by Sheila Walsh
The baby started to fuss, and Ava finished dressing her in one of the new pajama sets.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said in a singsong voice.
Emma mimicked her with a monotone hum that came from her chest.
“Are you singing?” Ava said with excitement, turning the baby’s serious expression into a huge smile and squeal.
“So you like singing?”
The baby gave her an open-mouthed smile, revealing pink gums, and stuck her tongue out from her lips.
“You are the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” she muttered as she lifted Emma and stood, then added, “The cutest baby I’ve seen in a long time, since your cousins Jason and Sienna.” The baby laughed as if she’d made a great joke.
“You like me talking to you, don’t you?”
She’d made a breakthrough. Singing and talking. That’s what every baby needed. She didn’t have much else, but for now, she’d sing and talk and play music. It would soothe both of their hearts, the broken things that they were.
Ava went to the kitchen and placed the baby in the bouncer seat while she made a bottle, then brought her back to the living room and sat down to feed her.
Emma’s eyes stayed locked into Ava’s as her lips puckered with the suckling motion. She sighed and squirmed but drank heartily until the bottle was empty.
As Ava watched her, she suddenly knew what she had to do. But first she needed a few moments to talk to God.
Twenty-Five
AVA STOOD BEFORE THE REMNANT OF THE WILLOW TREE, EMMA cooing in her arms as she looked at the sky, the leaves, and the trees. There was more sky than usual and the emptiness around the willow made her shiver.
Ava picked up one weepy branch and a trail of leaves fell from it. The impulse came over her to pick them up and glue them back on, then to raise the tree up and glue the trunk back to the stump.
During her crafty stage when the kids were young, Ava had joked that everything could be fixed with a hot-glue gun.
A light breeze lifted some of the leaves from the ground.
Ava had the sudden impulse to cry or to beg the tree to come back to life. It was the strangest sensation, this panic over a tree.
She prayed then, feeling foolish even before God. “It was a tree. But, God, I feel like I needed it. And now it’s gone.”
The tree had tied her to the good pieces of her childhood. Now it was dead and she was about to return to that place of childhood dread, to see the people who caused a lifetime of pain.
It seemed such a short time ago that the willow had been normal, healthy, full of life. She remembered that calm Sunday when Dane and Jason were both at home for breakfast. It had been a perfectly unspectacular morning, but it was the day she’d first noticed something was wrong with the tree. The beginning of autumn. Football season had just started.
September. Summer had just ended.
That reminded Ava of her niece’s note. Emma had been born in the summer . . . when? June twenty-second, she recalled. Four months ago.
At age forty-eight, four months earlier was nothing. But that was the entirety of this little being’s life. Ava tried to remember what they were doing in June. Jason had gone to football camp, or was that July?
Bethany had been in the maternity ward, seeing her daughter for the first time. Ava didn’t know any details of the birth, what Emma had weighed, how long the labor was, whether it was natural or Caesarean.
No one in the family had contacted her, and why would they? Years ago, when her children were born, Ava might have included her aunts and cousins in the birth announcements, but she couldn’t be sure. She had taken them off her Christmas card list after a cousin calling for a “loan” accused her of bragging by including their family photos.
Oh, little one. You have so much living to do.
A longing washed over her to protect this innocent little being from all that living she had ahead of her. It was a living full of pain and disappointment, especially in their family. Maybe she could find Emma a good home. Just a few months earlier, she might have thought a good home was their home. But now their future was clouded.
Have faith in me.
Even after all those years, Ava had an immediate “was that God, or was that me?” debate whenever such words whispered through her heart. With the doubts she constantly contended with, it couldn’t be her.
Have faith in what I am doing.
Ava looked down at Emma, resting her head on Ava’s shoulder. Content, at ease, trusting that she was safe. Her cheeks had the lightest hue of pink and her long, dark eyelashes touched her cheeks. One fist gripped Ava’s hair.
An old tree dying. A baby being born.
She stared at Emma, who had arrived on her doorstep the very morning after she’d chopped down the dead weeping willow.
“What does this mean?” she whispered with her eyes inclined toward heaven.
Believe was the lone word whispered back to her heart.
Twenty-Six
AVA STARED AT HER MERCEDES SEDAN SHINING BENEATH THE FLO-rescent lights. Dane had washed and cleaned it inside and out since he’d been off work. Usually he hired people to do it. In the past months, he’d neglected their vehicles like everything else. But one of his first projects since the company closed was to detail the cars.
So there it sat, ready for a road trip all glimmering and clean, except Ava had received a text from Dane that morning.
Aves, real sorry about this. E-mail from lawyer today—keep your car locked in garage, don’t drive it. I’m torn between coming home to work this out or being with Jason—he’s really different since we’ve been here.
Ava’s first reaction was anger—was he saying her car was in danger of being repossessed? Then she wanted to burst into tears. But after facing her self-pity again as Emma cooed and kicked her feet happily, Ava laughed at the added challenge. She also realized her plush Mercedes wasn’t the best vehicle to drive up to her grandmother’s farm. It might disappear into a local chop shop.
Ava typed back: Stay there. Jason needs you, and I’m fine. Guess we have Old Dutch for something.
