Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  Everyone here is praying for you, Dani. We loved Jeff, we loved Maggie, we loved Spencer, we loved Ava, we loved your mom, and we love you, too. Parker & Gavigan was never just a company; you know that. We were—we are—a family. Forever and always. You were a big part in helping to create that for all of us these past eleven-plus years. Please, let us be that same family for you now.

  We love you, Dani.

  With love,

  Tom (and everyone at your Parker & Gavigan family)

  The words, while kind and generous, pinged off her like gravel against tires. Family . . . love . . . Forever and always . . . those words, those concepts, didn’t go with her anymore. Mom, Jeff, and the kids were gone. They were her family; they were who she loved. And forever and always? Without them, she didn’t want tomorrow, let alone a forever.

  Lurching forward against the table, Dani refolded the letter, shoved it into the envelope, and returned it to the pile. A quick glance through the rest of the mail yielded nothing else she wanted to open, let alone read. Instead, she stood, dumped it all into her empty suitcase in the corner of the bedroom, and then returned to the kitchen and the contents of the evening’s dinner basket waiting to be unpacked.

  With hands that knew the drill, she transferred the still-warm meat and side dish onto the last of the plates inside her cabinet and carried it to the refrigerator. Inside, she hunted for an open space among the scads of untouched food and found one toward the back of the first shelf—in between yesterday’s soup and the previous day’s chicken.

  She’d tried to convince Lydia to stop sending so much food, but every day, like clockwork, more showed up.

  Days’ and days’ worth of dinners had gone from Lydia’s basket to the refrigerator with little more than a quick sniff and a very occasional nibble. Three months earlier, the smells alone would have overtaken any desire Dani might have had to watch her caloric intake. But now, after everything, even the most tantalizing aromas held no real power.

  “You need to eat, Mrs. Parker. If you can’t handle a big meal, then eat smaller amounts more often. Fruits and vegetables are important, sure, but calories are, too. So get yourself a milk shake from time to time. That’ll help.”

  Pushing the refrigerator closed, she stepped over to the cloth-wrapped mound that had been part of her breakfast basket that morning and fished out the piece of cold yet still-soft bread. She considered returning to the refrigerator for a smear of butter but opted, instead, to take the plain slice outside on the front porch, where she could watch the sheep and the chickens in private while Lydia and her family sat around the dinner table sharing tales of their day over the same turkey and dressing supper currently residing on the top shelf of her refrigerator.

  “You should try the swing.”

  Startled, she looked up from the rocking chair she was inches from claiming and spotted Caleb striding toward her with his cowboy hat atop his head and a shy smile inching its way across his generous mouth. “Oh. Hi. I didn’t know you were here,” she said, sliding her gaze beyond his to the empty spot where he tended to park his truck.

  “My truck is over at my folks’ house up the road.” He motioned her attention back to the farthermost corner of the porch and the wooden swing suspended from its ceiling by a single chain on each end. “That’s always been my favorite spot. The view is a little different from what you get sitting on the rocking chair, but there’s something mighty nice about losing yourself in it while your big toe does all the work.”

  “It’s okay; the rocking chair is fine.”

  “You’re right; it is. But the swing is better. Trust me,” he said, stopping just shy of the porch’s two-step staircase. “Try it.”

  Too tired to protest, she carried her bread over to the swing and slowly lowered herself onto the bench-like seat, its answering sway leaving her to make a mad grab for the armrest with her free hand. “Whoa . . .”

  His laugh spilled onto the porch. “Give yourself a second to get used to it and then just look out,” he said, spreading his thick and calloused hands outward. “It doesn’t get a whole lot prettier than that.”

  She waited for the swaying to lessen and then followed his gaze past the tree she favored for shade to the gently rolling pitch of the countryside. There, from the swing, the lush green of the growing spring crops seemed to stretch all the way to the ends of the earth only to merge seamlessly with the brilliant blue sky above. “Oh. Wow.”

