Easter Promises

by Lois Richer

  “Honestly, I don’t know why we even charged anybody to walk in a parade anyhow,” Sandy said, eyeing Howard. “Seems silly. We don’t charge to walk down our street any other day.”

  “We wanted only serious applicants,” Howard explained.

  “Serious applicants,” Sandy echoed incredulously. “To walk in a parade. Really, Howard, you outdo yourself.”

  Those two would be at each other in a matter of seconds if she didn’t do something. “So you agree to my proposal?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Howard replied slowly. “I haven’t heard condition number three yet.”

  “You both sit on the library board. So I’m asking you, now, to make a motion approving my hours to go down to part-time during the three weeks my ewes are lambing. That’s the only way I’ll agree to everything else.” Audrey sat back in her chair, hands clasped, and waited.

  “I think that’s reasonable,” Sandy said, daring Howard to think otherwise.

  “Well…” Howard stalled.

  “Oh, Howard, lighten up. It’s not like lives are at stake here.” At Audrey’s slightly shocked expression, she added, “Well, human lives. I think it’s the least we can do, given all you’ve asked of her.” She emphasized the you.

  It took twenty minutes more of posturing, but in the end, it was Demanding World, 0; Audrey, 1.

  Chapter Eight

  Audrey walked back to the library with a smile on her face and a prayer of thanksgiving in her heart. Perhaps God really was going to take her hand and lead her through this crazy season. After all, if she could manage Howard Epson and Sandy Burnside, a flock of sheep might just be within her reach. And that massive budget report due today by five should be a cakewalk for a woman of her newfound organizational confidence.

  She opened the library door to find Lilly Sycamore sitting in front of her desk, her little blue coat zipped right up to her chin and tears in her enormous blue eyes. Lilly held a tangled wad of yarn with the Knitting Nancy’s painted head poking out.

  “Daddy and Nancy had a fight,” Lilly said in a wobbly voice.

  Paul’s eyes broadcast “Save me!” from over Lilly’s shoulder. “We’re sort of stuck. I know you’ve got work to do but…”

  Lilly’s eyes filled with enormous, heart-wrenching tears. That wobbling lower lip had more persuasive powers that Sandy and Howard combined. Audrey checked her watch. “I’ve still got ten minutes left on my lunch hour. Let’s see if we can’t get Nancy up and running. I can write down the instructions for your dad in case you get stuck again, okay?”

  The disaster looked worse than it actually was. The solution was simple, but Paul must have assumed it was complicated because he’d done all kinds of things in his attempts to fix it. She showed both of them what had gone wrong, how to spot it again and how to fix it. Lilly actually had a knack for it, grasping the concepts right away. She guessed they’d graduate to real knitting by next week, if not sooner. Paul looked mostly embarrassed at having to ask for help of any kind, much less a knitting rescue.

  She knew his attention was driven by the need to help his daughter, but Audrey couldn’t help feeling watched. As if his concentration was more fascination than obligation—which was a notion that got under her skin entirely too quickly. She found herself talking too much, a nervous habit she hated, which only served to make her more nervous and chatter even more. While she was mortified by her own behavior, Paul and Lilly seemed to find it amusing. She was sure Paul laughed at her poor jokes just to be polite, sure Lilly asked questions just to be silly. It didn’t take long at all to get Knitting Nancy back to full production speed, Lilly’s little fingers flying over the task with an attention Audrey had to respect. When Lilly produced a tape measure from her little knitting bag and showed she had only two inches left on her three-foot goal, Audrey could only smile.

  “I owe you one,” Paul said when Lilly finally wiggled down from the chair to skip off to the children’s room for a few minutes. “Actually,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “I owe you three. Do you know I wrote a whole chapter last night while Lilly got seven inches of knitting done? I haven’t had that much peace and quiet in our house in ages. If I ever get published, I might have to list you in the acknowledgments.”

  “And how is the spy novel coming along?” She had actually browsed through the books-in-print listings the other day, looking to see if any horse-oriented spy novels had been published in recent years. She wasn’t sure why; it was mostly a lark to see if someone had beaten Paul to the punch on his unusual setting idea.

