Easter Promises

by Lois Richer

  So why did the gesture touch her so? Millions of people buy tea every day, but she couldn’t discount the tiny spark in his eye when he talked about buying tea for her. “Lilly asked me to,” he repeated again, as if needing to retreat to safer ground.

  “Tea would be nice,” she replied, feeling her own face heat up. She’d probably have choked down strong black coffee if he’d offered it with that look in his eyes.

  “Me, too,” Lilly chimed in as her father folded the paper and got up from his chair.

  Paul offered a lopsided smile and shrugged. “Lilly drinks tea now.”

  Audrey offered an apologetic wince, sure Lilly’s new beverage preference had been her doing. “Not cocoa?” she inquired, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  Paul’s reply was a self-deprecating smirk. “I’ve been usurped.”

  Audrey wanted to cringe. She couldn’t tell from his expression and his tone if he was upset or found the whole thing funny.

  “What’s that mean?” Lilly asked.

  “It means I own a teapot now and I’m man enough to use it.” He supplied a cavemanish grunt and lumbered over to touch a finger to Lilly’s nose. It was the first time Audrey had seen Paul joke with Lilly, and it charmed her, even if it did feel too close. He touched his daughter so tenderly, just inches away, with such a twinkle in his eye. “So y’all better watch out,” he added, mocking a Kentucky twang to rather poor effect.

  “Dad,” Lilly giggled. “We don’t say ‘y’all.’”

  “Not yet,” he called as he entered the kitchen.

  Lilly had finally put down her knitting and agreed to go to bed. Fixated as she could get on things, Paul knew he had a potential fight on his hands for things like chores and homework now that her fascination had fixed on knitting. Still, it was hard to knock a quiet, portable and creative pastime that gave Paul some time to get serious work done when Lilly was at home and awake. Up until now, school and the handful of hours after her bedtime were enough to keep him on schedule, but all of that could go out the window when summer came.

  Writing full-time was proving harder than he thought. Back in practice, Paul would thirst for the hour or two he could put into a writing project, eager to get his ideas down on paper. Now, he had more time than ideas. It was excruciating to stare at a blank page. Not that he had any deadlines other than the ones he’d set for himself—first draft done by June—but he was used to being productive. Getting things done. Ticking off a long list of tasks each day. Now, he was the creative equivalent of “all dressed up and nowhere to go.”

  Yeah, right, Paul thought to himself as the white of tonight’s blank page blared out at him. You keep telling yourself that. It was far easier to think of himself as having writer’s block than the unsettling truth that he was distracted.

  By Audrey Lupine.

  I’m not ready for this. He found his fingers typing the blurt of a thought, the blank page suddenly becoming a letter to God. He did that, wrote many of his prayers as long letters to his Lord. It helped him focus his thoughts and look back on insights. He stared at the sentence, changing the period at the end to a comma and adding, am I?

  I can’t go back, he wrote, sighing.

  I’m a vet to her, and I want to leave that behind. I need a new me, a chance to start over. Lord, I’m worried that if I keep going over to her barn, I’ll just slip back into the old me and all this will be lost.

  All that was true, but it wasn’t what was keeping him from his novel. What kind of idiocy was it to try and skirt the issue in a letter to God? He tried to turn off his inner editor, the one who told him not to write certain things, and just let it come purely out his fingertips. A purging. Taking a deep breath, he mentally dived in and typed. Watching her tonight, something bubbled up. Describe it, he told himself, as a writer’s exercise. Get it out, down on the page, then you can move on to that scene you need to get done.

  Her fingers have a practical grace. More honest than elegant, but there’s something about the way her hands move. Over the yarn, pushing her hair out of her eyes when she looks down, around a teacup. She looks so in control, but there’s this caution I see underneath—it shows up in her fingers to me, somehow. Her eyes have authority, a stubborn determination that I think the rest of the world sees easily. I see it, too—especially with the sheep. Her eyes are so dark, like you’d never see the bottom of them no matter how hard you looked. People would probably call them lovely or dramatic, but it’s her hands I keep staring at. Watching them hold Lilly’s hands caught me by surprise. I couldn’t look away. I was clear across the room and yet I felt their movement, felt them rest on my daughter, my flesh and blood, Caroline’s pale skin and long fingers. It felt like worlds colliding, watching Audrey touch Lilly. Not because it hurt, but because it didn’t.

