“I hope she likes it.”
“She’ll love it,” he said as two vehicles drove into view. An old Chevy passenger van and an SUV. “And so will everyone else.”
Clementine planned to tell him that she wished she had his confidence, but the trucks were there, kids and adults climbing out. All of it noise and chaos and bickering and laughter.
Except for Sunday. She limped along next to Heavenly, leaning on her daughter as if she didn’t have the strength to hold her own weight.
Somehow, they made it to the chapel door.
Sunday stopped there, running her hand over a wooden door that was exactly like the one that had been on the original building. “It’s beautiful, Clementine. I can’t believe you did this for our family.”
“Mostly, I did it for you, Sunday,” she said, taking her friend’s hand and helping her across the threshold.
It was much cooler inside, no glass in the windows to block air circulation. Just wood floors, high ceiling, and sparse furniture. Clementine had found several old wooden pews in a salvage lot and a local artist had donated a beautiful cross that now hung at the front of the chapel.
“I had to guess at the interior,” she said, filling the silence that had fallen over the group as they’d entered the building.
It felt sacred. The ground. The space. The air.
Even the children could feel it, their bodies still, their mouths shut. Somehow, in the silence, Clementine thought she could hear the hushed whisper of long-ago prayers.
“I think God must like this place,” Moisey whispered. “I can feel Him here.”
She grabbed Sunday’s hand. “Come on, Mommy. Let’s sit and listen for a while.”
“Listen to what, sweetheart?” Rumer asked, following them to the front pew, hovering a little too close as Sunday took a seat. Clementine wanted to remind her that they’d all agreed to try to give Sunday some space, but she didn’t want to embarrass either woman, and she didn’t want to ruin the calm and peaceful mood that seemed to have enveloped everyone.
“To all the people who prayed here and worshiped here and married here. I bet there were hundreds of them who stood right here on this very spot. And now people can be here again.” Moisey sighed, leaning her head against Sunday’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be lovely, Mommy?”
“What?” Sunday said, motioning for the other children to sit beside her. She might be struggling, but her love for them was as obvious as it had ever been.
“A wedding here in the chapel. We could do that one day, right? Have a wedding here?” Moisey asked.
“We’d need a couple who wanted to get married on a farm, but yes. We could have a wedding here.”
“A couple who wanted to get married on a farm, huh?” Harley said, standing near the door and looking oddly uncomfortable.
“Come sit with us, Harley,” Twila said, patting the pew.
“I don’t know, kid. I haven’t been in a church in a while.”
“God doesn’t care,” Twila announced. “Come on.”
“Right. Okay. Sure.” Harley stepped into the chapel, glancing up as if she were afraid the ceiling might fall on her head. “So, since I’m in here, I’d like to point out that I can think of a couple who’d probably love to get married on the farm.”
“Really?” Sunday asked, and for the first time since the accident, she looked excited by something. “Who?”
“Yes. Who?” Heavenly asked, her gaze darting from her mother to Porter, and then, finally, settling on Clementine.
“Why are you looking at me?” Clementine asked, but suddenly her mouth was dry, and her heart was pounding, because it wasn’t just Heavenly looking. It was everyone.
“Probably because I’ve been telling them about the plans I’ve been making for when this place was finished,” Porter responded, his hands on Clementine’s waist as he turned her so they were face to face.
And suddenly, they weren’t in a chapel filled with family and friends. They were in a space meant for just the two of them. And she was looking into his eyes, seeing the man who had become so much a part of her life, she couldn’t imagine a day without him in it.
“What plans?” she asked, and he smiled. The kind of gentle, sweet smile that always made her pulse leap.
“For a wedding. After a proposal.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out an old velvet box, dull with age and faded from many years of handling.
And beautiful.
So very beautiful.
Just like the chapel and all the people who filled it. Like the sacred air and the sweet trill of a songbird outside the window. Just like the words Porter was speaking about friendship and love and forever. About tractors and children and plans that he only ever wanted to make with her.
“That’s it, Clementine,” he murmured, kissing her gently. “Everything I have in my heart. Every word I can possibly say, and it still doesn’t seem like enough. You mean everything to me, and if I spend every day of the rest of my life with you, and then find you again in eternity, I’ll still want our story to continue. I love you, Clementine. Will you marry me?” He opened the box, revealing a flower-shaped ring. The center a sapphire. The petals diamonds. All of them old. The gold band scuffed just like the velvet box.
At least, she thought it was scuffed. Her eyes were too filled with tears to see much.
“Yes,” she said, and she thought she heard Moisey squeal and Sunday shush her.
“I found this in an antique shop, and it made me think of you. Unique and beautiful,” Porter said, slipping the ring on her finger, kissing her knuckles and then her lips. “If you don’t like it, we can find something else.”
“Like it? I love it,” she whispered. “But I love you more. I can’t wait to be your wife.”
“In that case, how does autumn sound?” he asked.
