Through the open front end of the carport, Esther could see the purple martin birdhouse Charlie had built and set up on a tall metal pole several years ago. It was listing a little to the left, and she would have to get him to straighten it. The trees that dotted their large backyard were starting to turn. It wouldn’t be long before Charlie would be out mulching and putting everything into his compost bin.
As she turned the key in the ignition, Esther reflected with pride on her husband’s fine garden. Every year they had the tastiest, freshest, plumpest vegetables in the neighborhood. Nothing pleased Esther more than to drop off a pint of ruby red strawberries as a get-well gift or leave a surprise basket of peppers and onions on someone’s front porch. She pulled the car’s transmission lever into reverse and pressed on the gas.
Just as the Lincoln began backing out of the carport, Esther saw her purse slide off the roof and land on the driveway. Oh, what now? She quickly put the car in neutral and pressed the brake.
Charlie had his mind on tomatoes as he drove around the curve that led to his clapboard house with its neatly manicured lawn. Feeling a little itchy for change, he had tried some different varieties this year. In the past, Esther had wanted only beefsteak and cherry tomatoes. Beefsteak for their sandwiches and cherries for their salads. But Charlie had put in three new plants as an experiment—pear-shaped red romas, a yellow variety, and even one that had a hint of purple to it. To his surprise, Esther thought the new tomatoes tasted delicious, and she had enjoyed showing them off at Deepwater Cove’s Labor Day barbecue.
Having decided to be bold with peppers in the coming spring, Charlie was pondering the difference between sweet bells, anchos, and jalapeños when he heard a loud bang from the direction of his carport.
Charlie stepped on his brake, gaping in disbelief as Esther’s long bronze Lincoln flew through the air, sailing off the four-foot-high concrete wall that divided the driveway from the backyard and then slamming down a good ten feet onto the lawn. On its way, the car had taken out two of the wooden support posts holding up the carport’s roof. Now the hood popped open and the horn began to blare. And the car kept going, careening across the grass as steam billowed from the engine and the hood bounced up and down like a jack-in-the-box lid. Somehow the Lincoln swerved around the purple martin house before grazing the trunk of an oak tree and mowing down a walnut sapling. Then it hurtled toward the thin strip of beach and the lake edge beyond, with only the shed blocking its way.
His heart frozen in his chest, Charlie put his own car in park and threw open the door. Was someone stealing the Lincoln? Had it rolled down the driveway on its own? Or could that dark shape in the driver’s seat be his wife?
“Esther?” Charlie took off at a dead run. The Lincoln was now barreling toward the shed. Charlie had built it a few years earlier to store his riding lawn mower and tools. Just as the car reached the shed door, it veered to the right.
“Mrs. Moore! Mrs. Moore, stop!” Cody Goss suddenly burst from the house, leaped off the end of the carport, and raced past Charlie. “Mrs. Moore, the post office is the other direction!”
With the Lincoln’s horn still blaring, Charlie could hear little else as he watched the car miss the side of the shed by inches. It pulled around in a tight curve, swayed toward the lake again, and then rolled to a sudden stop beside a lilac bush. Smoke billowed out from under the hood, and steaming water gushed onto the ground. The unremitting horn sounded louder than ever.
Cody reached the car five steps ahead of Charlie, but as the young man grabbed the handle, the door swung open.
Esther surged up from the driver’s seat, shoved her way past Cody, and headed up the slope in her high heels. “Where’s the mail?” she shouted. “I’ve got to get to the post office before it closes.”
“Mrs. Moore, you had an accident!” Cody called after her as she marched toward Charlie, arms flapping in agitation.
“Esther, what on earth?” Charlie caught her by the shoulders and forced her to stop. “Are you all right, honey? What happened?”
“I can’t find the mail,” she snapped. “Cody keeps moving it, and I’m late for the post office. Those bills aren’t going out today unless I—”
She looked up at her husband and seemed to see him for the first time. “Charlie?”
“Esther.” He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. “Oh, sweetheart, you scared me half to death.”
