She had told Becca she would take care of the house until she returned from London; she would see to it that bills were paid so that Becca didn’t need to worry about those details. At least, not for now. At some point Becca would need to decide whether to keep or sell it, a decision Hannah wished a twenty-one-year-old didn’t have to make. For so many reasons.
She stooped to stroke the drooping leaves of an amaryllis, the tall stalks now collapsed, the white flowers wilted and browned. She would keep this pot and its bulb. Meg would want that. As for the rest, Becca could decide what to do with the cards and photos when she returned at the end of April to organize her mother’s things. Hannah would help her, if she wanted help. But for now her only tasks were to dispose of the flowers and sort the mail.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, she thought as she emptied murky water into the sink and tried to keep orange pollen from the lily stamens from dusting the kitchen rug. Maybe the wilted petals of the roses could be dried and saved. She didn’t know anything about making potpourri, but Mara probably did. She removed as many petals as she could, then placed them in a plastic bag. She would ask Mara to make something lasting out of them. Sachets, maybe. Becca might want one. Or maybe she would think that was morbid. If she had left the flowers to fade, then maybe she didn’t want any reminders from her mother’s service.
Hannah unlocked the back door, startling the sparrows and finches investigating empty birdfeeders. She would fill them with seed. Meg would want them filled. She would even want the squirrels fed, especially the one with the bare patch on its back, an impudent squirrel Meg said had won her over with its persistence and ingenuity in finagling seed from the squirrel-proof feeders.
She was just about to walk down the stairs to the yard waste container when she spied multiple cigarette butts crushed on the concrete. Hannah flushed with anger. She had watched Simon from the kitchen window that night, his face partially lit by the porch lamp as he puffed smoke into the frosty air. With stunning disregard for the woman who had welcomed him into her home—the woman who, having never smoked a day in her life, had been struck down by lung cancer, of all things—he’d had the gall not only to contaminate her property but to leave the foul debris behind. By the time she filled the birdfeeders and began sorting the mail, Hannah had imagined several gratifying scenarios, the mildest of which ended with Simon saying or doing something so callous and conceited that Becca decided she was done with him.
If only.
She set aside a few handwritten envelopes to forward to Becca, along with paperwork concerning the estate. At some point she would need to try to pin Becca down about her summer plans, whether she would still accompany Simon to Paris or whether she might choose instead to spend the summer in Kingsbury. Not that Hannah would blame her for not wanting to spend the summer at home. What did Kingsbury hold for her now? Sorrow. And a big empty house that amplified it.
At the bottom of the stack of mail was one final handwritten envelope addressed in unsteady cursive not to Becca but to Meg. Hannah pulled it closer to decipher the return address: Loretta Anderson, Winden Plain, Indiana.
Meg’s beloved Mrs. Anderson. Maybe her card had been lost or delayed in the mail. Hannah checked the postmark. No. It was stamped five days ago.
“What should I do with it?” she asked Nathan when she returned to their house shortly before noon.
“Open it.”
“I don’t know . . . it feels a little intrusive.”
“Meg made you the executor, Hannah. Her business is your business.” His tone was uncharacteristically clipped.
“Maybe I should just write a letter to Mrs. Anderson and let her know. Or call her.” She could probably track down a phone number online.
“Whatever you think is best.” Nathan glanced at his watch and took a last gulp from his coffee mug. “I’ve got to go.” He pushed back his chair. Chaucer, who had been sleeping at his feet, jumped to attention.
“I thought the rest of the day was clear, for all of us.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Something came up while I was out with Jake. I won’t be long, I hope.”
“Something with a student?”
“No. With Jake.”
She waited for him to elaborate. Instead, the silence between them billowed. She rotated her gold floral earrings, then tucked her hair behind her ears. “Are you mad at me?”
“Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know . . . the pancakes . . . not going with you and Jake.”
He rinsed out his mug and set it down on the kitchen counter. “I’ve got lots of faults, Shep, but passive aggressiveness isn’t my style. You know that. When I’m mad at you, I’ll tell you.” He put on his coat. “I’ll be back soon.” Before she could ask him any more questions, he was gone.
Chaucer sat in the middle of the kitchen floor, thumping his tail. “Neglected again, huh?” She tossed him a treat from the jar, then opened the envelope from Loretta Anderson.
My darling Meg,
What a joy to receive your beautiful drawing of the cherry tree, and what a deeply moving reflection you wrote about its resilience. I look forward to receiving your photos when it blooms in the spring.
In the rest of the note she offered updates about her health (her eyesight was failing, but she was otherwise well and well-cared for), and she expressed her thanks for Meg’s kind words of love and encouragement. You have always been one of my deepest joys. I thank God for the gift of you.