  “I know.” Lowering himself onto the top step, he rested his forearm across the top of his knee and pointed a lazy finger at her lap. “Is that an appetizer or dessert?”

  She followed his gaze down to the slice of bread balanced atop her thigh and quietly sank against the wooden slats at her back. “It’s dinner.”

  His left eyebrow rose nearly to the brim of his cowboy hat. “Now don’t get me wrong. I love my sister’s homemade bread as much as the next guy. I, personally, like it best plain, the way you’ve got it there, but it ain’t bad with butter, either. That said, I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean it to be your only dinner.”

  “She didn’t.” Dani lifted the bread to her mouth, only to return it to her lap, untouched. “I’m just not hungry.”

  “Today? Or still?”

  She traveled her gaze back to the sky and the colorful sunset beginning to tease from behind a few white, puffy clouds. “Still, I guess. But it’s . . . hard.”

  “You’ll get there. Maybe you just need something different than that,” he said, pointing again at the bread.

  Turning her back flush with the armrest, she rested her arm against the back of the swing and cushioned her face against her sleeve. “I have different. Three refrigerator shelves’ worth of different, in fact.”

  “That’s a lot of different.” He tilted his head against the railing at his back and then, after a beat or two of silence, lowered his gaze back to hers. “From what I remember, Lydia’s eating always slowed down in the early part of her pregnancies, too. Although she never turned down ice cream.”

  She sat up so tall, so fast, the still-uneaten bread fell to the floor and sent her chasing after it, the denial she desperately wanted to give lodging itself inside her throat.

  “I was driving through town with a coworker shortly after lunch when I saw you,” he continued. “When I pointed you out to him, he told me the office you were coming out of was a baby doctor, and that the pack you were carrying was one the front desk gives you when you’re expecting.”

  He pointed at the recovered slice of bread in her hand. “You can just toss that out onto the driveway if you want.”

  At his amused nod, she wiped a little of the dirt onto the side of her jeans and threw it, piece by piece, over the railing, the activity a welcome distraction from a conversation better left in the rearview mirror.

  Halfway through the throwing process, he broke out in a grin. “You can just toss it in one piece, you know. Chickens aren’t picky.”

  “Oh . . . Right . . .” she mumbled, flinging the remaining piece into the driveway. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “So? Was he right?”

  “H-he?”

  “My coworker.” Dropping his hand onto the step, Caleb leveraged his weight against the wood and stood. “You know, about you being pregnant?”

  Oh how she wanted to deny it—to Caleb and to herself. But she couldn’t. Instead, she drew in a breath, held it to a silent count of five, and then released it along with her truth. “I guess you could say I missed a lot of the usual signs these past few weeks,” she said, looking back at the reds and oranges beginning to intensify along the horizon.

  The quick clap of his hands stole her gaze back to his. “Oh, Dani, this is wonderful news! Wow! Congratulations, Mommy—”

  “Please. Don’t.” Pressing her feet flush against the floor, she waited for the swing to slow enough she could stand. “It’s not wonderful news. Not for me, anyway.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not fit to be
a parent—not a good one, anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, the smile he’d boasted just seconds earlier gone.

  She leaned forward against the railing, her tone wooden. “This baby. It’s a second chance I don’t deserve.”

  “Don’t deserve?” he echoed. “Why are you saying that?”

  “Because it’s true. Look at what’s happened—look at me.”

  With slow, almost tentative steps, he came to stand beside her at the railing, the setting sun unnoticed by eyes that sought only hers. “What happened to your family, Dani, was an accident. Lydia said you weren’t even in the car.”

  “Exhibit A.”

  “Exhibit A? What are you talking about?”

  “I should have been with them,” she said, her voice ping-ponging between hushed and shrill. “I was the mom. I should have been at the park that day, too!”

  “Were you sick?” he asked.

  “ No. ”

  “Then why didn’t you go?”

  “Because my mom insisted I needed time for myself. She was always after me for going, going, going all the time.”

  Hiking the tip of his left boot onto the railing’s bottom rung, he shrugged. “Everyone needs to slow down now and again. It’s normal.”