  He gave a lopsided grin. “Slow. I have to say, I thought it’d be easier than this. When I was working, it was like I couldn’t stop the ideas from coming at me all day long. Now, I sit and stare at that white page and wonder who made off with my imagination.”

  He had a disarming smile, unassuming and genuine. She suspected his slow, steady nature made him a very good vet—the kind of person who’d be the coolest head in the room when a crisis hit. She was charmed that he’d devoted such energy to untangling Lilly’s knitting. She didn’t know too many men who would have put up with that. Then again, she didn’t know too many eight-year-olds with Lilly’s persistence. “I imagine you’ll grow into a rhythm of some sort,” she offered to Paul. “I used to think I’d love to knit all day if I didn’t have to work, then one day I broke my leg and had to sit all day long. It’s the one and only time I got sick of knitting. Everything in moderation, I suppose.”

  “Except whipped cream and sprinkles. Those, Lilly has informed me, should always be used in heaps.”

  Audrey laughed. “I guess I taught her more than knitting, hmm?” How many times had she chuckled at the memory of Lilly’s wide eyes when she’d placed the overtopped cocoa in front of her? She had gone overboard, too, with a silliness that felt as refreshing as it felt foreign. Truth be told, children often exasperated Audrey, all wild messiness and untamed energy, but somehow Lilly had captured a corner of her heart.

  She couldn’t even say why. It would only be fair to say Audrey tolerated children, despite their being a staple of library patronage. She’d been smart enough to recruit a small corps of volunteers to staff the children’s section of the library, keeping her need to cope with them down to a minimum. She’d been asked to teach Sunday school or direct the church’s children’s choir, but always found a reason to decline. It had no appeal whatsoever.

  Gram had never fretted about her “undomestic character” as Mama had called it during one particularly nasty argument, but in truth, Audrey felt like it made her different than every other woman in Middleburg. They all pined after husbands and babies, it seemed. Audrey never wanted to settle for anything less than a sweeping, epic, Jane-Austen-worthy kind of love—and the prospects of that showing up in tiny little Middleburg required more optimism than Audrey possessed. The truth was, she’d grown comfortable in the ordered life she’d made. The more baffling truth was that somewhere, deep down, she didn’t resent Lilly—and the sheep and even Paul—for knocking it all to pieces.

  Paul looked her straight in the eye. “I’ll help with your sheep however I can.” She knew, by the way he said it, that he meant it. And she knew that it was not a comfortable thing for him to offer, either. He was making an exception for her, going back on a promise to himself. That got under her skin, too, and she didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Thanks,” she said simply, afraid to take the conversation further.

  She didn’t have to, because at that moment Lilly came back with a stack of books. Each one about sheep. She hadn’t realized the Middleburg Community Library owned that many sheep-themed books, but by the size of the stack, Lilly had unearthed every single one. Audrey guessed the volunteer in the children’s room this afternoon was collapsed on a chair panting about now.

  “That’s a whole lot of books. And you haven’t returned last week’s yet.”

  “I’m not done with them, but I want these.” Lilly dumped the stack on Audrey’s
desk with a wide grin.

  “I think that’s great, but we do have limits. We need enough books for everybody.” Audrey leaned down until she was face-to-face with Lilly. “You pick three of these, and promise me you’ll bring back the other ones from last week tomorrow, and we’ll call it even.”

  “Aww,” Lilly moaned.

  “Miss Audrey’s been really nice to you today, fixing your knitting and all,” Paul reminded his daughter. “You’ll be at three feet soon, and you’ll want her to show you all those things she promised the other night, right? I think we ought to do exactly what she says.”

  “Only three?” Lilly pouted. “I like ’em all.”

  “I’m glad, but three’s my final offer.”

  The Serious Father Authority Voice came out. “Three, Lillian.”

  Lilly selected three and handed them over with the sort of look Audrey imagined small children normally reserved for brussels sprouts. “Smart decision.” Audrey surprised herself by giving Lilly a conspiratorial wink. “Besides, the rest’ll be here when you’re ready for them. Who knew we had such a big sheep collection?”

