“So it won’t be too long and we’ll have painters in here. What were y’all thinking for paint and finishings?”
That was a really good question. They hadn’t had six seconds all week to talk about anything other than critical and immediately-urgent issues. “Well, I don’t really know. You think maybe tomorrow we can get in here and talk about it?” Eric wound his arms in front of him and glanced first at the hallway and then at Rachel. “After… in the morning?”
He’d almost mentioned the Bible study, but he had no idea what Rachel knew and didn’t.
“Yeah,” Caleb said, twining his own arms. “I think that’s a good plan. We can go room-by-room and see what you all are thinking at least for the downstairs part.”
“Great.”
How long the conversation with her mother lasted, Dani couldn’t quite tell. Long enough that she missed most of the logistical meeting in the living room. By the time she rejoined them, they were scoping out the powder room and coat closet by the front, leaving Rachel examining the fireplace in the living area.
“Sorry about that,” Dani said, coming back in. “Mom.”
“Yeah.” Rachel turned from what she was doing and nodded with a sad smile. “Caleb told me about your parents. That’s got to be really tough.”
Dani put the phone back in her pocket and twisted her arms. “It is what it is.”
With another slow nod, Rachel turned to the fireplace. “So we were talking about the fireplaces the other night. There’s this one, the one in the parlor and one in the upstairs master. They’re going to be putting in central heat and air, so what’re your thoughts on these? Keep them all? Take them out?”
Widening her eyes, Dani dragged in air. “Oh, I don’t think we want to take them out. Can’t we keep them?”
“I’m sure we can. I just wasn’t sure what you were thinking.” Rachel examined it. “We’ll have to replace this hearth area. The stone is chipping and whatever they grouted it with is just crumbling.” Putting her hand on it, she demonstrated as she took a chunk of it off. “So we’ll have to do something with it.”
“Um, I don’t know. What… what’re our options?”
For the next half-hour they went through options for the fireplace. Who knew there would be so many decisions? The worst part was Dani didn’t really feel competent to make any of them.
“I figured Derek would be around,” Eric said as the two men came back from the front entrance.
“The windows for their place came in yesterday. He’s been busy over there,” Caleb said.
“Oh.” Eric lifted his chin. “You think he needs any help?”
Chapter 12
“Reinforcements have arrived,” Caleb called for the four of them as they entered the master bedroom of the farmhouse to find Jaycee on the inside of the window and Derek on the other side, safety glasses on and a nail gun in hand. Instantly, Caleb hustled over to the window. “Here, Jayc. Let me get that.”
Without questioning it, she stepped back to let him take it. “Oh, praise the Lord. I was wondering when y’all would get here.”
“’Bout time you show up,” Derek called from the other side of the pane as he shot two nails in. “How does that look?”
Caleb inspected it and nodded. “Good.”
Dani and Eric hung back, watching the easy transition of power. He felt how far she stood from him even though they were only inches apart. Jaycee sat down on the bed without so much as seeing them. The heap she made spoke of her exhaustion. She reached up and swiped at her head.
“Here,” Eric said, leaving Dani to go help the guys. He strode across the room, leaving Dani and Rachel who had just come in from checking on the handrail stain in the shop.
Just like that Jaycee spun. “Oh, wow. You guys made it.”
“We did,” Dani said as Eric and Caleb went to work.
“How’s window hanging going?” Rachel asked, and the worry in her voice was clear.
Jaycee shook her head. “They make this look so easy.”
“Yeah,” Caleb said to Derek after he had opened the window that was now tacked into place solid enough for Derek to finish it out. “Where is it?”
“It’s in the living room,” Derek said, punctuating the words with pops from the gun.
“I’m on it.”
In mere minutes, Rachel took charge of the inside even as the men jumped into gear hanging windows around the farmhouse at the speed of light. It had to be because daylight was failing them badly.
“We’ve got some hamburger,” Jaycee said as she sat down at the table and watched Rachel go to the refrigerator. “We could do spaghetti.”