  He’d somehow moved back into this letter to God, the need to sort out his reaction overshadowing any attempt at description.

  It didn’t hurt, Lord. I wasn’t ready for that. I felt…

  He paused, physically afraid to type the word.

  …drawn. To her. The very beginnings of something I haven’t felt in a long time. There’s too much on my plate now, Lord, to add this. Lilly isn’t settled, I don’t want to be distracted from this new work You’re calling me to, but that’s just what I am—distracted.

  He pulled his hands from the keyboard to glance around the room, as if he’d just made some earth-shattering confession and the world surely heard it. Only the silence of the den surrounded him. He debated whether to go on, wanting to go deeper and wanting to run from it at the same time. He looked up, seeing a lit upper-story window on her house from where he sat at his desk.

  She was awake. Well, of course she was awake; it was only ten o’clock and not past anybody’s bedtime at her house. Unbidden, an image of Audrey, bent over a diary penning an entry in long, flowing script—a detail for which he had absolutely no evidence—invaded his brain. He wondered, against every impulse not to, if she would write an entry about teaching Lilly to knit. She looked as if she enjoyed it so much, as if her enthusiasm was seeping out to him from across the room. Lilly’s utter absorption—wanting to stay up late to “get another row done”—hadn’t helped his own preoccupation. He just kept seeing her hands writing “Lilly” this and “Lilly” that.

  I need to stay away, he wrote, then underlined it.

  I’m not sure of that sort of thing right now, I’m probably vulnerable because of the anniversary. I’m confusing her niceness to Lilly with something else. Guard me, Lord, because I don’t feel very wise at the moment. Just guard me.

  He was going to write be my Shepherd, but it seemed counterproductive.

  Chapter Ten

  Paul took another look at Lilly’s math homework over breakfast. Her grades had gone down again. Fractions were rough on anyone, but Lilly’s preoccupation with Audrey’s sheep and knitting had made schoolwork a daily argument between Paul and his daughter. She’d fallen into a regular after-school routine of helping Audrey with the ewes, raking straw and setting out water and such for the animals who were beginning to need more and more care. He was proud of her, but it was easy to see where all this was heading. Once the lambs came, things would only get worse. Tasks would multiply. And what young girl could resist all that fluffy cuteness when it posed such a potent distraction to math facts?

  “Lilly,” he began, trying not to start yet another round of the same argument, “half of these are wrong.”

  “I don’t care!” Lilly pouted, pushing angrily at her eggs. “I hate math!”

  “You can hate it all you want, but it won’t get your homework done.”

  “No one needs math.”

  He was in no mood to get into this again, especially before school. “Lots of people need math. Even Miss Audrey said she uses it in her knitting, remember?” Spurred by the reference, he stole a glance over to Lilly’s knitting basket. She’d done another six inches on her scarf last night. Instead of her assigned reading, he suspecte
d. Paul was beginning to want to look this particular gift sheep in the mouth—Lilly was far too prone to neglecting her schoolwork in favor of getting a few more rows done. “Did you do your reading yet?”

  She didn’t answer. Paul looked at his watch. Not enough time to get anything done now.

  “No heading over to Miss Audrey’s this afternoon until your homework is done. Including your reading.”

  Lilly produced the exasperated eye-roll of which she was a master. “Aww, Daaad!”

  Caroline was always so much better at this. “School has to come before sheep. I don’t want to regret letting you help her, but you’re going to have to do your part.” To punctuate his declaration, Paul took the basket of her knitting and put it up into one of the kitchen cabinets. It made him feel like a big bad monster taking away her toys, but only fools negotiated with second graders.

  She slammed down her fork and stomped off to her room. Getting her on the bus this morning would be a battle. Again. Grant me wisdom, Lord. And patience. And endurance. And the memory of how to do common denominators.

