Past Forward Volume 1

by Chautona Havig

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Willow’s phone jangled her nerves and shocked her out of a restful nap. The clock said ten-thirty. Surely, it wasn’t Bill already. She stared at the phone, frustrated that she’d told Chad about it falling. If it were still under the bed, she would have no qualms about ignoring it. On the last ring, she slid it open and answered.

  “Ms. Finley? This is Suki at Boho. We have a business proposition.”

  Bill’s call came at two o’clock sharp, just minutes after Chad left for work. Willow, still reeling from her discussion with Suki, answered in somewhat of a fog. “Yes.”

  “Willow? It’s Bill.”

  Why did such simple words sound so confusing? “Yes.”

  “Are you ok?”

  “Oh, Bill—right. I’m sorry. I was thinking about something—actually, something I wanted to discuss with you.”

  “First, can I apologize? I was worried about you, and I let it affect my behavior. I was rude.”

  Her mind spun with the memory of a dozen attempts by Bill and Chad both to show that Bill was growing fond of her. Five short words, “I was worried about you,” illuminated what had otherwise failed to show. “I understand now. I do. I wasn’t exactly gracious about all of your help, and well, I’m sorry too.”

  “You said you had something to discuss?”

  “I got a call from Suki. Do you remember her from Boho?”

  “Yes…”

  She sensed eagerness in his tone. Could he know what she was going to say before she even spoke? “Well, when I was there on Wednesday, I showed her pictures of the jumpers I made for Aggie’s twins. I guess she liked them.”

  “I’m sure they were nice…” Bill began.

  Willow continued without waiting for him to finish. “She wants me to move to Rockland and take charge of a sister store to Boho.”

  “They want to open another store?”

  This time there was no doubt in her mind; Bill was excited. She almost didn’t want to continue. “Well, not another one exactly. They want to open a children’s version. They’re tentatively calling it Little Boho Chic.”

  “Catchy.”

  She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at for a second it as if somehow it would make his assessment less obnoxious to her. “Insulting. but it’s not my call.”

  “You don’t like the name?”

  Willow sighed. She knew she was being ridiculous, but the idea of a store with such a silly sounding name didn’t appeal to her. “It’s not my style, but that’s not important. I asked her to call you with their business offer. I don’t know anything about things like that. You do.”

  “So they want you to do what? Do you know?”

  “They want me to design the outfits they’ll sell, choose which fabrics they’ll use from the ladies store, and then find fabrics that will be exclusive to the girl’s section.”

  “So they want you to set them up?”

  “Well,” feeling silly about her hesitation to put their offer into words, “They want me to train with a manager from Boho and then run the store once it’s open. I would have to move to the city, I think. The bus ride every day would be horrible.”

  Bill immediately launched into an explanation of all of the benefits to accepting the job, including how close she’d be to the finest physical therapists in the area.

  “That’s reason enough to forget it. At least here, I have stairs which they did say are good, and soft dirt to walk on instead of concrete and—”

  “Just think about it—” She heard him swallow hard. “Pray about it. Remember, your mother chose this life as an escape from one she didn’t want. She never expected you to feel obligated to continue it.”

  “I’ll think about it. The design aspect sounds like a lot of fun. I just don’t know if I could stand being cramped in a little store like that all day every day. I think I’d go crazy.”

  “What did Chad say?” Silence stretched out between them. Before she could speak, he answered for her. “You didn’t tell him.”

  “It was selfish of me. And wrong.”

  He cleared his throat and asked, “Why?”

  “Well, I thought maybe if Chad thought I might not be staying, he’d quit helping me with the harvest, and well, if I do stay, I’m going to need that food.”

  “Chad’s a bigger man than that,” Bill said. To Willow, it sounded as if he didn’t want to admit it, but she brushed that aside as her being silly. His next words, however, made perfect sense. “He’ll help because it’s what he does. He’s a good friend, not a convenient one.”

