Sticks and Stones (The Barn Church Series)

by Aaron D. Gansky

  “No, I suppose I don’t.”

  She’d never heard her refer to Daddy as Big Joe Pitts, never heard about the love, only about the loss.

  “I’d appreciate the picture. It would mean a lot to me.”

  “Oh, gotta go. Someone’s beeping me. Let Rachel know I called, okay? Bye!”

  “Goodbye, Mother,” she said to the dial tone.

  She remained seated at the bar, hearing snippets from the TV as Ben ruthlessly advanced the remote. And she realized, the volume was set at a normal setting, Ben’s hearing aid must be turned up as it should.

  Which meant for once, her youngest son wasn’t fearful of something she might say.

  Julie rested her chin in her hand. She should make dinner, clean the refrigerator, check on Rachel, who was obviously thrilled at using the Jacuzzi tub.

  Rest. Listen.

  She closed her eyes, breathed deep for several lovely moments. Something in her home was different. Softer. Quieter. She settled back in the barstool and concentrated.

  This was what the absence of tension felt like. This was how it felt when she wasn’t frustrated, wasn’t striving, wasn’t pushing at her family because of her own unhappiness and stress and workload.

  This was how it felt to enjoy her life, her children’s presence and needs. If she could learn to rest like this, to live like this every day how different her life and home would be.

  Content in a way she couldn’t remember being before, Julie stayed right where she was and waited for her husband to come home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Rick didn’t want to go home. The post-adrenaline rush from the fire and the waiting. The knee-buckling relief at finding Rachel unharmed. The uncomfortable transparency talking with Daniel required—all combined together and pushed him to run, to hide, to flee any further human interaction.

  When they pulled into his driveway, Rick made himself listen to Daniel’s parting advice, shake the man’s hand, and maintain eye contact as he thanked Daniel one more time. But he couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.

  He bypassed the house, his wife, his children. He just wanted to be alone.

  He headed to the stables. Early summer meant the late afternoon sun was still high in the sky, cooking the land beneath, cooking him. Why he hadn’t noticed the blaring sun while he’d watched the school burn he couldn’t say. But his body started to sweat profusely as if purging itself of the day’s events and pressures.

  If he could work, if he could be alone and work and sweat, and not think for a while, maybe he’d be able to get his bearings before taking the next steps. The fork in the road lay before him and he knew which road he wanted to take. Taking it, however, was another issue.

  Noting the absence of Angelina’s Escalade he knew he was indeed alone. Changing his mind about working in the stables, he turned and walked the long east side of his land.

  Earlier that day he’d let Dutch, Trident, and the other males out into one of the larger pastures. He strode there, braced a heel on the bottom rung of the fence while carefully avoiding the live line across the top.

  “Hey, boy. Did you show everybody who’s boss?”

  Dutch meandered over, stretched his neck above the fence, seeking attention. Rick rubbed and patted and found a small wound, probably a nip from Trident. The frisky mustang strutted over and batted his nose right against the electric line.

  Snap! The horse jerked back, squealing and snorting.

  Rick couldn’t help but laugh. “No harm done. You’ll learn.”

  And suddenly he understood. Sometimes God got one’s attention through a still small voice. And other times He had to make a person extremely uncomfortable, like He was doing to Rick right now, to get the message across. Either way, God loved him enough, loved his family enough, to use whatever tactic the lesson required.

  Was it any different from the way Rick trained horses, catering his approach to a specific animal’s strengths and weaknesses? Each had his own personality. Some were skittish about every little thing. Others were just plain ornery and stubborn and got almost perverse enjoyment out of being a nuisance.

  Like Trident. Who chose that moment to test the fence one more time.

  Rick chuckled again. Pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed home as he strode to the barn.

  “Hey,” he said when Julie answered. “I’m back. Be working in the barn for a while. Maybe send one of the kids up with a sandwich or something later. I need to catch up from being gone all afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  “How’s Rachel?”

