She stuffed the tote bag in her jacket, pulled the strings tight around her hips, and stuck her arms in the straps before she zipped up the coat. Gloves slid comfortingly over her fingers. Her ear warmers came next, followed by her warmest felted hat. Finally, she knotted a scarf over the entire head ensemble to ensure the wind didn’t snatch it.
She called at nearly every mile. Where moonlight shone, she tucked the flashlight back in her jacket, but when it dipped behind trees or behind a cloud, she whipped out and trudged along the highway. Twice she heard a car, saw lights, and flattened herself in the ditch until the vehicle disappeared around a bend, feeling just a little foolish. Were Mother’s orders logical at a time like that? She didn’t know. Still she trudged onward. According to Bill’s way of thinking, you wouldn’t offer a stranger a ride anyway, and that probably went double for late at night.
By the convenience store, she was nearing panic. Where could he be? At the corner of Market and Elm Streets, she tried to blend into the hedge as Martinez made his last circle of the town square before his shift ended, his headlights sweeping just a few feet from her. She trudged to the apartment on Bramble Row, growing more concerned with each step but the sight of Chad’s truck parked crookedly at the curb both annoyed and relieved her.
“That man!”
She pounded on his door but Chad didn’t answer. The door was locked. She crossed the hall and listened. Someone was inside talking, so she knocked on the door. A man answered, but appeared to be alone. It took her a moment to realize that the voices were probably from a TV. I have to watch something sometime, she thought irrelevantly and asked, “Do you know if Chad’s home?”
“Thought I heard him a while ago, why?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
The man rubbed a potbelly and grinned. “Well, a guy does have to sleep. Maybe he turned it off.”
“He’s awfully sick. I just want to make sure he’s ok, but he won’t answer his door or his phone.”
“Sick, you say?”
“Fever, chills, sneezing—” Willow began.
“Sounds like the influenza. Supposed to be bad this year. I got a key for his place around here somewheres. He gave it to me a while back, but where—” A light came into the man’s eyes. “I know. I saw it just the other day when I was scrounging up change for a paper. It’s in the medicine cabinet. I’ll be right back.”
Willow couldn’t fathom why someone would put a house key in a medicine cabinet or why he’d look there for loose change. When he brought her the key, she quickly opened Chad’s door and brought it back. “He wanted you to have the key so—”
“That’s nice of you ma’am. Want me to go check on him?”
“If I need you, I’ll knock. Thanks.”
“I was sick and wanted to sleep, so I turned it off!”
“And when I turned mine off, I got my head chewed off! You said you’d call!”
Chad stuffed his hands where his pockets should be but came up empty. “I forgot. I was tired, sleepy, and I’m not used to having to check in with Mommy!”
“Gee,” she retorted, “that sounds extremely familiar. I thought you were dead or at least had the courtesy of being mostly dead on the side of the road.”
“Well, I’m mostly dead in my bed so will you just go away?”
Willow’s head snapped back as though punched. “I’ll do that.” She paused, glaring at him before adding, “Don’t ever hold me to a standard you won’t keep to yourself again. Ever.”
At the door, she turned back. “And turn your phone on, or next time I walk five miles in cold wind you’ll feel it. I assure you.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Chad bolted upright in bed, his heart pounding, and his mind whirling. He took a deep breath. It was just a dream. His head felt clearer than it had in days.
What a dream! Sending Willow out into the cold after a long walk like that, it was unconscionable. He frowned. Where had the word unconscionable come from? He didn’t talk or think with gold-plated words. Only the knowledge that he’d never do such a thing kept him from being sickened by his own somnolent hallucinations.
Was this some kind of warning from the Lord? Was he being overbearing about her safety? He had no right; he knew that. He had no rights whatsoever. An imaginary taste of his own medicine might just be what the Lord had prescribed to open his eyes.
He stood, amazed at several minutes of consciousness without sneezing, and waited for a wave of dizziness. Feeling silly when it didn’t come, Chad stretched. His muscles felt tight and unused, but other than that, he felt back to normal, almost.
After tooth de-fuzzification, he hurried into the kitchen—starved. A jar of soup on the counter stopped him cold in his tracks. “I thought I ate that,” he muttered. “How strange. I must have dreamed that too—”
A dirty pot, bowl, and splatters on the counter assured him that he didn’t dream anything of the kind. Memories flooded his mind. The drive to Willow’s, the concern in her eyes, the blare of a semi’s horn at the curve just before the Fairbury turn-off. He’d really driven after all. Not good. He could have killed someone.
He gripped the counter as Willow’s face loomed over him. He could still feel the aching shakes as she fought to wake him up. His mind watched in horror as her eyes went from fear and concern to anger and disbelief. He’d broken her trust. Nothing hurt him more than the idea that he foolishly put people in danger—except maybe that he’d disappointed Willow.
He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that. “Take a shower and work from there, man. This is bad.”
“Chief, I can come in, but I need to take a drive out to the Finley place first.” Chad paused listening to the Chief’s concerns. “No really, I know it’s my day off, but Joe and Judith worked their days off to cover me. I can at least cover one of them.”
