Ruth whispered, “What do you think it is?”
Laurie whispered back, “Probably a fox or coon.”
Ruth held the lamp while Laurie pulled the coop’s wooden latch to the side. The door swung open. Laurie pushed her head inside, her face mask incongruous with the rifle, pregnant belly, and flannel gown. It took all of Ruth’s strength to hold Zeus’s collar, since every ounce of his body was trying to bust into the coop.
Laurie asked, “Can you move in here with the lamp?”
Ruth said, “Why are we whispering?”
Laurie whispered back, “I don’t know.”
Ruth quickly let go of Zeus, darted into the coop, and re-latched the door to keep him out. The lamp immediately illuminated a snout-nosed opossum. Beady black eyes glared at them in the light. Disturbed from his nocturnal snack, he hissed and sputtered with feathers ringing his pointed mouth. The hen he had killed was splayed on the ground by his feet.
Ruth believed she had so far lived an adventurous life, but the creature’s scaled pink tail and prickly gray body was about the ugliest sight she had ever seen. Almost as an afterthought, Ruth screamed, but—in her defense—she did not drop the lamp.
The scream ricocheted off the interior of the coop. The opossum backed away from the light and the sound, hissing madly, but this couldn’t be heard over Ruth.
“Hold it still!” Laurie called, as if she were in battle, commanding, “Hold the line!”
Ruth snapped out of her hysteria as quickly as she had entered and calmly resumed holding the lamp. Without the light swinging wildly, Laurie moved deeper into the coop, driving the opossum into a corner so he was far enough away from the chickens not to cause them harm. She raised the gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger. This time, the sound not only reverberated off the walls, it reverberated inside the walls themselves and inside the chests and heads of the women, so it seemed even their bone marrow and teeth rattled with the percussion.
“Got ’im,” Laurie said. She turned and grinned at Ruth.
Ruth just stared at her future sister-in-law: Laurie’s pea-green face mask, her wide pink mouth, her bright, white-rimmed eyes, all captured by an old-fashioned oil lamp. Yes, so far Ruth had lived an adventurous life, but she had never lived an adventure like this. Suddenly—as suddenly as Ruth had emitted her scream—she began to laugh. She laughed so hard, she had to hold the lamp steady in one hand and her stomach in the other. Seeing her, Laurie looked confused, and then she began to laugh as well. The two very different women laughed and laughed as the smell of gunpowder and chicken dung filtered through the cool November air. It was the first time in a long time Ruth had felt anything overtake her like this, other than sorrow, and she embraced the release of it until tears of happiness and relief trickled from her eyes.
Every day, more bombs fell on the city of Kabul, decimating block after block until it sounded like a giant, mythical beast were slowly encroaching on the hospital, causing Chandler to fear he would die in a bombing identical to the one he had survived. So he left. The hospital was overrun with patients, and the nurse didn’t even blink when Chandler said he was checking himself out. For there was no “checkout” procedure. There were no computers to update or forms to fill out. He merely put on the clothes and shoes, which had belonged to another patient.
Chandler didn’t allow himself to think how the hospital had obtained them; he was only grateful the nurse didn’t make him leave in the dirty hospital gown he’d been wearing all week. Plus, the clothes were clean, and the shoes only a half size too small, which didn’t bother him as much as not having socks. Chandler put on this outfit and walked through the doors of the spare cinder-block hospital. Though his olfactory system yearned for fresh air after four months breathing in the odor of waste and decay, he found the scent was not the hospital’s alone.
Chandler had to fight the urge to turn around as he stepped off the broken sidewalk. He had flown into Kabul with his father, his passport, his credit card, his cell phone, and a carefully packed suitcase. Now, he was scarred, weak, and stepping into a war zone with nothing but a dead man’s clothes on his back. His build and dark features helped him blend in. He wasn’t sure if this was a blessing or a curse. A blessing, he supposed, as he walked the street, since anyone overtly foreign would be singled out, and yet it was his nationality that could save him, if he could only reach a city that wasn’t as devastated as the one he was in.