  “She’s good, I think. A little water-logged maybe. She spent almost an hour in our tub then washed her hair three times in our shower.”

  “You let her use our bathroom.”

  “It seemed like a good idea.” She paused. “My mother called.”

  Rick passed the smallest corral outside the barn and entered the stables. “You don’t sound upset.”

  “I don’t know what I am. I’m never going to have her approval, am I? She’s never going to be the mother I need her to be.” Julie laughed. “How can I be almost forty years old and just now figuring this out?”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m just now figuring some stuff out myself.”

  “Not about my mother.”

  “No. About me.”

  And God, he thought, but wasn’t quite ready to tell her.

  “You know, I think we’re supposed to start your exercises later this week, if your gums aren’t too sore or bleeding.”

  “They’re still pretty tender.”

  “Then we wait.” He felt like a kid who’d just begun learning to drive and wasn’t sure how to manage all the power at his command. “For another couple of days, anyway.”

  “Hold on a second,” Julie said.

  Rick heard Rachel’s voice in the background.

  “Rachel wants to know if she can forego chores this evening since she’s already taken a shower. And if she can come visit Godiva.”

  “Tell her we’ll make up the chores tomorrow since she won’t be in school. Have her bring me some food later. She can visit Godiva then.”

  “Okay, I’ll send her down. Rick, before you go?”

  He braced himself, an old habit. Which he usually followed by cutting the conversation short and shutting down inside. There had to be a better way.

  “Just tell me, Julie. Unless you’re about to tell me our house is burning down right now, it can’t be that bad.”

  “Not bad, just different. Something’s changed, hasn’t it? Today. Between us.”

  “I think so,” he said. “I hope so.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” she blurted. “To the way it was before.”

  “Neither do I.” Silence stretched as he reached the tack room. “Neither do I. Don’t wait up.” He hung up.

  He mucked the first few stalls and confessed to God his complacency before Ben’s birth. Mucked several more and admitted his lack of compassion for Julie after the child’s arrival.

  Barn lights glaring against the coming darkness, he continued down the line and repented events, actions, and attitudes, all of which had fueled the destructive fire which had constantly flared between him and Julie. When all the stalls were clean he grabbed a push broom and started sweeping the walkway.

  “There are things I should’ve taught my children,” he told God. “Things I shouldn’t have. Things I should’ve said to Julie. Things I shouldn’t have let her say to me.”

  With every stroke of the broom, he felt a weight lifting.

  Cleaning up, he thought, one little nasty spot at a time.

  “Thanks for sitting on me until You got my attention.”

  He moved into the tack room and gathered supplements for the night feedings.

  “You broke me. You had to, like I have to do with horses sometimes. Now I’m depending on You to train me right.”

  ***

  Tuck Rachel into bed tonight.

 
The idea came to Julie while brushing her teeth. The simple joy was still a huge pleasure after almost two months of not being able to do so. As she gently flossed, another often taken for granted luxury, the perfect thought took shape, filling her with anticipation. There might be a little friction as Rachel seldom went to bed the first or second time she was told to do so. But surely Julie could find a way to prevent a disagreement.

  She looked in the mirror. Thankfully, her gums weren’t bleeding. Another small step in her recovery.

  She found Ben sprawled on the couch, his face smashed against a pillow. He snored in spurts and his hearing aid dangled from his ear. Really, he was too big for her to carry, so she roused him slightly then steered him to his room. He fell into bed and seemed to melt into the mattress. The child always played at full speed and slept like he was heavily sedated. She placed his hearing aid on his night stand.

  Julie expected Rachel to jump at the chance to have the television and remote to herself. With Rick still at the barn, and Ben in a semi-coma, she could watch a show she might otherwise miss. But she was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t in Julie’s bathroom, or the hall bathroom. A quick glance showed she wasn’t in the kitchen getting a snack, or in her room.

  Julie stood in the hall, halfway between her children’s rooms and the kitchen. She dialed Rick.