“Autumn?”
“You can’t mean this autumn,” Harley said. “That’ll hardly give you time to prepare.”
“It’s plenty of time,” Clementine corrected, seeing it all in her head and knowing it would be just the right time and just the right place with just the right man. “The crops will be in. The weather will be beautiful. The foliage will be stunning.”
“And we’ll be starting our lives together,” Porter said.
“I can’t think of anything better than that,” she replied.
And he kissed her again, right there in the chapel surrounded by the people they cared about most. While the kids squealed, and the women sighed, and the songbird continued to trill its wordless melody.
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She was out of breath by the time she made it down the stairs. Panting and sweating like she’d run a marathon when all she’d done was descend fifteen steps.
Fifteen!
Her legs were shaking, her heart thumping, either from the effort or from the nightmare. Sunday Bradshaw didn’t know which, and it didn’t really matter. She’d made it down the stairs, and now she’d do what she’d done dozens of times in the past couple of months—walk into the living room, sit in the easy chair. No light. No television. No sounds except the sleeping house settling around her. Just herself, her thoughts, and the fading memories of the nightmare that had chased her from her room.
She crept through the hall, her feet sliding along smooth hardwood. There was a throw rug in the living room, a coffee table, a couch, a love seat, and an easy chair. They were all shadows in the darkness as she stepped across the threshold.
Someone had left the curtains open, and she almost closed them before she sat, but she felt wobbly, and she was afraid to push things too far. Not because she was afraid to fall. Because she didn’t want anyone to hear and come running.
Some things a person had to do herself.
This was one of those things, and lately there had been very f
ew challenges she needed to meet. If she was hungry, someone made her food. If she was tired, someone encouraged her to nap, helped her to her room, found the comfortable sweatpants and tank top she slept in. When the floor needed cleaning someone else did it. Same for dishes and the laundry. Like magic, everything in the house was tended to. She was driven to doctor appointments, physical therapy, counseling. She was brought to church when she had the energy to attend. Which was almost never.
Her days consisted of appointments and of sitting in the old rocking chair in the parlor, blanket over her legs, book in her lap, noises drifting in from the yard as the children played or helped with the farm. Sometimes friends stopped by to say hello. They smiled cheerfully and shared stories about the past. More often than not, Sunday pretended she remembered the event or the person. More often than not, she didn’t.
It took energy to play the part and put on the act. Every visit exhausted her. Every day exhausted her.
Nights were different.
At night, she was alone.
There were no people asking questions, no unmet needs or concerned gazes. No invitations to go outside or go for a ride or watch one of the children turn cartwheels in the yard.
There was no need to pretend. No need to try.
No need to feel guilty.
There was nothing but herself and her thoughts.
That was how she preferred it. Which was probably wrong and unhealthy, but it was the truth. A truth she hadn’t dared speak to anyone. Not even the therapist her brothers-in-law had insisted she start seeing.
She had six children, for God’s sake. They were depending on her to get her act together, to pull herself out of the strange world she’d fallen into.
And all she wanted was to be left alone.
She shook the thought away, focusing on crossing the room without bumping into anything. She didn’t want to wake Rosie. The live-in nanny had a room right at the top of the stairs. She slept soundly, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t hear a thump and come running.
The easy chair stood in the far corner of the room, turned to face the fireplace on the opposite wall. She lowered herself into it, the two large windows letting in just enough light to turn darkness to hazy gray.
Tonight, the moon was full.
She knew because of Moisey.
Just like she knew that tomorrow would be sunny and hot, and that Uncle Sullivan was going to take the kids to town for ice cream.
It should have been Matthias doing that, but he was gone, and Sunday’s brothers-in-law had been working hard to fill the spot he’d left.
And the one Sunday should occupy but didn’t.
She’d survived the accident that had killed Matthias. She’d come out of a coma that doctors had doubted she’d recover from. She’d returned to the house and to her children, but she was like a ghost drifting through the life she’d once had.
She let other people do what she should and probably could, because the children seemed happy and the farm was thriving, and it was much easier to drift than to join in and take part. It wasn’t that she couldn’t accept her new reality. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be there for her children. She’d lost huge chunks of her memory. She’d forgotten more about the kids—their likes and dislikes, their personalities, their goals and dreams—than she remembered.
She didn’t want them to know that.
She didn’t want them to understand how deep the divide was between the person she’d been and the person she was.
How many times had she been reminded of what an industrious person she’d been before the accident? How many people had told her that she’d been a fantastic mother, a loving wife, a savvy businesswoman who’d had big dreams for the farm?
So many that she could almost pretend that she remembered who that woman was: Sunday Bradshaw. Admired by the town and by the church and by her friends.
Now, in their eyes, she was the woman who’d survived what should have been a fatal car accident, the young widow, the invalid with six kids. The object of a town’s pity. The reason for fund-raisers and silent auctions and meal trains coordinated by the church.