  Audrey couldn’t remember having more victories in a single afternoon. Maybe the torrent of tasks before her wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “Ruth’s coughing again. And you know what they say…when sheep get sick, they go really quickly. What if Dusty had some sort of virus and she caught it?”

  Paul had already regretted his “I’ll help in any way” remark, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. “What did your vet say?”

  “He told me to stop worrying.” Paul suspected, based on the level of exasperation in Audrey’s voice, that he’d been a bit stronger than that.

  “I concur. You said they’ve had all their shots. She probably just ate something that didn’t agree with her.”

  “She’s pregnant. She can’t get sick now. I looked it up, and I found four diseases she can get that could cause her to lose the lambs. Her gums look funny to me. They should be paler, shouldn’t they?”

  There were days when Paul just hated the Internet. An educated client was a good thing. A hyperinformed panicked neighbor to whom he owed a favor was quite another. At least it wasn’t raining this time. Chapter four had been flowing so well this morning he almost didn’t answer his phone when it rang, but Lilly was at school and he hadn’t gotten caller ID installed on his phone. Yet. “I’ll be over in ten minutes,” he’d said.

  Paul wasn’t surprised to find the sheep in good health. Pregnant and irritable, maybe, but nothing requiring a vet’s visit. It was time to offer Audrey a little perspective. “How many times have you called Dr. Vickers this week?” When she acquired a guilty look, he pressed the point as gently as he could. “Really.”

  For a moment she looked just like Lilly did when caught misbehaving. “Four.”

  Paul sighed. “Your vet’s a good sport for putting up with that, but I’m guessing even he has his limits, Audrey. You want to be on his good side now, so when you need him for lambing you haven’t used up all his patience. I’m telling you, as a friend, you’re going to have to find a way to be less panicked about your sheep.”

  “I know that,” she said, pacing the barn. “I know. I look at you, and you’re so calm, so in control about Lilly, and I don’t know how you do it. I can’t seem to stop worrying about them. I feel so responsible for them.”

  “Look, I admire that, and you’ve taken good care of them so far, but there is such a thing as too much care. God knew what He was doing when He made sheep, and they come with all the necessary equipment.” She didn’t even laugh at his joke, small as it was. He caught her by the arm as she began to pace again. “They’re going to be fine, Audrey. But not if you make yourself sick worrying over them.” He hadn’t even realized he’d touched her until she froze in her tracks. They stood there, both startled by the contact, and Paul was sure even the sheep looked up and took notice. “You’ve got to calm down,” he said gruffly, pulling his hand away and stuffing it in his pants pocket. “For everyone’s sake,” he added when the barn still seemed far too silent.

  “I don’t know how,” she said quietly after a long moment had passed.

  The need in her voice undid something in his chest. He leaned up against the barn wall and ran his hands down his face. It would be okay to tell her. It might help. “When Caroline—my wife—was in chemo, I couldn’t seem to stop worrying. If it would work. How she’d hold up. What the whole thing would do to Lilly. A little girl should just never have to see her mother that sick, you know? It got to the point where I’d worry all the time. Where all I saw or felt or knew was the worry.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Audrey sat down on a crate, her eyes fixed on him with such a tender sadness. It was always so awful to tell people about it the first time.

  “But then Caroline started worrying about me instead of focusing all her attention on getting well. So, you see, I was only making things worse. My worry gave her more to worry about. It was wrong to do that to her. And I realized, when my pastor and I talked about it, that it was wrong to do that to God. We had so many people praying over Caroline and our family. Worrying was like saying to God and all those praying people that I didn’t trust them.” He looked at Audrey. “I’ll pray for you and your sheep. I’ll get my Bible study to pray for you and your sheep. You get the choir and your friends to do likewise. And you do the best you can to believe you’re supposed to have eleven sheep and God hasn’t just looked the other way while you’ve messed up. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Chapter Nine

  Audrey sat Lilly right next to her on the couch, holding the two needles in front of her. “It looks hard, and you’ll feel like your fingers are getting all tangled up, but that’s only at first. Watch me.” She went about making a knit stitch, going very slowly. The thick, bright yarn and big needles had been the perfect choice to lure Lilly’s attention—she couldn’t help herself when she saw them at her favorite yarn shop in Lexington last week. And, they had little sheep figures on the ends—what could be more perfect?

