Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 3 Page 15

  “They’re in mother’s dresser in the boy’s room.” Willow grinned mischievously. “Her pink ones are in there too if you prefer…”

  “I am so going to get you—” He yawned. “—after I wake up. Night Willow. See you at lunchtime. If you want, don’t make anything, and I’ll go get subs from town.”

  “Already have chili planned, but thanks.”

  As Chad climbed the stairs to Willow’s room, he wondered if he’d ever be able to get ahead of her plans. Perhaps that was part of the problem. Willow and Kari planned their ways, but who truly directed their steps? He was too exhausted to think about it. After a quick brush of the teeth and a change into more comfortable clothes, Chad crawled into Willow’s bed, pulled the covers over his head, and drifted quickly into a lavender scented sleep.

  The children worked quickly on their schoolwork once they knew Willow was serious about getting it done. At the kitchen table, with an extra leaf added for elbowroom, Tavish and Ellie raced to finish the required number of pages. Willow watched, amazed at how quickly they flew through vocabulary lists, spelling words, capitalization corrections, and labeling the states and capitals. Their reading books had ten comprehension questions that both children answered without reading the book. When asked, Ellie confessed that they read everything the week before in hopes that they’d have more time to play at her house.

  Laird’s work took a little more time, but he too managed to finish everything by eleven o’clock. This time, however, Willow was prepared. She insisted that they pile their work on top of the center bookcase in the library, clean up their mess, and return upstairs to make their beds. “Tomorrow, be sure to do that before you come downstairs. I didn’t think to tell you that last night.” As they rushed for the stairs, she added, “And do it quietly. Chad’s sleeping.”

  “When will Uncle Chad be awake,” Laird asked eagerly.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “No, I just wondered when I’d get to see his apartment.”

  “Oh.” She’d already forgotten that he wasn’t one of “her” charges. “Sometime around lunch, I think. Why don’t you go check on the chickens and the plants in the greenhouse? I’m going to check the ice and see if it’s ready to smooth, and maybe you guys can skate until lunch time.”

  Ellie watched, her face pressed to the window, as Willow grabbed a strange looking metal thing with bars that attached to the garden hose and walked it back and forth across the ice, smoothing it as she went. After fifteen minutes, Willow pronounced it smooth enough for skating and sent Ellie upstairs to find skates for them all.

  Her jeans soaked, Willow crept into her bedroom to grab a new pair from her drawer. Chad slept soundly as she found jeans and socks and readjusted the covers, before pulling the shade and tiptoeing back out of the room. She’d planned to change immediately, but after seeing Ellie arrive with her skates as well, Willow decided that a few spins on the ice wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  They played ice tag, stick hockey, and follow the leader. For nearly an hour, Willow played, taught Ellie how to skate with more confidence, and chased Laird more than once to retrieve her hat. Exhausted, she coasted to the edge, removed her skates, and stuffed her feet in her mud boots.

  “I’m going to go and check on lunch. Come on in when you’re done, and I’ll have lunch ready. Leave your skates on the porch. There will be a towel out there—dry the blades off or they’ll rust.”

  She packed the stoves once she came in and decided that she’d better keep the upstairs stove going if the children might be playing. Once in dry, warm clothes, she mixed cornbread and popped it in the oven, nearly salivating with hunger. Cookies sounded like the perfect after skating treat, so while she waited for the cornbread to bake, Willow mixed a batch of oatmeal cookies and nibbled shamelessly on the batter.

  The children came in just as she pulled the cornbread from the oven and inhaled their lunches. Laird pronounced her “the best cook I’ve ever met,” which earned him a dirty look from Ellie. “What? Aunt Aggie is learning, but—”

  “What about Mommy!”

  “Mommy could cook, but not like this. Except for brownies. No one makes better brownies.”

  Appeased, Ellie gleefully enjoyed the rest of her meal in silence. Cookies disappeared equally rapidly followed by large glasses of milk. Tavish brought his dishes to the sink and commented, “I think your milk might be going bad. It tasted different somehow.”

