Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 3 Read online

  “Mom? I’m fine. Willow’s fine. Can I talk to Pop?”

  Christopher groaned as he rolled over to grab the phone from Marianne’s tired hands. “Son? What’s wrong?” To Marianne he whispered, “I’m going downstairs. This could take a while.”

  Chad groaned. “Poooop!”

  “If that was written out phonetically, it would look like poop.”

  “Gross.”

  “Spill it.”

  While Chad explained the evening’s discussion and the events that led to it, he heard his father rattling around in the kitchen. The sliding door to the patio opened—he’d recognize that squeak anywhere—and, there it was, the creak of his father’s favorite patio chair. “Comfy?”

  Christopher laughed. “Yeah. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “I just don’t want that man’s money to hang over me.”

  “So basically you told her that her money was a problem but that she couldn’t get rid of it.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Does she know that, son?” Christopher sighed. “Look, I get her now. Ever since she spent a week here, I understand more how her mind works. So I’m going to ask you again. Does she know that you didn’t mean to say that there wasn’t a solution that would satisfy you?”

  “I think so. She just said, ‘Well will you still come visit and play games and spend time with me if we don’t get married? Things weren’t going to be that different after marriage anyway.’” Just repeating the words made him sick.

  “I can see why she said that.”

  Of all the things his father might have said at that moment, those words were the last he expected. “Say what?”

  “You heard me, Chad. You’ve made it very clear to everyone how you’re just good friends, and this marriage is convenient for both of you. If we all know that, how much more should she think—”

  “Dad!” This was not his fault. Chad refused to accept responsibility for Willow’s overreaction to a genuine problem. “I called for help in dealing with Willow’s unreasonable response to the money situation, not to hear how you think I’m an idiot.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I misunderstood. I don’t think she was unreasonable, so I guess I should go. Night then.”

  Christopher clicked the “talk” button on his portable phone handset and carried it back into the house. Marianne stood at the kitchen sink unnerved by a late night call. “What did he want?”

  “Our son made a big fuss over Willow’s money, she tried to come up with solutions—she even offered to give it to that financial adviser of hers, and when nothing would please Chad, she suggested marriage might just be too much of a hassle for them.”

  “What!”

  Christopher chuckled. “Yep. Told him they might as well just go on being friends like they are.”

  “I can’t believe it. She didn’t. Why would she do that?”

  “He’s made such a point of telling everyone about it like that, that I’m sure she thought she was doing him a favor.”

  In a hoarse whisper, Marianne asked, “Do you think she really cares so little about the marriage though?”

  “I suspect that she’s home sobbing her eyes out and wondering what is wrong with her.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  He wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist and steered her toward the stairs. “Remember when she wanted to make your dress, and you said you’d find something in the store?”

  “Yes? What about it. She was so excited to help me look. Thankfully she wasn’t hurt.”

  “She was crushed.” Christopher’s voice took on a tone of tenderness he reserved only for his wife.

  “She was?”

  “Sweetheart, I heard her crying in her room an hour after you got home from shopping. I went in, talked to her, and got it out of her.”

  Marianne was aghast. “Why didn’t she—why did she act so chipper? Why fake that?”

  “I asked her about that. She said it was something she’d read in C.S. Lewis. I don’t remember which book she said it was but in it, he mentioned something about putting on the ‘mantle of Christlikeness.’ She chose to respond how she wanted to feel to train herself to feel how she thought she should.”

  “Did you tell her that was dishonest?”

  “I told her she was mature beyond her years in her desires, but that the appropriate response isn’t always what it seems. It seems that I wasn’t clear enough.”

  “And now Chad probably thinks she’s happy with the plan…” Her eyes sought something in his face. Once she found it she added, “But you think she’s unhappy.”

  “Yes.”

  Marianne turned and waved him upstairs. “I’ll call her.”

  “It’s late Marianne.”

  “You said she’d be up,” the persistent woman insisted. “I’ll at least try.”

  Somewhere in a pile of hay in the Finley barn, a cell phone rang, but the mice and cats that heard it were too busy to pay attention.

  Willow awoke the next morning, red-eyed and emotionally drained. Trying to keep herself occupied and her mind off her troubles, she milked Ditto and rotated pastures so the cow and sheep could enjoy new grass; the chickens fairly flew the coup as she opened the doors. May first. She remembered May Day baskets on bedside tables and stories of her mother delivering baskets to the elderly in her church every year before Willow was born.

  Buds on the lilac bush thrilled her until she remembered that there was no need for them anymore. There’d be no wedding, no bouquets, no lilacs to perfume tables with their heady scent. Her stomach clenched. Surely, there was another option. Maybe—but no, she’d made the suggestion to ease Chad’s misgivings, and he had accepted it. It must be for the best.

  A long list of calls filled her mind. The cake, the caterer, the dance floor, and the horse—cancelled by noon if she could manage it. Unless… She thought about it for a few seconds and then smiled. It’d work. Why shouldn’t they go ahead with the party? The invitations were sent, the money spent. She would just make a different dress and they’d celebrate that friends can be just friends without complicating the relationship. The thought alone nearly made her ill. The memory of a kiss… or twenty… nearly broke her spirit. Eventually she’d feel that way—eventually.