  “I think I get it.” Lilly took the yarn and needles into her own hands. Slowly, with considerable effort, she worked her smaller fingers as Audrey talked her through the steps of the stitch. When she finished the stitch and slipped it from one needle to the other, Lilly beamed. “Did I get it right?”

  Audrey’s memory cast back to the warm summer afternoons on Gram’s porch, fumbling her way through her first knitting projects. Was her current smile as warm and proud as Gram’s had been? Had she been as excited to make her first row as Lilly looked? “Perfect,” she encouraged the charming girl. “Now try the next one.”

  She watched as Lilly pursed her lips in concentration, repeating out loud the instructions Audrey had said on the stitch before. Audrey looked up for a split second, to see if Paul noticed his daughter’s accomplishment. He was staring at the two of them, a bittersweet and complicated expression filling his features.

  “Is that right?” Lilly’s needles jutted back into Audrey’s vision.

  “Yes, but try pulling just a bit after each stitch. Not too much, just a bit. Use your index finger, like this.” Audrey took back the needles and demonstrated on a handful of stitches. “It’ll help make them even.”

  “Okay.” Lilly bent her head over the project again, and Audrey felt Paul watching them. It was an odd sensation, an awareness, startling but not unpleasant. She felt her gaze pulled up, not really wanting to look at him but unable to resist the urge.

  He had the most expressive eyes. She could read a dozen thoughts in the way he looked at her before he looked back down to his newspaper. Fascination mixed with caution. Warmth held at a distance. She wasn’t quite sure how the blue of his eyes could be so pure and complex at the same time. Even glancing down, she felt as if she could still see his eyes. The tingle at the back of her neck told her he wasn’t really reading the paper. Any more than she was inspecting Lilly’s stitches—something she really o
ught to be doing.

  Lilly, however, due to either hours at the Knitting Nancy or simply a natural knack for it, finished her row with perfect, if uneven stitches. “Wow,” Audrey admired, “I’ve taught grown-ups whose first rows looked worse.” She forced herself to count to ten before giving in to the urge to look up again.

  And met his eyes, again. They held her gaze for a moment, catching Audrey’s breath, and despite several momentary flickers away—mostly driven by what her pulse was doing to her train of thought—her eyes continued to stray back to his. It was a moment too fragile for a smile, too unsettling to last long, but too important to ignore. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed Paul’s grip on the newspaper tighten. It made Audrey wish she’d brought knitting of her own, something to do with her hands and somewhere else to put her eyes.

  “Dad, look!” Lilly held up her second row, thankfully breaking off the moment.

  “Looks good to me. Seems you’re a natural.”

  “She is,” Audrey agreed, entirely too quickly, feeling as though her voice pitched up half an octave. “This looks great. Now turn your work like this—” she demonstrated how to flip the working needle to the other hand “—and start over, just like before.”

  “I’m knitting, Dad. It’s not as hard as I thought.”

  “Looks hard,” Paul said, one tawny eyebrow dubiously raised.

  “All knitting is two basic stitches done over and over. With a few fancy tricks thrown in now and then. You’ll see. Okay, now, you do this row all by yourself without any help from me.” It was the way Audrey always taught, but she instantly realized it left her one entire row of Lilly’s with nothing to do. Suddenly it seemed as if two hundred stitches were on that needle instead of just twenty.

  Paul seemed to sense her unease. “You want a cup of tea or something? Lilly had me buy some at the store last week.” A flush tinted his face momentarily, realizing the sort of admission that was. Paul didn’t drink tea, which meant they’d bought it to host her. Well, she had promised to teach Lilly to knit, so she really shouldn’t read too much into that. It was the hospitable thing to do.