He slid his phone shut and glanced at his watch. Two hours before work. His eyes traveled to his closet. Should he change now and leave straight from Willow’s for work? A glance at the soup jar on his counter clinched it. He’d change first. She might not throw leftovers on him if he was dressed in his uniform. As he reached for his uniform, he sighed. Only one clean one left. He couldn’t risk it.
Thirty minutes later, he drove up the long driveway wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and his uniform safe on the seat of his truck. The sound of her axe told him she was chopping wood. Again. The last thing he wanted to do was tousle with an axe-wielding angry woman like Willow.
He stood off to the side as Willow split wood like a pro. That thought amused him. She was a pro. Splitting wood kept her warm and fed all winter. Her life depended on it. Literally.
As she tossed another piece of wood into the wheelbarrow, he could have sworn she raised one eyebrow at him. He swallowed hard. “So I came to tell you about this dream I had.”
“Really?”
Chad stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. I woke up in a panic because I dreamed that you walked all the way to my house to make sure I was ok, and I just kicked you out.”
“Really now?”
This wasn’t good. She managed to add a new word but the old one still hung there— taunting him. “I was so relieved to wake up and realize it was a dream. Well, until I went in my kitchen and saw a jar of soup on my counter—and an empty one in the sink.”
“Humph.”
“So, I grabbed some work clothes and drove straight out here to see if I really did what I’m afraid I did, or if my dreams are just more vivid than I realized.”
“Get me some water, will you?”
The request surprised him. He’d expected sarcastic remarks about feeling better, angry comments about having to work hard to warm up after her walk, but a request was the last thing he’d expected. “Sure.”
Water dripped from his nose, chin, and all over his sweatshirt seconds after he handed her the glass. “What—”
“I’ve read in books about women doing that. It always sounded so satisfying,
but I never thought I’d have an occasion to do it.”
Chad shivered and brushed water from his sweatshirt, thanking the Lord for dirty laundry protecting his uniform. “Willow, there’s no excuse for what I did—”
“That’s for sure.”
“—but I am very sorry. I wouldn’t have ever done anything like that consciously.”
She dropped the axe and leaned her hands on her knees, her eyes barely raised to his face. “I was terrified. I can’t lose any more people in my life. I don’t have enough to spare.”
“Forgive me?”
Without thinking, Chad arranged his features into the practiced boyish earnestness combined with masculine charm that worked so well on his mother. To his chagrin, and his relief, it worked. Willow rolled her eyes, threw up her hands, and said, “Oh, you’re impossible. Come in, I have cherry bars.”
Cherry bars. He’d sent her home in freezing weather and she had cherry bars. What was wrong with this picture?
Just as he stepped inside the door, she thrust a plate in his hands with a glazed cookie bar on it. Chad took the plate and stood near the stove, trying to dry his sweatshirt. “This is good. Almond.”
“I had some dried cherries once, so Mother and I tried to come up with a recipe we liked. I think they’re good.”
“Good,” he agreed between bites.
“I shouldn’t have thrown water on you out there in the cold. It’s a fine way to get you sick while your resistance is already down.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Chad.”
“I send you home in the cold and you’re sorry.” He shook his head and added, “Look. Let’s consider it behind us. I’m getting the better end of the bargain, but…”
She seated herself at the table and pulled out marking pens and a piece of paper she’d been embellishing. Small flowers slowly appeared scattered across the paper. Willow talked as she drew the flowers, sometimes meeting his eyes while still coloring in a leaf or a petal.
“Is there anything you can’t do?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His index finger thumped on the table, just once, next to the paper. “That’s what I mean. You cook, you preserve, you work the land, you butcher animals, you draw, sew, and create strategic versions of games that require incredible mental skills. What can’t you do?”
“Music.”
“You sing…”
“Not well, though. I sound ok, great compared to Alexa Hartfield actually, but still, it’s just a generic voice. I can’t play an instrument of any kind.”
The longing in her voice, the idea that she hadn’t learned something that she sounded interested in—it surprised him. “Why not? That sounds like just the kind of thing you’d do on a winter’s evening.”
“Mother was adamant. We couldn’t learn from a book, so we didn’t learn.”
“I don’t understand. Why not just pick up an instrument and play with it until you figured it out. I mean, the first people who ever used an instrument had to do that.”
With a sigh that deepened that longing, she shook her head. “Mother said that you’d learn terrible habits if you weren’t taught to hold your mouth or your fingers correctly, and it’d only leave you disappointed when it limited you or made it impossible to learn.”
“How sad.”
“It is how it is. Mother was always right about these things, so I just learned to focus in other areas.” The traces of yearning in Willow’s voice almost hurt him.
“Is there something you wanted to learn?”
With a smile that struck him as sad, Willow shook her head. “I never let myself think about it.”
Kari had made one mistake in the world she created on their farm. She developed a love of learning, beauty, grace, and artistry in their lives. Every year was an exercise in living life as richly and fully as they could. Learning new things became a way of life, but somehow she’d managed to stall this area. Chad hoped to find why and how in her journals. It seemed out of character for her.