  She heard Chad’s truck in the driveway and hurried into the house. By the time he entered, she had a pan heating and was beating eggs into a bowl. “I got a late start, so I thought omelets would be easiest.”

  “We have to talk.”

  Willow agreed readily and launched into her “wedding party without a wedding” plan. “It’ll be easier than calling everyone, and then—”

  “I don’t want to call off the wedding.” He’d said it. All the way to Willow’s house he’d practiced how to broach the subject, and here he’d just blurted out the first thought that came to mind.”

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought wrong,” Chad insisted. “You aren’t the only one in this equation. Yes, the money is difficult for me to swallow, but not marrying you is more difficult.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course, she wouldn’t understand. Time filled the room, ticking with a silent invisible hand and waving the past behind them. As Willow handed Chad his omelet, he pulled the other chair toward him with one foot and gently pushed her into it. “I know you don’t. That’s my fault. I focused on one reason for marriage so exclusively that I left you thinking that’s all it was—a convenience.” For the first time, Chad forced himself to share more of his heart. “It’s not true,” he rasped, his throat closing with pain as he spoke. “I want you—marriage to you—and not because it means that I don’t have to split my time between two houses.”

  Chad saw her swallow hard and mentally kicked himself around the barn and back. He was going to blow this. Anger welled again but this time the object wasn’t Willow. This time he saw that she wasn’t the one with little thought
for him. In a rush, a new thought, one that he should have realized, slammed into his brain, stopping short of producing a partial lobotomy. She had probably been a bit self-sacrificing.

  “Willow, I was a bit perturbed last night.”

  “A bit?” One eyebrow arched slightly.

  “Ok, I was quite ticked off. I assumed that you didn’t care about us—our marriage. I went home, whined to my father… I’m not exactly proud of my behavior. What did you do?”

  She stood, pushed the chair behind her, and returned to the stove. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Willow, lass, we have to talk about it. We can’t let this—”

  She whirled to face him steely anger in her voice. “I can’t believe you decided that this was all about me. I’m sick of being the backward idiot who doesn’t know how to relate in your world. You didn’t like any of my financial solutions, what else am I supposed to think? How am I supposed to know that you’re not looking for an out? You sounded like you wanted one.”

  “It wasn’t that, so much as your infernal cheerfulness. You seemed perfectly chipper at the idea of just going back to the way things were.”

  “So you would have preferred I cried and begged you not to abandon me?”

  “Well cried may—” he began with a slightly panicked tone. He’d been through tears enough with her to want to avoid them at all costs.

  “Exactly! I save my breakdown for when you’re gone, so I don’t push you further away, and I get blasted for it. Had I bawled, you would have hated it. Can you give me an option three, because my brain quit at two.”

  Willow shoved the half-cooked omelet into the sink and stormed from the kitchen. Chad stared in shock at the empty back door for several seconds before he jumped to follow. She was right. He had treated her somewhat like the backward child who must be the cause of all things discordant.

  He hurried out of the kitchen, down the steps, and around the greenhouse to the back of the barn. Chad was sure she’d gone to her swing. He’d head her off there. She seemed drawn to it anytime she was unsettled or needed to think.

  Just as the tree came into view, he heard the distinct sound of breaking glass against metal. Seconds later, it repeated. What on earth? Chad retraced his steps and opened the barn door where Willow was systematically smashing dishes into a barrel. Again. But this time death wasn’t the cause. He could take credit for this one.

  “Aww, lass, I’m sorry.”

  Another dish crashed into the barrel. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Willow, I—”

  “What part of ‘don’t want to talk’ is incomprehensible?” Two more dishes followed.

  In a brilliant stroke of preemptive genius, Chad knew she wouldn’t find kissing to be an acceptable alternative to talking. “What do you want?”

  “I want to rewind to yesterday, and then I’d burn that card from Bill.”

  “That wouldn’t change anything, though—not in the long run. It’d just delay the inevitable.”

  She glared at him with eyes loaded with unshed tears. “Well, if the delay waited until after the fifteenth, then the solution options reduce dramatically.”

  “So you want to marry me,” he commented almost gleefully.

  “I don’t believe this. You thought I agreed because I thought it was stupid, and I wanted to make myself miserable?”

  “Oooh, listen to the sarcasm!” His mockery didn’t make her smile as he’d hoped, but she did put her next plate back in the nearly empty box. “You’re almost out of those. I should have mom find some at a thrift store or garage sale.”

  “I have one more box in the lean-to.”

  Chad thought of something. “Can I have one?”

  “Um, sure.” She handed him a plate and stepped back.

