“Of course, not. I just—I—”
“I have a feeling that’s a little bit how Willow felt tonight; am I right Willow?”
A slight nod accompanied her faint, “I had no idea what to think.”
Marianne couldn’t take it anymore. “It sound to me like you came home and tried to pick a fight.”
“So it’s all my fault. I see. I would have thought my family could see—”
“What a jerk you’re being?” Marianne’s expression dared her son to argue with her.
“Tell me about the accident this week.”
The room went utterly silent and still at Christopher’s question. Chad’s face grew hard as though shutting off everyone around him. “It was ugly, ok? Is that what you want to hear? Do I now have a family of verbal sensation seekers?”
“Stuff it, Chad. I’m asking a legitimate question. Was a child hurt?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. A little girl not much older than the lads riding on the seat without a car seat. The babysitter wanted a soda and didn’t have the car seat. She just put the poor thing on the front seat and tried to get there and back before anyone missed her.” He crossed his arms again. “Are you satisfied? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Of course we don’t want to hear about that kind of thing; no one does. But Chad, can’t you see it’s eating at you?”
At the words “not much older,” Willow had stood, crossed the room, sat next to Chad, and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m so sorry. That must have been so awful.”
“It’s the job.”
“Doesn’t make it easy. Is the baby going to be ok?”
At the choked sound in Chad’s voice, the room emptied quickly, leaving Chad and Willow alone. “She’s better off than she’s ever been—than any of us are. She’s with Jesus.”
With those words, Chad broke down and wept, speaking of holding the dear little girl’s broken body and trying to find some kind of life left in it. He told of having to notify parents at their places of work that their little daughter was gone and of how he’d had to arrest a broken and shocked babysitter for several broken laws.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You don’t need to hear about the ugly side of my job.”
“But Chad, the ugly side of your job is usually a domestic dispute or a drunk driver. It isn’t like you deal with child deaths every day. You can’t just let that eat at you.”
“You seemed to mock everything I said today.”
“I wasn’t trying to. Actually, I thought you were teasing me—at first at least.” She glanced at his face seeing the change slowly wash over him. “I didn’t mean to offend you with leaving the boys or not wanting the fridge. If you want to leave the electricity on in the house, just tell me. I’ll learn to adjust.”
Seeing the sacrifice she was willing to make for him crumbled the rest of the wall he’d erected between them. “Was I really as awful as it seems like I was?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t quite know who you were for a while. If I’d realized that the accident was probably affecting you, I might have been a little more understanding.”
The sight of Christopher’s glass on the coffee table caught Chad’s attention. “Still want to throw that at me?”
“Not this time.”
“I don’t want there to be a next time, lass.”
‘There will be. I have no doubt that there will be.” She smiled. “I’m warning you, though. Next time I’m going to call it like it is, and I’m not going to play along. You can pick all the fights you want, say all the ugly things you can think of, but I’m not engaging. I let this get under my skin this time, but I won’t let it happen again.”
“If you tell me I’m just decompressing, I’m liable to blow up at you.”
“Now that I understand why, I can take it,” she assured him with an air of confidence Chad prayed was genuine.
“Now what do we do?”
She glanced at her watch. “Pick up our sons before I explode?”
Chapter 14 6
“I don’t know what to do! I can’t keep up with processing and picking and—” Willow’s wail cut off her words.
Jill wandered the huge garden plot, the greenhouse and checked the trees in the orchard. “Do you have all the food your family needs?”
“All the produce, but—”
“Well then you have two options. The first is that you could just hire a bunch of teenagers to pick the fruit and you could bring it to the store.” She glanced around the farmhouse, observed the tidy yards and huge flowerbeds, and watched the sheep grazing. “But, if I was you, I’d have a ‘Self-Serve’ Sunday. Open your farm up to visitors for a few hours in the afternoon. Allow them to pick all the produce they want and charge by the pound. That way, you’d only have to hire one or two teens to man scales and cash box.”
Relief quelled the rising panic in her heart. This could work. “I like it. As fast as things are getting mature, I think I’ll do it on Wednesdays and Sundays. Once a week will allow too much waste.”
“How about the pumpkin patch? How is it doing? I haven’t been out there in a while but it looks good from the road.”
Excitedly, Willow made Jill promise to look as she left. “The first pumpkins will be ready around mid-September I think. I’m so excited about it. When Chad showed me those city patches, I just cringed for those kids. He wants to do a corn maze next time, but I don’t think we have the time for it.”
“Well, get some scales, some more buckets, and paint a sign.”
A wail from upstairs sent Jill home and Willow upstairs to rescue her “starving” sons from apparent imminent demise. Chad found her on the swing, Lucas rolling around trying his best to fall off while Liam nursed. “Well, this is a sight for weary eyes.”
“Rough day?”
“No—good day, actually. Just long when you’d rather be home.”
“Good day? How?” Willow sat Liam up and rubbed his back firmly until he managed to burp up the air he’d swallowed.
“That’s m’boy.” Chad winked at her. “Aiden Cox.”
“What about him?”
