Susan Meissner - Why the Sky Is Blue

by Unknown

  I guess they had come to a crossroads of their own that terrible night.

  It was a little after one in the morning when the phone rang a second time. Dad answered it again.

  “Yes?” he said. “Yes, I am Dan Holland.”

  It had to be the sheriff’s department. I could hardly breathe.

  “Yes, my wife and I are her legal guardians.”

  I looked at Mom. Her eyes were closed and her hands were folded in her lap. I don’t think I will ever forget how she looked at that moment. It was like she was already imagining living in peace without Lara. I could not imagine it.

  “Oh, thank God!” my dad said next, and we both turned to him. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “She’s okay.”

  I sat down next to Mom and put my arms around her. She probably thought I was offering reassurance to her, but I was really seeking it. She hugged me back, and we anxiously waited to hear what Dad would say next. There was a long pause while he listened.

  “Oh, is he all right?” Dad said. “I see. Have you called his aunt and uncle? Okay. Can we come and get her? Okay. We’ll be right there.”

  He hung up and joined us on the couch.

  “She’s okay, she’s okay,” he said softly as Mom cried softly onto his shoulder.

  “What happened? Where has she been?” she asked when she could.

  “They were in her car,” Dad said. “I guess she followed Seth to Wes and Nicole’s place when she left Kate’s. Something happened there. It’s not clear yet. But Seth broke into Wes’s gun case and took a revolver and some ammunition. He forced Lara to drive out to the edge of a slough about twenty miles from here. That’s where they’ve been this whole time.”

  “Did he...did he hurt her?” Mom asked.

  “They said she was fine. They said she was okay,” Dad said. “He turned himself in, Claire. Lara drove him to the sheriff’s station, and he turned himself in.”

  “Can we bring her home?” Mom said, wiping her eyes.

  “We can leave right now. You want to come, Kate?”

  “Yes, just let me call Michael,” I said.

  We were out the door in two minutes.

  The county jail was quiet. There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot. One of them was Wes and Nicole’s. One of them was Lara’s. The quiet lobby didn’t seem to match our circumstances at all. We were tense and jumpy. There was no one in the waiting area and only one lady dispatcher behind the glass.

  “I’m Dan Holland,” Dad said to her. “I’m here for Lara Prentiss.”

  She spoke into a phone and then hung up.

  “It will be a few minutes,” she said.

  We sat down to wait.

  Perhaps half an hour later, she buzzed the three of us in. We entered a hallway where a deputy met us and took us to where Lara was waiting. There was no sign of Seth or Wes or Nicole.

  Mom flew to her and hugged her close. Dad hurried to her as well and put his arms around both of them.

  “Are you okay?” Mom said through her tears. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m okay,” Lara said softly. She sounded exhausted.

  “What happened? Why didn’t you come home?” Mom said. “Did Seth have a gun?”

  Lara looked very tired. She saw me in the background and managed a tiny smile.

  “He didn’t fire it,” she said.

  The deputy came forward.

  “You should be very proud of this young lady,” he said. “She not only saved her own life tonight, she saved the life of that young man.”

  Mom turned to look at the deputy.

  “Is Seth okay?” Mom said to him.

  “He’s getting the help he needs,” the deputy said. “This young gal has had a pretty rough night, so why don’t you take her on home and let her get some rest. Okay?”

  We filed out of the room into the hallway and through the heavy, leaded door. A Blue Prairie police officer was coming through the door as we were walking through it.

  “So, you’re the big hero,” he said to Lara.

  She just smiled and said nothing, and in silence we made our way to the parking lot.

  “I can drive Lara’s car back to the house,” I offered and Lara handed me her keys without a word.

  I followed my parents’ car back to their house in kind of a daze. When we got to the house, Lara stepped slowly onto the porch, leaning on Dad the whole time. I followed them in with her keys and backpack and set them on the kitchen counter.

  “Can I just sleep on the couch?” she said sleepily. “I don’t want to try and make it up the stairs.”

  Without waiting for an answer she headed for the couch in the living room and collapsed onto it.

  “I’ll get a pillow and some blankets,” Mom said, disappearing.

  I pulled off Lara’s shoes, and she mumbled a thank-you. Dad reached down and turned out the light next to her and brushed away a few stray hairs from across her face. It was an unmistakable fatherly gesture.

  “Kate?” Lara said softly.

  “Yes?”

  “Are the kids okay? Did they get to sleep all right?”

  “They’re fine, Lara. Don’t worry about them,” I said.

  “Seth said such awful things,” she mumbled.

  “I don’t think they remembered them,” I said honestly.

  “That’s good. Because he didn’t mean them.”

  And then she was asleep.

  33

  In the weeks that followed it was difficult to go about the mundane and ordinary things of life. We all felt like we had traveled an incredibly dangerous journey and made it back safely by just the skin of our teeth. Going back to the routine of everyday existence seemed to mock that danger and tempt it to return.