  “Hey. Is Rachel there with you? I thought she was in her room. Then I brushed my teeth and put Ben to bed. Now I can’t find her.”

  “She stayed for a while after the vet checked on Godiva, but she’s gone now.”

  Julie heard a click. She cocked her head, walked back to her daughter’s room, and eased the door open further. Light from the hallway slanted into the space, throwing shadows. Then a shadow moved as the comforter shifted and tented. She thought she heard pages rustling.

  Julie stepped back. “I think I found her. Don’t work too hard. Bye.”

  She wanted to do something sweet, something special for Rachel. A kind of offering. Within minutes she’d spooned refrigerated cookie dough onto a baking sheet and slid it into the oven.

  She hunted in the china cabinet, then dug around in the buffet for a platter she’d used on special days when Rachel was small. A nubby, green turtle plate. She sat on the floor, running her fingers around the awkward shape. Rachel had always loved turtles. In the back of Julie’s mind, the trace of a memory surfaced. Hadn’t she once promised to get Rachel a pet turtle? But, she’d never actually done it.

  The oven timer dinged softly. Julie arranged the cookies on the silly plate, poured a small glass of juice and, using a large tray, carried the surprise to Rachel’s room. The door was still cracked from when she’d looked in before, so Julie sneaked in, closed it quietly behind her, squelching the light from the hallway. Her eyes quickly adjusted, and she saw the glow of Rachel’s flashlight under the covers.

  She walked to the edge of the bed. “Knock, knock.”

  Rachel didn’t respond. Earbuds, Julie thought. She set the tray aside on the floor and gently pulled down the covers. Rachel scrambled up, her eyes wide, a look of fearful expectation on her face as she turned on her bedside lamp, off the flashlight, and pulled out her headphones.

  Julie’s heart twisted. “You’re not in trouble.”

  The relief that crossed Rachel’s face confirmed once again Rachel lived watching for the next verbal assault.

  “I want to apologize. And I brought you a surprise.”

  “Oh.” Rachel looked from Julie’s face to the cookies, smiled, then looked back at her mother. Her smile shrank. “Okay.”

  How did a parent explain to a child that becoming a parent didn’t magically make one omniscient? That just because you had a child, didn’t mean you understood the child, or knew everything the child needed, or even how to give it to them.

  Children expected adults to know, and to know better. And they lived at the mercy of adults’ bad decisions, when those adults didn’t. How she wanted Rachel to understand her heart, her sorrow over her own actions.

  She knelt by the bed and gazed up into her daughter’s face, a replica of her own as a teenager.

  “I’ve had some very humbling, very eye-opening experiences over the last few days. A kind of ... revelation you might say. I’ve talked with Laurie. I’ve read my Bible a lot. And I’ve prayed and prayed trying to figure out the next right thing to do.”

  Rachel’s eyebrows winged up. “Are you becoming a missionary or something?”

  “No, but I guess you could say I’m changing my life’s focus.”

  “And?” Rachel looked at the cookies on the tray. “You want to be a baker?”

  “No.” Julie felt a faint chuckle tickle her throat.

  “Let me start over. Rachel, I am utterly, completely, and covered-in-shame sorry for everything I’ve ever said that hurt you. I’m sorry for not paying attention. For being too busy. For letting you believe I don’t love you and don’t care about your feelings.

  “I’m sorry for not even knowing you.”

  She took a deep breath. “I had no idea the mistakes I was making as a mother. Or as a wife for that matter. I’ve learned I’ve hurt your father in many of the same ways I’ve hurt you. I don’t want your father to be the only one you care about seeing or talking to after you grow up and leave this house.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I. Am. So. Sorry. I want to change. I will change. I want the chance to heal our relationship.”

  The wariness left her daughter’s face. “Has Daddy forgiven you?” A tear slid down her daughter’s cheek.

  “I think so. He’s trying to, at least. But I know I’ll have to prove myself to both of you.”

