Homecoming (Sweet Hearts of Sweet Creek Book 1)

by Carolyne Aarsen

  “Didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the past few nights.” He angled a mischievous glance at her. “Been thinking about you.”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “That sounds great.” He scooted over and lifted her past him, then helped her adjust the seat. “Just keep it around the speed limit, okay?” he said with a laugh.

  He watched as she put the truck in gear, checked over her shoulder and pulled into the traffic. Sheryl tried not to feel nervous with him watching her and glanced over at him.

  “I think I’m going to like this,” he said.

  Then, to her surprise, he stretched out and laid his head on her lap, staring up at her. “I think we’ll do okay,” he whispered, his eyes drifting shut, his head growing heavy and warm on her lap as he relaxed.

  Sheryl glanced down at his beloved face, so close to her and let a full-bodied sigh drift out of her.

  She stepped on the accelerator, looking down the highway to the hills as they graduated to the Rockies. They were the mountains of her youth, and beyond them was home.

  She had come full circle. She and her mother had left Alberta seeking a home and now she had found it. She had found it not by becoming strong, but by becoming weak.

  She glanced down at Mark’s face, relaxed now as he drifted off to sleep. A wave of pure love washed over her, and she sent a belated prayer of thanks to Heaven.

  In weakness is strength, she thought I sought strength and found weakness. I sought independence and found a home.

  Home. Next to love, the most beautiful word in the English language.

  Dear Reader

  Dear Reader,

  Family is important to me. My husband and I have been blessed with brothers and sisters who share our faith and parents who have nurtured it from the very beginning. Through our family and relationships with siblings and nieces and nephews, our faith is strengthened. We are reminded of what God needs and requires of us.

  Sheryl had wanted to be a part of the Kyle family, but they didn’t understand where she came from. By the time her stepfather realizes what he has done, Sheryl has become a person who mistrusts and wants to be strong on her own, thinking that leaning on God or family is a sign of weakness.

  Mark, with his faith in God and his own loving family, shows her that, like an arch, leaning on each other creates strength. Through Mark, Sheryl learns to forgive and to lean on family and trust in God instead of trying to be strong on her own.

  By writing this story, I found I had to reach back into our own families and search for the things that frustrate and yet strengthen. I like to think our families are a small reflection of the community of Christ. None of us are perfect, but we are united by one goal. We must always be forgiving and asking for forgiveness as we stumble along with our eyes on the One who is the epitome of love and forgiveness, Jesus Christ.

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  Afterword

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  Excerpt - The Only Best Place

  Smile. Think happy thoughts. Take a deep breath and…

  “Hello. I’m Leslie VandeKeere, and I’m a farmer's wife."

  No. No. All wrong. That sounds like I'm addressing a self-help group for stressed-out urban dwellers.

  I angled the rearview mirror of my car to do a sincerity check on my expression and pulled a face at my reflection. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Both the polar opposite of the VandeKeere signature blonde hair and blue eyes repeated throughout the Dutch-based community of Holmes Crossing.

  During the past hour of the long drive from Vancouver to here, I'd been practicing my introduction to varied and sundry members of the vast community of which I knew about four and a half people. I'd been trying out various intros. That last one was a bust. I'd never been a farmer's wife. Would never be a farmer's wife. I’m a nurse, even though my focus the next year was supposed to be on our marriage. Not my career.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. "Our year here will be interesting."

  Worse yet. Most women could break that code faster than you could say "fifteen percent off." Interesting was a twilight word that either veered toward the good or the dark side.

  Right now my delivery was a quiet and subdued Darth Vader.

  I had to keep my voice down so I wouldn't wake my two kids. After four Veggie Tales and a couple of off-key renditions of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," they had finally drifted off to sleep, and I didn't want to risk waking them. The eighteen hour trip had been hard on us. They needed the rest. I needed the rest, but I had to drive.

  I stretched out hands stiff from clutching the steering wheel of my trusty, rusty Honda, the caboose in our little convoy. My husband, Dan, headed the procession, pulling the stock trailer holding stage one of our earthly goods. Next came his brother-in-law Gerrit, pulling his own stock trailer loaded with our earthly goods stage two.

  I had each bar, each bolt, each spot of rust on Gerrit's trailer indelibly imprinted on my brain. Counting the bolt heads distracted me from the dread that clawed at me whenever I saw the empty road stretching endlessly ahead of me.

  A road that wound crazily through pine-covered mountains, then wide open, almost barren, plains. Now, on the last leg of our journey, we were driving through ploughed and open fields broken only by arrow-straight fence lines and meandering cottonwoods. Tender green leaves misted the bare branches of the poplars edging the road, creating a promise of spring that I hadn't counted on spending here.

  I hadn't gone silently down this road. I had balked, kicked, and pleaded. I had even dared to pray that a God I didn't talk to often would intervene.

  Of course I was bucking some pretty powerful intercessors. I'm sure the entire VandeKeere family was united in their prayers for their beloved brother, son, cousin, nephew, and grandchild to be enfolded once again in the bosom of the family and the farm where they thought he belonged. So it was a safe bet my flimsy request lay buried in the avalanche of petitions flowing from Holmes Crossing.