Chad stood rinsing his plate as he did. “I am sorry to hear that. I think you’d enjoy it.” He rose, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got to get to work.”
As he stepped out the back door, Willow’s voice stopped him. “I thought of something else.”
“What?”
“Money. I don’t get it.”
He stared at her in surprise. “But you have such a head for numbers!”
“I can’t seem to translate it into practicality. I’m really glad mother had such a good financial advisor.”
Chad returned the table and leaned against the back of his chair. When her eyes rose to him, questioning, he said, “Willow, your financial guy is only as good as your understanding of what he does.”
“… financial guy is only as good as your understanding of what he does.”
Chad’s words pounded her mind from every corner. He must be right. Bill was trustworthy, but Willow knew her mother watched their accounts carefully. She could add, subtract, multiply; basic math skills were a breeze. The abstract concepts of applying those numbers in daily living were another story. Counting dollars was not a problem, but assigning value to items made no sense to her.
That evening, she poured over Kari’s accounting journals and Bill’s monthly and semi-annual statements. Chad found her at the kitchen table, hands cupped protectively over her head and tears of frustration threatening to overcome her at any minute. “Hey, what’re you doing?”
“Trying to understand it all. There are all of these numbers; they all make sense on paper but not in my head.”
“Well, I only have an hour but—”
She shoved the journals off the table. “But why can’t I understand it? I’m not stupid!”
“Hey—” He touched her arm lightly. “Hey, look at me. You are right. You’re not stupid. But you’ve lived a life where you never actually used money. Value of items is personal to you instead of collective.”
She blinked slowly, tightening the hands over her head. “Ok, you’re losing me already.”
“Well, for example, what would you pay for my truck?”
She looked at him blankly. Willow Finley had no interest in his truck. “I don’t know. I’m sure trucks are expensive—all that metal and stuff.”
“Ok, so how much would you pay for it?”
“Nothing. I don’t want it.”
Chad whirled the other chair around and sat backwards in it. “Well, if you did—”
“Um, probably a few hundred dollars. Maybe even a thousand.”
“Oh, how I wish! I’d keep more of my paycheck every month.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What does it have to do with your paycheck?”
“Well, that truck was almost twenty-five thousand dollars before down-payment and trade-in. I have to pay four hundred dollars a month. By the time I get another chance at the job in Rockland, it’ll be paid off.”
Her eyes widened. “How can you afford that?”
“I don’t have many expenses. My apartment’s cheap and includes utilities. I decided I’d buy it with today’s dollars instead of tomorrow’s.”
“But it’s so much money. That’s what we spend on living a year on expensive years, look!”
“Oh, Willow, you and your mother had so few living expenses compared to most Americans. You had no car insurance, car payments, no mortgage, almost no food budget— Those are the big ticket budget items.”
She pointed out her mother’s expenditures, mystified by the price of things. “Seeds. Look at the price of seeds! They’re so inexpensive. You pay four hundred dollars a month for just a tiny piece of a truck but we don’t pay that much a year for seeds!” None of it made sense. “Food is so much more important than that truck.”
Chad glanced at his watch. “I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon. We’ll do this—you and me. You can learn it. You’ve just never had to, and I think—”
Her head snapped up instinctively. “What?”
“I think that now you’ve been exposed to it a little more, you’ll get it.”
A smile lit her face. “Of course. I just need time. And I can ask my lawyer to look over new account sheets to make sure she agrees with Bill’s decisions until I understand it, can’t I?”
Chad nodded. “Or, I can look for you. I took some economics and financial classes in college.”
She gathered the papers and shoved them in a pile, dumping her mother’s journals on top. “I’ll just wait until you can help me understand then.” Relieved, she jumped up to add a log to the stove as she said, “I need to remember to teach it all to whoever I put in my will.” She sighed. “Yeah, Bill said I have to make a will.” Her eyes widened. “Wait, I was going to leave it to you anyway, so I don’t have to teach you anything.”
Chad’s cruiser sped toward Brunswick with another drunk in the back seat, but his mind was on Willow. He’d deceived her. Deliberately. He’d chosen to use truth to hide truth. Kari Finley had chosen not to help her daughter understand money. She’d known of Willow’s educational gap; that was obvious. And he’d hidden that fact from her.
“Lord, now what?”
“You shay shumpin’ to me?”
Glancing into his rearview mirror, Chad shook his head. “I’m sorry. Talking to the Almighty.”
The drunk’s head lolled to one side and a snore followed. Chad’s mind reverted to his prayer but he kept it internal. “I lied to her, Lord. What do I do about that? Do I confess? Do I just tell her some other time? Do I keep my mouth shut? I don’t know. I know Kari had her reasons. Surely, they’re in the journals somewhere. Find it and let her read it herself?”
He prayed all the way to Brunswick. An hour later, minus a drunk and with a strong odor of Lysol-tainted vomit in his car, Chad zipped past the Finley farm and breathed easier as he saw it enshrouded in darkness. She was sleeping again. Sleep meant she wasn’t worrying. Now if he only could.
Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 2 Page 4
