Love Comes Home

by Ann H. Gabhart

  He slid his arm out from under her head and slipped out of bed. He couldn’t lay still. He had to be moving. Standing. Watching. A man had to be ready. Not so long ago, he’d been on a battlefield, with artillery exploding in his ears. He’d known what to be ready for then, but now he wasn’t sure. As much as he hated to think it, Fern was right. Something could happen. Even so, a man couldn’t always be peering around the next corner, worrying about what was to come. Live in the moment. That’s what he’d told Kate. That’s what he needed to do. He wasn’t going to be afraid of the future.

  Perfect love casteth out all fear. That verse came to mind as it had so many times during the war. He moved quietly through the house to the back porch. The spring air, cool against his skin, smelled damp with the promise of things growing. Above him, the sky glittered with thousands of stars. It was good to stand in the dark without a helmet. Without a gun. With no boom of artillery pounding in the distance.

  He was glad to leave the war behind, but he couldn’t forget it. He blocked it out during the day. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t talk about it. He sometimes didn’t flinch now when somebody at the feed store dropped something with a clatter or when a truck backfired. Noise was part of life and all booms didn’t presage death. But at night, the war had a way of sneaking back.

  Kate’s father warned Mike and him to expect that. Mr. Merritt knew. In spite of all the years since he’d been over there, he said he still had nightmares about the mud in the trenches of that First World War. “Some nights the mud tries to swallow me. Those nights I wake up not able to breathe. But it’s not the mud. It’s this muck in my lungs.” He coughed and hit his fist against his chest.

  They had been sitting around the stove in the front room a few weeks after Jay got home. The noise of the women finishing up dinner had floated out to them. Ordinary sounds. Birdie’s laugh. Samantha’s little-girl squeal. Dishes rattling. A pan top clanging. Wonderful sounds Jay wanted to plant in his head to cover up the memories of war. Mike must have felt the same.

  “But I don’t want to remember.” Mike’s face was creased with lines of sorrow. “The dying. The hunger. The fear.” He looked over at Jay. “You know how it was. You might have even had it worse.”

  “It was all worst. Except getting to know your brothers.” He hadn’t had to explain. They both knew what it meant to be part of a fighting unit with men ready to die for one another. And in that moment, they felt the bond among themselves. They knew what it was like to go to war.

  But he was home now. He gazed at the stars and felt gratitude for that rise within him. He’d made it through the war. Done unimaginable things as a soldier. Being a father had to be easy compared to that. One day at a time. That was how it was in the Army. That was how the Lord said life was supposed to be. One day at a time.

  He told Kate to live in the moment. He needed to take his own advice. And the moment was good and got better when the door opened behind him and he heard the whisper of Kate’s bare feet coming across the porch.

  She put her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his back. “Trouble sleeping?”

  “Haven’t tried yet. Just out here checking the stars.”

  “They’re bright tonight.” She leaned around him to peer up at the sky without loosening her arms around his waist. After a moment, she asked, “You okay?”

  He turned in her arms to embrace her. “Better than okay. Always better than okay with you around.”

  He wouldn’t worry about months from now when the baby would be there between them. October, she’d said. He had time. They had time. Time. That was the one thing the war had taught him. To treasure time.

  18

  Tori didn’t know why everybody was so worried about her. She always had fishing fever once spring chased winter away. So on a Saturday late in April when the sun felt more like June, it was only natural for her to wish she was at Graham’s pond instead of stuck at the store.

  They’d had a rush all morning the way they generally did on Saturdays, but by two o’clock, most everybody had headed home to get ready for Sunday or maybe to plant the corn seed they’d bought. Or to go fishing. Business was so slow that her mother told Tori to take the rest of the day off.

  “Call a friend and go to a movie since you don’t have Samantha tonight,” Mama said.

  Tori managed to keep smiling. Samantha was spending the night with Sammy’s mother. Her very first night away from Tori. Mrs. Harper had started keeping Samantha for a few hours nearly every weekday morning. She doted on the child and wanted to help Tori out, she said.