  Willow poured a bit into a glass and tasted it. “Tastes normal to me. I’ll ask Chad if Ditto is nibbling on the straw. Maybe we should give her alfalfa for straw.”

  “This is milk from your goat!” Laird’s face looked positively ill.

  “Of course. Where else would I get milk on this farm?”

  “Isn’t that—unsanitary?” Tavish questioned, staring at the glass Willow drained.

  “I’ve been drinking this milk all of my life. Have you ever drunk milk from your Uncle Zeke’s cows?”

  “Well yeah—” Laird began.

  “What’s the difference? We both have clean barns, clean animals, clean kitchens, and clean milk pans—”

  “But goats? They’re like—not cows.” Ellie’s logic, while faulty, was comical nonetheless.

  “Well,” Willow said finally. “Drink my milk or don’t drink any. I don’t really care. Go brush your teeth.”

  Ellie’s eyes widened and stared at Laird who slipped from the room. Tavish shrugged and followed. After a few steps to the door, she came and stared up at Willow. “Are you mad at us?”

  “Mad? Why?”

  “You sounded upset about the milk.”

  “I’m not upset. If you don’t like it, don’t drink it. I really don’t care.”

  The child’s eyes searched her face for something… and found it. “You mean that. Wow.”

  Just after one o’clock, Chad followed the sound of Willow’s dulcimer to the kitchen. There in her rocking chair, Willow plucked the notes to “Blowin’ in the Wind,” humming along as she played. With his back to the living room wall opposite her, he stood listening as she struggled for some notes and played others confidently. Once done with the verse, she started over, this time making no mistakes at all, letting the notes drift into silence as they reverberated through the room, and died.

  “Beautiful.”

  Willow’s head whipped up but she didn’t see him anywhere. “Chad?”

  His head peeked around the corner. “Smells good too.”

  “Hungry?” she asked, carrying her instrument to the bookshelf by the window and laying it gently on top.

  “Starving. Where are the kids?”

  “Outside somewhere. I’m guessing ice skates, zip line, or maybe they took the sled up the hill without you.”

  As he accepted a bowl of chili, Chad asked with as much nonchalance as he could muster, “How did it go with their schoolwork? Will they be done soon?”

  “They were done by eleven. We skated for a while. I had fun with them.”

  “Done? How did they get done so quickly?”

  She shrugged. “They seemed to act like it was normal. I checked their answers, and they got everything right as far as I could tell.”

  “They didn’t have access to the answer keys did they?”

  “No. I put those up in the library closet. It seemed silly to mess with them when the work is stuff I already know.”

  Unable to argue with her logic, Chad buttered his cornbread and said nothing more. Maybe Aggie had assigned a light schedule to make things easier on Willow. It sounded like the kind of thing he’d suggest if he was leaving for a couple of weeks and near strangers were going to be educating his children.

  “Can we get the education discussion over?” she asked tentatively. “I have work to do on the invitations, but—”

  “Willow, you’re not going to get out of this marriage that easily.”

  “I’m not trying—”

  “Maybe not,” he conceded, “but it’s hard not to wonder
when a new obstacle arrives every week or two. At this point, I’m committed. I’m not giving up on this regardless of what new problem you discover.”

  “But we do have to consider these things. We can’t go into a marriage if we’re going to disagree—”

  “Yes we can,” he argued, “and we will.” Chad pushed his plate away from him and folded his hands slowly and deliberately. “At some point, now would be good, you’re going to have to trust me and the Lord with some of this stuff. You can’t plan every aspect of your life years in advance. As admirable as your orderliness and schedules are, they are also a crutch.”

  “Chad!”