“He came zipping down the street, on his scooter, wearing his helmet and elbow and knee pads. He even jumped off the sidewalk when he saw Alexa Hartfield walking toward him.”
“Will wonders never cease?”
“I just wish he didn’t have to learn the hard way like that.”
“The hard way?” Willow passed Liam to her husband and grabbed her basket. It was past egg gathering time.
Chad scooped Lucas up in his other arm and carried them around the house talking to Willow as he went. “He was there the day of the accident. He saw me working on the baby. I didn’t have time to stop and make him go away.”
“Oh, Chad! How horrible!”
“I think the reaction of the sitter made the biggest impact on him.” It was as though Chad couldn’t stop talking about it. All through the egg gathering, he told about calling Mrs. Cox and suggesting she come and get her son, how he’d blocked Aiden’s view of the child, and tried to comfort the sitter before her hysterics drove Aiden into the street just to get away from it all.
Abruptly, he changed the subject. “So what did you do today?”
“I know how we’re going to save the produce.”
“Really?”
Willow outlined the plan for the produce stand and by the time they went to bed that night, an extra-large sign was ready to attach to the fence out by the gate. Excited at the idea, Chad was certain it’d ensure success for the pumpkin patch as well. More than everything else, they were both happy that Willow’s hard work wouldn’t be wasted. If she had to choose farm work or time with her sons, her sons would win diapers and little hands down, but she preferred not to see the rot and waste that would come from her inability to finish her projects.
No one could have predicted the success of the produce stand, but it exceeded anyone’s expectations. On Wednesday and Sunday
afternoon and evenings, she walked through the gardens, pointing at ripe, mature foods, and shaking her head if someone reached for something not quite ready. Customers did the work of picking, and she managed to keep them from stripping the plants.
Everyone loved the boys, and the sling Willow fashioned out of athletic jersey kept her and the boys as cool as possible. She strapped one to each hip, and strolled up and down the rows, explaining what each plant was as if they could understand. Marianne showed up on opening day and spent ten minutes on the back step clutching her stomach, laughing at the sight of Willow’s “humongous hips.” However, it proved an effective way to keep abreast of what was happening with her garden and keep the boys occupied with something other than wrestling in the playpen.
With less to do in processing the extra food, Willow found time to butcher her meat chickens on schedule and kept her egg layers happy with their new extra-large run. She and Chad still ate the laying hens as new layers came up in the ranks, but she used meat chickens to serve her customers, who were looking for free-ranging and hormone-free chickens. For some inexplicable reason, the boys would sit for hours in a playpen in the new barn and watch their mother pluck, skin, and wrap chickens. They rattled their toys, took an occasional wrestling tumble, but seconds later, their eyes roamed back to watch each fascinating movement. Chad was disgusted.
In a vintage overnight case that Marianne found in an antique store, Willow stored the cut out clothes she planned to sew for the ever-growing boys. It sat beneath the coffee table and Willow had great plans to cover it with fabric or paint it to match the room, but for now it was just a plain brown case looking like it was put there as part of the décor. Inside were flannel-lined overalls, Jon-Jons, rompers, and of course, more rompers. She knitted “longies” out of the white wool that Chad still hated, and no evening went by that Chad didn’t find a new pile of something or another on the coffee table when he got home from work, waiting for her to put away the next day.
One evening late in September, he arrived home at two in the morning to find her journal lying on the coffee table next to three piles of new diapers, several longies, and to his amusement, four hand-knitted and sewn footed pajamas. She’d just spent twice the cost or more making something that could be purchased at Wal-Mart for five dollars each. Even as he thought it, her words from those early days came back to him, “I can’t afford to buy cheap things. I need to invest in quality so that I don’t have to replace them as often.” She always assumed that cheap equaled inferior.
He picked up one of the sleepers and felt the softness of the fabric, the carefully knitted wool feet, and attached hoods. “She’s right,” he murmured to himself. “This will last through another ten children and look almost as good then as they do now.” Something Dr. Kline had mentioned caused him to add even more softly, “Even if maybe they aren’t our children.”
In the kitchen, on the back of the woodstove, he found a bowl of stew on the still-hot stovetop. Using potholders, he sat it on a plate and grabbed a spoon, some cornbread, and a glass of milk, carrying them back to the living room. As he ate, he read the latest entry into Willow’s journal.
September-
The strain on our friendship is all but gone now. Chad seems to have taken his father’s words to heart, and when things get stressful, he simply talks about it—even when he doesn’t want to. I think he’s amazingly brave. It’s hard enough stopping drunks, breaking up fights between families, or dealing with an accident. It’s even harder to come home and have to make yourself vulnerable to the very people you want to shield from those things.
The little chaps are growing and growing! Mother marked my growth inside the door of my closet, so I’ve been using each side of their closet for their growth. It’s easier to mark them now than at first. I used to have to lay them down and use my measuring tape and transfer, but now they’ll stand up against the door just like Mother used to do with me.
Liam is crawling. He can’t seem to go forward, however. He sees something across the room, gets up on all fours, crawls with all his might, and ends up farther away from it than ever. It is hysterical watching him and the look of utter confusion on his face. One of these days, he’ll put his knee forward instead of backward to go and actually get there.
