Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 5

by Chautona Havig

  He hadn’t realized how pressured he’d made her feel to do things he thought were important. Reading about the retreat and Kari’s journals through her eyes, he could see the pressure she felt, and if he was honest with himself, the pain it would cause her to do something so intense with her mother’s journals. He’d have to tell her not to worry about it.

  He crawled upstairs ready to climb in bed only to find it empty. With a sigh that only Willow understood how to translate, he made an about face and went back downstairs, onto the front porch, and found her curled up on the porch swing with several blankets. A closer look showed tearstains on her cheeks.

  Were they evidence of more grief at the loss of her mother? A result of the pressure she was under? Were they something between her and the Lord? Why the tears? Could they have been prevented? And finally, why did he always feel so helpless when he saw evidence of tears, but a little irritated when he actually saw her crying?

  Chapter 147

  Willow hummed her favorite song from Chad’s “Argosy Junction” CD. Occasionally, she’d sing a line or part of a line, before returning to her absentminded hum. “…my mother, she’s my sweetheart…”

  “Lass, you were sleeping on the swing when I got home last night.”

  “Mmm hmm. I heard the babies around four and came inside.”

  “When you weren’t in bed, I went looking for you.”

  She turned, an egg clinging to the spatula as she stared at him curiously. “Does that bother you? My sleeping outside I mean. I thought you didn’t care…”

  He hastened to assure her that wasn’t his concern. “Of course, not. I wouldn’t have made the extender if it bothered me; I just wondered…”

  The egg slid back into the pan just before the yolk broke. “Wondered what?”

  “It looked like you’d been crying.”

  As she buttered the pancakes coming off the griddle, Willow told Chad about her evening. “The boys went down early. I think they’re getting more teeth or coming down with something, because they’ve both been so sleepy the past couple of days. Anyway,” she shook her head as though trying to clear the fuzz from her thoughts. “I went out onto the swing for a while and was having a nice chat with the Lord.”

  From his chair, as he ate the stack of pancakes and his fried eggs, Chad listened as Willow talked about her tryst with the Lord. She spoke of her prayers for him and his safety, for the town and for their appreciation for all the police and firefighters did to protect them, and for wisdom for the town council regarding several issues facing the community. “I just felt…” she struggled for the word. “Well, burdened about it.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve been praying for the town a lot in past weeks.”

  “Well, from there it went to your family and Mother’s…”

  Chad only half-listened, his mind mulling the tendency for her to consider the Finley’s her mother’s family rather than her own. He noticed she’d stopped speaking and was looking at him expectantly. “I’m sorry, you said something that distracted me. What did I miss?”

  “I asked if Cheri was taking the trip with the missionaries in Guatemala or not.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Good. I prayed about it and then suddenly felt ridiculous for praying for something I didn’t know for sure was happening.” She stabbed her pancake stack with her fork. “Anyway, that led me into praying for the boys, and their health and growth and their relationship with us and the Lord. Before I knew it, I was praying about our home, our lives, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with just how blessed we are. Gratitude like I’ve never felt before almost smothered me. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was sobbing, but it was a good and thankful sob. Weird, I know.”

  “A good sob?” Chad thought he understood, as much as a man who hates feminine tears can. His mother and sister had drilled the concept of “happy tears” into his head at a very young age. However, happy sobs—grateful sobs—he could not comprehend. To his mind, only Willow was capable of taking a basic fundamental feminine accomplishment and turning it into a full-scale production.

  “It was like that Christmas list I made. Remember? It was good—cleansing—but I’m still wiped out from it.”

  As though the words were their cue, both boys sent up wails of sogginess and hunger. Willow wearily started to rise, but Chad jumped to his feet and gently pushed her shoulders back into the chair. “I’ll get them. You finish your breakfast before they start demanding theirs.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “Well, it’s about time they learned some manners. Clean diapers before breakfast and ladies first.” Chad’s wink warmed her heart as he turned to collect his sons.

  September dissolved into October. The leaves that changed to the warm colors of autumn contrasted with the now crisp and sharply cool weather. The produce stand sold little more than pumpkins these days, but the idea had been a reasonably profitable one. With every passing day, the leaves fell, the grasses died, and the barren bleakness of the upcoming winter crept slowly over Walden Farm.

  Ryder, however, kept the plants in the greenhouse growing succulent tomatoes, fresh lettuce, celery, and of course, carrots for Lacey. Spinach filled their salads, and he was attempting to try watermelon. The tomatoes in water walls in the garden were spindly little things. Willow had little hope for them, but Ryder refused to give up yet. He also had great plans to plant five acres of Christmas trees in the spring and five more acres each year afterward. He’d convinced Chad that by the time the first crop was mature, the boys would be old enough to take over most of the responsibility of care for, and later sell, the trees.