When Rachel came out with the frozen hamburger, the worry dropped another two levels when she looked at her friend. “You look beat.”
“We’ve been hanging windows all day. I don’t think I’m as young as I used to be.”
“Tell you what, why don’t you go freshen up? Take a shower. Take a little break. We’ve got this, right Dani?”
That jumpstarted Dani’s attention. “What? Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Right. We’ve got this. Go on.”
There was no protest, and Dani could tell from Rachel’s frown that was not a good thing. When Jaycee was gone, Dani went over to the cabinets by Rachel.
“I should probably call Sage,” Rachel said just loud enough for only Dani to hear.
“Oh? And invite them too?”
With the way Jaycee looked, a party would not be the best idea in the whole world.
“No,” Rachel said shortly. “Let her know to keep an eye on Jayc.” She shook her head as she unwrapped the meat and put it in the microwave. “This isn’t like her. I hope she isn’t getting sick again.”
“Again?” Dani opened the bag of spaghetti as Rachel dug out a pan. She remembered Caleb in the shop, and worry coursed through her as well.
“Last fall when they were working putting the town back together, she got like vertigo or something. Real nasty stuff.”
The microwave dinged, and Rachel pulled the meat out. “Wonder if they have any salad to go with this.”
The evening meal went off without a hitch. After finishing the windows with Derek, Caleb and Eric went up to town and got the kids. Without really trying, Dani watched them all. Rachel kept a careful, watchful eye on Jaycee though no one else probably even noticed. Since being alerted that Jaycee might really not be feeling well, Dani, too, kept an eye on her, and it wasn’t hard to see that the take-charge light in her eyes had dimmed considerably since the first time they had met. She really hoped everything was all right.
When the meal was over, Dani quickly jumped up to help Rachel with the dishes saying it was the least she could do for such a wonderful meal. The last thing she wanted to do was be a burden on her hospitable hostess. Shortly thereafter Caleb and Rachel left for home with the two little ones, and Derek and Jaycee said it had been a long day as well.
Since they weren’t at home, that left Eric, Dani, and Jaden in the living room in a very quiet house. The living room was nice though strangely the furniture didn’t really coordinate with the walls. Dani wondered about that but didn’t dwell on it. A few minutes of the quiet and she stood.
“You going to bed?” Eric asked in surprise.
“No. I was just going to get my laptop. Might as well get something done. What’re we going to do, sit here and stare at each other all night?”
A second and he shrugged. “Yeah. You might as well.”
By the time she got back, Eric was on his phone and Jaden was sprawled out on the floor with the coloring books and colors they had wisely bought her when this trip looked like it might be happening frequently. Dani curled herself onto the couch, yawned, and clicked on her email. She should have asked Rachel what they would be doing the next day, but she hadn’t thought to ask that. The shimmering backlight illuminated the dim room, and she blinked at its onslaught. With a sigh, she got to work, figuring the more she got done now, the less she would have to do Monday morning.
At nearly eleven, Eric sat up from the chair and looked back to Dani on the couch. Sometime during the past hour she had slipped down onto the pillow, her hand under her head, her other holding onto the laptop. With a sigh, he stood. “Ja-baby, it’s time for bed.”
“Okay, Daddy.” She got up and gathered her little things into their holder.
“You go on. I’ll wake Mommy up.”
There was a second of hesitation, and Eric looked at his daughter in confusion at the strange look on her face. “You okay?”
She looked at him for a very long second and finally nodded slowly.
“Okay. Give Daddy a kiss.”
The child did as requested and headed off through the darkened kitchen to her room.
Eric sighed and looked down at Dani. He couldn’t help but smile. With her dark, cinnamon tresses down, she looked so much like she had when they had first met. He didn’t see her like this much anymore. Now it was business suits and slicked back hair ready to take on the world. Carefully, gently, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Dani. Babe. It’s time for bed.”