  It was a help. At the store, Samantha was forever getting into things while Tori waited on customers or stocked the shelves. Besides, it was good for Samantha to be with Sammy’s family, but that didn’t keep Tori from feeling lost without her. Not being able to see her and know for sure she was okay made Tori’s throat so tight she could barely swallow.

  “But what if Samantha cries and won’t go to bed?” she said. “They might have to bring her home.”

  “Don’t be such a worrywart. Christine Harper raised four boys. I think she can get one little girl to bed.” Mama smiled. “You made her so happy letting Samantha spend the night. And Samantha too. She loves her Mama and Papa Harper. She’ll be fine.”

  “I know.” Tori couldn’t keep the tremble of threatening tears from showing up in her voice. “But will I be fine?”

  “Oh, my sweet and lovely Victoria. You will be fine. You are fine already.” Mama hugged her close for a moment. They both knew she was talking about more than Tori missing Samantha, but she pretended that was what she’d meant as she went on. “That first night away from your little one is hard, but babies grow up. So very fast. One minute you’re nursing them, the next you’re watching them nurse their own babies. At least I still have Lorena for a little while longer.”

  “And you have me.”

  “I do, and you’ll always be my baby. But you will find your wings to fly away again. In time.” She stepped back from Tori and cupped her cheek with her hand. “I want that for my girls. It’s such a joy to see you becoming mothers. First you, and now Evangeline and Kate. That’s the way the good Lord intended things to be.”

  She did her best not to stiffen at her mother’s words. People always talked about things happening according to God’s will. She’d grown up believing the Lord was watching over her. That if she did what she was supposed to, he’d shower blessings down on her. Ask and it shall be given. But then she’d asked and it hadn’t been given. Sammy had been taken.

  Her mother stroked her cheek. “I’m praying for you, sweetheart. Do you want to know what I pray for you?”

  Tori wasn’t sure she did, but she nodded anyway. Her mother expected her to listen.

  “I pray you’ll stop being angry at God.”

  “I’m not mad at God.” Tori’s denial was instinctive. A person wasn’t supposed to get mad at God.

  But her mother simply gave her another hug before she pushed her toward the door with a little sigh. “Go on. Get your fishing pole. I know you’d rather do that than go to the movies, and who knows? A pond bank might be a good place to feel God’s love. To think about the plans the Lord has for you.”

  Plans? She had no plans, she thought as she walked down the road toward home. Except to go fishing. Maybe that was what the Lord planned for her too. The Bible talked a lot about fishing. Some of the disciples were fishermen. Maybe with nets instead of poles and hooks, but fishing was fishing.

  Everybody thought Tori went fishing too much. Her mother and father. Kate. Well, not everybody. Not Evie. She was too wrapped up in being in the family way to notice anything Tori did. Jubilant one minute. Distraught the next. Fishing would do Evie good, and she might even go if the weather was perfect.

  Evie wasn’t like Kate. Before the war, she enjoyed fishing as long as Mike was along to bait her hook and take the fish off her line if she happened to catch something. Tori had never asked Sammy to do that fo
r her. Never. She could handle her own bait and fish.

  When she reached the house, Tori didn’t go inside. There was no need. Her father was still at his shop, and Kate had borrowed Uncle Wyatt’s car to take Lorena to audition for a radio program. Lorena was so excited, she’d been spinning in circles all week. Her little sister could very well be famous one day. She was already in demand at churches in the area.

  Her mother’s words about the Lord’s plans fit Lorena better than they did her. He’d blessed Lorena with a beautiful voice and the desire to share that gift with others. But he’d let the war smash Tori’s plans for her life. Now she didn’t want to think about her future.

  She had plans for Samantha’s future, but for herself she just took each day as it came. The Bible said to think on the day and not store up for a future a person might not have. Futures weren’t guaranteed. How well she knew that.