  Willow’s days slowed into a new familiar rhythm that allowed her to relax and enjoy the dozens of firsts her boys seemed to achieve every week. Some, like first crawls and belly laughs, were balanced by first illnesses and unexplained screaming fits. More often than she or her mother ever could have imagined, Willow poured over her mother’s journals, reading about how to handle a tooth that nearly erupted and then moved back up into the gums, how to make lotion for chapped lips and cheeks that didn’t irritate sensitive skin, and how to double rinse diapers when rashes appeared.

  Chad remarked more than once that the journals were nearly priceless. He’d grown concerned that they’d be damaged and worn with so much use. So, the scanned copies became reference copies. He put the originals away for times when Willow just needed to feel close to her mother. However, no matter how strongly he argued for a fireproof lockbox, Willow refused to put them out of sight.

  This had created a new project for Willow. Kari’s journals were written with little regard to organization—much like Willow’s journals. When she’d needed gardening information from one or more, she’d copied the information into a specific gardening journal that she later organized by dates, crops, and similar ideas. However, she only added information as she needed it, resulting in much being lost in the original journals until someone read it later and commented or copied into another journal.

  Armed with sticky-note “flags” that Chad provided, as she nursed the boys, she read through her mother’s journals again but this time with an eye to organization. She marked gardening topics with green flags, childcare, much to Chad’s disgust, with pink, and housework yellow. She had flags for recipes, maintenance, and clothing plans. There were addresses, family history, and enough subgroups that some flag colors had asterisks, boxes, and circles to differentiate between others of the same color.

  As the month drew to a close, she’d managed to do all of the fall canning and winter preparation, flag most of the journals, and nothing else. Chad didn’t understand her frustration and despair, but Willow became nearly distraught at the lack of accomplishment in her days.

  “I haven’t made their next sets of clothing, I barely got the house wiped down much less scrubbed, and if Ryder wasn’t taking care of the greenhouse, we’d be hurting for next spring.”

  “Did you hear yourself? You cleaned
the house—”

  “Wiped. I really didn’t get to do any serious scrubbing. I’m going to have more work next spring because of it, and by then, the boys could be walking, which means it’ll be harder than ever to get things done.”

  Patiently, Chad tried again. “Willow, wiping is all it needed. You keep a clean house. It didn’t need seriously hard scrubbing. My mother doesn’t scrub our house half as much as you scrub this one.”

  “She doesn’t live in the dirt! My house has twice the dirt in it since bringing in the sheep, having vehicles coming up and down the driveway every day, and that horse stirring up dirt in the yard.”

  Unaware of how her words sounded, Willow picked up her sleeping son and carried him upstairs to his crib. Chad sat, stunned in his seat. Their changes caused more work, he knew. He’d calculated the time expense of shearing, of more work in the gardens and processing. He’d ensured that what work they added was doable with growing boys that would need more and more of their time the older they grew. He had even calculated the cost of another pregnancy or two and how to downsize quickly if the demands of family became more than they could handle. The idea of additional housework caused by the animals and vehicles arriving and departing simply had never occurred to him.

  He knew that cleanliness was very important to her. The Finley women didn’t spend all of their time working hard and working fast at their work. They took their time, enjoyed the process, and left enough time at the end of the day to relax and do something they enjoyed. Whether reading a book, playing a game, or creating something beautiful just because they could, they kept a part of their life available to refresh themselves in that way. With a sinking heart, Chad realized he hadn’t seen Willow do anything “for fun” in weeks—months even. In fact, the last time he remembered her doing anything creative had prompted a trip to town for a yellow pencil and some white envelopes.

  He needed to talk to someone before he talked to Willow. He only managed to hold his immediate desire to sit her down and go over the situation in check by the lessons he’d learned in how differently Willow thought than most people. At last, he hurried upstairs and asked if she’d like to take a drive into the city.

  “Oh, I’ve got much too much to do today. If you see your mom, tell her the boys are trying to pull up on things, and she needs to hurry out here before she misses it.”

  “I do think I’ll go by and see them. They have a DVD from Cheri with her trip to Guatemala on it. I’ll burn us a copy so you can see it too.”

  The relief Willow felt as Chad drove down the driveway bothered her. The boys were sleeping, the day was unusually warm—nearly sixty degrees—and if she worked quickly, she could cut out several sets of diapers and a couple pairs of Jon-Jons each. Eventually, her tasks drove the discomfort out of her mind as she worked as quickly as possible to get everything accomplished before Liam and Lucas awoke from their morning naps.

  Chad drove past the Westbury off-ramp and drove toward the Chesterhill area of Rockland. He passed small bungalows that reminded him of Fairbury, around a park that sent a lump into his throat, and down the Finley’s street to the colonial style home where Willow’s mother had spent her childhood. As a last minute idea, Chad prayed that talking to David was the right answer.

  “Chad? Is everything ok?” The voice made Chad spin, hand automatically going to his hip. David Finley grinned at the sight of his “grandson” in “cop mode.”

  “Oh hey, Granddad. I’ve got something to discuss with you.”

  David’s eyes narrowed. “About what?”

  “Well, I was talking to Willow this morning, and—”

  “Does she know you’re here?”

  Frowning, Chad shook his head. “I started to go talk to my parents, but then—”

  “I’m not discussing anything with you about Willow without her knowledge.”