Now she stared across the far end of the garage to where the old VW was hidden beneath a car cover.
“Old Dutch, don’t fail me now,” she muttered.
By the time Ava had loaded everything into the car, taking breaks every so often to check the baby in the portable crib, change her, feed her, and give her a pacifier, Ava was exhausted.
“How did I ever raise two children?” she muttered. Emma smiled, and Ava saw a tiny lone tooth just barely protruding from her bottom gum.
“And now the car seat,” she said with a sigh.
Getting the base properly secured by the seat belt was an even bigger challenge. She’d never been good at assembling things or figuring them out—another one of Dane’s jobs. She got it strapped in, but then something niggled at her. Wasn’t the baby supposed to be rear-facing? She took out the base and started over. After some trial and error, Ava was confident she had a safe ride for Emma.
Ava ran back in the house and rifled through the baby things Kayanne had bought. There! A mirror she could attach to the backseat so she could see Emma’s little face while she was driving. She sent God a silent thank-you for Kayanne and ran back out to attach the mirror.
It was late Saturday afternoon, but the road beckoned. She locked the house, strapped Emma into her seat, and turned the key, hoping it would start.
The engine rumbled and sputtered, then sprang to life. Ava checked the gauges, trying to figure them out, found the lights for when it became dark and the wipers in case of rain, then she backed out of the driveway.
Emma started crying.
“Oh no, not one of those,” she said, remembering how Sienna had hated the car, crying every moment they were driving. Jason, on the other hand, seemed to fall asleep on cue in the car, except he’d become carsick on winding roads. It had taken several excursions to figure out that he didn’t have the flu every
time they went on a trip. Emma cried louder.
The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the driveway, making Ava wonder how late it had become.
“Oh, you must be hungry!” she exclaimed to the screaming baby. Ava pulled back inside the garage, then hurried to get Emma free from the car seat. The baby let out a few remaining protests and babbled as if trying to chastise her for forgetting such essential needs. She scooped up the baby bag and headed inside.
The call of the road—thwarted by the hunger of a baby.
An hour later, Ava was back in the VW, Emma safely strapped in once again.
I’m going on my own little adventure. I’ll be home before you and Jason are, she typed into her phone before heading off.
Old Dutch rolled along nicely—not quite the ride she’d become accustomed to, but Ava found the high humming of the VW engine to be like a soundtrack to her adventure. She and a baby in a VW were heading south out of Dallas toward her hometown—it sounded like a Lifetime movie, which amused her to no end. Emma chewed on her teething ring in the middle seat behind her.
But as she rounded the turn from the smaller highway to the interstate, her lukewarm coffee toppled over, spilling across the seat and over her leg.
She pulled into a parking lot where she saw a sign for a dollar store and decided to look for some paper towels. After wiping off her leg with some baby wipes, Ava started thinking of more things she’d forgotten on this ill-planned excursion.
Ava carried Emma in her car seat and set her in the small shopping cart, nearly filling it. Emma kicked her legs in and out at the bright lights and Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations covering the wall near the entrance. As a child, Ava had been used to the five-and-dime, but she hadn’t been in a discount store in decades. She pushed down an aisle of ornaments, decorations for parties, cosmetics, and cleaners with a number of well-known brands. Some of the items looks like they’d been packaged in the ’60s, but other things—the majority— were fresh and useable. There was even food—Ava had no idea that dollar stores sold food, though since her organic kick had started several years earlier, she wouldn’t be serving up dollar TV dinners to her family anytime soon. But what a deal, she thought as she wheeled around a woman with a basket full of items.
With her dwindling funds, Ava had to conserve. Dollars added up quickly . . . surprisingly so, she realized, as she counted the items filling up the small spaces around Emma’s car seat.
She’d picked out some snacks, cups, a few candy bars, and diaper wipes that smelled a bit like ammonia, but they were a brand she recognized.
As Ava rounded a corner with her cart, she nearly bumped into Corrine Bledshoe.
“Well, Ava,” Corrine said with surprise.
“What are you doing here?” Ava asked, as if accusing her of a crime.
“I’m buying some canned goods for the food bank. What are you—” Corrine broke off as her eyes drifted to Ava’s shopping cart with Emma chewing on her bare toes.
“Who is that?”
“What?” Ava said, retrieving Emma’s discarded sock from atop a package of thank-you cards.
“You have a baby in your cart.”
Ava bit her lip and couldn’t help chuckle. Of course she would run into Corrine at a moment like this. The irony tickled her funny bone.
“Why are you laughing?” the woman asked, frowning.
“I’m sorry, it’s just . . . here you are and here I am.”
“And why is that funny? Are you babysitting for someone?”
“I’m shopping. And no, I’m not babysitting.”
“Is she yours?” Corrine appeared more than a little confused, and Ava could practically see the math going on in Corrine’s mind as she tried to estimate if it were possible for Ava to conceive a child. This made Ava laugh even further.
“No, she’s not mine, but in a way . . . I have to go. Sorry.”
“Wait!” Corrine said, but Ava sped away toward the entrance of the store. She scooped up the car seat from the shopping cart, leaving everything inside and rushing out the door. Oh, how Corrine was going to have a field day with this one.
