by Melissa Tagg
“I’ll text you.”
Jen squeezed her arm before moving away. Finally, they were alone. Well, alone in a crowded coffee shop. But surely this was better than someplace private. If it got too weird or something—
“Mara?”
It was somehow comforting to see her own hesitation mirrored in her father’s expression.
“Should we sit?”
She nodded and towed herself into the high chair. She should’ve ordered a drink. It would’ve given her something to fidget with. The strums of a country song hummed along behind the chatter of the shop and the groan of coffee machines. Sunlight streamed in the long windows, interrupted by people walking past on the busy sidewalk.
“I’m so happy you were willing to come all this way,” Dad finally said, breaking their strained silence. “Your email alone was more than I’ve hoped for in years now. So to actually be sitting here across from you—”
“What do you mean you hoped for an email?” The purse on her knees slid forward. She barely grasped it before it dropped to the floor. “You were waiting for me to reach out? You could’ve emailed. You could’ve called.”
“Mara—”
“I deserve an explanation, Dad. I deserve to know why I wasn’t worth sticking around for. Birthdays, holidays, graduation—you missed all of it. You didn’t even come to Mom’s funeral.”
“I tried to.”
Her knuckles were white around the strap of her purse. “What?”
“I thought I could do it. I wanted to be there, I did. I started the drive, but . . .” He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater. “I relapsed on the way. Didn’t even make it as far as Kentucky. Ended up in a hospital. I was so bad off that time they put me in the psych ward.”
Were Mara’s lungs still working? “What do you mean you relapsed?”
Dad’s pale eyes met hers. “She really never told you?”
Did he mean Mom?
“Mara, I was in treatment. On and off for years. I’m an alcoholic. Seven years sober now, but—”
“What? No . . . that can’t . . . You’re a country music singer. You’re a Grammy-winning songwriter. You went to Nashville to chase your career.”
“I went to Nashville to enter a rehab center to get help for my addiction.”
Too many questions clogged in her throat. Words that didn’t seem to compute knocked into each other. Alcoholic. Addiction. Treatment. None of it matched up to the image of her father in her head.
“It was a year-long program. I stuck with it all the way through the first time. Then I came home, remember?”
“Remember? I’ve relived that night a thousand times, Dad. We dressed up. We made pot roast. It was all a plan. To try to get you to stay.”
He scooted his chair closer to her. “I wanted to stay. But your mom. She could tell I’d already been drinking before I showed up at the house. One week out of rehab and I was already at it again. She told me to leave and I don’t blame her.”
“But why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
The tears were back in his eyes. “I wish we would’ve. I was so ashamed at the time. I have to believe your mother thought she was doing what was best for you.”
“She let me believe you didn’t care. That you’d walked away.”
“She was hurting too. Hurting people do inconsiderate things sometimes.”
Inconsiderate? “But your career . . .”
“There was a volunteer at the center who had connections at The Bluebird. He heard me playing guitar at chapel one night. The rest is history.” He placed one palm on the table, close to where her hand now gripped the table’s edge. “I lost my family because of my addiction and my shame. The career happened somewhere along the way, but it’s nothing to me compared to what I lost.”
Too many emotions pressed in. Hurt so long buried. Confusion. Disbelief and realization knotting together. How could Mom have let her think . . .
She shook her head. Mom wasn’t here. Dad was. “I still don’t understand why you haven’t tried to contact me. You said you’ve been sober for seven years.”
He cleared his throat. “I told myself I didn’t want to intrude on your life. That it wouldn’t be kind to you. That you were better off. But I think the deeper truth is that I was just a coward. And a fool. I may be sober but . . .” He lifted his gaze. “There’s no excuse. Not for any of it. If I could change the past decades, I would, but all I can do is sit here now and try to tell you how immensely sorry I am. How much I’ve missed being your father. How many times I hoped that you’d hear one of my songs and know . . .”
His voice cracked and he looked away as he pulled a tissue from his pocket.
“I hoped you’d hear one of my songs and know that your dad loved you. Even if he was too much of a mess to ever show it.”
“Dad.” She didn’t know what else to say. Or even what to feel. It was going to take a while to tunnel through all the new details of the past, find her way to new footing in the present.
But for now, maybe it was okay just to be. To be here. With her dad.
“Could I get you a coffee, Dad?”
“So what are you going to do?”
The question burst from Jen before Mara had even closed the hotel room door or the sound of Dad’s retreating steps faded. She slid the chain lock into place and turned to see Jen sitting cross-legged on the queen bed closest to the window, shopping bags spread around her.
“Did you find those boots?”
“We’ll talk about my boots—all three pairs—later. You can’t just text a friend that your dad, whom you haven’t talked to in almost two decades, asked you to move to Nashville and then not elaborate.”
Mara plopped on her bed, muscles still sore from the cramped plane trip earlier this morning, but heart overflowing. She’d talked with Dad in that little coffee shop for more than three hours. In fits and spurts, snippets of their lives shared through the awkwardness of not really knowing one another anymore.
But he loved her. He’d always loved her.