“I don’t know … I’m not sure what happened, Charlie.”
“You drove the Lincoln out the wrong end of the carport. You’ve been in an accident, honey. Let’s sit you down.”
“Where’s my purse?”
“Here, sit on my jacket.”
“On the grass?”
“Yes, right here. I’ll help you.” He pulled off his lightweight jacket and spread it out for her. Then he eased her down onto the lawn. “Now catch your breath, Esther.”
“What did Cody do to my car?” She glared in the direction of the shed. Cody was leaning into the driver’s side of the Lincoln. A sudden silence sounded loud as he somehow managed to turn off the horn.
“Look at that boy,” Esther grumbled. “He’s gone and wrecked my car. I knew we never should have taken him on. You think you can trust someone, and then . . . where’s the mail, Charlie? I’ve got to hurry to the post office. And my hair. Good heavens, I’m late for my set-and-style.”
As she checked her watch, Charlie noticed a discoloration on her wrist. “You’re hurt! Esther, honey, let me see your other arm. Oh, for pete’s sake, sweetheart, you’re all bruised up.”
“Esther? Charlie, what happened?”
He looked up to see their neighbor, Kim Finley, hurrying across the lawn with her twins in tow.
“Charlie, is Esther all right?”
“We heard the crash!” Lydia sang out.
“Your carport roof is caving in, Mr. Moore,” Luke added as they neared the couple seated on the grass. “You lost the two middle support posts.”
Behind them, Charlie noticed Brenda Hansen and Kim’s mother-in-law, Miranda Finley, moving toward the scene. Suddenly it seemed like half the neighborhood was descending on the Moores.
“I wish Derek was here,” Kim cried as she knelt in the grass at Esther’s feet. “He’s got all that first-aid training. Charlie, it looks like she might have hit her head. Her face is beginning to swell.”
“Whose face?” Esther asked. She was looking from one person to another. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“You drove the wrong way out of the carport,” Cody told her. “You meant to go backward, but you went forward. We need to call 9 11 right now, because that’s what you do when someone has an accident. Even if they don’t look hurt too much, they could be hurt inside, and that’s why the doctor needs to check them. I saw it on TV when I was at my aunt’s house. They said to call the ambulance no matter what.”
“I’ve already called.” Brenda Hansen, crouched beside Esther, took her hand. “Do you remember getting into your car?”
“Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone. I need to get to the post office. And Patsy’s expecting me for my set-and-style.”
Charlie had noticed a lump growing in his throat, and he tried to speak around it. “After you got into the car, honey, why did you put it in drive instead of reverse?”
Esther gazed at him, her blue eyes misty. “Did I do that?”
“Do you recall driving off the end of the carport?”
“I saw the birdhouse; that’s all.” She blinked a couple of times, and then she turned to where the car was still sending up clouds of steam. “I looked up, and the birdhouse was coming right at me, so I turned the car a little bit. And then there was a tree.”
“Two trees,” Cody said. “You did some fancy steering, Mrs. Moore. You missed the birdhouse, the trees, and even the shed.”
“Well, what do you know …”
“We know you scared us halfway to deaf!” Cody exclaimed. “I still can har
dly hear. But I got the horn to quit, and here are your keys. I switched off the engine all by myself.”
Charlie reached up and took the keys. The Lincoln wouldn’t be going anywhere soon, if ever again, he realized. The front end looked somewhat like an accordion, and the smell from the smashed radiator still hung in the cool late-afternoon air.
“I hear the ambulance,” Esther said. “Oh, goodness, I don’t think that’s necessary. But I guess we ought to go and thank them anyway for coming out this far.”
As Esther moved, Charlie saw her pretty face crumple in pain. “You sit right here with me, Esther,” he said, tucking her under his arm. “Just the two of us. We’ll sit here together, and everything will be fine.”
CHAPTER TWO
Charlie couldn’t keep his eyes off Esther, who lay sleeping in the hospital bed. Though her injuries from the car accident appeared minor—mostly bruising and abrasions—the doctor had decided to keep her there for a couple of days. “Tests,” he’d told Charlie. “I’d like to run a few more tests.”