  “You’re right. I’ll think about it. I really just don’t know if I’m ready to make such a huge change. I still wake up and hurry downstairs to wish Mother a good morning. Leaving here…”

  It took the better part of a minute for her to realize Bill’s words weren’t designed to convince her to accept the job and move. Gentle and understanding, he encouraged her, sympathized with her indecision, and just before he disconnected the call, he prayed that the Lord would give her comfort and wisdom. For several minutes, she stared at the phone in her lap, confused.

  At six o’clock, boredom attacked Willow from all quarters. She wanted to escape—go anywhere—do anything but sit in her room and stare at the four walls. She’d read her book, she’d memorized every feature of every photo in her birthday album, and she’d nearly committed her mother’s journal of 1988 to memory. Oh, and she was hungry. Very hungry.

  Fish. Willow wanted dill baked trout. It sounded heavenly. Fried green tomatoes—oh, they’d be the perfect side dish. She considered the fallout when Chad arrived after work and grinned. He wouldn’t be home until ten o’clock. Surely, she could fix it and get back in bed before then.

  Her leg screamed for more painkillers, but she refused. They made her feel muddle-headed, and she needed her wits about her if she planned to cook. Just as she started to lower herself to the first step of the stairs, she remembered something. When she was ten, her mother had brought home a pair of crutches from a yard sale in Fairbury. Thanking the Lord for her obsession with war stories and amputations, she crawled up the attic stairs and retrieved the crutches.

  At the top of the stairs, Willow tossed the crutches onto the landing, seated herself, and scooted down one step at a time. When she reached the landing, she pushed the crutches down a bit farther and smiled with satisfaction as they leaned perfectly against the bottom few steps. This’d be a piece of very painful cake.

  Willow managed to make it to the back door in a reasonable amount of time. Her armpits screamed against the injustice of hard rubber slamming against them with each step. She knew there were buttons for adjusting, but she opted not to waste precious time on that.

  Saige nearly knocked her over with overblown excitement. Willow rolled the puppy away with the bottom of the crutch every few steps until she felt like her arms as well as legs were fighting to keep her upright. Once at the freezer, she discovered a new problem. She had no way to carry the fish back to the house.

  Feeling quite foolish, Willow wrapped it in a kitchen towel, stuffed the ends in her teeth, and hobbled back across the yard. Every step sent the frozen fish swinging into her breastbone. “Great. More bruises. I’ll get a tote for the tomatoes,” she told Saige as she shoved the dog away again.

  It took her nearly an hour from the time she left her bed until the time she collapsed, exhausted, into her kitchen chair. A washed tomato sat beside the sink and her frozen packet of fish lay soaking in a bowl of water. She was disgusted. It took her an hour to do a five-minute task.

  Her stomach growled. She wanted that trout. Steeling herself against the waves of pain sure to follow, Willow stood and grabbed her trusty skillet. She’d have to make a fire in the stove. Trying to grill with the pup working hard to send her sprawling across the yard seemed even more dangerous.

  Ignoring the heat, the pain, and the exhaustion, she fried her fish and tomatoes. The scent caused Saige to scratch mercilessly
at the door. Willow banged her crutch at the bottom of the screen, but the pup ignored her and scratched even more. By the time Willow took her last bite, the puppy wiggled around her feet and a torn screen announced the score. Saige: 1. Willow: 0.

  Chad glanced around the yard as he made his way to the back door. A ripped screen and the lingering scent of fried trout shocked him. He took the back steps two at a time and burst into the kitchen. A dirty frying pan sat on the stove. Stifling heat in the room prompted him to glance in the wood box. It was no longer full. A plate lay turned upside down on the floor. His next step sent a fork flying through the air.

  Saige flew from the direction of the living room and yapped excitedly around Chad’s legs. “What are you doing in here girl? Who was out here?”

  Chad pushed the puppy outside and shut the door. He wandered into the living room and stepped in a pile of excrement. “Oh ugh. Saige!” He stepped out of his shoes and set them on the back step, scrubbed up the “dog pile,” and wandered through the house looking for puddles and other piles. “That puppy is more trouble than she’s worth,” he muttered.