  As Audrey got ready for work a few weeks later, she surveyed the box of bottles, nipples, heat lamps and medicines that sat in her mudroom waiting to be put into service. Lambing was coming. In two weeks, she’d start her stint of reduced hours that would last until the week after Easter—useful for both the parade and lambing duties ahead of her. The ewes’ bellies were rounding out, and Audrey was sure she saw the happy glow of motherhood in their faces. Everything was falling into place. She found herself humming the swelling classic hymn “The Lamb of God” as she walked out to the barn door for a check on the girls before leaving for the library.

  The sound stopped her first. A dreadful, moaning bleat, not at all like the normal sounds she knew from her ewes. It was like Martha’s bleat, and then not at all like her voice. Was she sick? In labor somehow and already in trouble? The overwhelming sense of “wrongness” hit her like a solid wall, sending Audrey into a flat-out run toward the pen. The girls were huddled in one corner, facing away from her.

  Three of them.

  “Oh, Lord, no…” Audrey moaned aloud, her fears confirmed. She pushed her way gently through the trio to find Martha lying on the bedding. Her first thought was that Martha was sick or had died, but Martha swung her head around at Audrey’s approach. Audrey would have argued to anyone, looking in Martha’s eyes, that sheep could cry. The tiny pink mass Martha was licking and nuzzling was, without a doubt, the saddest thing Audrey had ever seen. A stillborn lamb was just wrong, a violation of hope that stabbed into Audrey’s chest like a knife. She grabbed the side of the pen for support, trying to push out the sob and pull in the gasp that tangled in her throat. Martha hadn’t dug the ground or swelled or shown any of the signs of labor. This was weeks before she should have given birth. It couldn’t be happening. Not to Martha. Martha was the only ewe not having twins, according to Dr. Vickers. The one supposed to be pregnant. It seemed so horribly unfair.

  The other ewes knew. They surrounded her, breathing softly in a scene that seemed the terrible negative image of the Bethlehem stable—the animals gathered around death instead of life. Not Martha. Martha nudged the contorted, stained body and Audrey felt her legs give way. There had to be something she could do. Audrey dragged her mind through all the research, knowing she’d read about what to do but completely unable to recall it. A wave of helpless sobs overtook her, and she touched Martha’s soft, pink ear, moaning “I’m sorry” over and over.

  When she caught her breath, she reached into her pocket and called Paul on her cell phone. The shred of composure she gained evaporated when she heard his voice. “Come.” She could barely get the word out. “Come now!”

  “Audrey? What’s wrong? Is it the girls?” She could hear his steps, hear him rushing out the door with the cell phone in his hand.

  “It’s Martha. Oh, Paul, come now.”

  Paul burst through the door not half a minute later, his breath puffing mist into the chilled morning air.

  It took him ten seconds to guess the situation, and she watched his heart break inside his eyes. “Oh, no. Not Martha.”

  The vet in him took over, scanning the pen for details, running his hands over Martha’s body and assessing her health, inspecting the stillborn lamb with tender reverence. He straightened up slowly, reaching back for Audrey’s hand even before he turned to her. When he pulled Audrey into his arms, the last of her control fled and she cried in great, heaving sobs onto his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her hair with the same grief she had stroked Martha’s ear. “I’m sorry.”

  “I failed her.” Audrey made herself say it, even though the words stabbed like broken glass. “I was so busy watching the ewes with twins I must not have seen her in trouble. I missed the signs. Not even when I checked before I went to bed last night. I didn’t see.”

  “Sometimes lambs just don’t make it. There aren’t always signs.”

  Audrey could only shake her head; words couldn’t find their way above the weight pressing down upon her. She’d failed Martha. Martha, who was supposed to be the mother. How awfully, preventably wrong it all seemed. Martha’s eyes looked empty beyond imagination. She’d even stopped tending to the little sheep and now stared off into nowhere, silent and spent.

  Somehow, Paul maneuvered Audrey onto a bench and then opened up the storage chest in the corner to pull out a towel. With a carefulness that was almost too hard to watch, he picked up the tiny body and wrapped it in the towel, wiping the muck from the delicate face. He had the quiet composure of a man too well acquainted with death. It made sense, suddenly, why the lambs had proved an irresistible draw for him and Lilly. Death needed to know life still survived.

