by Tamara Leigh
Caleb doesn’t speak again until the traffic thins and Pickwick Pike lies ahead. “Don’t think I take it personally.” He smiles my way. “I’m simply trying to provide insight into what I believe happened tonight. You see, when I mentioned to my father that I was interested in the Pickwick estate, he insisted on putting me in touch with Bartholomew. Obviously, he views it as a means of gaining the property on more favorable terms—playing on your father’s guilt over our loss.”
At least Caleb is honest.
“And from his championing of my interest over that Dirk fellow, it seems to have worked. But I want you to know—”
“You’re going to turn left, just past that old barn.” I point ahead.
“Right. I just want you to know that though I’m very interested in your family’s property, I’m not looking to steal it.” He clicks on his blinker. “I’ll pay what it’s worth—providing I like it up close as well as I like it from a distance.”
“I appreciate that.” Not that anyone will be allowed to steal it.
Caleb slows his car and peers at the dirt road down which I’m asking him to take his shiny turbocharged toy. “Turn here? Really?”
“Really.”
“All … right.” He crosses the other lane and sucks air as his tires transition from pavement to rock-strewn dirt. Once his car’s tail end is off the pike, he brakes and leans forward to consider my headlight-lit driveway. “How far is your house?”
“A quarter mile, give or take.”
He slowly sits back. “You know, after such a filling meal, I could use a walk. What about you?”
In sneakers, but heels? Well, at least he’s willing to walk me up the driveway. And I do have an alternative to these wretched shoes. “Sure, just let me get out of these high heels.”
“Oh! I forgot about that.”
“No problem. I’m a barefoot girl.” I hook a finger in the back of each shoe and reach for the door handle. “Of course, your fancy loafers are bound to take a beating.” I swing my legs out the car door.
“If you can go barefoot, so can I.”
Shortly, his shoes and socks safely stowed in the car, pant legs rolled up, we start down the driveway bordered on either side by woods—the driveway Easton graded to ease the approach to the house, the woods he tramped and—
Stop it! Since Caleb cut the headlights, we have only bits of moonlight between the leafy canopy to guide us. However, it’s enough so that, apparently, he doesn’t feel obligated to offer his arm as Easton would have done. I’m good with that.
“So you own a nursery,” he says as we reach the first bend in the driveway.
Then he recognizes me as the woman who chased down his real estate agent. “I do.”
“Good business?”
“I like it, almost as much as I like designing and constructing crop mazes, which is what’s runnin’ me ragged right now.”
His warm chuckle butts up against the nip of autumn, the official start of the new season only days away. “I remember now. You and your … what did they call it? The Great …”
“The Great Crop Circle Hoax.”
“Right. I’ve never understood what possessed you to out yourself.”
“I didn’t make it so I could stand by all smug as a bunch of so-called experts in extraterrestrial phenomena proved they were anything but. I did it to keep the harvesters away from a mama deer that had birthed a crippled fawn. So, yes, when the area was overrun by the greater threat of lookie-loos, I put an end to the nonsense.”
“As your father would say, commendable.”
I nearly laugh with him, but Daddy did not call my rescue attempt commendable. He called it shameful—especially my “outing” of it.
I look across my shoulder and catch Caleb’s eye. “Are you environmentally minded?” I ask.
“I am. Unfortunately, my stance on the environment is the quickest way to put a wall between my father and me. He says God gave man dominion over the earth and all its animals, and he doesn’t see what all the hoopla is about.”
Caleb gets better by the minute, even if he is overly concerned about his car. “Sounds like my daddy.”
“Then we have something in common.”
I could get to like Caleb.
We walk on a ways, not speaking again until my house, lit by a single energy-saving bulb outside the front door, comes into sight.
“Pretty secluded,” Caleb says.
“I like it that way.”
“You live alone?”
“I do now.”
“Sorry, I forgot you’re a widow.” He touches my arm.
I stiffen as awareness passes through the material of my sleeve to my skin. That’s twice tonight a man has invaded my personal space. First J.C., now Caleb, making me feel things I shouldn’t—
Things a married woman shouldn’t feel. You’re no longer Easton’s wife. That makes me ache, but not with the weighted pain that once accompanied the simple act of breathing through the memories of the last days with the ever-optimistic Easton, the last hours before they lowered him into the ground, the painfully blurred days that followed when all I kept for company was a refrigerator full of casseroles from well-meaning Pickwickians.
“I understand it’s been quite a few years since your husband passed away. A freak accident, wasn’t it?”
Caleb’s question sticks in my mind, my answer in my throat. I don’t like to think about the accident. I reach to a dread, but they’re long gone.
“That’s what I heard,” Caleb says.
I gather my breath. “I’ve been a widow for four years.”
“Long enough?”
I falter, bare feet kicking up dust, and look at Caleb’s darkened profile. “That’s a strange thing to ask.”
He turns his face toward me, but I can’t make out his features. “I’m sorry. It’s just …” He halts.
I turn. “What?”
“For all my talk that my interest is solely in the estate …” He blows out a breath. “That could change. I’m attracted to you, Bridget.”
