Easter Promises

by Lois Richer

  “Well, you’ll find lots of folks willing to talk horses here,” Audrey said. “We’ve even got breeders from Dubai down the pike. Start with Howard Epson, our mayor. He’s more of a hobby breeder, but Howard knows everyone and I know he’d be happy to introduce you around.”

  “I’ve met Howard.” Dr. Sycamore shifted his backpack and pushed a strand of wavy blond hair off his forehead. “He came over the day after we moved in. It was kind of nice, actually. Never expected to have the mayor come out and give me an official welcome.”

  That sounded like Howard. He liked to be the first at anything, and he definitely liked to be official.

  “You have lambs.” Lilly pointed at her. “I saw them.”

  “I have ewes. Lady sheep are called ewes. Four of them. But I bred one of them last fall, so I will have a lamb or two soon.”

  “Your sheep are funny. They stare at me. They’re furry. And stinky.”

  Dr. Sycamore rolled his eyes. “Lilly, you know better than that. You’ve come to work enough times with me to know that all animals smell a bit. Mrs.—” he peered down to look at the nameplate on Audrey’s desk “—Lupine’s sheep look pretty clean to me. They’re friendly. And they don’t smell bad, they just smell like sheep.”

  Lilly wasn’t changing her opinion. “They’re really furry.”

  “Technically,” Audrey said as she finished typing up the Sycamores’ library card, “they’re really fleecy. But not for long. My sheep are getting haircuts on Friday afternoon. I spin their fleece into yarn for my knitting, you know.” She handed the card to the father. “And it’s Ms. Lupine.”

  “Your sheep are getting haircuts?” Evidently Lilly found the idea startling.

  It must have been the girl’s adorably baffled expression. There simply wasn’t another explanation for why Audrey blurted out, “They are. Want to come watch?”

  Chapter Two

  Paul pulled his green Mustang into the parking lot at King’s Christian Academy and walked toward Ms. Madison’s class. The children were out at recess, enjoying a swatch of February sunshine.

  For all the highly pleasant surroundings—KCA was about as picturesque a school as anyone could imagine—Paul still felt unready for yet another parent-teacher conference. They were so much harder without Caroline. Yes, her cancer kept her from most school events toward the end, but Caroline absent wasn’t ever the same thing as Caroline gone. He could always go and talk things over with her. Even at the end when she was barely awake an hour in a day, he’d go into her room and talk himself through the household issues. Now, especially with Lilly acting up so much lately, he felt truly alone. Almost two years alone—he thought he’d be more used to it by now.

  Any number of household things still baffled him. Christmas decorations. Brownie Scout merit badges. Tights. He’d barely figured out how to make Lilly’s pigtails last month. Paul was pretty sure he was going to have to ask some horse groomer to show him how to braid soon.

  “I’m glad you could come,” greeted Ms. Madison. She looked too calm as she motioned to the only two full-size chairs in the cheerfully decorated room.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul tried to sound less panicked than he felt. Maybe it was unreasonable to expect Lilly to handle a move well on top of all life had thrown at her. He was only just getting a hold on his own life.

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong, actually. I think Lilly’s doing well.”

  That sounded qualified to Paul, as if she’d hadn’t said the “considering” she was obviously thinking. “She’s acting up a bit at home,” he admitted. Well, maybe not. What exactly was normal was for kids that age? Paul knew more about what to expect from a calf than a little girl. The strategies didn’t exactly translate. “She keeps asking women their age. You can imagine how that goes over.”

  Ms. Madison laughed. “Seems like a healthy impulse to me. She’s trying to figure out if everything that’s happened to her is normal or unusual. She’s very bright, but I gather you knew that.”

  Do very bright girls cut open their stuffed animals to “look inside?” Do they insist on blue sweaters four days in a row? Paul knew some really smart students in vet school who did weird things, but he wasn’t sure Lilly’s latest antics were a function of intellect. Then again, he did put a dozen frogs in his mama’s freezer just to see if they’d survive when he was Lilly’s age. “I suppose,” he offered, thinking a neutral answer the wisest option at the moment.

