart fluttering inside me.

  “What? What?” I screamed into the phone, willing her to tell me what she had seen.

  “We need to call the police,” I heard Wes say.

  It seemed to take forever for Nicole to lift the phone back to her mouth.

  “I have to hang up, Kate,” she said, her voice quivering. “Seth and Lara aren’t here. One of Wes’s guns is missing. And some bullets.”

  I suddenly felt very nauseous.

  “Call me at my parents’!” I yelled and clicked off.

  I raced over to my shoes by the back door and yelled to Michael what Nicole had told me.

  “You’re in no condition to drive!” he said as I grabbed my car keys. “Let me take you over there.”

  “We can’t leave the kids, Michael!” I said. “And we can’t bring them over there. We don’t know...we don’t know what has happened!”

  I promised Michael I would call him the minute I knew something.

  Then I fled into the night, utterly oblivious to the brilliance of the starlit sky.

  32

  When I look back on that night, I feel as though I came to a crossroads in almost every area of my life. All those hours while we waited for news of Lara, I felt as though I was teetering on the edge of all that I was and all I wanted to be: like there was just a thin plate of glass between the two, and I was not on one side or the other but somewhere in between.

  I knew I loved my husband and my children, but I also knew I still yearned to know what kind of life I would be leading if my mother had not gone shopping that night seventeen years ago. I knew I loved my art and my job. And I even loved Blue Prairie. But I felt like I didn’t choose any of it. If I could have chosen, would I have chosen this? I loved my parents, but they had made decisions that I would not have made. I wanted to love Lara, and yet I feared loving her.

  But I stumbled upon the deepest truth as I began pacing the floor for the third hour after my mother’s call. Tracing my steps over and over between the living room and kitchen—in the house where we tried to forget all our sorrows—I realized I trusted God only to a point. And realizing t
his made me stop dead in my tracks because it explained everything else.

  My doubts about my life’s direction, the uncertainty regarding the choices I had made, the fear that kept me from loving my sister completely—they all hinged on trust. And the truth was, I was afraid to trust God with the things that mattered most to me.

  As my parents and I waited out the long hours, I found myself silently asking God over and over, “Can I trust you?” And I kept hearing the words my mother told me she had heard him whisper to her: Do not be afraid.

  But I was afraid. And I didn’t know how not to be.

  At a little after midnight the phone rang, and the three of us jumped.

  “I can’t answer it, Dan,” my mom said, fear twisting itself around her words.

  Dad nodded and answered the phone.

  “Yes?” he said, instead of “hello.”

  Mom and I waited.

  “No, Nicole. We haven’t heard anything,” Dad said.

  My mother and and I slumped onto the couch.

  “No, the sheriff’s department said they would let the other counties know,” Dad continued. “I don’t think so. They told us to wait here at the house in case the kids come here. Yes. We will. Bye.”

  He hung up and fell onto the couch next to my mother. Several long moments passed without a word between us.

  Then my dad turned to Mom and took her hand. He seemed to forget completely that I was right there in the room with them. Or maybe he didn’t care.

  “Sometimes I think I made a horrible mistake, Claire,” he said.

  When she looked at him in wonder, he continued.

  “Sometimes when I look at her, when I see how she loves people, when I see how much she reminds me of you, I think we should have kept her,” he said, emotion thick in his voice.

  Mom laid her head on his chest, and he folded her into his arms.

  “We did what we did because we loved her,” Mom said. “And she is who she is because she has been loved. Don’t you see?” she continued when he said nothing. “It’s all been worth it. It’s all been worth it, Dan. Even if she’s in heaven right at this moment, it’s all been worth it. Because we loved her.”