  “Maybe so. But . . .” She pushed at the sudden weight pressing down on her shoulders. “I can’t. It’s just so . . . so awful.”

  He turned to face her. “Try me.”

  “I put up a fight that morning. About not going. And my arguments sounded sincere enough that I actually believed them myself. But the truth is, underneath all my protests to the contrary, I’d been fantasizing about time away from the kids for a while.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “As in, I sent away for information on an adults-only retreat in upstate New York—a place with walking trails, and spa services, and fancy food, and wine-tasting tours, and luxurious beds, and quaint balconies, and twenty-four-hour room service.”

  “I’m not seeing a problem here, Dani. The place sounds incredible.”

  “And it should—to a single guy like yourself, or even a couple without children. But I wasn’t part of a couple without children. I was a mom.” She pressed a hand to her lips, but alas, it was too late to completely silence her quick yet tortured sob. “I was Maggie and Spencer and Ava’s mom. And they were great kids. Good kids. Smart kids. Thoughtful kids.”

  Like a genie unleashed from a bottle, the words began to pour out, slowed only by her own shallow and raspy breaths. “But instead of being grateful, instead of soaking up the three beautiful gifts I was given the first go-round, I was constantly sneaking peeks at the pamphlet I got back from the retreat place in the mail. A big . . . colorful . . . glossy thing that left me yearning for time without them—with or without Jeff. Oh, I talked a good game . . . I-I could barely hide my disdain every time my next-door neighbor, Roberta, went off to play cards with her friends, or took a girls-only getaway with a certain group of moms at the school or in the neighborhood. But despite all my eye rolling and talk to the contrary, I was looking, Caleb. I was wishing. And you know what?”

  Reaching forward, he brought the pad of his thumb within wiping range of her tears only to let it fall to his side as she reared back. “What?”

  “God saw me looking at that pamphlet. He knew what I was longing for. He heard me call that place a few days before the accident to inquire whether adults-only really meant no one under eighteen. And he gave me exactly what I wanted. I’d looked a gift horse in the mouth and my family paid the price for that with their lives.”

  This time, when he reached toward her, it was to grab hold of her upper arms and wait until she was looking at him, rather than the ground. “Dani, please. Tell me you don’t really believe what you’re saying. Tell me you’re just having a bad day here.”

  “Do you know what I did that day instead of being with my family?” she rasped, the words flowing from her mouth now with no rhyme or reason. “I wrote thank-you notes to everyone who came to my daughter’s birthday party the day before. And when those were done, I-I just can’t. I can’t say it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of some quiet time to get a needed task done, Dani.”

  She stared at him. “Do you know what I was doing when the state troopers came to my door to tell me my family was dead? I was reading! I was so wrapped up in some fictional world I had absolutely no idea what was happening—what had happened—to them. There’s no excuse for that. None.” Yanking free of his grasp, she paced her way back and forth between the swing behind her, the staircase to their right, and the railing where he stood staring at her, his mouth agape. “You’ve seen Lydia. She’s an incredible mother. She lets her kids play in the rain, not caring one iota about the extra work all that mud will ultimately mean for her in the end. Because seeing them so happy matters to her far more than the inconvenience of having a few extra pants and dresses in the laundry basket. And she gets such a kick out of watching them, she decides to get in on the fun with them, muddying up her own clothes in the process.”

  Caleb smiled, no doubt at the image borne on her words—an image he’d missed out on witnessing by little more than ten minutes.

  “A few days before the puddle jumping?” she said, moving on. “I was hiding from life, and everyone associated with it, on the back patio when Lydia and Nettie came outside after lunch. Next thing I knew, Lydia was sitting on the ground with that sweet little girl in her lap. Nettie started chattering away about a million different things and Lydia actually listened. I mean, really listened. To. Every. Single. Word. And Nettie? You could just hear the happiness dripping out of her knowing that she had her mamm all to herself.”

  “Dani, I’m sure you gave your full attention to your kids. I don’t believe otherwise.”