  Every word he spoke was clear, calm, and oh so very calculatedly calm and distinct. He waited for her to sit in her chair, relax, and then continued. “I know you want me to promise I’ll do this your way. I know you want assurance that everything will fall into every piece of your carefully calculated puzzle, but I can’t and I won’t. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “But—”

  “I promised—” he continued, ignoring her interruption, “that I wouldn’t lead you where you weren’t ready to go, and I won’t. You’re going to have to trust that and trust that the Lord is guiding both of us.”

  The living room clock chimed but Willow didn’t speak. The kettle whistled and Chad mixed him some coffee, and still she sat silent. Finally, with honesty she hadn’t shown with herself, Willow admitted, “I don’t know if I’m ready to follow Jesus if it means away from what I know.”

  “You have a habit of that—lying about things like that.”

  “What!”

  “Just a few days ago, I heard you singing, ‘Where He leads me I will follow, all the way… Follow Jesus every day.’ You did that before—about something. Hymns are prayers, affirmations—not quite the same as vows perhaps—but nearly so. You sang you’d follow Him, and when He asks you to trust Him to only lead you where He wants you to go, you balk because you have no guarantees it’s where you want to go.”

  “Will you go away?”

  Chad misunderstood and sighed. “I didn’t think you were a quitter. I foolishly thought you cared, if not about me, about our friendship. I—”

  “Chad?”

  “What?”

  “Be quiet.” The dumbstruck look on his face nearly sent her into a fit of giggles. “I didn’t say leave forever and don’t come back. I said go away. I need time to work this out. I need quiet. I need you to go away.”

  Chad pushed back his chair, kissed her temple, grabbed his jacket, and left. Willow stared at the back door, as it swung shut gently. “What is with him and the constant kisses lately?”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  “What are you doing, Aunt Willow?”

  “Making invitations for the wedding.”

  Ellie watched for a moment and asked to help. “I like art…”

  Without a word, Willow laid a piece of paper in front of the empty chair next to her, dipped a brush in water, wiped it across the paper, and then washed a bit of cadmium light yellow across the surface of the paper. “Get comfortable doing that, and I’ll have you do my washing for me.”

  “Washing?”

  Patiently, Willow explained the process of putting a light wash of yellow over most of the front of the card leaving just enough white around the edges to make it appear to float off the page. “Then, once it’s dry, I can paint the lilacs and daisies on it.”

  “Oh, I’ve never heard it called washing. My art books call it ‘putting a wash’ over something, but washing makes sense, doesn’t it. Funny.” Her head cocked to one side. “Why didn’t you just buy them?”

  Even children wanted to know why Willow didn’t do things as everyone else expected her to, and it exhausted her to think about it. “That’s not how I do things. Some people like to do some things; others like to do other things. I guess I’m an ‘other things’ kind of girl.”

  Chad’s voice surprised them from the living room doorway. “You’re my kind of girl.”

  Ellie giggled. “Uncle Luke says mushy stuff like that too.”

  “What can I say,” Chad began, tugging on Willow’s braid. “I come from a long line of mushers.”

  “That sounds a little revolting,” Willow protested, standing. “You go ahead and use up that yellow. I’ll get some more.”

  Chad watched Ellie for a minute, but the child finally glanced up at him. “She wants to talk to you alone.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because, that’s what Aunt Aggie does when she wants to tell Lu— Uncle Luke something. She goes off somewhere, and he just follows.” At the doorway, Ellie’s voice stopped him. “Uncle Chad, does she like us?”

  “Why do you ask that? Of course, she does.”

  “She’s not very—I don’t know the word I want, but she’s not it. It feels like we’re in the way.”

  Chad kissed the top of the child’s head and squeezed her shoulder. “Ellie, did you know that until she met your family, Willow had never even talked to a child? Not even when she was a child?”

  Eyes wide, Ellie’s jaw dropped as she shook her head. “Not ever?”

  “Never.”

  “Who did she play with?” No children around was a completely foreign concept to a child with seven siblings.

  “Her mother.”

  “Where was her daddy?”

  An awkward silence filled the room as Chad struggled to find words that were appropriate for Ellie’s ears. “God chose, when He planned a home for Willow, to put her in a family without a father.”

