“I don’t know,” Liz said. “I’m not descended from Wilhelmina, but from Robert Clark and his first wife’s son, Alexander. Which of Wilhelmina’s children was your ancestor?”
“Elizabeth Lawrence, her daughter with her first husband,” I explained. “I’m no relation to Robert Clark.”
“See there?” Liz said triumphantly. “You aren’t cousins at all, but you share a lot of the same cousins.”
“That’s kind of cool, I guess,” I stated, running my finger across the Bible. “Liz, I don’t suppose you would let me…”
“Borrow it?” she finished, smiling. “Absolutely, if you promise to come back and have lunch with me.”
“Done,” I said, smiling at her. I stood up and held the Bible to my chest as Rosalie came in the room and asked if I was ready to go. I told her that I was and said my goodbyes, thanking Liz for the meal. I also gave Charlotte a hug and told her I couldn’t wait to see her again. Rachel made me promise to spend some time with her during the week. Jeff and Ted were watching baseball, so I don’t think they even noticed us leaving.
Finally, I moved past Cole, glancing at him with a sad smile. He met my gaze for a minute and then looked away. I thought maybe he would follow us, maybe apologize, at least say he had gotten things wrong, but he didn’t. He just kept sitting there, and I walked away, my heart breaking.
Chapter Twelve
I woke up Monday to the realization that I had been at Rosalie’s for a whole week, and had accomplished next to nothing. I had written some more of my book, but nothing I couldn’t have handled from Charlie and Trina’s living room. My trips to the library had given me very little assistance. The visit to the cemetery, while helpful on an emotional level, didn’t provide anything new.
To add to that, after lunch yesterday with Cole and his family, I was definitely in a funk. For the first couple of hours after we returned to the bed and breakfast, I tried to convince myself that he would apologize. All would be okay, because it was just a misunderstanding, and surely he would be sorry for that, wouldn’t he?
What if he wasn’t?
It didn’t matter, though, because there was no apology. I sat on the couch in front of the television for three straight hours Sunday afternoon. I ate at least a dozen cookies. Okay, maybe not quite a dozen, but… Wait a minute, I almost forgot the three in front of the refrigerator, so definitely a dozen. By the time it started to get dark, I was so disgusted with myself that I made use of Rosalie’s treadmill for over an hour.
During my jog Monday morning, I wound up pushing myself so hard that I ended up walking back part of the way. I couldn’t force the thought to stop running through my mind that Cole believed I was a liar. I alternated between angry and sad so many times that I ultimately couldn’t even decide how I felt. When I finally ended up at Rosalie’s almost three hours later, she informed me that she had almost given up and was about to come looking for me.
“I ran too far,” I told her, aware that my chest was damp with perspiration and my hair was plastered to my forehead. She looked at me skeptically and folded her arms across her chest.
“Too far, huh?”
“Yeah, you know, I just have a lot on my mind,” I stated, pulling out a kitchen chair and tumbling into it. She pulled out a chair next to me and sat down, never removing her eyes from my face.
“Like what?” she asked. I looked up at the ceiling and breathed a heavy sigh.
“Well, for starters, I can’t seem to get anything done,” I said with exasperation. “There are always these interruptions, and I’m not complaining, because I have had some good times during the last week, but this is just not how I do things. I need my work to be ordered and planned, because I can’t operate in chaos. I mean, you know me well enough to realize that my entire persona just breeds chaos all the time, so I can’t have it. It doesn’t work. Does that make any sense?”
“You don’t want life getting in the way of your book,” Rosalie stated as she stared at me.
“You make it sound like I can compartmentalize it, but I can’t. My life is that book, Rosalie. If I don’t get that book finished, I can’t provide for myself.” I stopped to push my hair off my forehead with the back of my arm, and then rested my head against my hand. “Forget finished, it’s not even that. That book is no good. If I can’t pull this out somehow in the end, what does that mean for me? If I am not a successful writer, I’m not sure what I’m left with.”
“So you’re basing your worth as a person on the success of a book that no one knows you wrote,” she said matter-of-factly.
I pondered her words as tears welled up in my eyes. Taking a deep breath to hold them back, I stared past her at the wall for a moment and finally looked down at my hands.
“You know,” I whispered, sniffing quietly, “that might not be ideal, but that’s what I have. That’s my reality, and I think… Maybe it would be better if I left now.”
“What would your grandma think of that?” she asked.
“Wow, that’s not fair,” I shook my head, wiping a tear off my cheek. “You didn’t know her.”
“No, I didn’t,” she continued quietly, “but right now, if she was here, I think she would say that she didn’t have you pegged for such a coward.”
“What?!” I breathed, not quite believing what she said.
“You have people here who are willing to accept you into their family, who want to love you, and you are so terrified of what that means that you would rather run away than take a chance at letting yourself love them.”
I stood up and pushed my chair in slowly, tapped my hand against the back a couple of times, and then headed off towards the bathroom. When I was almost there, I turned around to face her again.