  “Actually, it’s Lilly’s ability to process what’s around her that is the reason I wanted to talk to you, Dr. Sycamore.”

  “Paul,” he corrected. He wasn’t feeling much like Dr. Sycamore these days.

  “Paul, the truth is that Lent and Easter are coming. As we study the Easter story, I want to be sensitive to Lilly. We talk about death and resurrection. I think it’s still rather fresh for her, so I’m hoping to do a little planning with you to make sure she gets as much of a positive experience from this as she can.”

  How exactly do you make a giant, gaping wound a “positive” experience? Paul was pretty much counting on merely surviving Easter, not gaining anything from it. Caroline had died on February 26, so his first Easter without her was pretty much a blur of pain and grief. Last year’s wasn’t much better. Maybe it was time he improved on that for Lilly’s sake. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “I think you should ask her what she knows about Easter, ask about where she thinks her mother is now, questions like that. Nothing too pointed, just some casual questions here and there so we can give her some extra care where she needs it.”

  “I think I can do that. I’d planned to take her out to lunch today, maybe I’ll throw in a question or two.” Grade-school life-and-death theology over grilled cheese? He’d survived worse.

  Lilly arranged the four triangles of her sandwich in two rows, points up, the way she’d started doing lately. “Why up?” Paul asked.

  “So Mom can see them.” Lilly answered as if it were an everyday fact of life. “They’re waving at her.”

  The thought stuck in Paul’s throat for a raw moment. “Greetings from Lilly’s grilled-cheese sandwich, huh?” he managed almost casually.

  “Yep. I got the idea from the trees. Ms. Madison says the trees clap their hands to God, so I figure my things can wave to Mom.”

  Paul silently wondered if perhaps Lilly’s grasp of life-and-death theology wasn’t stronger than his own. With a smirk, he took his Reuben sandwich and tried to make the half rounds of rye wave to Heaven.

  They fell over, spilling out sauerkraut, and making Lilly giggle. “Yours can’t, Dad.”

  “I guess not. I bet Mom thinks it’s as funny as you do.”

  “Yep.”

  Gina Deacon, the friendly woman who owned the diner, came over with two new glasses of chocolate milk. “Gotta say,” the big woman said, smiling, “I ain’t had a guy your size drink this stuff in years.”

  Paul was so used to people thinking it odd that he drank chocolate milk with Lilly that it took him a second or two to realize she was paying him a compliment.

  “Dad says life’s too short to drink white milk,” Lilly pronounced.

  Gina fairly beamed at Lilly. “Well, three cheers for your Dad, honey. World needs more people like you, if you ask me. Paul, you and Lilly are welcome here anytime.” She winked. “This round’s on the house. ’Cuz, as I’ve just learned, life’s too short not to drink free chocolate milk.”

  For all his angst, Paul really did feel welcome here. Gina had asked—and remembered—his name from his second visit. She was always so warm and cheery toward him. People back in Pennsylvania didn’t know what to say to him after Caroline died, so they often just nodded and didn’t say much of anything. Anyone but his best friends seemed afraid to have too long a conversation with him, fearing it would venture into sad topics. In their defense, Paul suspected he wasn’t the best of company. Even Lilly had called him “a sourpuss” frequently in the months after Caroline was gone. There
was something healing in being treated like a normal person, not the epicenter of tragedy.

  “And you, Miss Lilly, may I say I do like what you do with a grilled cheese?” She nodded toward the three remaining upright triangles of sandwich. “Looks so much fancier that way.”

  Lilly beamed. “It’s waving.” Paul couldn’t decide if he was sad or grateful Lilly hadn’t offered the full explanation. He was living in that odd gap of not knowing who knew he was widowed and who didn’t yet know.

  Gina peered at it, then simply shrugged her shoulders and waved back. “I suppose it is. You’re one happy girl, Lilly. Hey, soon you’ll be one happy Easter Lilly. Imagine that!” she said as she went back toward the kitchen.

  Well, now, this is what happened when you prayed for God to hand you the right opening to a difficult conversation. “Yep, Lilly, Easter’s coming soon.” For lack of a better segue he tried, “What do you think of that?”