The dream she was having softened so that she knew it was leaving, and Dani reached for it just one more time. In it she was a little girl again, climbing trees with Mitchell at their house. Laughter twined with the feeling of being completely carefree, and then she heard her mother’s voice.
“Danisha Renee, what do you think you’re doing in that tree? Get down from there right this instant! What are the neighbors going to say?”
And then she was awake and somehow beyond comprehension, looking not at her mother but at Eric. She struggled to make sense of that, to figure out where she was, where they were, what was going on, what time it was… “What…?”
His face softened so that she wasn’t at all sure she wasn’t still dreaming. “You fell asleep. I didn’t want to leave you out here. You ready for bed?”
“Wh…?” Coming up though that shook her equilibrium something awful, she ratcheted her eyes three times to get them to work. “Oh, y-yeah. Wow. I was out.”
He smiled. “I noticed. You ready?”
“Yeah.” She pushed herself up off the couch with the laptop before readjusting her shirt and following him. At the door between the living room and kitchen, he hit the light switch, plunging everything into a velvety blackness that tore a soft gasp out of her. In the next second his hand found hers between them, and this gasp had nothing to do with the darkness. She managed to swallow it before it sounded in the still night air, but she felt it just the same.
Her heart and chest surged forward at the warmth of his touch. Somehow she had forgotten the smoothness of his hand, how gentle and yet how secure. Even as they went through the dark kitchen, she glanced down at it as if to see what the rest of her senses were screaming about how this felt. By the time they got to the bedroom in the back hallway, she was veritably gasping for breath, and it had nothing to do with the short walk.
At the doorway, he flipped the light on, and she licked her lips to wet them again. It must have been the waking from the dream that had her all gushy-headed and hoping he wouldn’t bother with the light. Of course, that was patently ridiculous. He hadn’t so much as touched her like that in… Well, in more time than she really wanted to bother calculating. Not that she was upset about that. In fact, more than once since the last time she had rebuffed his advances, so much so, he had finally quit making them. Choosing to stay on his side of the bed and well out of her orbit when they were at home together.
Home.
That had to be it. It was because they were here, out of their element. That accounted for the absurd feelings wafting across her spirit. “So you’re leaving early tomorrow?” she asked, hating the raspy quality of her voice. He was going to get the wrong idea if she wasn’t careful.
“Yeah. We’re meeting up there at six.”
“Okay.” She nodded, fighting with all of her being to keep herself from wishing he would cross the room to where she was, take her in his arms… Laying the laptop on the little table, she forced her hands to be steady. “I’m just going to go check on Ja right quick. Make sure she’s okay.”
He never moved from the two steps he had taken into the room where he let her go, and she didn’t dare look at him as she crossed back for the door, passing him and feeling the electricity of him in ways she had forgotten she could. “Yeah, good idea.”
When she was gone, Eric knew he had to get a handle on this craziness. She didn’t want him like that anymore, and he had learned to be okay with it. Besides, they were one short hallway away from Derek and Jaycee, their gracious hosts. So he gathered up his clothes and went to take a shower. He knew by the time he got back, she would be asleep, and his insanity of wanting her would have to settle down. That’s the way it was for them now, and he was going to have to find a way to be okay with that.
~*~
By the next morning when Eric met Derek at the table at five-thirty, the night before was relegated to memory-only status. It was better there anyway. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Derek said, and just like that, the morning started.
“Well, I have to say, I was a bit surprised by Caleb’s request,” Pastor Steve said when they had all made it to his office. It was a nice space, cozy but well-appointed. “But I’m glad you all are here.”
Eric sat in one of the winged-back chairs, Caleb and Derek took the couch, Greg got the desk chair because the pastor already had the other winged-back chair across the way.