“I already have a family,” I told her, feeling another tear trail down my cheek. I hastily wiped it away as she stood up and pushed her chair towards the table.
“Family is the people who love you, nothing more,” she said, walking over to the counter and grabbing her purse. “I’m going to town to do my grocery shopping. You don’t owe me anything, Camdyn, but I care about you. You have become like a daughter to me this week, and I’ll be really disappointed if you’re not here when I get back.”
I watched her walk out the door, and then I went into the bathroom, sat on the floor, and sobbed. Her words had stung, but mostly because I could feel the truth in them. She was right to say that my grandma would be disappointed, I was sure of it. I was afraid, too, of so many things. Each of my books had been better received than the one before, so what would I do if this one wasn’t? What was I going to do next if I failed? Where would I go? With Charlie and Trina getting ready to have their baby, I knew now that I was all but homeless. They wouldn’t have time for me, either, once the baby came – I was truly going to be alone.
Wasn’t I already alone, though, really? Why was that thought suddenly so terrifying? Truth be told, I was a little scared to leave Rosalie’s now that I had gotten comfortable, too. Granted, my writing was definitely suffering, but knowing that Rosalie thought of me as a daughter… It was overwhelming, to say the least, especially in light of my relationship with my own mother. That wasn’t helpful to think about in any situation, though, so I quickly tried to put the idea out of my mind.
Then there was Cole. Everything about him frightened me, from the thought of not seeing him to the thought of running into him and having him break my heart over and over. I couldn’t save myself from that heartache while I was staying here, but could I even if I left? I doubted that I could stop thinking about him, regardless of where the road took me.
Tired from my long run and emotionally spent, I stayed there in the bathroom floor, curled up in a ball, and prayed. I laid it all out and gave it up, one fear after another, asking for wisdom or guidance or courage, until I was finally still and exhausted. It was in those moments, when I was perfectly silent, no longer thinking about anything, that a thought started running through my head.
Trust and w
ait.
Just wait.
Wait.
I picked myself up off the floor and prepared to take a shower, wondering about waiting. What did it mean? It would certainly take a lot of trust, because I wasn’t a “wait around and see what happens” kind of girl. I was the girl who always rushed headlong into things and worried about the consequences later. Maybe that’s what my grandma meant when she told me to plant my roots – growing something took patience, which I wasn’t in the practice of exhibiting.
So, trust and wait. I can do it. I will do it.
I cleaned myself up, dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a t-shirt, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. I was just coming out of my bedroom when I heard Rosalie’s car door slam in the driveway, so I pulled on my tennis shoes and headed out the front door. She was behind the trunk pulling bags out as I approached her and grabbed a couple of bags myself, smiling over at her.
“You’re still here,” she said with a grin, handing me a gallon of milk, “and very calm, surprisingly enough.”
“Yeah, God and I had a long talk,” I told her as we walked toward the house.
“And?” she prodded.
“And…I’m going to work on it,” I stated with a laugh.
“So not leaving then?” she asked, stopping at the door and turning to face me.
“Not if you will let me stay,” I said, swinging the door open for her. She walked inside, set her bags on the counter, and then turned around and put her hands on her hips, laughing.
“I’ll have to think it over,” she joked, and then walked toward me to give me a warm embrace.
-§-
After lunch, I remembered Liz’s Bible, so I settled in on the couch and began looking it over. It wasn’t much help to me in figuring out Wilhelmina’s past before she met Robert, but it was still remarkable. It was exciting to me just knowing that she held this book in her hands, and that I was staring at her handwriting. While there wasn’t any detail besides important events and their dates, I still found myself glued to the pages. I thought about the first wife of Robert, whose handwriting was also on the pages. She died a few days after giving birth to their second child. The entries were made very neatly as though they were notes in a ledger and not a record of a life.
Wilhelmina’s name appeared after that, with a date of marriage. Underneath she had written the name of her daughter, Elizabeth, from her first marriage. Daniel was next about a year later, followed by Catherine and Charles, who appeared to be twins. Catherine’s entry indicated that she only lived three days. After that came William, who was stillborn. Three years later, there was another entry for Miriam, and then Nathaniel. The last entry for their family was Oliver, who died after only two weeks.
I wasn’t really sure how to process this new information. All the records I had seen previously included seven children, which were Robert’s two sons, Wilhelmina’s daughter, and the four children they shared. It was easy enough to imagine Wilhelmina living out her pioneer life with her seven children and being happy enough, but with three dead babies? I couldn’t even begin to imagine it, so how was I going to write about it?
Staring blankly at my laptop most of the afternoon, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. Eventually I just went back to writing what I had been previously, because I didn’t want to think about it anymore. The more I wrote the more frustrated I became, because something just didn’t feel right. I muddled through a couple of pages before I reminded myself that I should just put it aside and wait.
I can’t do that, though, with my deadline.
Still, I kept thinking those words.
Trust and wait.
I put the laptop aside and joined Rosalie for dinner. Afterwards, I took a drive to the area near B’s where I knew my phone worked, and enjoyed a much needed catch-up phone call with Trina. She had no news on the baby, but a lot to say about being pregnant and wanting it to be over.