What did that mean? Wasn’t Esther going to be back to normal once those dark spots on her arms and face healed up? And why wasn’t she talking more? Esther had always been a chatterbox, but now she mostly slept or just looked out the window at the hospital parking lot.
Pastor Andrew had driven to the hospital the moment he heard about the accident, and he’d been back every day since. Usually the minister focused his attention on Esther—talking to her, reading the Bible, praying with her. Today, instead of walking straight to Esther’s bedside, he sat on the chair next to Charlie’s recliner and studied the silent television set for a few minutes.
“I notice you’ve got the TV on, but you haven’t glanced at it once,” Pastor Andrew said finally. “You keep looking at Esther as if you’d never seen her before. What’s on your mind, Charlie?”
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Charlie admitted. “I even considered telling Charles Jr. and Ellie they’d better come see their mother. But the doctor says it’s not that serious, and the kids are both so busy that I decided against it. But she’s got me worried.”
Pastor Andrew nodded. Charlie liked the tall, lanky fellow who wore glasses a little too big for his face and suit coats a little too short for his arms. He had led Lake Area Ministry Bible Chapel—LAMB Chapel, as folks called it—for more than ten years. He took his role as pastor of the flock seriously, and he was forever visiting folks in their homes or dropping by the hospital or nursing home.
When Pastor Andrew preached a sermon, about all he did was choose a passage from the Bible and teach the congregation what the verses meant and how they ought to affect a person’s life. Which Charlie figured was exactly what most folks needed. Pastor Andrew had been to a Bible college, but he didn’t go for fancy messages with highfalutin lingo like some ministers.
Charlie had been raised in a church where the pastor was more interested in sounding grandiose than in teaching truth to his flock. Not Pastor Andrew. In fact, he regularly got garbled, off track, or tongue-twisted during his sermons—a fact that endeared him to everybody. One Sunday, he told the congregation that they should not be lax in doing good. “The truth is obvious,” he announced in a stern voice. “We’ve got a laxative problem around here.”
Esther and Charlie had laughed over that one later, and they still occasionally reminded each other not to have a laxative attitude. It was one of the many little jokes between them—lines from movies, silly puns, memorable events—things only the two of them understood. One word or a meaningful glance could trigger the very same thought in both of them. As Charlie gazed at his wife, he wondered if they would ever share such intimate moments again.
“Has she been talking to you much?” Pastor Andrew asked Charlie now. “I wonder if she remembers the accident. I can’t get her to tell me about it.”
“Right after it happened, she had all kinds of energy. She was talking, but she was confused. She thought Cody Goss had wrecked her car and made her miss her weekly set-and-style at the beauty parlor. She kept talking about the post office and insisting that she was fine. I thought the accident had just shaken her up a little, and she’d be back to her same old self in no time. But now … I don’t know . . . it’s like she’s gone off somewhere, and I can’t get her to come home.”
“Home? This world is not Esther’s real home, Charlie. You know that, don’t you? Her Father’s getting things ready for her—for all of us who belong to Christ—to come home forever.”
“I hate to disappoint you, Pastor, but heaven is the last thing on our minds. Esther’s even got Thanksgiving dinner all planned out. There’s a turkey in the freezer. On the day of the accident, she was on her way to her hair appointment, and then we had planned to eat dinner at Aunt Mamie’s Good Food—the Friday night all-you-can-eat shrimp special. I can’t figure out why Esther just lies there sleeping or staring out the window.”
“Maybe it’s the medication. Do they have her sedated?”
“They did at first. I’m not sure now. The doctors and nurses mean well, but they talk so fast you can hardly make heads or tails of what they’re telling you. They rattle off their medical jabber—names of medicines and tests and body parts. The doctor told me he thought Esther might have a broken clavicle, and it about scared me half to death. I typed the word into my computer, expecting the worst, and it turns out a clavicle is nothing more than a collarbone. And Esther’s wasn’t broken after all, just bruised.”