  He brought the bundle to Audrey. “There’s no signs of disease, but I need to make sure Martha’s okay. I’ll take this for you, if you want.”

  She couldn’t let him spare her the darker tasks of this. Not after all he’d been through. “No,” she said, finding her voice surprisingly steady even as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’ll hold it.”

  “Him,” he said, his voice breaking a bit. “It was a male.”

  The baby lamb was so heavy, as if death poured weight into the lifeless body. It felt important to hold it. To not back away from the tragic details just because they were unpleasant and painful. “Death happens on the farm,” Dr. Vickers had always warned her. Somehow, she’d always thought her little flock too small to see death. Her sheep were supposed to be all about comfort and hope. Martha’s little lamb stole her sense of control, knocking her off the precarious balance she’d managed to find in the past few weeks.

  She wasn’t sure how long it was before Paul returned—time knotted around her as she cradled the bundle on her lap, listening to the way the three other sheep bleated softly as Paul moved through the barn. He walked into Audrey’s house without asking, returning with the lambing kit he’d helped her pack and store in the mudroom. He treated Martha with things from the kit and with things from his vet bag, and Audrey felt as though she ought to take notes but couldn’t move to find pen and paper. Paul knew what he was doing. He quickly checked over the other sheep, put out their morning feed, and then very gently took the bundle from Audrey’s lap. “I’ll handle this later. Martha is in good shape—the other girls are, too. We need to get you inside.”

  She couldn’t make her legs move. Part of her knew she was taking all this too hard, that any farmer knew things like this happened all the time and she should be able to handle this, but her body felt as empty as Martha’s hollow black eyes.

  “Audrey…” Paul’s voice was as gentle as his touch. “Come inside. We’ve done everything there is to do out here. Time will do the rest.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Paul guided Audrey into her kitchen, where she slumped into a chair and stared quietly at the place mat. He knew that stunned, hollow feeling. He also knew there was nothing for it. Nothing but time, that is. Thank g
oodness Lilly was already at school. He let Audrey be while he found the kettle and put on water for tea. She didn’t move while he opened a few cabinets in search of tea bags and sugar. He badly needed another strong cup of coffee, but there was no way he was going to leave her alone for the sake of a better shot of caffeine. Settling for what looked like the strongest brew—and that was an overstatement at best—he sat down beside her while the water heated up.

  “I know it’s just a lamb…” she said quietly, as if lecturing herself out of the grief. Trouble was, grief never really cared much about logic.

  “It’s not just a lamb.” He kept his tone as soft as hers. “It was a life. It was important to you.”

  She looked up at him, surprise in her eyes. “They are. They’re so important to me. That’s sort of sad when you think about it. My best friends are sheep.”

  Her sincerity brought a small chuckle out of him. “I happen to know you have lots of friends. Several without four legs. And they’d all understand how hard this is for you.”

  She looked at him, eyes narrowing in that analytical squint he recognized from when she went over Cameron’s endless spreadsheets or her own piles of research. “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Survive Caroline’s death. Get yourself and Lilly through something so awful.” She plucked a tissue from a ceramic container lined up on the sideboard behind her. At that moment, she looked frail and small and very young—nothing at all like the stern librarian who lectured Lilly about standing on her books that first day. “This is just a lamb and I want to curl up in a ball and never talk to anyone again. How did you survive losing Caroline?”

  “I felt like that for days afterward. I was so grateful Caroline had made her own decisions about her funeral and all that because I wanted the world to disappear that first week. I don’t think I was a very good father. Caroline’s and my parents stepped in and took care of most of the funeral details and Lilly while I was in that first fog. After that, you just sort of slog through the pain.” It surprised him how easily he could talk about it with her. “I’d pray for God to get me through the next hour. The next ten minutes. And then ten minutes became ten days, ten days became ten weeks. When someone said I’d make friends with the pain, I thought they were nuts. But that’s sort of how it is. It becomes a part of you, every day. You find a few happy things that sort of cancel it out for a while. And then a few more, and a few more.” He leaned back in the chair. “And one day you turn around and two years have passed, and you realize you’ve somehow managed to scrape your life back together.”