When I returned to the bed and breakfast, I decided to call it a night. A quick glance at my laptop and planner on the bed was all I took, and then I moved them over to the dresser without opening either. I pulled out some pajamas and started to put them on when I noticed the corner of the dresser drawer wasn’t closed all the way. Popping open the drawer to find the cause of the problem, I noticed Cole’s t-shirt sitting at the top. I only gave it a second’s thought before I pulled it out, slipped it over my head, and settled into bed.
-§-
Tuesday morning I woke refreshed and ready for the day, partly because I slept way longer than I normally do, and partly because I was trying to embrace this whole waiting idea. If I wasn’t going to write, it was practically a vacation day, after all.
I rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen, where Rosalie had left some muffins on the counter. I poured myself a glass of orange juice and then settled at the table with a blueberry muffin. I sat there long enough to finish the blueberry, so I helped myself to an apple muffin. I had almost finished that one when Rosalie came in, gardening gloves on her hands and a big bouquet of spring blooms in one hand.
“Wow, those are incredible!” I told her. “Did those come out of your flowerbed?”
“No, I was just pulling weeds,” she said. “These were delivered for you.”
“It’s pretty early for a delivery, isn’t it?” I asked, trying to imagine who in the world would send me flowers.
“Well, he did have to go to work,” she stated. “I told him to wait for you, but he said he better just go.” She handed me the flowers and reached into her pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. She held it out between her fingers, and I cautiously took it from her and pulled the fold back.
I know I’ve been saying it a lot lately, but I’m sorry.
Asking you to forgive me again feels pretty selfish, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Cole
“Cole brought these himself?” I asked, staring at the note between my hands.
“He said he picked them this morning,” she replied, pulling off her gloves. “He told me he didn’t expect you to forgive him, and that by all rights you should hate him, but I told him to just give it time and see what happens.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, still staring at the note.
“Of course,” Rosalie began, “at the time I really wasn’t sure whether you were angry with him or not. Had I known that you were sleeping in his t-shirt, I would have told him to come on in.”
I dropped the note and looked down to see that I was still wearing Cole’s t-shirt. I had completely forgotten that I put it on the night before.
“Oh my gosh, I would have been mortified,” I told her, eyes wide. She laughed and shook her head, pulling something off the counter and sitting down next to me.
“I had my suspicions anyway,” she said. “This fell out of your planner yesterday.” She pushed the stolen picture of Cole across the table toward me, and I felt my face flush.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I was going to give it back, I promise.” She laughed again and grabbed the note from between my hands, reading it for herself. I sat there staring at the stolen picture between us and scolding myself for being so stupid.
“Don’t you think you should tell him?” she finally asked.
“That I stole the picture?” No, no, no, that would be humiliating.
“No, not about the picture. You can have the picture,” she said with a smirk. “Don’t you think you should tell him how you feel about him?”
“No… I mean, what would I say?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at Cole’s face. “Besides the fact that I forget my own name every time I see that smile, I’m not even sure how I feel about him.”
“You’re not in love with him, then?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. My mouth dropped open and my eyes went wide with surprise.
“Of course I’m not! I’ve only known him a week, and most of that time he’s been angry with me!” I was trying to remain calm, but I could feel the heat rising in my neck again. “
Honestly, Rosalie, I can’t even believe you said that!”
“Okay, I’m sure I’m reading more into it than I should,” she said with a chuckle, rising from the table. “Just don’t let your opportunities pass you by, honey. Life’s too short.”
I sat there a while longer, staring at the flowers, then the picture, then the note. Rosalie was wrong about me being in love with him, because that was basically nuts. How could I be in love with someone after such a short time? No, it wasn’t possible.
Was it possible to be in like with him, though? If so, I was totally there.
-§-
Just a little before noon, I decided to take the Bible back to Liz. I had gleaned everything from it that I could, and having such a prized family heirloom in my possession was making me a little nervous. I made my way to her house, driving pretty slowly in the last stretch of the road so I wouldn’t miss the turn, and mentally chiding myself for not paying better attention when I was riding with Rosalie. Upon pulling into the driveway, I suddenly wished I had called first. I took my time walking to the house, and then I knocked on the front door, Bible tucked under my arm. There was about a thirty-second wait before I finally heard a noise on the other side of the door. When it swung open, Liz was holding a duster in her hand.
“Oh, Camdyn!” she exclaimed, pushing the door open further. “What a pleasant surprise!”
“I can come back if this is a bad time,” I told her, but she shook her head and tossed the duster behind the door, taking a moment to brush a stray hair away from her face.
“No, not at all. Just cleaning, but I was about to take a lunch break. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat,” I stated with a smile as she motioned me inside. The house was quiet, save for the sound of a couple birds coming through an open window, and the whistle of a breeze every now and then wafting through the blinds.
“Do you like chicken salad?” she asked as we made our way towards the kitchen.
A Reason to Run (The Camdyn Series Book 1) Page 17