  The one person I had on my side was my sister, Terra. But she only talked to God when she'd had too much to drink. Of course, in that state, she chatted up anyone who would listen.

  The friends I left behind in Vancouver were sympathetic, but they all thought this trip would be an adventure. Interesting adventure, my friend Josie had said when I told her.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at my sleeping children. Nicholas shifted in his car seat, his sticky hands clutching a soggy Popsicle stick. The Popsicle had been a blatant bribe, and the oblong purple stain running over his coat from chin to belly would probably not wash out. A constant reminder of my giving in.

  Since Edmonton, I'd been tweaking my introduction, and now that we had turned off the highway, time and miles ate up what time I had left. I had only ten minutes to convince myself that I'd sooner be heading toward the intersection of "no" and "where," otherwise known as Holmes Crossing, Alberta, than back to Vancouver.

  We would still be there if it weren't for Lonnie Dansworth--snake, scumbag, and crooked building contractor. The $90,000’s worth of unpaid bills he left in the "VandeKeere
Motors" inbox tipped Dan's fledgling mechanic business from barely getting by to going under. The Dansworth Debacle, in turn, wiped out the finely drawn pictures I'd created in my head of the dream life and home Dan and I had been saving for. The home that represented stability for a marriage that had wobbled on shaky ground the past year.

  The second push to Holmes Crossing came when Dan's stepfather, Keith Cook, booked a midlife crisis that resulted in him doing a boot-scootin' boogie out of hearth, home, Holmes Crossing, and the family farm, leaving a vacuum in the VandeKeere family's life that Dan decided we would temporarily fill.

  Temporary had been a recurring refrain in our life so far. The first two years of our marriage, Dan had worked for a small garage in Markham while I worked in the ER at the Scarborough Hospital. When an oil company needed a maintenance mechanic, we moved to Fort McMurray, and I got a job as a camp nurse. Two years later, an opportunity to be his own boss came up in Vancouver. When we packed up and moved, Dan promised me this was our final destination. Until now.

  "It's only a year," Dan assured me when he laid off the employees, pulled out of the lease on the shop, and filed away the blueprints we had been drawing up for our dream home. We could have lived off my salary while Dan got his feet under him and worked on our relationship away from the outside influences of a mother Dan still called twice a week. But Dan's restless heart wasn't in it. Being a mechanic had never been his dream. Though I'd heard plenty of negative stories about his stepfather, Keith, a wistful yearning for the farm of his youth wove through his complaints. We were torn just like the adage said: "Men mourn for what they lost, women for what they haven't got."

  The final push came when a seemingly insignificant matter caught my attention. The garage's bilingual secretary, Keely. She could talk "mechanic" and "Dan," and the few times I stopped at the garage, she would chat me up in a falsely bright voice while her eyes followed Dan's movements around the shop.

  When her name showed up too often on our call display, I confronted Dan. He admitted he'd been spending time with her. Told me he was lonely. He also told me that he had made a mistake. That he was trying to break things off with her. He was adamant that they'd never been physically intimate. Never even kissed her, he claimed. She was just someone he spent time with.

  I tried not to take on the fault for our slow drift away from each other or the casual treatment of our relationship as kids and work and trying to put money aside for our future slowly sunk its demanding claws into our lives, slowly pulling us in separate directions.

  I also reminded him that I had remained faithful, taking the righteous high road. Dan was chastened, Keely quit, and her name never came up again. But her shadowy presence still hovered between us, making Dan contrite, and me wary.

  Now, with each stop that brought us closer to the farm and Holmes Crossing and the possibility of repairing our broken relationship, I'd seen Dan's smile grow deeper, softer. The lines edging his mouth smoothed away, the nervous tic in the corner of one eye disappeared.

  Mine grew worse.

  A soft sigh pulled my eyes toward the back seat. Anneke still lay slack jawed, her blanket curled around her fist. Nicholas stirred again, a deep V digging into his brow, his bottom lip pushed out in a glistening pout. Nicholas was a pretty child, but his transition from sleep to waking was an ugly battle he fought with intense tenacity.

  I had only minutes before the troops were fully engaged.

  My previous reluctance to arrive at the farm now morphed into desperation for survival. I stomped on the gas pedal, swung around the two horse trailers, and bulleted down the hill into the valley toward my home for the next year.

  My cell phone trilled. I grabbed it off the dashboard, glancing sidelong at Nicholas as I did.

  "What's up?" Dan's tinny voice demanded. "What's your rush?"

  "The boy is waking up," I whispered, gauging how long I had before his angry wails filled the car.

  "Just let him cry."

  I didn't mean to sigh. Truly I didn't. But it zipped past my pressed-together lips. In that too-deep-for-words escape of my breath, Dan heard an entire conversation.

  "Honestly, Leslie, you've got to learn to ignore--"

  Dear Lord, forgive me. I hung up. And then I turned my phone off.