No mention of Meg’s cancer diagnosis. Meg must have chosen not to tell her, for whatever reason. But there was no reason now for keeping it secret, especially if Loretta was expecting further contact. Taking the card with her, Hannah retreated to Nathan’s office and found some non-monogrammed stationery in a desk drawer. Painful as the truth would be, silence would be unkind.
three
Charissa
Seeds, Charissa was reading online, could lie dormant for centuries—millenia, even—and then, when planted in good soil and given the right amount of moisture and sunlight, they would sprout and bear fruit. “They actually planted seed they found in one of the Egyptian pyramids, and it grew,” she said to John, who was reclining on the couch with a remote control, waiting for the March Madness brackets to be announced.
“Grew into what?”
“Grain, I guess. Wheat. Isn’t that amazing?”
“More amazing if it had grown into mummies.”
“Oh, no. Wait.” She clicked on another link. “I take that back. Nope. Sorry. Not true.”
“No mummies?”
“No sprouting. Not from the tombs, anyway. But that would have been a great story.” In principle, however, seed viability was real. Scientists, she read, had extracted embryos from some ancient seeds buried by Arctic squirrels, and the seeds had germinated in the laboratory.
“Sounds like Jurassic Park stuff,” John said when she relayed this information. “Cool.” He sat up on the couch and turned up the volume. “Ahh, here we go. C’mon, State.”
This was her cue to leave. She rose with her laptop.
“You’re not going to watch with me?”
“I want to keep reading.” Though she was reluctant to admit it, Pastor Neil Brooks’s sermon on the parable of the sower that morning had spurred her curiosity in ways that years of listening to the Reverend Hildenberg’s sermons had not. She had spent all afternoon studying Scripture references to seeds and sowing.
“You’ve got your seeds,” John said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “and I’ve got mine.”
Every year with the basketball thing. Charissa didn’t understand it, the game or the madness. She only knew that for the next however many weeks, John would be obsessed with his brackets, engaged in friendly and sometimes not-so-friendly competition with friends and work colleagues. From the bedroom she could hear him on the phone, running loud commentary as the drama unfolded.
The son of Michigan State alums, John cheered for th
e Spartans as if he’d attended there himself. If he’d been a foot and a half taller, he often lamented, he might have gotten an athletic scholarship. But where height failed him, heart compensated, and he’d played on the Kingsbury University team with the same intensity and gusto that characterized all of John’s endeavors. Though Charissa couldn’t care less about the difference between a jump shot and a lay-up, she understood the meaning of Most Valuable Player and had celebrated with John when he was given the honor their senior year.
“Yeah, baby!” he yelled before appearing in the doorway, phone still pressed to his ear. “Number two seed!” He gestured at her with his fingers in victory formation. She gave him a thumbs up, and then he disappeared. He had already purchased several green Spartan shirts in all different sizes for Bethany. His parents had bought her Spartan onesies, bibs, cutlery, and pajamas. Charissa had drawn the line at the baby football jersey. How about a cheerleader’s outfit, then? John had teased.
He was incorrigible. Loveable, but incorrigible.
Opening to Mark 4, she read the text again: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
Before attending the sacred journey retreat at New Hope, Charissa would have never paid attention to the parable for herself. If asked what category of soil her own soul was—if asked to assess her own capacity to receive the Word of God and be fruitful with it—she would have replied without hesitating: she was the good soil. Didn’t her good and upright life attest to that?
But for the past six months she had been weeded and plowed, vigorously and relentlessly. Achievements she had for years named as wheat had instead been revealed as tares rooted in her desire for honor and recognition, her pursuit of excellence, her idolatry of reputation, and her addiction to esteem. All of it had been exposed and gathered up and burned, leaving her with scorched ground. Thorns and thistles, that’s what had characterized her life. She had been choked by thorns without even realizing it.
Yet there was good news too. Thank God her eyes had been opened to the truth of the depth of her sin and her desperate need for grace. Over and over and over again. She had been led firmly and persistently toward repentance. Daily. And now could she be patient with the process of transformation? Could she trust the viability of the good seed planted in soil tilled by the Spirit?
Be mindful of the condition of the soil, Neil had said, and submit to the process of being composted and amended. The Lord knows what to remove from us and what to work into us to make us fruitful. Trust the wisdom and the slowness of his work. And trust the power of the seed. Give a seed good soil, and it does what seeds do. It grows.
Let anyone with ears to hear listen.
Her temptation, she knew, was to want immediate results, to plant the seed in the ground, monitor it daily for progress, and then become obsessive about comparing it to seeds planted in other gardens, in other souls. Her temptation, she knew, was to be too quick to weed her own garden. Sometimes, however, it was hard to tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds. Sometimes, Neil reminded them, you needed to let the wheat and the weeds grow up together for a while before you could discern which was which.
But waiting was not her strong suit. Charissa was a fan of efficient planning, measurable goals, and straight lines to the destination. The long, slow, circuitous nature of growth and transformation was dizzying and disorienting, even infuriating at times.
She recorded some notes in her journal, then turned her attention toward literal rather than figurative gardening. Even though she ought to be working on her lecture for Tuesday or her metaphysical poets paper due on Wednesday, she would give herself the luxury of one more hour.