No, knowing so didn’t erase eighteen years of pain just like that. But maybe pain wasn’t a thing to be erased anyway. Maybe in facing it and understanding it and walking through it instead of around it, a person could find new purpose.
He’d be back in another couple of hours to take her and Jen to dinner.
She laid on her back, gaze on the popcorn ceiling. “Apparently he has a really nice guestroom. He offered it when I told him about Lenora selling the Everwood.” She bent her knees, her toes tangling in the bed sheets and her arms crossed over her head. “Honestly, it was pretty weird. He kept looking at me like he couldn’t quite believe I was real. We sort of tiptoed around each other.”
“Now I feel bad for being rude to him.” Jen moved to the edge of her bed, feet touching the floor. “Him looking at you like he couldn’t believe you were real, though? It makes sense. You’re probably a miracle to him. He thought he’d lost you for good.”
And Mara had thought she’d lost him. All this time, if she’d only reached out . . . if he’d reached out . . .
No, she’d already decided not to go there. At least not now. Today was a reunion, a celebration she’d never seen coming. She wasn’t going to get caught up in if onlys.
“So, you could move to Nashville. You could move to Illinois with Lenora. You could stay in Maple Valley.” Jen held up a finger for each option. “You could chase Marshall to Milwaukee.”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, obviously, happy as I am for you and your dad, I have to cast my vote for Maple Valley. What are you thinking?”
Mara sat up. “I have no idea what I’m thinking.”
“Don’t you have some little inkling, though? A gut instinct?”
“I love Maple Valley. It’s the first place that’s felt like home in . . . forever, it seems. But without the Everwood, what would I do there?”
“Move in with me? Help me clean out my parents’ house?”
/> Mara laughed.
“You think I’m kidding, but I’m totally serious.”
Moving to Illinois would be the safe choice. She’d have a new place to belong. Lenora would dote on her and Mara would be the daughter she’d never had. It was the very thing she’d longed for at this time a year ago.
But for some reason, “safe” didn’t hold the same allure now.
“I want to get to know my dad. I really do.”
“You’d move to Nashville? Just like that?”
“I’ve moved plenty of times before.” She turned to the window, the lights of Nashville and the sprawling airport nearby glittering against a sunset abounding in every shade of pink. What did she want?
Marshall’s face filled her mind in an instant. Just like it had so many times in the days since he’d left. Those gray eyes of his—stormy at times and at others as soothing and mellow as one of Dad’s songs. His smiles, so rare when she’d first met him and ever-varied—crooked and teasing, dimpled and sincere.
Marshall Hawkins. Thirty-five. Milwaukee.
But Marshall was a who, not a what. And he had his own road to walk right now. Besides, while it might sound romantic to go chasing after him, there was something else tugging on her soul now. Something urgent and beckoning. Voices, memories rising up.
Jen as she helped paint. “I think there must be something magical about this house. Even Lucas seems happier since he’s come here.”
Lenora as she pointed Mara toward faith. “I think God led you here, Mara.”
And Marshall. “You’re not just saving the Everwood, Mara. Every day that I’ve spent here—with you—I’ve felt a little more whole.”
And one more voice. A whisper. The one she’d been waiting for. I carved out a place for you. Because I love you.
She watched through the window as a plane lifted into the pastel sky. God, who’d loved her with an always and everywhere kind of love, even when she hadn’t seen it, was summoning her from the hallway once more, wasn’t He? It was time to stand up and walk through another door. She didn’t have to know how it’d all work. She just had to take the next step.
Mara reached for her braid, pulled its tie loose and helped it unravel. She brushed her fingers through unruly waves as she turned to Jen. “Come on, friend. Let’s get ready for dinner with my dad.”
23
Lenora
Davis’s great-grandchildren—four girls and a boy who is awfully good-natured for being so outnumbered—are racing around my chair as I guard my teacup. Their parents are out on the lawn playing a game of bocce ball while Davis’s adult daughters—my cousins!—keep me company in the living room.
I can’t get over how closely they resemble me.
I can’t get over how Davis’s wife has taken to mothering me just as much as she mothers them, never mind that we’re all so close to our seventh decade.
I can’t get over this family. My family.
After George died, I asked God to send me a person. Just one person to care for. He sent me Mara. And he sent me this.
“Kids,” Davis says as he and his cane thumpety-thump into the room. “Time to stop making Eleanor dizzy. Great-Grandma has snacks for you in the kitchen.”
Eleanor. The poor man has tried so hard to call me Lenora. But sixty-odd years of thinking of me as Eleanor are hard to undo. Over and over I tell him I don’t mind.
He settles into the recliner next to me, his daughters caught up in their own conversation over on the sofa. “You miss her,” he says simply.
And that’s another thing I can’t get over. How an uncle I didn’t even know months ago can now hear my unspoken thoughts. But he spent all those weeks praying at my hospital bedside. Maybe, even when I was unconscious, God was knitting us together. Grafting me into this family.
But not so long ago, He grafted Mara into my life too. And Davis is right. I miss her.
Yet I’m happy for the decision she’s made. It’ll be official soon. All the paperwork completed and signed. She’s found her open door. She’s taking her next step.