  The morning after the episode with Seth, Lara revealed a nightmare that few of us adults could imagine dealing with. Seth had in fact waited for Lara in the driveway of my parents’ house after he left my place that day, and he convinced her to come back with him to Wes and Nicole’s. He told her he wasn’t drunk, but Lara said she didn’t believe him and refused to get into his car. She drove in her own car back to Wes and Nicole’s, where Seth proceeded to lambaste his social worker, his mother, Wes and Nicole, every teacher at the school, Michael and me, my parents, and just about everyone else who had ever tried to help him.

  Lara said they were at the house for a couple of hours. Most of the time, Seth was yelling and complaining. She said she waited until she thought the alcohol had worn off and then tried to help him see past his pain. She told him he would never find peace in his relationships with people until he had peace in his relationship with God. Lara said he listened to everything she said for quite a while without saying a word. She thought she almost had him convinced of his need to turn to God.

  “But then it was like he just snapped,” Lara said. “He broke into the gun case and grabbed the gun and some bullets. The whole time he was loading it, he was shaking like he had a fever.”

  Lara said she begged him to put the gun down. She said she told him over and over that God loved him, that he cared about him. And that she cared about him too. Hearing those things was apparently more than he could handle. He told Lara nobody loved him, and he didn’t think anyone should.

  Seth told Lara to get into her car. She refused. He flipped off the safety and pointed the gun at her.

  “Get in the car,” he said.

  She did.

  Lara said she had no idea where they were headed, and she didn’t think he did either. When they finally stopped at the slough, it was close to eight o’clock and pitch dark. Lara believed Seth had picked the place where he planned to shoot them both. First her, then himself.

  I asked Lara if she was scared, thinking immediately it was a dumb question—of course she was scared. But she said the strangest feeling came over her as they sat in the car and talked— she, about life and love; he, about death and hate. The feeling was that when it all came down to this—to your last moments on earth—a
ll that matters is how much you loved.

  “I loved much,” she told me. “I loved two incredible parents, plus Dan and Claire, you and Michael and the kids, Cleo, the grandparents, Wes and Nicole, and even Seth.

  “I wasn’t as afraid for me as I was for Seth,” she continued. “I didn’t want him dying without knowing what it was like to love and be loved.”

  For several hours, Lara kept Seth from pulling the trigger. It was another hour after she talked him into giving her the gun— which Lara threw into the slough—before he agreed to let her drive him to the sheriff’s department where he turned himself in.

  I haven’t seen Seth since that night, though I hear he is doing well at the regional treatment center where he is now living. Wes and Nicole seem to have recovered from the ordeal, although Nicole has not been able to make the trip up to see Seth. Wes has gone twice.

  My parents seem different to me in the aftermath, like they finally see eye-to-eye again on the matter of Lara. Then again, I’m not sure if they ever did before this. Maybe this is the first time they have ever both felt the same way about her. It’s like Lara is their bright, shining reminder that God can forge beauty from tragedy. The wall of denial they had lived under for the past seventeen years has crumbled. Lara is no longer someone no one is allowed to discuss. She is someone they both love.

  Michael says I seem different too. When I asked him not long ago how I seem different, he shrugged his shoulders and said it’s like I’ve grown up, and then he winked at me. I knew what he meant. He means I’m not acting—what was the word he used?—childish regarding Lara anymore. He attributes it to the scare of almost losing her. But that’s not it actually. It’s attributable to finally understanding where my problem with my discontentment started. It didn’t start with my fear of loving something or the fear of losing it. It started with my preference for only trusting God halfway.

  In spite of the intense drama we experienced as a family in March, April flew by. Winter gave way to a quiet spring, typical for Minnesota. Spring arrives gradually here, not all at once. There is no riot of new color or burst of green to herald its arrival. It arrived like it usually does—subtly, slowly, and without fanfare.

  Lara went to the prom with a fellow senior from church— whom Dad said couldn’t be all bad because he raises award-winning heifers. She also got acceptance letters from every college and university she applied to. No surprise there. Her college entrance exam scores were off the charts. By the end of April, she had decided to attend a small Christian college in Saint Paul, just a two-hour drive away. Mom was pretty pleased with that decision. Olivia didn’t like the idea of Lara going to any college, anywhere. But she is learning, just like the rest of us, to flow with change, not resist it.

  Lara told me not long ago when we were both at the Table that she’s decided on an education major, that being with my kids the past nine months has really shown her how much she enjoys children and watching them learn.

  “What about the mission field?” I asked her when she told me this.

  “There will always be a need for teachers on the mission field,” she said. “And there will always be a mission field.”

  She didn’t say it word for word, but I took that to mean she felt no immediate urgency to pursue a life thousands of miles away from home.

  And this was home. She felt it. And I was glad she did.

  It is now nearing the end of May. Nearly a year has come and gone since Lara came back to us. Earlier this month, Nicole began planning Lara’s graduation open house which will be held at Tennyson’s Table. On her birthday. It will be a beautiful party. Nicole never does anything less.