When did that happen? And why? I didn’t encourage him.
“Bridget?”
I jump back at finding him standing over me, and he grabs my arm as if I need steadying. I don’t. By the time I see what’s coming, his mouth is on mine—off center, but he adjusts. And it feels almost good. As do his fingers in my hair. And his other hand on my back pressing me near and causing the ring between us to dig into my sternum.
What am I doing? Surely it’s too early to be feeling things I was only supposed to feel with Easton. I wrench away, thrust my shoes into the space between us, and shake them. “Do that again, and I’ll … well, I won’t take kindly to it.”
For a long moment, all that’s between us is two feet, but another of his apologies soon fills it. “I’m sorry. I thought you were feeling what I was feeling.”
Oh, I was, though oddly there seemed something more with J.C., and he was only holding my hand.
“Forgive me?”
I lower the shoes. “Providin’ you don’t try something like that again.”
“What if I ask permission first?”
My mouth goes dry. At the end of my first date with Easton, we awkwardly stood on the front step of my folks’ home, and he asked if it was all right to kiss me. I’d known then he was the one for me, having hated the pawing of suitors to whom I rarely gave a second chance. Might Caleb be the one too, though he did start with pawing? “I’ll think about it.”
He laughs. “Not too long, hmm? Should I walk you to your front door?”
“Better not. I have a Great Pyrenees staying with me, and the dark makes him all kinds of jumpy.”
“Then I’ll say good night now.”
“Night, Caleb.”
He turns, and I watch his shadow move down the dirt road. When I can no longer differentiate it from the other shadows, I head for the house.
“Ow! That! Hurt!”
I pivot. “You okay?”
He grunts out something like a curse. “Stepped on a rock. A sharp one.”
Soft feet. “Are you bleedin’?”
“No. Limping.”
He’ll survive. “Drive carefully.”
He mutters something and moves off again.
Soon, I enter my house, praise and pat the big dog that greets me, then scoop Reggie off the top of the hutch. “You and Errol not gettin’ along, sweetums?”
Her beady eyes are shot with suffering.
“Now don’t be like that.” I pull her into my chest and look to where the ungainly dog that belongs to Uncle Obe’s attorney, Artemis Bleeker, has settled on his haunches in the kitchen doorway. “You aren’t givin’ Reggie a hard time, are you?”
Errol gives a “who me?” twitch of his eyebrows.
Fortunately I know him well enough to be assured he would never hurt Reggie, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t engage in a little “chase the opossum.”
“Come here, you big sweetheart.” I pat my leg.
Letting his long foamy tongue hang, Errol trots over, his weight causing the hardwood floor to creak.
Reggie hisses and scampers onto my shoulder. She’d get used to Errol if Artemis would let me keep him permanently, but though the elderly attorney can’t stand the dog, his wife notices her pet’s absence from time to time. When that happens, Artemis has to collect Mrs. Bleeker’s “big boy” from the person to whom he’s farmed him out.
“How long you gonna stay this time, hmm?” I scratch behind his ears, and he pushes his head against my stomach. “I love you too.” I say the words lightly, but they make me long to be able to say them to, and hear them from, a person. And not kin. This brings me back to the first kiss I’ve had since Easton was last on my lips.
“Caleb Merriman,” I whisper. “Maybe.” I touch the ring beneath my shirt, the earlier reminder of which shortened Caleb’s kiss. “But probably not.” Nothing to do with the ring. I will take it off. If not tomorrow, the next day.
Or the next. Or the week after. Or the month after. Or the year—
“Okay!” The strength of my voice jolts my companions. “Sorry.” I meet Errol’s big-eyed gaze, pat Reggie’s stiff back, then pull the chain from under the dress and stare at my wedding ring as it unspins. It really is past time.
I return Reggie to the top of the hutch. Though Errol follows me to the bedroom I once shared with my husband, I slip inside and ease the door closed to avoid mashing his massive snout. I flick on the light that is used once a week when I come through with duster, vacuum, and furniture polish. I haven’t slept in here for four years. Of course, that will change when I keep my word to have Miles and Birdie overnight. But one step at a time.
Unclasping the chain from around my neck, I cross to the dresser and open the wooden box that holds my meager selection of jewelry. For a moment, I stare through the ring’s circular window to the box. Then, aching a little and a little more, I lower the ring alongside a leather bracelet that belonged to Easton.
As I start to close the lid, my gaze returns to the bracelet. I know the words hammered into the band, words by which Easton tried to lived: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
“All things except prevent what killed you.”
That wasn’t through Christ, Bridget. You know it. He shouldn’t have done what he did.
I square my shoulders to argue with my inner voice, but then it adds, And don’t forget he did it for you.
Never has the voice gone that far, and the shock of it leaves me with nothing to defend myself. Because Easton did do it for me. And because I’d rather God were to blame.
I drop the lid. The first tear falls before I make it to the guest room, the next as I toss back the covers and burrow into bed; then all tears break loose as I cry as I haven’t allowed myself to do since the day after Easton’s accident. No, I had reached deep inside, pulled up anger, and threw it at God where it belonged. Or so I told myself …
“Still”—I narrow my gaze at the darkness all around—“You could have saved him.”