Most of all, she’s discovered the One who’s present in the hallway every bit as much as the other side of all of life’s doorways. I hear it in her voice when she calls. In her newfound confidence and her gentle strength.
“I miss her,” I confirm to Davis now, setting down my teacup. “But she’s right where she’s supposed to be. And I’m right where I belong. And—”
A high-pitched tone blasts from the pocket of my cardigan. Of course, that phone Mara insisted I buy and Davis keeps trying to teach me to use. Never mind that I had the annoying thing figured out the day it came in the mail. Just because I don’t like technology doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use it.
But it makes him happy to teach me and so I let him.
“The green button, Eleanor,” he says. “The one with the little image of a phone.”
It’s not ladylike to roll my eyes, so I don’t. I lift the phone. “Hello?”
It’s not the voice I expected. It is, however, another answered prayer. I hang up a few minutes later and turn to Davis. “I hope you don’t mind company.”
24
These long road trips were getting old.
Marshall jumped down from the driver’s seat of his new truck. He’d test driven three different vehicles a few days ago just to make the salesman at the used car lot happy, but all along he’d had his eye on the ten-year-old hunter green Ford. The thing had plenty of miles on it and a few scratches on the dash, but it suited him.
A gentle rain pattered on its top, and he pulled up the hood of his jacket. Despite the rain, stubborn sunbeams pushed through the clouds, and he moved without hurry to the little yellow house.
All it had taken was some Googling and a couple of phone calls to find this address and confirm that the woman he needed to speak to was, in fact, in residence. He’d thought about having this conversation over the phone but it didn’t feel right. Instead, he’d asked to visit.
So here he was, once again road-weary and approaching an unknown house in the rain.
But oh, how different this was than the night he’d stumbled upon the Everwood. This time, his head was clear and his steps sure. This time, he wasn’t running away from a life he could barely bring himself to care about anymore. He was walking toward a life he couldn’t wait to begin living.
Or had already begun living, really. Easter Sunday with Beth and Alex and the kids had been the first holiday in years he’d actually enjoyed. And that night when Alex had dropped him off at his townhouse, it wasn’t loneliness that awaited him, but instead, action. He’d started packing boxes and hadn’t quit until sunrise.
He’d spent the following days making calls, meeting with a realtor, breaking the news to his sister and Captain Wagner. He’d even called Penny.
And of everyone he’d talked to, of all the encouragement he’d received, hers were the words he’d replayed over and over in the days leading up to today.
“She’d be so excited for you, Marshall. She’d start jumping up and down and running from one end of the townhouse to the other.”
“And the neighbors would bang on the adjoining wall.”
“And she’d only run faster.”
He hadn’t been able to see Penny’s face, but surely there’d been tears in her eyes too. Just like in his. Tears a little more sweet than bitter, although there’d always be some of both.
But he could finally truthfully say it was better this way. Better to feel—to feel all of it—than nothing at all.
“You should go see her before you go, Marshall. Tell her yourself.”
He almost hadn’t been able to do it—stop at the cemetery to see Laney before hitting the road this morning. Any other time he’d tried in the past two years, he’d never made it farther than the iron fence encircling the graveyard.
But this time, he’d gone through with it.
And now, hours later, despite limbs stiff from too many hours in the truck and a gr
owling stomach, he was still wrapped in the tranquility of that place, the impact of those moments.
Knees in dew-tipped grass. A hushed breeze in the trees. It was strangely solacing, the way grief and love had entwined around and inside him as he stared at his daughter’s tombstone.
“I will love you and miss you always, Laney Grace Hawkins. Always. But for you, I’m going to choose hope today. I’m going to choose to believe that there’s still something good for me here.”
Rolling clouds had drawn his gaze to the azure sky. And for a wonderful, spellbinding moment, he’d been able to picture it so clearly. Laney pumping her little legs and running through the heavens, moving clouds and lighting the sky with her laughter.
Goose bumps had covered every inch of his flesh and those words he’d hurled at God in the hospital chapel came flooding back. “If you want me to believe . . . you’re going to have to give me something. Anything.”
The wind had picked up and the grass and trees around him bowed. And he could still see her running even as a sob, somehow grateful, stole the breath from his lungs.
This was the gift. The something, anything, he’d begged God for. He’d see Laney run again someday. He knew he would.
He’d wept until he was spent, and when he’d finally stood, he was a man ready to keep living in the now—in all its abundance and possibilities and longings too—even as he held on to the hope of then.
He shook the hood from his head now, amazed at his lack of a headache. The drive should’ve done it, if not the tears.
Marshall paused on the front steps of the yellow house. A wreath of sprigs and little white flowers decorated the front door and a silver mailbox to the side was half-open, catalogues and envelopes sticking out. He cleared his throat and lifted his hand to knock.
But the door swung open before he could. “Marshall Hawkins. It’s about time you got here.” Lenora Worthington clucked her tongue. “And look at you, you’re all wet.”
“Even if I didn’t already have the best reason ever to be here in Iowa, this coffee alone would make the whole thing worth it.”