  Excerpt - All In One Place

  Chapter One

  By the time I left British Columbia, I'd stopped looking over my shoulder. When I started heading up the QUE2, my heart quit jumping every time I heard a diesel pickup snarling up the highway behind me.

  I was no detective, but near as I could tell, Eric didn't know where I was.

  Four days ago, I'd waited until I knew without a doubt that he was at work before packing the new cell phone I had bought and the cash I had slowly accumulated. I slipped out of the condo we shared, withdrew the maximum amount I could out of our joint account, rode the city bus as far as it would take me, and started hitchhiking. Phase one of my master plan could be summed up in three words: Get outta town.

  Okay, four words if you want to be precise about it.

  Now, as I stood on the crest of a hill overlooking a large, open valley, I was on the cusp of phase two. Again, three words: Connect with Leslie.

  I let the backpack slip off my shoulders onto the brown grass in the ditch and sank down beside it in an effort to rest my aching feet and still my fluttering nerves. I was leery of the reception I would get from my sister and not looking forward to what she might have to say. Since August, nine months ago, I'd tapped out two long, rambling e-mails telling her what was happening in my life and laying out endless lists of reasons and excuses. But each time I read the mess of my life laid out in black and white on a backlit screen, guilt and shame kept me from hitting the Send button.

  I knew she had a cell phone, and I knew the number, but a text message couldn't begin to cover either apologies or explanations.

  So I was showing up after nine months of nothing hoping for a positive reception.

  But at the same time my heart felt like a block of ice under my sternum, the chill that radiated out of it competing with the heat pouring down from above.

  The click of grasshoppers laid a gentle counterpoint to the sigh that I sucked deep into my chest. I slowly released my breath, searching for calm, reaching into a quiet place as my yoga instructor had been yammering at me to do.

  I reached down, tried to picture myself mentally going deeper, deeper.

  C'mon. C'mon. Find the quiet place. Anytime now.

  The screech of a bird distracted me. Above, in the endless, cloudless sky, a hawk circled lazily, tucked its wings in, and swooped down across the field. With a few heavy beats, it lifted off again, a mouse hanging from its talons.

  So much for inner peace. I guess there was a reason I dropped out of yoga class. That and the fact that my friend Amy and I kept chuckling over the intensity of the instructor as she droned on about kleshas and finding the state of non-ego.

  The clothes were fun though.

  I dug into my backpack and pulled out my "visiting boots," remembering too well how I got them. Eric's remorse over yet another fight that got out of control. On his part, that is. He had come along, urging me to pick out whatever I wanted. I had thought spending over a thousand dollars could erase the pain in my arm, the throbbing in my cheek. But those few hours of shopping had only given me a brief taste of power over him. His abject apologies made me feel, for a few moments, superior. Like I was in charge of the situation and in charge of the emotions that swirled around our apartment. That feeling usually lasted about two months.

  Until he hit me again.

  I sighed as I stroked the leather of the boot. For now, the boots would give me that all important self-esteem edge I desperately needed to face Leslie.

  As I toed off my worn Skechers and slipped on the boots, I did some reconnoitering before my final leg of the journey.

  Beyond the bend and in the valley below me, the town of Holmes Crossing waited, secure in the bowl cut
by the Athabasca River. For the past three days, I'd been hitching rides from Vancouver, headed toward this place, the place my sister now called home. In a few miles, I'd be there.

  I lifted my hair off the back of my neck. Surely it was too hot for May. I didn't expect Alberta, home of mountains and rivers, to be this warm in spring.

  In spite of the chill in my chest, my head felt like someone had been drizzling hot oil on it, basting the second thoughts scurrying through my brain.

  I should have at least phoned. Texted.

  But I'd gone quiet, diving down into my life, staying low. I wasn't sure she'd want to see me after such a long radio silence. I knew Dan wouldn't be thrilled to see me come striding to his door, designer boots or not. Dan, who in his better moments laughed at my lame jokes, and in his worse ones fretted like a father with a teenage daughter about the negative influence he thought I exerted on my little sister. His wife.

  Leslie had sent me e-mails about my little nephew Nicholas's stay in ICU and subsequent fight for his life, pleading with me to call to connect. I knew I had messed up royally as an aunt and a sister by note being there. Not being available.

  And I'd wanted to be there more than anything in the world. But at the time, I’d been holding onto my life by my raw fingertips and had no strength for anyone else.

  You had your own problems. You didn't have time.

  But I should have been there for my only sister. I could have tried harder.

  The second thoughts were overrun by third thoughts, the mental traffic jam bruising my ego.

  I pulled a hairbrush out of my knapsack. Bad enough I was showing up unannounced. I didn't need to look like a hobo. As I worked the brush through the snarl of sweat-dampened curls, I promised myself that someday I was getting my hair cut. I stuffed my brush back into my backpack and brushed the grass off my artfully faded blue jeans, thankful they were still clean. Zipping up my knapsack, I let out one more sigh before I heard the sound of a car coming up over the hill. My low spirits lifted as I turned to see who might rescue me from walking on these stilettos all the way to town.