Therefore, Chandler began to walk. He walked east, toward the rising sun, because that felt safer than forcing himself to walk into the darkness. The sun and the moon, he thought, are the same. No matter where he was in the world, no matter how long it would take to get home to his family, the sun that shone on his family was the same sun that shone on him. He just had to follow it; to remain focused, regardless of the pain that accompanied each step.
Chandler Neufeld wondered if this separation was what he deserved.
Far too often, he had escaped to the clinic, where he was confident in his abilities. At home, he got the sense he was doing it all wrong. He gave the girls baths but forgot to rinse the conditioner from their hair so the girls’ bangs looked greasier than before he began; he folded towels, but they weren’t folded in the way the narrow shelves required. He put the food away after Ruth cooked, but he just set the plastic containers in the fridge, not bothering to cover them with the coordinating lids, or even tinfoil, which Ruth said allowed the food to dry out and absorb the smells. Yes, Chandler was incompetent at home, and so he escaped. It was easier to make a difference when the people you were ministering to didn’t see you fail. So when the opportunity to leave Colombia for Afghanistan came, Chandler contacted his dad and asked if he’d like to go with. He knew Ruth believed that Chandler Senior had contacted him first, and it was a subterfuge he didn’t mind perpetuating, since this way his father took more flak.
He and Ruth weren’t at a good place; they hadn’t been for a long time, and he thought the distance would be healthy for them—would allow them to take an objective viewpoint of their marriage and family and see where they were headed with both. He would never leave her, Sofie, and Vivienne, or at least that’s what he told himself as his plane left Bogotá. But sometimes there were easier ways of leaving, and the escape route he’d chosen was humanitarian aid. Yes, this was his punishment, as he plodded in a dead man’s shoes in the ruins of a dying city, the buildings against the rising sun looking like they were, once more, going up in flame.
In September, Elam had offered his cabin to Ruth as her private art studio, and for two months, it had become her haven as well as his. But she’d never had the courage to use it without him there, like she was doing now. Ruth walked up the porch to the cabin, found the key in the planter—where he’d said it would be—and unlocked the door. The hinge groaned as the scent of musty books and dust rose to greet her. The spines of his jewel-toned classics had softened with frequent use and age, and silverfish glittered like bookmarks between the pages as they unfurled, like living things, in Ruth’s hands. But Ruth loved entering this portal into the inner workings of Elam’s heart and mind, shelved with all those things he held dear.
A notebook, scrawled with illegible lyrics, rested on the piano top. Next to it, a series of candles had melted, gluing the four into one waxen tray. An indigo-blue pottery jar displayed a clutch of dried wildflowers. Elam’s cabin was an ode to natural beauty and wonder, and she loved imagining him—large-boned, capable Elam—out in the woods or in the cranberry fields, gathering these small treasures and tucking them into his pockets, to keep them safe.
Ruth couldn’t recall when she’d last taken delight in the natural world before coming here. The morning they flew to the States, Ruth had woken the girls and led them from the lonely house in Greystones down to the beach to say good-bye. But even while anchored by her daughters’ warm hands, the waves hadn’t reminded her of the countless, salt-sprayed mornings she and her father had searched the packed shoreline for shells; instead, they had reminded her of her
own impotence. Every day, people lived and died, and yet the waves continued to crest and recede—pulled by the moon but impervious to the sun’s rotations.
Ruth walked over to the desk and the chair in front of it, both repurposed from barn wood. The pastels she found there crumbled at her touch; the sketch paper was yellowed; the horsehair brushes frayed. Ruth didn’t check, but she imagined the oil paints were in the same condition. However, Elam had set up an easel in the corner, near the window, and spread a drop sheet beneath, the sheet more than likely pulled from his own cot bed. Ruth rose from the desk and lit another candle. She moved it closer to the easel, and that is when she saw it. A letter: to her, from Elam, balanced on the tray. She smiled as she opened the page and read:
Dear Ruth,
If you’re reading this, I am delighted, because this means you’ve taken my suggestion and come out here while I’m gone. I pray this cabin serves as a refuge for you—a place where you can create and dream and be. This cabin has been my refuge for years, and that is why I want to share it with you, my future bride. I still haven’t quite wrapped my mind around that concept, not because it scares me (well, okay, maybe a little), but because it’s so difficult for me to finally understand that, in a few short weeks, a long-held dream will come true.