The thought turned her back around. She wasn’t going to let anyone get the better of her. Lugging the car seat back through the entrance, she reached her shopping cart just as someone was about to take it.
“Sorry, that’s mine.”
Corrine was pushing her cart around the corner of a display of canned corn with her ear leaned against her phone. Ava zipped up to her.
“Corrine, I just have to ask you. Have you ever had anything go wrong in your life?”
“Hang on, it’s her,” she whispered and set the phone against her chest. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you have had anything go wrong in your life.”
Corrine shrugged. “Of course.”
Ava had heard about Corrine’s husband’s alcoholism and her recent estrangement from her son, but in Bible study and planning events, Corrine never let on that there was a problem.
“Do you think it’s your fault every time something bad happens?”
“I examine my life and spirit and seek to find anything that God wouldn’t approve of in me.”
“And does everything get better then?”
“Some things are out of our control. I’m not saying that you have sin in your life, but someone in your house obviously must. It’s the same with my house.”
Ava felt a sudden sadness for Corrine and her entire family. They lived with the sense that God came at them constantly searching for ways to harm them. Ava couldn’t change that.
“Oh, Corrine. God’s grace is offered so that we don’t have to live in fear that any mistake or any struggle will produce some awful circumstance.”
“God’s grace is for our salvation. We still have consequences for our actions.” She glanced down at the baby as if to bring home the point.
Ava sighed, knowing that some people couldn’t escape the prison cell despite how Christ had opened the door. She’d grown up with such fear, and she’d been allowing her grandmother’s beliefs to infuse her life, blotting out what Christ had done for each of them. The prison door was open. She needed to stop walking back inside and acting as if it were locked again.
“Have a nice night.”
“But—” Corrine called after her. Ava headed toward the register.
Okay, Father, I surrender everything. Show me what you want me to face that I’ve been trying to escape.
Emma cooed contentedly as Ava drove onto the highway heading south out of the suburbs and into the vast, open Texas prairie.
The sun was dipping low in the sky, but Ava was prodded forward by the need to face both the past and her future. She hadn’t planned anything—this was her being spontaneous, she thought with a mustered-up sense of adventure.
She called Kayanne to fill her in on their location and route. Luckily Kayanne was getting ready for a date and didn’t have much time to grill her but extracted a promise that Ava would call tomorrow.
Emma’s noises softened, and Ava glanced back. In the mirror she could see Emma’s head resting against the side of the car seat, unmoving in sleep. The ticking of the VW and the open road at twilight filled Ava with a sense of nervous excitement. She’d never taken off without another adult—her aunt, a friend, or Dane was always with her. Night dropped like a stage curtain over the plains, and small towns stepped up and fell back from the country highway.
Eventually Emma stirred and began suckling at the air, grunting as she did, cueing Ava that the hours had passed between feeding times. She pulled into a Dairy Queen parking lot to prepare a bottle from the warm distilled water she’d packed in a thermos. She picked up Emma and settled herself into the front passenger seat with the baby in her arms.
Emma put her hands around the bottle, staring at Ava with round, dark eyes. She drank anxiously at first, then settled into a gentle rhythm. She paused to reach up with a chubby hand for Ava’s face. Her soft fingers brushed
Ava’s cheek, then returned to grasp awkwardly at the bottle.
“It’s just you and me, little one,” Ava whispered with a growing awe at the little life in her arms. She was so small and beautiful. In the great big world, this one child could become lost in the shuffle. Fear suddenly crept toward the windows of the VW. Ava clicked the door locks and prayed for God’s protection and guidance, which brought the strength of peace encapsulating them.
Across the road, Ava saw a billboard for a familiar hotel with luxury beds. They’d need a place to stay tonight, but their funds had dwindled far below the rate of her usual hotel choices. How much did a decent motel cost these days? She thought of the comfort of home only several hours back. Ava chastised herself for venturing out so unprepared.
Her cell phone rang and she saw Dane’s face appear on the screen.
“Hello?” she whispered as Emma’s eyes fluttered open and then her lashes dropped like a butterfly’s wings back closed, open and closed again.
Dane’s voice crackled with static. “Hello . . . where . . . you . . . thing . . . all right?”
“I can’t hear you,” she whispered again.
“Try . . . ter . . .” and the line went dead. Ava was relieved she didn’t have to confess to her husband that she was sitting in a parking lot in the middle of Texas with an infant in the car.
Dane didn’t call again as she waited, and Emma’s body grew heavy and limp. She shifted the baby onto her chest as she considered what to do and adjusted the seat back down. She closed her eyes . . . for just a few minutes.
A sound she didn’t recognize stirred her. Ava jumped at the face staring at her, only inches away. Emma pushed herself up with her hand and let out a protesting grunt, then chewed on her fist hungrily.
“Where, what?”
Dawn softened the bleak horizon. The inside of the VW was cold, as were the baby’s cheeks and hands.
“No way, we slept here!” Ava’s eyes bounced around the fast-food parking lot as she pulled Emma’s blanket back over her. She’d slept for hours with Emma on her chest. Anything could’ve happened.