  Chad however, took the plate and rubbed his thumbs around the rim. Gentle ripples edged in gold around the rim of the plate showed tiny rosebuds scattered here and there. “I could break this. I feel like it. I’m frustrated with myself, and it’d be refreshing.” He gave her an anemic smile. “But, I’m not going to do it.” Suddenly he felt like Chris with one of his annoying “word pictures,” but he had to try. “You see, I did that last night already.” He prayed it would work.

  “You did what?”

  “Last night. I got upset about something, and instead of showing self-control; I just let myself break things. I damaged our relationship. Forgive me?”

  “We’re ok?”

  “We’re more than ok.”

  He saw her relax, every muscle seemingly stretching comfortably again. “I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know really. Just afraid. That’s why I asked what’d happen if we didn’t get married. I’ve seen it in books—people end engagements and never speak to each other again. I didn’t want to be alone again.”

  “Breaking off the engagement was never an option in my mind. Once I asked you to marry me, in my mind, I was committed. For life.”

  Willow shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense, though. What if I sent you away? You’d never marry ever?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Probably but—”

  “Then it’s not the same as marriage. You can’t trivialize marriage like that. Marriage is unique and special because it is a total irrevocable commitment. Even if you left me once I was married to you, I don’t think I’d ever marry again—not while you were alive. The same isn’t true for engagement. It’s not right to give more power to one or it takes away the beauty and strength of the other.”

  “So,” Chad questioned stubbornly, “You think engagements are just a way to ‘go steady’ while planning a wedding? There’s nothing special about an engagement?”

  “I think there is a lot special about engagements.” Willow removed the plate from his hand, pushed the box out of the way and started toward the house. “I just don’t think it’s right to give it as much strength as a marriage. I like the old idea of them being breakable but considered a ‘breach of promise’. It’s the kind of thing you do only under the most serious of circumstances. One person loses their faith, you find out the other has been married and didn’t disclose it, one is unfaithful… something like that.”

  “You have a point—” He stopped midstride. “Wait; where are you going?”

  “Well,” she teased, “if you came over here to tell me that you’re not taking ‘go away’ for an answer, then I’m changing for Wes. He said he’d be here at nine, remember?”

  “Hmm… I guess got sidetracked with saving my marriage before I even had it. I’d better go change.”

  As his truck bounced over the ruts in the road, Willow watched from her window. “Lord, why don’t I trust? Why do I fall apart over these things instead of turning them over to You?” She sighed. “It’s not like I can do anything about them in my own strength anyway. I don’t understand why I never learn.”

  Chapter 98

  Willow’s cell phone rang. Again. She now was ready to give the thing away and never see it again. She’d already called Chad and chewed him out for finding it in the pile of straw in the barn. Now she took a deep breath and forced herself to answer it with a pleasant tone.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Marla from Maître D’. I’m calling to ask about your side dish options?”

  “I thought I chose the potato cups, spring salad, and corn chowder?”

  “Yes, but we’re having trouble with our supplier. Twice now they haven’t been able to provide us with the greens and tomatoes for the salad—”

  “So come and get mine. Tell me how much you need, and I’ll have them picked and ready for you. I’d offer to bring them, but I don’t drive.”

  “You’re kidding. You have tomatoes, lettuce, spinach—”

  “Unless you need fresh corn, I’ve got most salad basics.”

  “We have the corn. Excellent. I’ll be there at four p.m. on Friday, if that’s ok.”

  Wi
llow shoved the phone in her pocket and wrote “pick vegetables” on her list. As an afterthought, she noted to call for amounts on Friday in case the supplier came through after all. Before she could return to hemstitching tablecloths, the phone rang again. Tempted to ignore it, Willow glanced at the name flashing. Forcing herself to sound cheerful, she answered. “Hello Marianne!”

  “Are you ready to go crazy yet?”

  “Crazy? Why?” The moment she asked, Willow regretted it. Why indeed? She knew why. Because brides-to-be must be utterly crazed with a million things to do and not enough time to do them. It had started on the day of her engagement photo shoot, and at this point, Willow limited her prayers to it ceasing at least by the end of the wedding itself. She simply couldn’t hope to ask for any sooner without breaking some unwritten wedding law.

  From the silence on the other end, Willow ascertained that this was not the answer Marianne had expected. “Well, you only have until Saturday morning…”

  “Yes. It’s going to be a long week.”

  “I’ll see you Wednesday afternoon. Cheri is cutting her Thursday morning class. Her professor said she could turn in her work early and make up the essay next week.”

  “Nice professor,” Willow agreed, not knowing what was expected.

  “Are you sure there isn’t anything you need me to do?”

  “If I think of something, I’ll put you to work when you get here,” Willow assured her.

  The moment Marianne disconnected the call she dialed her son. “Chad? I’m worried about things.”

  Chad asked his mother to wait as he pointed a warning finger at Aiden Cox and shouted for the boy to buckle his helmet straps. “What is wrong?”

  “Willow is too calm. I don’t think she understands—”

  “She’s got it covered, Mom. Everything is happening on schedule. Wes is bringing the proofs from our engagement pictures tonight—man he’s fast. They’ll be waiting for you to look at when you get here.”