I already hate leaving you, and I can’t imagine how much more difficult it’s going to be to leave our little family once we’re truly one. Thank you for coming into my life. Knowing you and your daughters has caused me to believe that all things truly work together for good—even the hard, painful things. I know you still struggle to see that God loves you, so I pray you will not only discover yourself while you’re out here, but also discover and encounter his love. Take all the time you need, and please make yourself at home. All I have is already yours.
Love,
Elam
Ruth traced the words. The scrawl was nearly as illegible as the lyrics on the piano top, and yet the letter itself was beautiful. The last time she’d received a letter like this, she and Chandler were living continents apart. She didn’t understand how she could deserve a second chance with a man like Elam, and if she wasn’t going to repeat the same mistakes, she needed to find healing for her heart. Setting the letter aside, Ruth picked up a pastel that was the color of the Wisconsin sky. She pressed it to the yellowed paper and began to sketch an image of the farm. A place that had been foreign to her so recently, and yet already felt like home.
When it was finished, she sat down at the desk, looked out the window, and recalled every step in her journey that had brought her here. It seemed she was submersing herself in water, how tangible was the sense she should hold her breath. But then she exhaled, pressed the pencil to paper, and wrote: The caskets were closed, of course. No flowers adorned them.
CHAPTER 11
THE AFTERNOON ELAM RETURNED, Vivienne ran out the door in her stocking feet and clutched his legs. But even when she stood on tiptoe—her arms stretched toward him, clearly wanting to be held—she didn’t come to his knees. Elam couldn’t deny her. He scooped her up and tossed her into the air, so that her fine hair fluttered and her gleeful laughter rippled around them like the tail of a kite. Sofie had run toward the door as well. But when she saw who’d arrived, she stayed behind it: a grubby hand pressed to the door’s left jamb while she chewed on a strand of dark hair. It was as though she were inwardly debating if it was okay to take part.
Chandler had spent the majority of Vivienne’s young life either at the orphanage’s clinic or in Afghanistan. Therefore, she had no qualms about opening her heart to Elam. Her sister was another story. Sofie might not have the words—or the self-awareness—to express how she felt, but her every behavior conveyed that to embrace Elam was to be disloyal to her father. Because of this, Ruth hadn’t worked up the nerve to talk to Sofie about her marriage to Elam. Elam had offered to be there for the conversation, to offer support, but Ruth feared how Sofie would react, since six-year-olds aren’t prone to having the same filter as adults.
Sophie asked, “Why’d he come back?”
The question startled Ruth. She thought her older daughter didn’t know she was being observed. Rising from the bottom step, Ruth walked over to the door and stroked Sofie’s hair, simultaneously tugging the wet curl from her mouth. Ruth said, “Because this is his home.”
Turning, Sofie looked up at her mother. “Is this our home now too?”
Ruth’s legs trembled as she knelt. It was difficult, trying to navigate this unexplored world. “Yes,” she said. “This is going to be our home. With Elam, Grandma Mabel, and Vi.”
Sofie’s pupils were swallowed by the black holes of her irises. “Will you be here?”
Ruth’s body deflated with relief. Maybe telling her wouldn’t be as hard as she feared. “Of course, my darling,” she said. “Mommy’s never going anywhere.”
But just like that, Sofie withdrew and stared out the window again to watch Elam tickle Vi beneath her chin. The easygoing child threw back her head and giggled. “You can’t say that,” Sofie said, and her young voice held no hint of anger. She was, with the preternatural clarity of a six-year-old, simply stating facts. “Daddy told me he was never going anywhere too.”
Chandler feared falling asleep, but exhaustion made wakefulness no longer an option. He crossed the street and entered the gaping doorway to another bombed-out building. He hoped it looked too decimated to appear inhabitable to anyone else. The first floor was covered in a sheet of plaster dust, the particles of which floated in the air, though the bombing must’ve happened weeks ago. The scent of decay overlaid everything, so Chandler climbed the cement steps to the second floor, hoping to escape it. Three days had passed since he’d eaten, and he wasn’t sure if his weakness was due to chronic hunger or his body still struggling to recuperate from the severity of his burns. The bombing was strange in how it could flatten entire blocks, and yet leave a table set for dinner, along with a glass vase of synthetic flowers, each petal and leaf encapsulated in fine dust. Chandler prayed everyone in the household had been rescued, but he knew from the months he’d spent performing emergency surgery that, even if a vase of flowers could remain intact, the same was often not true for the human body, which could withstand many things but succumbed so easily to man-made destruction.