  Without skipping a beat, Chad whipped out his phone and dialed home. He told Willow about his visit and passed the phone to David. Within minutes, both men zipped along the highway back to Fairbury. When they arrived, they found Willow elbow deep in flannel, corduroy, and denim. “Just walk around the mess. I decided I have to get this done before the boys wake up.”

  Stacks of cut diapers, threatened to topple as the men threaded their way through the room, but Willow kept cutting. David watched her with concern growing in his eyes. Chad cleared his throat and nodded as Willow’s grandfather raised an inquiring eye. “This is why I went looking for help. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t expecting too much of us with all the changes.”

  “What’s going on around here? I’ve never seen Willow look frazzled before.”

  Willow’s head rose wearily and shrugged her shoulders. “There’s work to do and no time to get it all done. I do what I can, Chad does what he can, and we’re both pretty thankful for Ryder these days.”

  “Are you expecting too much of yourself, Willow?” The gentleness in David’s voice soothed away any hint of condemnation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have a lot on your plate, girl. Are you sure you can handle it all?”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “I’m doing no more than mother did.”

  “You have twice the children she had—” Chad took his cue from David and spoke cautiously.

  “And I have a husband when she didn’t.”

  “You have more animals and more land cultivated…” David knew, even as he spoke, they were taking the wrong direction.

  “And I have Ryder and Chad to help with those.” She looked up at the men confused. “Are you here to tell me that we need to change how we live?”

  “No!” The men’s voices echoed through the room in unison.

  Chad shook his head vehemently. “I brought David here to help us see how to accomplish everything we want to and if I’ve added too much of a burden on you. I feel like I’ve let my ideas and dreams for this place override your personal workload and comfort, but I knew if I said that, you’d object.” His voice grew more intense as he prevented her interjectory objections.

  “What do you see as adding too much to her plate?”

  “Well, until today, I didn’t realize how much just adding traffic to the driveway added to her workload. Before we got married, I don’t think she noticed the extra dust that my truck stirred up around here. But add extra animals, Ryder coming and going, Jill coming and going, and then family and friends visiting, not to mention the produce traffic when the stand is open, and her workload is increased exponentially just keeping abreast of the dirt.”

  The defeated look on Willow’s face bothered David. “What is it, Willow?”

  “I didn’t realize the dirt bothered him too. I thought it was just me.”

  “I didn’t even notice it, lass. I just know how much cleanliness is important to you, and I’ve made it hard for you to keep ahead of the dirt.”

  Confused, David shook his head. “Ok, what do you see that is bothering you, Chad?”

  “I see Willow working harder than ever, faster than ever, and never having any time to relax. She’s always glowed with life and loved what she does. I don’t think she resents her life now or anything, but I can see she doesn’t love it like she did, and I think I’ve contributed to that. I want to know how to fix it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Chad. It’s just adjusting to a new way of living with the boys. Once I’m—”

  “I see it too, Willow. You look weary. I saw you cutting out clothing for the boys before they were born and while it was work, it seemed almost leisurely. Here, you’re frantic. There are dark circles under your eyes, and I suspect you’re on the verge of tears at the idea the boys might wake up before you finish.”

  As if given permission, the tears flowed freely as David spoke. “I don’t want anything to change, but…”

  Chad tried to take the scissors from her, but Willow jerked away from him. “Sit down and stay out of my way. I have to finish—”

  “See what I mean? What you loved to d
o has now become a burden. You know that all I have to do is speak the word, and my mother will show up at the door with bags of clothing. You don’t have to do this and part of you still wants to do it, but there is also a part that feels burdened by it.”

  Her vision blurred as tears obscured the fabric pieces she tried to cut. Dropping the scissors, she pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her skirt around her legs, and dropped her head to her knees. As if it was a perfectly logical time to comment, she added one last desperate whisper, “I can’t get rid of the leftover baby weight either.”

  The men stared at each other in horror. A discussion of work, expectations, and plans was reasonable in their minds. Adding in a woman’s weight and tears made both of them miserably uncomfortable. Instinctively, they knew they were in for a difficult discussion.

  “Lass, what does—”

  David interrupted quickly. “Ok, well, I have a question.” Frowning at Chad and giving him a quick shake of the head, David Finley drew upon years of dealing with women and stopped Chad from escalating the focus on her appearance. “What is most important to you? Is it doing everything yourself because that is the life you want to live, or is it having the benefits of the life regardless of who does the work?” He watched the gears start and put his hand up. “Don’t think, answer with your gut. You can change your mind later. I want to know your gut answer.”

  “Live my life regardless of the division of labor.”

  At the corner of the couch, Chad relaxed visibly. David nodded understandingly. “That’s a very good way to put it. I have another question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What is keeping you from working at a reasonable pace and doing the things you love to do?”

  “The interruptions. The boys need me right when I’m in the middle of something so I have to leave it. Then, when I return, I often have more work than ever because I have to undo what dried out, or caked on, or whatever while I was with the boys.”