“If you all don’t mind, I’d like to start us off in prayer,” the pastor said, and they all bowed their heads for the short prayer. “Lord, we gather together today as husbands, fathers, and men who know we need Your guidance and help. You said in Your Word that where two or three are gathered, You are there in their midst. Come into our midst, Lord. Guide our thoughts, our hearts, our spirits so that through this next hour we might come closer to You. We ask this in Your Holy Name. Amen.”
“Amen,” Eric whispered with the others. When his gaze came up, he sensed the awkwardness in the room, and he really hoped the pastor had a plan.
“One of the things you have to know about me is that I try very hard to listen to the Holy Spirit’s guidance no matter what I happen to be doing,” the pastor said. “If I’m counseling a person or a family, I make it a study to watch and listen to things the Holy Spirit might point out to me that will help. Earlier this week, I watched something online that at the time I didn’t really think much about, but as I began to sort through where we might want to start today, that video just kept coming up in my spirit, so…” He took a breath.
“In the last few months I have done something of a research project, thinking about our world today and how it’s changed, and how it hasn’t. One of the things I’ve come to a deep understanding about is that as a whole, we, as a society, as a human race are not fundamentally happy. Oh, we pretend. We post our vacations on social media and take selfies of great moments, but on a very basic level, we aren’t experiencing joy and peace on a daily basis. It’s more like a malaise.”
He laughed. “I was quite young when Jimmy Carter talked about our country being in a malaise, but that’s what I see in so many people today. They are just quietly miserable all the time, going through the motions, trying to get through today, existing.”
It took a fight not to nod because Eric understood what the pastor was saying so well.
“The more I’ve looked at it,” the pastor said, “the more I’ve come to realize that although we might think it is, this really isn’t a new phenomenon. People have been quietly miserable for a long, long time. The question is, what do we do about it? The answer to that for most of us is that we find ways to numb that feeling. We cope.
“Think about it, fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, people smoked and drank to even out the rough spots. Then we found out that smoking isn’t a great idea, and alcoholism destroys people and families. I know growing up, it was a quiet scandal when a father was
an alcoholic. I remember kids in my own high school who rejected alcohol because of what it had done to their families. But the malaise didn’t go away, so they searched for new ways to distract themselves, and what did they come up with?”
“Drugs,” Greg said, nodding knowingly. “I have a brother who did that.” He sniffed softly. “Nearly ripped my mom to shreds.”
With compassion in his eyes, the pastor nodded. “Some did turn to drugs.” He paused a long second before dragging his gaze off of Greg and putting it on the floor. “Others turned to easy sex.” A nod and he brought his gaze back up. Now there was apology in it, and Eric’s heart went out to Greg. Surely every man in the room knew his story, and how he had come to be in this room.
A knock on the door brought them all up from the conversation, and Luke entered sheepishly. “Sorry I’m late. Crazy morning at the Baker household.” Coming in, he accepted the folding chair the pastor got out, and taking it over, Luke sat down next to his father-in-law. “What’d I miss?”
No one said anything, and Eric said a silent prayer that someone would be able to find the words.
“We were just talking,” the pastor said, “about quiet misery and coping mechanisms.”
Luke nodded seriously. “Oh, boy, I need me a few of those.”
The pastor gave a soft laugh. “I think we all do.” He paused a second before continuing. “Some people use television or gambling as their way to distract themselves from life.”
“Like sports,” Luke said. “My dad would come home on game night, eat dinner quick, and just veg in the recliner ‘til he fell asleep.” He let out a breath. “Sometimes I’d like to be able to do that like he always did.”
“Yes, sports,” the pastor continued. “Money. Some people get so focused on work, that becomes their distraction. When people figured out that alcohol and drugs weren’t a good idea, they turned to food, and out of that, we got the obesity epidemic in our society. But the one I was most fascinated with was the idea of cell phones and technology, social media, email, texting, and those things. The speaker talked about how all of those things are supposed to connect us, but what happens in too many cases is we use them to disconnect rather than to connect.
Raising Attabury: A Contemporary Christian Epic-Novel (The Grace Series Book 5) Page 17