  She spun around, her teeth clenched in a sudden burst of anger. “Then you’re wrong. Because I didn’t.”

  “Dani, I—”

  “Do you know what Maggie—my eight-year-old—asked me almost every single night?”

  His answering shrug was labored, sad.

  “Maggie has—had—this window seat in her room. I included it in the building plans because, in my head, I envisioned her sitting there one day, brushing her dolls’ hair with the sunlight raining down on her. And that happened, sure.” Dani flicked her hand toward the kitchen window at her back. “I could probably pull up a half dozen pictures of her doing exactly that in my phone right now. But the reality was that Maggie liked that window seat for entirely different things, like getting lost in one of the dozens of chapter books she read every month. She’d sit there every chance she had and read, read, read—either alone, or with her brother and sister snuggled up alongside her, listening.”

  “I’m missing the issue here,” he said, spreading his hands wide.

  “Maggie loved the stars. She loved looking up at them and making wishes, and imagining what kind of wishes kids her own age—kids in faraway places—might be making on the same exact stars at the same exact times. She asked me every night for years to sit with her on the window seat so we could make wishes together, until, one day, she just quit asking.”

  She walked to the stairs, turned, and headed back toward the swing, her path both purposeful and aimless. “Side note: I didn’t even realize she’d quit asking until after . . .” Spinning back toward the stairs again, she continued, her returning anger propelling her forward. “And do you know why she quit asking? Because only once—maybe twice—in all that time, I actually sat with her and looked up at the stars. Maybe twice. That’s it. The rest of the time, I had to hurry downstairs to make up snack bags or decorate cupcakes for the next day’s soccer game or scout meeting. Or there was a cabinet I’d planned to organize that day and, Lord knows, I couldn’t just carry it over to the next day’s to-do list.”

  This time, when she reached the stairs, she just stopped. “Seeing checkmarks on every line of my daily to-do list was of utmost i
mportance to me.”

  “Dani, I think you’re being awfully hard on your—”

  Her back still turned to him, she pulled in a slow, steadying breath. “Now juxtapose that story of my stellar mothering against the one I just shared about your sister and Nettie on the ground.”

  “Dani, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” she asked, glancing back at him over her shoulder. “Don’t tell it like it is? Sorry. I think I lived with my head in the clouds long enough. Your sister is Amish, Caleb. That alone means she has all sorts of tasks and chores that must be done every day both inside and outside the farmhouse. Yet there she was, sitting outside on the ground, soaking up her child. And Nettie? Her smile could have lit the sky for miles all on its own.”

  The opening creak of a door sent their collective attention toward the main house. A chorus of laughter, just seconds later, let them know the Schlabach children were done with dinner and looking for a little fun in the backyard. For a moment, maybe two, she drank in their joyful sounds before crossing the porch to her own door.

  “I get why God took my family,” she said, stilling her fingers on the door handle. “I didn’t appreciate them enough; I didn’t treasure them for the gifts they were. But to take a child from someone like your sister? Someone who lets her kids be kids? Someone who takes the time to listen to their ideas, their thoughts, and their fears? Someone who knows that being a mother isn’t about how many activities your kids are in or what’s next on some color-coded calendar? Someone who most surely would have sat on a window seat next to her daughter every night, making wishes on stars?” Squeezing her eyes closed against the memory of everything she hadn’t been, Dani continued, the tremble in her voice slowly giving way to the kind of calm borne on conviction. “I don’t get why He did that, and I never will. But getting it and fixing it don’t have to go hand in hand. Not for me, anyway.”

  Chapter 17

  Dani studied the picture of the towheaded man smiling down at the pretty dark-haired woman and the tiny baby sleeping contentedly in her arms. The man, listed only as Tim, was thirty-eight, his wife, Sheila, thirty-six. The couple, according to the write-up beneath the thumbnail-sized picture, were unable to have children due to an unnamed medical condition. But because of the courage and selflessness of an unwed mother on the other side of the state, they—