  “I get chocolate, right?”

  Paul gulped at the thought of assembling an Easter basket. Like much of last year’s Easter celebrations, baskets hadn’t happened. “Yes, you’ll get Easter candy. But what do you know about the Easter story? You know, the one in the Bible. Have they talked about it in school at all?”

  “Jesus and the empty tomb.”

  “That’s the one.”

  Lilly’s face scrunched up in thought, and Paul waited patiently for the words to surface. “Mom said Jesus was her friend.”

  Caroline used that term all the time. She tried mightily to impress upon Lilly that Jesus should be her friend, too. She had always said watching her daughter’s faith come to maturity would be one of the things she’d miss most. Well, that and the big wedding. Caroline loved weddings. Their own, not a week after Paul graduated from veterinary school, was a full-blown extravaganza. “It’s true. Mom and Jesus were good friends.”

  “Now they’re ’specially good friends, don’t you think? Jesus got to go to Heaven at the end of Easter. And Mom’s there, so they’re near each other.”

  Paul fought the king-size lump in his throat. He couldn’t manage much more than “Yep.”

  “I like being near friends.”

  “Do you miss your friends from Pennsylvania? We could call some of them.”

  “I got new friends here, too.”

  “And we’re nearer to Grandma and Grandpa now, so we get to see them more, too.”

  Lilly selected a triangle from her plate and popped too much of it in her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s, and she didn’t bother to swallow before saying, “I like it here.”

  A week ago Paul had to fake his agreement. Now he really meant it when he said, “You know, I do, too.”

  A million tiny healings, the grief counselor had said.

  Chapter Three

  He’s huge.

  That was the only thought Audrey had about the new shearer who pulled up in his truck Friday afternoon and unloaded his gear. Well, of course he has to be, lugging sheep around all day, but he looked huge and rather grumpy. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she’d found the right man for the job, especially after how rough least year’s shearer had been. No brute was going to get near her “girls” with a power tool!

  Lilly and Paul had come over half an hour ago, so that Lilly could get to meet Martha, Mary, Ruth and Esther before and after their “haircuts.” The quartet of ewes, whom Audrey always thought of as “the girls,” were big lumbering things with all the fleece. They looked portly, a bit dirty and not at all like the dainty lambs they still were in Audrey’s mind. She was looking forward to the surprise Lilly would get when they were restored to their gleaming white, much skinnier selves. The whole process struck Audrey as every woman’s fantasy—shedding the older, tubbier self for the sleek, fresh person you were underneath all along.

  Audrey was most anxious for Martha, the sheep who had been bred, to get her fleece off. Every very pregnant woman Audrey had ever known had looked so uncomfortable, lumbering about just like the ewes, that Audrey was looking forward to relieving Martha of the cumbersome wool.

  Dr. Sycamore was inspecting each of the sheep, evidently unable to drop his vet’s curiosity in the face of such friendly animals. He’d been slightly friendlier in the few days since their encounter in the library, but that still didn’t mean she knew him well enough to be able to judge when to ask vet questions and when such questions would be an imposition. And really, small talk with handsome men had never been a strength. Audrey managed facts and information easily. Relationships? Well, that was another story.

  Lilly laughed when Martha was upended for shearing. It was funny—the sheep were essentially sat on their backsides, front hooves dangling awkwardly in the air, hind legs spread out in front of them, like great furry trolls sitting with their bellies to the world. Up on their feet, they had a social air about them—talkative, fidgeting, slightly nervous. Upended, they sat drowsily and looked, well, not too bright. “They’ll stay calmer that way,” George the Enormous Shearer explained to Lilly when she asked why they couldn’t stand up for the process. “They know I’m in control, and I won’t hurt ’em.”

  Lilly jumped when George turned on the shears—they were loud, sounding more like little hedge trimmers than anything one would see in a barbershop. George started on one shoulder, and the white of Martha’s undercoat appeared like the pith of an orange peel.