  Crutches at the base of the stairs startled him. “Oh she didn’t. She didn’t!” Of course, she did. He knew it. He had to get Chief Varney to mobilize his wife and the ladies’ Bible study or Willow would kill herself trying to be herself.

  He peeked in on her, relieved to find her sleeping soundly. The glass of water beside her bed was empty, so he filled it and carried it back. The heat felt oppressive to him, but she seemed comfortable as she slept.

  Downstairs, Chad grabbed one of Kari’s early journals and began reading. He needed to wind down and Kari’s insights into life on the farm and into Willow’s personality relaxed him like nothing he’d ever read. Of course, maybe if you read something other than the Bible, you’d find that other things relax you too. The thought appeared and then evaporated as he turned the page.

  Halfway through September 1993, Chad involuntarily sat upright. He reread the section, hoping he hadn’t read what he thought he had. His heart sank, and he rushed to the kitchen searching for Willow’s reference journals. He read through the handwritten index and finally turned to the page on hay cutting.

  Sickened, Chad pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialed the number of the station and waited for Joe to pick up. “Joe, I’m going to be sick tomorrow.”

  “Calling in lies huh,” Joe teased.

  “Nope. Not a lie. I either go to work and get sick, or I take preventative measures. Right now, I could hurl.”

  “What’s wrong?” Joe’s concern sounded hemmed in mirth.

  “I botched Willow’s hay. I piled it into the barn without letting it dry. I’ve got to get it out of there or it’ll mildew. According to Kari’s journals, it can even cause some kind of spontaneous combustion thing and burn down the barn.”

  “I’ll work for you. Fix the hay.”

  “Hey Joe,” Chad added as an afterthought.

  “Yeah.”

  “Pray.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Layer after layer, Chad spread the alfalfa back over the field. He considered using the yard, the driveway, and every other nearby area, but Saige was likely to bother it. When he told Willow of the problem, she burst into irrational fits of weeping.

  Chad heard snatches of words like failure, shop, make it, and the worst, “maybe Bill was right.” Unsure of whether he should comment or just comfort, he took the safe route, patted her shoulder, handed her a roll of toilet paper (which she tossed aside in favor of handkerchiefs), and prayed. Remembering it as he spread hay in the sun to dry, Chad wondered if there was more to her tears than he’d first imagined.

  At noon, Chad came inside and scrubbed his hands, arms, and face in the kitchen sink. He downed a small pitcher of cold water, refilled it, and shoved it back into the icebox. The sound of Willow thumping across the living room floor sent him to help her. “Here, let me—”

  “I can do it,” she growled.

  “What do you want for lunch? I’m famished.”

  The fire in her eyes died as quickly as it had blazed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been in a bad mood all morning. Can you fill up on a salad?”

  Chad didn’t have the heart to tell her that a salad was the last thing he thought was filling. “I’ll go see what I can find.”

  “There’s chicken in the freezer. It’s in the top door shelf to the left. Labeled chicken pieces. If you put them in warm water they’ll defrost.”

  While in the kitchen, Chad made a sandwich with lettuce leaves for bread and made a mental note to buy a loaf or two. The last thing she needed was to start baking on that leg. The sandwich would keep him going until he could get into town and get bread. And a burger. Definitely not in that order. At his usual place, a salad sat waiting for him.

  “So I got a call from Rockland yesterday,” Willow began.

  “How is Bill?”

  “Fine—but that’s not who I was talking about.”

  “Oh?” Chad picked at his salad trying to remember how good for him the green piles of vegetation were.

  “That store I went to? You know the one where I bought a few things?”

  “Yeah.”

  She swallowed. For reasons she couldn’t fathom, Willow wanted Chad’s approval. “They want me to design a children’s line similar to the women’s clothes and help manage the children’s store.”