She still hadn’t figured out who she was in her own eyes.
She only knew that it was easier to sit in silence thinking about it than it was interacting with all the people who loved her and wanted her to go back to being what she’d once been.
But, of course, she wouldn’t.
Traumatic brain injuries changed people. They flipped things around. Turned things off and other things on. Complicated things that should be easy. Like life.
It shouldn’t be so hard, and she shouldn’t be so tired from the simple act of living it.
She sighed, leaning back in the chair and staring at the fireplace. There were framed photos on the mantel. Maybe a dozen of them. Pictures of the kids, Matthias and Sunday doing ordinary things together. They looked happy.
She refused to cross the room and lift the photos, to study them one by one the way she had when she’d first returned home after the accident, searching for things she’d forgotten.
It had been early spring then.
Now it was summer. Closing in on the end of it. She still didn’t have all the memories back.
And, God! She wanted to.
Desperately.
She didn’t want to put on a show with the kids. She didn’t want to pretend. She didn’t want to lie about remembering what it was like to be their mother. But that’s what she did. Every day. If they found out the truth, they’d be devastated. She’d poured through their adoption files. She’d tried to memorize the details of their lives before, but like her long-term memory, her short-term memory was faulty. No matter how hard she tried to hold on, the details slipped from her mind and then slipped back again. Randomly. She had no choice about what she remembered or how, so she pretended.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, the words hanging in the air. If Matthias were around, he’d agree. It was one of his favorite things to say. It’s going to be okay.
Even that last day, he’d said it.
It’s going to be okay. As her heart shattered and her stomach sank and her mind screamed that it wasn’t.
She remembered that.
God! She wished she could forget.
She stood, her legs still wobbly, her heart thumping that heavy, strange beat that had been part of her life since she’d woken in a rehab center a few months ago. She should go upstairs and get back in bed, pull the covers around herself and try to fall asleep. The sun would rise soon enough. Another day would begin, and she wanted to think she’d be doing more than sitting in the old rocking chair.
Maybe she’d go outside for a while.
Sit on the porch. Watch the kids turn cartwheels or tend the flowers that had been planted nearby. She’d been on enough tours of the farm to know it had changed for the better. Crops were growing in fields that had been fallow for decades. One of the old barns had been converted to a store that would soon be filled with farm and local produce. There were animals and activities and all the things that she’d been told she’d talked about before the accident.
She didn’t remember that.
She only remembered how much her parents and grandparents had loved the land and the old house. She remembered being a kid, watching as her grandfather tended the fields. She remembered knowing that Pleasant Valley Farm was home.
Only now, it was Pleasant Valley Organic Farm, and it didn’t feel like home. It felt like a house she used to live in.
She walked back through the hallway and into the kitchen, determined to do something for herself. One little thing. And, just like she’d done dozens of times, she kept the lights off, reaching for the old kettle and filling it with water.
She set it on the stove, turned on the gas burner, and watched as the blue-white flames shot out. She wouldn’t let the kettle boil. She didn’t want the noise. She just wanted to know that she could still do this—make a cup of tea the way she h
ad for her mother and grandmother. Grab the chipped white mug from the cupboard and a tea bag from the tin on the counter. Take a little milk from the fridge. A little sugar from the pantry. Somehow, those simple acts made her feel more connected to the past than anything else had.
Cool air drifted through the old windowpanes. It was summer, but nights were already showing hints of fall. There’d been a nip in the air the previous morning. She remembered that, but she couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for breakfast. She could remember what Heavenly had eaten—a fistful of sugary cereal. She’d been sashaying down the hall with it when Sunday had spotted her. Shorts an inch too short. Shirt a few inches too tight. Nearly thirteen and dressing in a way Sunday would never have approved before the accident. She was certain of that.
After it . . .
She still didn’t approve, but she hadn’t said anything. She’d just watched as her daughter continued down the hall. She’d listened as the front door had opened and closed. She’d wondered where Heavenly was going so early in the morning. She hadn’t asked anyone.
Which made her feel about as much like a failure as anything could. These were her children. Not her brothers-in-laws’ or their significant others’. Not Rosie’s or the community’s. It was her job to make sure they were okay.
And all she seemed to be able to manage was a cup of tea in the wee hours of the morning.
She frowned, turning off the burner and pouring hot water over the tea bag. She set the kettle back in its place, poured a little milk into the mug, spooned in a little sugar. Put everything back where it belonged.
This, at least, was easy.
Making tea.
Sipping it as she stared out into the backyard.
Someone had mowed a few days ago. She’d inhaled the scent of fresh cut grass as it drifted in the parlor window. It had smelled like family and hope, like endless summer days and starry summer nights.
She tried to remember what it was like to walk barefoot through the grass. She was certain she’d done it. When she was a kid and, probably, as an adult. She couldn’t quite grab on to how the blades of grass or the cold earth had felt against her skin.
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