  “Oooo,” Lilly said, pointing. “Daddy, look how pretty it is underneath!”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Audrey said, squatting down to Lilly’s height. “They’ll make such pretty yarn, won’t they?”

  “How do you knit that?” Lilly asked, as Martha’s coat began to peel off as one great sheet of wool.

  “Lots of things have to happen to it first before it becomes yarn. I’ll show you if you like.”

  “Ms. Lupine has other things to do than spend her days doing arts and crafts with you, Lilly.” Paul caught her gaze over Lilly’s head, as if to say, “You don’t really have to.”

  And normally, Audrey wouldn’t have. Still, something irresistible about the girl’s wonder tricked Audrey into such invitations. With Gran gone, Audrey had a sharper yearning to share all the things she loved about yarn and knitting with someone who didn’t merely tolerate it as “Audrey’s hobby.” There was a perfect circle about it, passing things down to another generation just as it had been done to her. “No, really,” she said, smiling at him. “I’d like it.”

  Just then Martha bleated and scampered her new, clean self upright.

  “She’s naked!” Lilly cried. Audrey had to admit, Martha did sort of look as if she was in the sheep version of underwear—all white and thin and a little startled. Her pregnant belly showed clearly now, and Audrey thought of the little white lamb that would grace her barn in the coming weeks.

  “She’ll be much more comfy now,” George said, winking at Lilly. “It’s always best for them to be shorn before lambing. Ms. Lupine’s a good shepherdess. Next?”

  “Esther,” Audrey said, popping up to guide the next sheep over to George. Esther bleated what Audrey suspected was a “nice to meet you,” and abruptly turned away.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” George said, catching her by the ears, angling her back against his massive legs before flipping Esther as unceremoniously as he’d flipped Martha. He patted her all over, inspecting her fur. “Um, which one is this again?”

  Dr. Sycamore got a funny look on his face and stood up. He walked to the fence, turning away from her, as if he thought a woman with only four sheep ought to be able to tell them apart.

  “That’s Esther, of course.”

  “And you said Martha was lambing, right?”

  “Yes. Martha is lambing.”

  George patted Esther’s belly, looked up and smiled. “Well, so’s Esther.”

  “No. Just Martha.” Audrey stood up.

  “You tell that to Esther.”

  Esther had not been bred. “How?” Audrey gulped.

  George�
�s smile grew wide and amused. “Well now, Ms. Lupine, when two sheep love each other very much…”

  “Not that how.” Audrey bobbed her head furiously in Lilly’s direction. “Dusty was only allowed in the pen with Martha.” Dr. Sycamore coughed. “We took precautions,” she continued. “There was a fence between Dusty and the other ewes.”

  George laughed. “I like this Dusty fellow.”

  Well, it had been unrealistic, Audrey supposed, to have a ram and ewes near each other for several weeks and not expect some…courtship…to go on. Still, she was sure she’d controlled any wandering on Dusty’s part. She’d never found him outside his assigned pen. Ever. “It’s a surprise,” she said carefully. “But with a little bit of research I can plan for two lambs.”

  “Three,” George corrected. “Esther here’s lookin’ like she’ll have twins.”

  “Three lambs.” Audrey began pacing the pen, facing away from the two men, scrambling to get her thoughts together. Wait a minute. If Esther, then…

  George’s long whistle ground her panicked projections to a halt. “Ms. Lupine?”

  Audrey turned slowly, feeling the air thin out around her. “What?”

  “You got a right bargain. All four of your ewes are lambing. And from the looks of it, all but Martha here are having twins. Mr. Dusty has my respect.”

  It was not possible. This simply couldn’t be happening. “But…but he never left his pen. The fence…”

  Dr. Sycamore stuffed his hands in his pockets, shrugging his shoulders. Oh dear, he’d known somehow, hadn’t he? That’s where that funny look on his face came from. “Fences can be jumped,” he said.

  How dare he make light of this crisis? Seven lambs. She’d have more lambs than sheep. “How could this happen?”

  George snorted. “I think we just went over that, ma’am.”

  “I mean, I planned this all out. I did the research. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew exactly what I was doing.”