  An awkward silence fell. Had she said everything she needed to say? Had she said it right? She so wanted to be near Rachel. Close to her child.

  “I was bullied in school,” Julie said.

  “You?”

  “Yes. I remember being picked on all the way through middle school for my last name, Pitts, and about my size, my weight. Then when I reached high school, well, a lot of boys enjoyed making embarrassing comments about—” She glanced down at her chest. “You know.”

  “Yeah. I know. Britney, you know?”

  “The school offered counseling for us—you, your dad, and I—about the bullying. We’re thinking about it.”

  “Would it only be us? Not like, some big group thing?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay.”

  Julie’s heart pounded. “Would you, um, tell me one thing in particular that I did which hurt you?”

  Rachel was quiet for a long time, her finger worrying with a frayed thread on her comforter. More tears fell from her eyes.

  “You never let me stay near you,” she said. “You were always sending me away to Daddy, to my room, to do something. I never felt like you wanted me around.”

  Now her heart split. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to keep you occupied or give you something to do, so I could do what I needed to. It’s not an excuse. It’s not. I should have paid better attention to the message I was sending you.”

  Julie moistened her lips and squared her shoulders. “Rachel, I apologize to you for making you feel—”

  Her voice broke and she had to squelch rising sobs to keep speaking.

  “For making you feel like I didn’t want you around. For not letting you know that just having you near was a wonderful, happy thing for me, just because you’re my daughter. I am so very sorry.”

  “Is that how you apologized to Daddy?”

  “Kind of. I have a lot of apologies to give him. And you. It’s one of my new habits.”

  Another awkward silence fell.

  Rachel looked again at the tray on the floor. “You found my turtle plate.”

  “Here, scoot back.”

  Rachel shifted on the bed and Julie set the tray in place across her lap.

  “These are for you. I wanted to show you I was thinking of you and, contrary to how I’ve behaved, do enjoy doing thi
ngs for you. I promised you a turtle once, didn’t I?”

  Rachel bit into a cookie. “Yeah. Right before Ben was born. You told me you’d have to spend a lot of time taking care of him, and I said I wanted something to take care of, too. So you said you’d get me a turtle.”

  “Right. Then I had to spend way more time taking care of him than I’d anticipated. And I forgot all about getting you a turtle.”

  Her daughter looked up at her. “Pretty much. Whatever Ben needed kind of controlled everything around here for a long time.”

  “You’re right about that, and I’m sorry about the turtle, too.” She leaned down, kissed her daughter’s hair. Rachel’s arms came around her, and Julie returned the embrace.

  “You know, we never went out for pizza, just the two of us, like we’d planned on the night you got hurt.”

  “We did plan that, didn’t we?” She looked down at Rachel. “I’ll be more careful this time. I’ll put it on my calendar, so I don’t forget, no matter how busy I am.”

  “Mom. In the journal? I might have exaggerated a little. Maybe more than a little.” She let go and Julie eased back.

  “I love you, Rachel. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Mom. I love you, too.”

  Julie turned for the door.

  “Want a cookie?”

  “Thank you.”

  Outside her daughter’s room Julie leaned against the wall, eating the cookie while tears of gratitude flowed down her face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Julie woke before sunrise with a song in her head. A phenomenon that hadn’t happened for many, many years, definitely not since having Ben.

  The melody flowed like a peaceful brook, steady and strong and sure. Then it built and surged at the chorus, as through rapids and around rocks.

  She lay in her bed in the predawn darkness, staring toward the ceiling. Fingers splayed across her stomach and rounded as if playing the music with its various parts. She caught herself starting to hum and stifled the impulse, so Rick could get a few more minutes of sleep.

  By the time he rolled over and groaned, a typical start of his day, her excitement had built. She knew she’d never get back to sleep. And she didn’t want to. Though she’d almost memorized the piece, she hurried out of bed, donned a robe. She barely stopped herself from skipping to the piano as she made sure the children’s bedroom doors were closed.