Pastor Andrew gave a low chuckle. “Sometimes they forget we’re all just regular people.”
Charlie nodded. That was what he liked best about his minister. Pastor Andrew was a regular fellow with a wife and two kids, a man who planted a vegetable garden every spring, took his family boating on the lake in the summer, and organized a pancake breakfast for the deer hunters every fall. Only difference was, God had given him a special gift, and that was to shepherd a flock—which he did to the best of his ability.
“Did the doctor tell you what kind of tests they’re running?” Pastor Andrew asked.
“He told me a lot of different things, and I tried to write it all down on the back of an envelope I had in my pocket. But that didn’t do me much good. Couldn’t spell much of it, so I couldn’t read it, so I couldn’t look it up. I guess I’ll have to wait until they tell me what they’ve found out.”
For a moment, the two men studied the motionless woman in the bed nearby. A chill ran down Charlie’s spine, as it did every time he looked at Esther. How could this have happened? Why did she step on the gas pedal instead of the brake? Old people made those kinds of mistakes, and Esther wasn’t old. They were both still in their sixties—not for long, but even so. It didn’t make sense.
“Why all the sunflowers in the bouquets around her bed?” Pastor Andrew asked.
“Esther likes them. They’re her favorite kind of flower.” Charlie hung his head. “You know, I didn’t even realize that until the bouquets started coming in. Finally, this morning when Kim and Derek Finley brought over an arrangement with nothing but sunflowers, I asked about it. Kim acted real surprised that I didn’t know how much Esther loved sunflowers. But I didn’t. I never gave it a thought till I went home last night. We’ve got sunflower wallpaper in the kitchen, sunflower towels in the bathroom, and a wreath of artificial sunflowers on the front door. I’ve been married to that woman almost fifty years, and suddenly I’m finding out all kinds of things about her that I never knew.”
“What else?”
“Take a look at this.” He picked up one of Ashley Hanes’s jewelry boxes from the rolling cart near Esther’s bed. “I’m sure Esther told you that she’s been helping a young lady in our neighborhood build a small business. Well, I got roped into it too. We sort beads and string them onto fishing line. Anyhow, in the past few weeks, Esther and I have discussed every color in the rainbow and a few more besides. We’ve talked about patterns and shapes and earrings and necklaces and what all, till I’m just about beade
d out. Then yesterday, Ashley Hanes showed up with this.”
He lifted a delicate, three-strand necklace out of the box. “Ashley tells me she made these beads especially for Esther. And you know why? Because purple is Esther’s favorite color. Purple! I never knew that. Never thought about it, never asked her, nothing. Last night, I got to thinking back, and I remembered that Esther wore a purple gown to our high school prom. Orchid, she called the color. Big flouncy thing all covered in netting and lace. We’ve still got that dress up in the attic somewhere. So before I went to bed, I took a look at Esther’s side of the closet. Lo and behold, nearly everything the woman owns has some shade of purple on it.”
“I suppose there are always a few surprises left in a marriage,” Pastor Andrew observed.
“I reckon so.” Charlie fell silent, wondering what else he might have missed in the past fifty years. “It wasn’t too long ago I found out Esther was self-conscious about her cooking. Her mother had made her feel inferior in the kitchen. Turns out every time I took her to a restaurant for dinner, Esther thought it was because I didn’t like what she was planning to make that night. But she’s a wonderful cook.”
“She sure is. I’ve enjoyed her Sunday pot roast many times.” Pastor Andrew clapped a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Well, I’d better get home before my wife starts thinking I’ve forgotten it’s family game night. She’s a whiz at Scrabble, and I can beat her at checkers any day of the week. The kids always want to play Uno, but there’s only so much of that you can take.”
As the minister made to stand, Charlie suddenly caught his arm. “Pastor Andrew, what would you do?” he asked, the words tumbling from his lips before he’d thought them through. “What would you do if you lost your wife?”
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