Lucas, on the other hand, gets to anywhere he wants to go by crawling on his forearms and elbows. Chad calls it the “army crawl.” It is slow, and it looks horribly uncomfortable, but he can get anywhere he wants to go. Liam seems to understand this and it annoys him. Lucas also has all four front teeth whereas Liam only has three.
Mom says that the boys are growing amazingly fast. The clothing she buys them are all designed for children of twelve months instead of six, so in her opinion, that means they’re exceptionally healthy. However, Dr. Wesley concurs that they are larger for early babies (although for more medically substantiated reasons), so I guess that’s good.
Lucas knows Chad’s voice and has a very keen sense of hearing. When he comes home, if Chad even says one word to me, Lucas hears it and wakes up, unless he’s in a very deep sleep. If he’s playing on the floor, he starts crawling and has even climbed up on Chad’s leg to get closer. Liam is definitely attached to Chad, but it’s not the same as watching Lucas. I don’t know if it is a personality difference or if maybe he’s a little less advanced. I just don’t know, but I think it’s interesting. We’re going to have a lot of trouble keeping the boys from the stoves this winter. They’re too little to really understand or obey and too old to leave them alone.
The garden is under control again. Most of the produce is either ready for me to process, all picked and processed, or just growing in the greenhouse. We started new tomatoes outside just to try it. We have the water walls all around them and can’t wait to see how well they work. We always used to start them that way when it was getting warmer but not when it was getting colder. I don’t think it’ll work, but we can’t know unless we try.
All the fruit has been picked, and the alfalfa is in the barn. We had so many acres of alfalfa this year that Chad rented a baler. It made storing the hay easier. We’ve got enough to keep the animals fed for most of winter without calling the feed store. I’m excited about that. Fortunately, we didn’t have to remove very many trees to plant those crops either. The property we bought from Adric was old cropland that just needed a good tilling and a couple of young trees removed. Those trees are now in our front pasture for shade for the sheep.
Ryder revamped the greenhouse to be twice as productive. He’s built “loft beds” for shallow growing vegetables and herbs. He almost doubled our produce with that one move. Alexa Hartfield found out I could grow corn year round and has offered me obscene prices to keep her supplied. How could I say no? We’ll get some too, so it’ll be good for all of us. Meanwhile, the work Ryder does in the greenhouse has given him lots of material for his first term paper. I don’t understand it all, or why they even have to do it, but Chad says it’s normal.
I met Ryder’s girlfriend the other day. She seems like an intelligent girl—very pretty—and showed an intelligent interest in what he’s doing here. She took a tour of the house and asked questions about why we do much of what we do. I guess a cellphone next to an oil lamp is a bit of an odd sight. Chelsea, his girlfriend, is a senior in high school and plans to attend Rockland University next fall. She says she is interested in nursing. Ryder seems very taken with her. I hope he’s not too young. I’d hate to see him or her hurt.
Granddad still comes once a week, without fail, on Thursday afternoons. He sits with a boy on his lap, talks to them about Mother, tells him about Uncle Kyle and about my cousins, and plays with him. Then he passes the little lad to me and picks up the next. Those boys adore their G-G-Dad. I had no idea that children so young could become so attached to someone other than possibly their mother or father, but they are. When Grandmom comes, they both fall asleep to her lullabies and curl up with her as though she’s the greatest thing in their little worlds.
I love it.
I think we need to make an effort to become part of Uncle Kyle’s life or at least to try to include him in ours. I don’t know my cousins. I should know my cousins.
We see Mom and Dad Tesdall around every ten days or so. It’s never quite two weeks, but usually more than one. Why that matters, I don’t know, but there you have it. We take turns making dinner for each other, and when they come, they insist that Chad and I go into town for ice cream or a movie. At first, I was annoyed by the idea that we needed to get away from the children. Now I think I understand that it’s not about getting us away from the babies, but rather about giving us time alone together. It’s about giving us something rather than getting us away from something. Fine nuance, but a big one. I can see that it means a lot to Chad, and the more we go, the more I look forward to those couple of free hours to focus on him alone.
I’ve been invited to speak at a Christian Women’s Retreat in New Cheltenham next spring. Chad recommended that I accept, but I still haven’t decided. They are asking for women around the greater Rockland area in hopes that people will make friends of both the attendees and the speakers. They requested that I speak on infusing beauty into life and journaling. How did they find out that I journal? Chad wants me to try to get mother’s journals “edited” so that I can offer them for sale at the retreat. He thinks they’d be a huge encouragement to other women, but I’m not sure. I don’t know if I have time for that project. Chad, the lads, and the farm must come first.
Chad found the changes in pen color and the fine differences in writing or penmanship style between paragraphs amusing. She’d taken to starting one journal entry for each month and just adding to it as she had a moment. A paragraph or two at a time, the information that meant most to her ended up on paper. Sometimes she wrote about what was on her heart, the wrestling she had to overcome her own sins and weaknesses, and other times specific details about how to do something with the children or the work to make it smoother or more efficient.
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