  “But you have to have a father— you need him to—” Her practical knowledge apparently prohibited Ellie from accepting the hint of an immaculate conception.

  “Yes, but in Willow’s case, God removed the father before Willow was ever born. She likes you—she just doesn’t know how to show it so you see it. Her letting you work with her is proof enough that she likes you.”

  Satisfied that Ellie understood and accepted his explanation, Chad hurried upstairs. “Need help?”

  “Lots. I don’t know how to relate to these children. Ellie asked why I didn’t just buy the invitations. I’m tired of answering that question. I am really tired of explaining my life.”

  “Sometimes,” he said gently as he helped her down from the stool, “You forget that you’ve been accustomed to getting your own way in everything. It has made you a little self-centered.” Seeing the defenses rising in her features, he hurried to explain. “It’s natural! If you have no one to consider but yourself, you’re going to be self-centered. You can’t help it. It’s impossible to live alone, not interact with others, and not be self-centered. Where the problem begins—” Chad swallowed hard praying he’d get his words out in the right order. “—is when you forget that sometimes you need to trust that others have good ideas and plans too. They may not be best for you or for your situation this time, but that doesn’t invalidate them.”

  “Do I do that?” Fear of the answer slowly clouded her eyes as she waited.

  He brushed a stray hair from her face and waited for her to meet his eyes. When sighed and raised her face, he quoted, “‘Decide whether you want children or me. Because if this is what it means, I won’t have them.’”

  He watched the truth of his rebuke slam into her heart and felt the rush of air as she reacted as if it was a physical hit. “Did I really say that? I mean, I know I did. I remember it, and I know exactly what I meant. It’s just not what I want to admit that I meant. I just—” Willow buried her face in his chest in what was becoming a regular ritual with her. “I can’t believe I gave you such an ugly ultimatum.”

  “I can. When faced with yet another change in your life, you did what comes natural to all of us. You panicked and ran in the only direction you could think of. It’s natural. It’s normal.” Chad swallowed hard. “You just can’t do it.” His voice dropped to a pained whisper. “It hurts, Willow. It hurts to think that the next change might be the one th
at sends me away again. I fought once. I’ll fight again. But at some point, I’m going to take you seriously when you make it clear that you don’t trust me or want me around anymore.”

  “I’d better go supervise Ellie—”

  “Don’t do it, Willow. Don’t run from me when it’s uncomfortable.”

  Her fingertips slid lightly along his jaw, the stubble tickling her as she did. “I’m discovering that my best friend is good for me. He tells me what I need to hear rather than what I want to hear. I’m also learning not to like it when he’s not around.”

  “I guess this isn’t the time to tell you that at five, I’m taking Laird home for the night?”

  “No, it’s not. I think I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  Ellie heard his chuckles as they came down the stairs and smiled to herself. She recognized that chuckle. It’s the one Luke always made when he said something that made her Aunt Aggie blush.

  Chad’s pickup bounced across the ruts, reminding him that he needed to drag the drive—again. When he’d seen Willow’s face droop as he carried his bag downstairs, he was both tempted to stay for her sake and happy to see her missing him already. His father was right. As soon as he gave himself half a chance, he’d fall in love with her. He was half-way there, but her tendency to push him away held him in his old pattern of self-preservation, and he knew it.

  The slightly awkward silence that began when they got in the truck disappeared by the time they reached the highway. Laird started off with a simple question. “I brought my books. Can I work ahead while you’re at work so I don’t have anything to do when we’re at Aunt Willow’s?”

  “Sure, if you can get it done.”

  Laird thought for a moment. “Can I call Tavish and Ellie and tell them they should just do the week’s work tomorrow, so they have until Monday before they have any work?”

  This wasn’t something he’d expected. “Well, what would Aggie say?”

  “She lets us do it on Wednesdays but not before. She thinks we shouldn’t let too many days go between working.”