  She let out a long breath and headed toward the barn for her bait bucket. Samantha had helped her dig for worms after the rain last week, squealing with delight each time she managed to grab one out of the dirt. But she was too young to sit quietly and enjoy the finer moments of fishing. Tori’s mother was right. It was a good place to think, but even more, it could be a place not to think all that much about anything except the breeze in her face and the rippling rings on the pond when a fish kissed the surface of the water.

  At the pond, she settled in her favorite spot, baited her hook, and cast her line in the water. Inch by inch her body relaxed in the sunshine. The pond was peaceful. Birds flew between the trees, building nests and chirping at one another. Buzzards circled high in the sky, floating in and out of sight on the air currents. A couple of rabbits popped out of the bushes. They paid her scant notice as they hopped on about their business.

  The word “Look!” jumped to her tongue and made Tori miss Samantha that much more. She liked pointing things out to her. Tori pulled in a deep breath and thought about Samantha making cookies with her grandmother or sitting with her on the porch swing while her grandmother told her things her father did when he was little.

  Mama Harper liked planting memories of Sammy in his child’s head. A good thing, since Samantha would have no actual memory of him on her own. She didn’t miss him. She didn’t realize her father was missing. Yet. But someday she’d ask about Sammy. Tori had copied every word he’d written in his letters about Samantha in a composition book to give her when that happened. Between the two of them, Tori and Sammy’s mother, they’d make sure Samantha knew her father.

  What she might tell her ran through Tori’s head. Your daddy was funny. His smile was just like yours. He had a hard time sitting still. He wanted to help everybody he met. He loved us. He didn’t want to leave us.

  When she heard somebody coming through the trees toward the pond, she smiled and kept her eyes on the water. It would be Graham and his dog. It wouldn’t be Fern. Not making that much noise. Tori rarely saw Fern in the woods or here at the pond, but Tori didn’t have to see her to know she was often there. She just had to feel the odd tingle across the back of her neck.

  It used to scare Tori and make her want to shout at Fern to stop watching her. A few times, she had yelled at the woman, but if indeed Fern was back in the trees, she never came out where Tori could see her.

  These days Tori didn’t let it bother her. If she got the feeling Fern was there, she simply rubbed the back of her neck and shrugged it off. In some ways it made fishing by herself at the pond easier. Any different noise, she blamed on Fern and kept fishing.

  She kept fishing now, setting her hook when her cork bobbed, and waited for Graham to come out of the trees. Graham was such a part of the woods and pond that she expected him to show up whenever she was fishing. She liked hearing him talk in those muted tones that had a way of blending into the day.

  She reeled in her line. The fish was a keeper if she could catch some more to go with it. She was putting it on her stringer when someone spoke behind her.

  “Hello, Victoria.”

  It wasn’t Graham. She was so surprised she dropped the fish and it slid back into the water.

  “Clay.” She whirled around and stumbled over her fishing pole on the ground.

  He reached a hand out to steady her. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you’d hear me coming.”

  “I did, but I figured it was Graham.” Tori stepped back from him a little too quickly and stumbled again. Her foot slid down into the mud at the pond edge and she threw out her arms to catch her balance.

  “Watch out.” Clay dropped his cane pole and grabbed her before she fell backward into the water.

  His arm was strong around her and she caught the fresh scent of soap as she leaned against him in order to jerk her foot free. She started to pull away from him then, but it seemed wiser to get back on solid ground before they both ended up in the pond. He kept his arm around her as she climbed the bank. Her heart hammered inside her chest. Only from the surprise of seeing him there and then almost falling. It had nothing to do with his arm around her.

  “Thank you,” she said politely, stepping away from him. “I’m not usually so clumsy. I haven’t fallen in the pond since I was fifteen.”

  She was sorry for that memory as soon as her words summoned it up. She and Sammy had both fallen in the pond that summer day. But being clumsy had nothing to do with it. The hot day and Sammy pushing her in had everything to do with it. When he reached a hand to help her out, she’d jerked him in too. They had laughed until their sides hurt.