He walked reverently around the table, his fingertips trailing lines in the powder. There were four chairs. One had a booster similar to the one Vi used at home. The only piece of cutlery at this place setting was a rubber-handled spoon. At that moment, he missed his family so much, the pain in his heart far surpassed the pain in his body. What would the father say if he could be here? Would he berate Chandler, as he deserved, for leaving his family? Would he tell him how important it was to be with your loved ones until the end, not to abandon them when they needed you most? Would he rebuke Chandler’s selfishness, disguised as altruism? For wasn’t it easier to be someone’s knight in shining armor, halfway around the world, than to participate in the unsung day-to-day efforts required of child-rearing and marriage?
Chandler felt sick in a way that had nothing to do with his recuperation. He walked through the kitchen and saw pots on the stove, the lids on top, but the outside wall was gone, allowing cold, fresh air to rush through the space. Chandler sank down in front of the stove, and the towel, draped over the handle, brushed the top of his head. He thought of his wife, and of his little girls, and the choices he had made, which had culminated in him leaving them. And not for the first time, sorrow and remorse overcame Chandler so that he began to weep, yearning for a glimpse of his loved ones’ faces, and yet finding himself sitting on the floor of a still-life tomb.
Elam and Ruth took a walk after the children were in bed. As they walked, Ruth wondered how different her relationship with Elam would be if he’d been the man she’d married six years ago. She imagined they’d be like they were now—holding hands in companionable silence as they each stared out at the field. Chandler, in some ways, had been a good husband
; she saw that now he was no longer here. He was not the type to bring home flowers, run her a bubble bath, or rub her feet—all things that would’ve made her swoon with shock.
But there was that one time when Chandler came home, after being at work for twenty-four hours, and found Ruth sitting on the couch with Sofie and Vi.
The girls’ cheeks were flushed and eyes polished by an internal heat. It might’ve been his proclivity as a doctor, or maybe his proclivity as a father, but whatever it was, Chandler went from pure exhaustion to full-time nursemaid in minutes. He checked their temperatures, changed their diapers, made Sofie a homemade version of Pedialyte in the kitchen, and warmed a bottle for Vi from the breast milk stored in the freezer. Ruth knew she must’ve smelled of her children’s vomit. Her hair was a rat’s nest, and she hadn’t had time to brush her teeth or change out of the pajamas she’d been wearing when Sofie first got sick. But Chandler didn’t seem to see any of this. Instead, he came out of the kitchen with a cup of tea and a piece of toast.
“Have you eaten?” he asked, setting the plate and mug on the coffee table. Ruth shook her head, not even realizing she hadn’t until now, since the scent of sickness kept her appetite at bay. He sat next to her on the couch. He took Vivienne, giving her the bottle, and Sofie climbed onto Ruth’s lap. Ruth stroked her daughter’s sweaty black hair and took a bite of toast.
Chandler reached for Ruth’s hand, but then let go to wipe Vi’s chin with a corner of her blanket. “We’ll get through it,” he said.
Ruth looked over at him and smiled wearily. “We will.”
And they did.
Vi’s case of the flu wasn’t nearly as severe as Sofie’s, probably due to the antibodies in Ruth’s breast milk, but Sofie’s fever soared so that the staggered doses of ibuprofen and Tylenol could barely touch it. When the thermometer stopped beeping at 103.7, they stripped her down, laid her on a towel, and wiped her with a damp washcloth, waiting to see if her temperature would drop. At two in the morning, too anxious to let Sofie sleep on her own, Chandler and Ruth lay on either side of her on the narrow twin. The nightlight on the windowsill flickered pink, purple, blue, and green. Ruth looked across Sofie’s radiating body up at Chandler and felt such love for her husband, it seemed impossible she could have ever felt anything else.
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