  Grandma and Grandpa arrived yesterday from Michigan to attend Lara’s graduation on Friday night and to help celebrate at the open house on Monday. Grandpa looks so fragile. His doctor didn’t want him to come, and I think the airline wished he hadn’t. I hate to think that he isn’t long for this world. But I am learning that this is how it is. We spend our lives saying hello, we spend our lives loving, and we spend our lives saying goodbye. It is the way it is. To refuse to acknowledge this is to miss out on all the beauty and wonder of life.

  Lara will spend the summer here in Blue Prairie, working at the Table, playing with my children, and working her way deeper into my heart. Come late August, she will head off to college, and life will sort of seem like it did before she came. But it really won’t be like that at all.

  Because in the meantime I am on a quest of my own. I now have three goals I am anxious to pursue, and as I sit here at the writing table in my shop, I find that I can’t wait to get started. The first, taught to me so many years ago by Rosemary, is to fully learn to let love lead me—and to enjoy its leading. I feel I have made some headway here, and that progress is helping to fuel my second goal—prompted by my mother though she does not know it: I want to learn how to look deep to see what people are really like. I want to be the kind of person who plunges past the surface and seeks to know the inner thoughts of the people I am around. I want to see the beauty in people like Cleo from the moment I meet them.

  Lastly, and this will be the hardest goal for me to reach, but it is also the one I want the most to reach: I want to paint the night sky as God created it.

  I know now I can’t do it on my terms—that is, in my own studio, where all that I am comfortable with surrounds me. I have to do it on God’s terms.

  I must be willing to meet with God alone under his vast canopy of stars and see where the level of my trust starts and where it stops. If I am going to love people completely and at the heart of who they are, I am going to need to trust that God will watch over them in the way he sees as best. Because loving people will cost me, and I need to be able to meet that price with trust so that I can enjoy love’s best moments and endure the worst.

  It will take time, and it will take commitment.

  It starts tonight. With me. And I know what I have to do to begin.

  I just have to bring my canvas out to where the stars are.

  Epilogue

  October 21, 2003

  Dear Cleo,

  Thanks for the wonderful cookies you sent! My roommates and I ate them all in one sitting! They all want to know if they can have the recipe so they can send it to their moms.

  My classes are going well, and I really like my professors. It’s hard to believe it is almost time for the fall break. Time has gone by so quickly.

  I am sorry you couldn’t make it out for Grandpa Stuart’s funeral. It was really beautiful. He reminded me so much of my dad. I wonder if maybe they have found each other in heaven! Perhaps they are right now having a wonderful time chatting about all the things they had in common.

  Claire tells me you are thinking of moving to Blue Prairie and sharing a house with my grandma and Aunt Elizabeth! I think it’s a great idea, Cleo. And you wouldn’t have to worry about Ben; both nursing homes there are really wonderful. I think he would make a very smooth transition. And Nicole could really use you at the Table. No one can make a pot of tea as terrific as you can!

  It would be wonderful if you could move there by Thanksgiving. I would love to just sit and chat with you and show you my pictures from Kate’s and my trip to New York this summer. We had such a great time. We bought matching hats and gloves in Manhattan at Bloomingdales!

  Guess what? I think I have convinced Claire and Dan to come with me on a short-term mission trip to Brazil next summer. It’s a three-week trip to this farming community that could really use Dan’s skills as a vet and Mom’s talents as a teacher. I’m not sure yet if all is a go, but Claire told me she found a good deal on a book and tape set for learning basic Portuguese, and she bought it. That’s a good sign!

  I really do have to run. I have class soon, and I want to write a letter to Seth before it starts.

  Tons of hugs,

  Lara

  P.S. I really am praying that you will come to Blue Prairie for good. I don’t like your being up in Two Harbors all by you
rself, Cleo. I love my new family, and they love me. And they will love you too. I know how much you worried about my coming to live with them because you were afraid they wouldn’t love me for who I really was. But they do! Remember that quote my mom liked, Cleo? “Love is not blind—it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.”

  XOXOXO

  L.

  Reading Guide

  1. Early in the book, Claire Holland was faced with an agonizing decision. How did she make her choice? What do think about the choice she made? If you had been her friend and she’d asked you for advice, what counsel would you have given her?

  2. Could you relate to Dan’s decision regarding Claire’s pregnancy? Did your opinion of Dan change by the end of the book, and if so, how?

  3. Claire remembers her mother saying that there’s a reason the sky is blue but for most, the answer is too complex to make sense. Later Claire says she has learned to trust God regarding what seems to make no sense based on what she does understand. Have you ever been down a similar road?

  4. If you could ask God one question about something that happened to you in your past, what would it be?

  5. When adult Kate jokingly tells her brother Spence that parenting can bring out the worst in a person, he quickly says it also brings out the best. Would you agree?

  6. In Chapter 29, when Claire says finally understands that we are not meant to be afraid of loving people, Kate tell us: “I knew what she meant. She was telling me that the risk in giving love and receiving love is better than the safety of not loving at all.” Have you found this to be true? What do you feel is the greatest risk in loving people?

  7. Near the end of the book Claire tells Dan that Lara is who she because she has been loved. How was Lara’s personality shaped by love? Do you think she would have been a different person had she been raised solely by Dan and Claire?