  “My fault,” Clay said. “I should have hollered at you when I came out of the trees.”

  “What are you doing here?” The question was out before she could stop it, but even to her own ears it sounded rude. It wasn’t even a question that needed asking. They both knew why he was there.

  His smile dimmed, but stayed on his face. “Graham told me the fish were biting and I could come catch a mess.”

  “Oh.” Tori picked up her fishing pole. Wait until she saw Graham. She knew what he was up to. He was playing Cupid again the way he’d done with Kate and Jay. While that had worked out fine for them, she didn’t need anybody matchmaking for her. She had half a mind to just pick up her stuff and go find Graham right then to make sure he knew that. But the sun was shining, and the fish were still in the pond instead of on her stringer.

  “He didn’t think you would mind sharing the pond bank.” Clay began unwinding the line from around his cane pole.

  “I didn’t know you liked to fish.” Tori kept her eyes on her bait bucket as she dug out a worm.

  “I used to go some with my father before he died.” Clay had the line loose, but he didn’t pick up the hook to bait it. Instead he stared out at the pond as if he’d awakened some memory he was sorry he’d disturbed. Then he shook himself a little. “I don’t have much time for fishing these days. Too busy on the farm.”

  Tori cast her line out into the pond, then looked over at Clay. His jaw was tight as though he had his teeth clamped together. Not mad. More sad as he stared at the hook.

  “And it hurt too much when you went.” She knew how that felt. Even now after more than a year she sometimes felt Sammy’s loss more acutely at the pond. At the same time, she couldn’t give up fishing. Not and keep her sanity. With Samantha, she made new memories, new times to remember here at the pond. “That would have gotten better after a few times.”

  “I guess so. But I never was very good at fishing anyway.”

  “Anybody can be good at fishing. If you have the right bait and throw your line in where the fish are.” She looked over at him. He still hadn’t baited his hook. “Did you even bring any bait?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I knew I forgot something.”

  The laugh that bubbled out of her as she handed him her bait bucket was a surprise, but it felt good.

  “Thanks. I’ll dig you some worms in the barn lot to pay you back.” He pushed a worm on his hook and then stepped away from her to flip his line in t
he water.

  For a while, they fished in silence. The plop of their corks hitting the water and the birds singing gave a lazy summer feel to the day. At the same time, the air seemed to carry a little extra charge. Clay wasn’t holding a cane pole for the love of fishing. He’d chased her to Graham’s pond, and not because he wanted fish for supper. She watched her cork for the slightest wiggle. Better to think about that than how Clay kept looking over at her. She sensed he wanted to say something but hesitated, unsure of his words.

  She felt a little unsure too as she remembered his arm around her when he helped her up the bank. It had been good to lean on somebody. Sometimes she got so tired of being alone. She almost smiled at her thought. She was actually very rarely alone, surrounded by family at the house and people at the store. But the alone she was feeling was a different kind of loneliness. Everything came in twos. The rabbits earlier. The buzzards floating above her. The birds building nests. Pairs. Adam and Eve. Abraham and Sarah. Mary and Joseph.

  She stared out at the pond, wishing for a nibble to give her something to do besides think about the man beside her on the pond bank. He was so sweet with his little sisters at the store or church. She’d never seen him say a cross word to them. Ever. He worked hard to take care of his family. A man who wanted to make her part of that family. That was why he was here fishing.

  She didn’t know whether she wished he would just come out with whatever he was trying to work up the nerve to say or that he would keep quiet. It was pleasant to fish in companionable silence. She was glad he was there. That made her so unsettled that she moved back from the pond and began reeling in her line. Maybe everybody was right. She was fishing too much.

  “Did you catch something?” Clay asked.

  “No. I don’t think the fish are biting today.” She caught her hook in one of the eyelets and tightened the line. “Guess I’ll head home.”

  “Oh.” He stared at his line. “They don’t seem to be biting for me either.”