She typed “planting seed in Michigan” into her search engine and perused the results: beans, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts. She hadn’t considered planting vegetables. Could she actually grow broccoli in her garden? The thought of planting something they could serve for dinner seemed beyond her horticultural reach. Most of the planting was still indoors—no way she could manage the time and attention that required—but come April, she could start planting seeds that could sprout into green things. “As long as I don’t have to eat those green things,” John said when she mentioned this to him later.
“They’re good for you. Good for Bethany. I could make spinach smoothies.”
He grimaced. “Good thing you’re the pregnant one.” He reached into the fridge for a soda. “Just don’t be hiding any of that nasty stuff in my food.”
“I don’t cook.”
“Exactly. Guess I’m safe.” He popped the can open and strolled back to the living room, sipping as he walked.
“I could learn!” she called after him.
He laughed.
“Okay, mister.” She pursued him and spun him around, extending her hand for him to shake. “Right here. Put it right here.”
“What are we shaking on?”
“A bet. You’ve got your madness bracket thingy, so I’m doing my own competition. One meal from scratch, using all fresh ingredients, once a week until the baby’s born. You choose a night, I’ll choose a night.”
He laughed again.
“I’m serious, John. Why can’t I?”
“’Cause you’re the one who’s always joked about what you could make if you knew how to boil water.”
“Well, maybe I’d be good at it. Enjoy it, even.”
He stared at her a hard second. “Nothing from a can?”
“No.”
“No frozen anything?”
“No.”
“Ooooh. You’re on, Riss. And how do we determine a winner?”
“I say, given my disadvantage going into this, if it’s edible and we don’t get sick after eating it, I win for the week.”
“What’s the prize?”
“You’ll have a wife who knows how to cook. What more do you want?”
He flexed his eyebrows playfully at her. “How about a deck?”
“You’ll help me, won’t you?” Charissa said to Mara on the phone a little while later. John, who had wheeled the garbage can to the curb, was now talking with the next-door neighbor. He could easily be occupied for the next twenty minutes, even in the cold.
“I’m no gourmet cook, girlfriend. I use lots of cheats and shortcuts because Tom and the boys never wanted froufrou meals. Why’d you set the bar so high?”
What a great question for her life in general. “I figured I might as well go for it if I’ve got the motivation.” How hard could it be?
“Well, I’m more of a baker than a chef, but I’ll give it a whirl. When do you want to start?”
“I told him I’d cook on Friday. So maybe we could go grocery shopping after we finish serving at Crossroads? Or will you be too tired?”
“No, that’s fine with me. Let me do some research this week, figure out a good recipe for you to start with. And then we’ll go from there.”
“Thanks, Mara. I told him you’ll be my coach, at least for the first couple of weeks. And then I’m on my own.”
“You’ll be fine. Quick learner, I bet.”
Charissa switched her phone to the other ear. “I didn’t think I’d succumb to the whole nesting thing, but maybe there really is something biological to it. Or maybe it’s moving into our own house that’s made a difference, having a yard for the first time. Whatever it is, I’m feeling a longing to become domestic. Don’t tell anyone.”
Mara laughed. “No, I remember the same thing when I was pregnant with Jeremy. But there wasn’t rea
lly a place for me to nest. Just a crummy apartment Bruce kept on the side, without Tess knowing about it. So it pretty much sucked. My own fault, I know. But I wouldn’t give Jeremy up for anything, that’s for sure.” She paused. “Did you guys happen to see him at church this morning?”
No, they hadn’t. After a few weeks of sitting with John and Charissa for worship at Wayfarer, Jeremy and Abby hadn’t shown up that morning, and Jeremy hadn’t replied to John’s text. “We looked for them, but I don’t think they were there.”
Mara sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I really screwed things up.” Mara related her worries over Jeremy’s financial situation, her desire to help them, and her offer to give them the basement as an apartment. “You know, just in case they need it. But Jeremy got really upset, said something about living in his mother’s basement. I hadn’t even thought about the way it would sound, offering him a place, you know? I just wanted to help, to try to take some of the pressure off. God knows I didn’t mean to offend him or make him feel even worse about himself. And when I called back later to apologize, he wouldn’t pick up his phone, and Abby said she wasn’t sure where he was.”
“I’ll ask John to call him.”
“Would you?”
“Of course.” If he ever stopped chatting to the neighbor. He was probably inviting him over for dinner or to watch basketball. John could befriend anyone, anywhere.
“Thanks, Charissa. Keep them in your prayers, okay?”
Charissa had never been one to pray regularly for others, and she always felt a bit guilty when people asked her to pray because she knew she would probably neglect the task. Some of her friends kept a list of people and requests, committing to daily intercession and chronicling updates and answers. Maybe she should begin a new daily discipline. But start small. Pray regularly for only a few people. “I will,” she said, and tried to mean it.
An Extra Mile Page 5