  “Is that something you want to do?”

  Though she saw that he tried to hide it, Chad sounded unsure. Willow jumped on that. “I don’t know. Bill seems to think it’d be good. He mentioned that I’d be closer to the physical therapists at the hospital, and I do like the idea of designing the clothes, but—”

  “But what?”

  She shrugged. “It seems like a lot of change just so I can make a few cute outfits and some fabric decisions.”

  “Why don’t you counter-offer?”

  “Huh?”

  Chad stood and carried his plate to the sink. He pulled his gloves back on and turned to face her. “I just meant that I don’t see why you can’t design the children’s clothes, pick the fabrics and stuff, but not manage the store. J.C. Penney buyers don’t have to manage their stores.” With a wink and what he knew was a weak smile, he jerked his thumb at the door and told her he’d better get back to the hay.

  Sickened by her news, Chad left the house in a rush. He’d grown to like working around her place. Even undoing his work from Saturday was satisfying. If she left, what would happen to her farm? Would she give away the animals? Would she stop growing the vegetables and quit processing the fruit? Would she sell out?

  Maybe she’d let him rent it. He had a better understanding of her financial situation, now. Living in Rockland would be expensive, but she’d have a salary—Bill wouldn’t let anyone take advantage of her. Maybe she’d marry him.

  That idea grew a hard stone in his gut. He felt horrible. He had no right to an opinion, but something about Bill didn’t fit. Something about Bill just was not right. Hypocrite. You’ve practically been begging God for this and now that it’s here, you think he’s wrong.

  Seated on the couch, a pillow behind her propped knee, Willow painstakingly stitched her fabric pieces together. Autumn would knock on her door sooner than she expected, and she felt like bringing a little bit indoors. If she couldn’t wander through her flowerbeds and pick pumpkins, she’d create fall from the inside out.

  Once her quilt blocks were finished, Willow grabbed her cell phone and called Chad. “Can you help me?”

  He was inside before she could tell him what she needed. “You ok?”

  “I’m fine, you goof. I just didn’t feel like climbing those stairs. I spent twenty minutes after lunch stepping onto that first step with this bum leg, and I’m tired.”

  Shaking his head, Chad frowned. “You don’t have to do all your therapy at once. It’s ok to rest too.”

  “I just don’t want to get yelled at for not going to the therapist.” She poin
ted to the stairs. “Ion the bottom shelf in the craft room, there’s a pile of wool sweaters. Can you get them?”

  He was upstairs and back before she could shift into a more comfortable position.“What are you doing with them?”

  “Potholders. I’ll hang them in the kitchen and bring a little fall indoors.” She paused, thinking. “Oh, wait. In the closet, by the door, top shelf, there is a box marked red-orange. Can you bring that too? I’m going to make a few pumpkins.”

  “Why don’t I just bring in a couple of them from the garden?”

  “That too.”

  As she sewed, Willow dreamed up charming clothing designs for children. She didn’t know what kind of clothing options the store had in mind, but occasionally she sketched an idea on a notepad. Several she wadded and tossed at the wastebasket in the corner, but occasionally she had one that she knew was perfect.

  Under her skillful fingers, potholders and pumpkins grew. Aware of every minute that passed, she forced herself to relax and enjoy the chance to do some of the things she rarely had time for in summer. When she needed green for pumpkin leaves, Willow decided to get it herself. Her leg wasn’t throbbing, her pain medication was working, and she needed all the exercise she could get.

  When he returned from town, Chad found Willow feeding the chickens. “What are you doing?”

  “You know, what I always do? I’m feeding the chickens. I can’t milk Willie, but I can at least give them a snack and roll them in.”

  “Roll them in?”

  Willow grinned. “Well, when the weather turns bad quickly, we don’t have time to chase them in, so we just push the yard back.”

  Chad watched amazed as she clicked locks off wheels he’d never noticed and slowly pushed the yard back. The chickens were forced to climb into their coop or be squashed. “How did you ever—”