He was saved. Not your way, but by way of his Savior.
I pull the pillow over my head and press it to my ears—for all the good it does.
Easton is not suffering. And it’s time you stopped.
“How?”
Get rid of the rest of your widow’s weeds—the Band-Aid, sleeping in the guest room, the sour faith that hangs around your neck like a string of garlic, your fear of letting another man near.
I close my lids tight. “I’m trying.”
I believe in you.
“Why?”
Silence. Not that I mind. I didn’t come out on top, but the argument is over.
Though I don’t expect to sleep much, I slowly relax into the mattress. Awhile later, I’m roused from something approaching sleep when Errol joins me on the bed, and I feel a little less alone. Later, Reggie settles into the tuck of my knees. Even less alone. I smooth her back. “You’ll do,” I murmur. “For now.”
Because I do want out of these widow’s weeds. I really do.
13
Ms. Piper Pickwick and Mr. Axel Smith
request the honor of your presence
when they stand before God, family, and friends
to bind their lives together in holy matrimony
Saturday, November 6 at 12:00 noon
at the Pickwick Mansion
1001 Pickwick Pike
Pickwick, North Carolina
Friday, October 1
You outdid yourself, Bridget.” Henry Martin winks, then resumes his side-to-side gum chewing.
I tuck his check in my back pocket and fold my arms over my chest. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the farmer on the balcony of his house overlooking his land, I concede that he’s right. I did outdo myself. But then I had a lot to work with due to the longer-than-usual growing season that made the cornstalks shoot high. Henry’s five-acre harvest maze, which will attract thousands of families in the thirty days between now and the end of October, is the largest maze I was commissioned to design and construct this year. He said he wanted something more out of the ordinary than usual—spooky for those who like a good chill but joyous in honor of God’s blessing of this year’s bountiful harvest. So I gave him The House on Boo-ntiful Lane.
From this vantage point, of which visitors will partake as they crest the hill and start down the dirt road to the parking area, the outline of the Victorian house cut into the cornfield is breathtaking. The less-intrepid visitors, mostly small children, have plenty of flagstone paths to follow among the topped cornstalks that make up the Victorian’s courtyard. There they’ll find stands of vibrant yellow and orange marigolds, a pumpkin patch, benches, and a small stage where Henry’s granddaughters will enact puppet shows every half hour.
For those intent on goose bumps, shudders, and jolts, they have only to enter the “house” and explore its numerous rooms—especially at night—to get turned around and lost, since most paths either dead-end or wind back on themselves. Other than forcing a way between the dense cornstalks, there are only two means of exiting the maze: through the secret passageway in one of the “second-floor” rooms or the chimney that leads to a hay-chute slide.
“I’m glad you like it.”
Henry chews some more, and I marvel at how smooth his earth-colored face is despite the sixty-some years he has to his name. “How’s your uncle doin’? I keep meaning to stop by his place and sit a spell, but this festival eats up all my time.”
Henry and Uncle Obe go way back. Though my uncle never exposed those who aided him in chucking the statue of Great-Granddaddy Pickwick in the lake, Henry was probably present. He was also what Easton called his “spiritual mentor,” having befriended the young Christian when he first moved to Pickwick. And there’s the root of the tension that sometimes rises between Henry and me. Hopefully, he’ll leave Easton out of this day.
“All things considered Uncle Obe is doing well, especially no
w that Piper has hired a live-in caregiver.” Not that Mary Folsom was my cousin’s first choice, seeing as she has little caregiving experience, but once Uncle Obe locked on the woman who offered to share her table at the coffee shop, he made certain by argument and guile that the list of five candidates was narrowed to one.
Henry nods again. “That’s good. How’s he handling those experts snoopin’ around his property?”
J.C.’s team that showed up a week ago, just four days after he returned to Atlanta. Piper was right; competition is good. For Caleb, too. Though I’ve been too busy to take around Daddy’s choice of a suitor, Caleb has been back twice—once to tour the mansion and again to have Axel show him the acreage, including the quarry.
“He appears to be handling it fine, but you know it can’t be easy on my uncle.”
He shoots me a sideways look. “I have the whole family praying for him.”
I recognize the bait as a door to Easton. Normally I wouldn’t go through it, but I see Birdie and the tears my bitterness caused, hear my sister’s angry words, remember my attraction for J.C., and feel Caleb’s kiss and the emptiness in the guest bed that neither Reggie nor Errol can adequately fill.
I moisten my lips. “I’d feel better about those prayers for Uncle Obe if God had a better track record with answering them.”
From beneath a gathering of silvered eyebrows, he stares at me with those soulful browner-than-brown eyes. “Nothing wrong with God’s track record. He didn’t answer your prayers for Easton the way you wanted Him to, but He answered.”
I turn my hands up. “So why bother wearin’ out my knees when He already has His mind made up?”
Henry sets a hand on my shoulder. “Because He wants to hear from you. Though His answer may not match up with yours, He wants to be your comfort.”
I reach for my ring, but it’s gone like my dreads. “Easton was my comfort.”