High Plains Hearts

by Janet Spaeth

  “Wa-hooooo!” he shouted happily. “Gran is the coolest.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun with her, but don’t get too crazy,” she warned him.

  “I know.” He nodded seriously. “She’s older than I am, and she doesn’t bend where I do.”

  “That’s true, but I meant don’t use up all your crazies on her ’cause I’ll want some when you come back home!” She caught him up in her arms and hugged him.

  Holding him close like that, she nearly changed her mind. It was going to be torture not just to defend herself against the false charges, but coming home to an empty house afterward—well, it was almost too much for her to even think about.

  She buried her face in his neck. “I’m going to miss you, tiger.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” he said.

  “I’ll miss snuggling with you and hugging you and kissing you.”

  Todd pulled back and said impishly, “You can do that to Ric!”

  He ran off before she could stop him, and she could hear him in his bedroom giggling over his joke.

  She couldn’t take it too seriously. For him it was just fun, all tied in with his concept of girl cooties, which were the most dreadful of all afflictions, according to him.

  As long as he didn’t say it at the wrong time to the wrong person … like Ric.

  Lily sighed and pushed Ric once again back into the corner of her mind. It seemed as if whenever she allowed herself the luxury of doing some cleaning in the far reaches back there, something happened that caused it to fill up again. Kind of like her hall closet.

  Her stomach tightened as she recalled what was ahead for her. She knew she was up against an able and talented adversary in Douglas Newton. He would do anything to prevent himself from being tied in with diverting the money from the Nanny Group.

  She almost gasped as another rogue thought slipped into her mind. What he had done was—what was the word? Every time she tried to put a name on it, it would turn elusive and slip beyond her mental grasp.

  Lily stood up and got the suitcase from under her bed and began to pack it from the laundry basket. Luckily she’d just washed and dried Todd’s clothes, so he had plenty to wear when—

  Embezzlement. The ugly word sprang into her brain. That’s what Douglas had done. It wasn’t just immoral; it was a crime. He had embezzled money from the organization. How much, she didn’t know.

  He’d committed a crime. She shook her head sadly and began to place Todd’s folded T-shirts and shorts into the suitcase. Douglas was a sleaze.

  Her breath froze in her throat. Douglas. She knew what he had done, and he knew what he had done, but everyone else thought she had done it.

  To the rest of the world, she was the embezzler.

  Her stomach coiled itself into a tight spring. She hadn’t put it in this perspective before.

  She slammed the clothes into the suitcase.

  Enough was enough.

  God, I’ve tried to be patient about this. First You put me into the Nanny Group, and I thought I was going into Your service, but I don’t think so, God. How can You have meant this for me? Once, I could see—maybe it was an oversight on Your part. But twice? And to label me a criminal? And what about Todd? Did You forget about him, God? Huh? Did You?

  She cracked open one eye, half expecting to see a long flash of lightning headed her way, but she was met with only the happy twittering of birds, delighted over the bumper crop of earthworms because of the rain.

  “Yeah, easy for you to be cheerful about it,” she grumbled to the birds outside her window. “But ask the earthworm how he feels. Things aren’t so chirpy happy for him, are they?”

  “Who are you talking to?” Todd asked as he came into her room and hopped onto the bed. She kissed him on his forehead.

  “I was talking to God,” she said. She hadn’t even been aware that she was speaking out loud.

  “Were you asking Him for something?”

  She considered his question. “I suppose so. I think that’s pretty much what prayer is all about, don’t you, tiger?”

  “No. At Shiloh we learned that you shouldn’t ask God for things like bicycles.” Todd stopped and looked at her speculatively. “Were you asking God for a bicycle?”

  “No, I wasn’t asking for a bicycle.” She managed not to smile. “It was a bit more serious than that.”

  “Oh. Well, if it’s a car, you still can’t ask God for a car. It’s the same thing as a bicycle, I think. Why do you want a new car, anyway?”

  “I don’t want a new car. I was talking to God about something else.”

  “Did God answer you?”

  She was ready to say no when she stopped. Just at the point that she’d expected to be zapped with a lightning bolt, Todd had torn into the room.

  She thought back to what the end of her prayer had been.

  God had clearly not forgotten Todd. In fact, now that she ran it all through her mind again, perhaps He’d sent the little boy flying into the room as an answer.

  “Yes, tiger, I think God did answer my prayer.”

  “That’s good,” Todd responded. “I usually don’t get answers that quick. I think sometimes I don’t get answers at all, but Ric said that we had to learn to listen to how God speaks since He maybe isn’t using English. Like words. Not Spanish either.”

  To anyone else, Todd’s sentences may not have made sense, but to Lily, they were direct and real. She couldn’t expect God to simply holler out an answer to her question. Instead, she had to let herself be open to His response whenever and however it might arrive.

  And, no matter what Todd’s hopes were, she didn’t think God’s answer was going to be a bicycle.

  The drive to Mandan was interesting, as any ride with Todd was. He chattered and sang the entire way. Usually his patience expired about half an hour into any trip, but not this time. He was apparently too excited about seeing his grandmother.

  Although there was a part of her that wanted to stay with her mother and pour out the story, she stoically unloaded Todd’s bags, made sure he knew where his bear was, took a quick break at the condo for a glass of lemonade and a sandwich, and then, pleading a need to take care of some urgent cases at the day care, kissed them both good-bye and headed back to Wildwood, fighting tears the entire way.

  She’d pulled her car into Resurrection’s darkened parking lot when she noticed a car parked in the shadows. Someone moved in the car, and she nearly passed out when the door opened and a figure emerged and approached her.

  The scream died in her throat when she recognized Victoria Campbell. Her relief must have been obvious as Victoria’s face crumpled with concern.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said hastily. “I wanted to talk to you, and you weren’t in—and please don’t think ill of me. I know it looks bad, but I wasn’t lurking in the lot here just waiting for you to come home. I really wasn’t.”

  “That’s fine,” Lily said as the desire to reassure the woman grew to be nearly overwhelming. “No problem at all. Would you like to come in and have some iced tea or something?”

  Victoria paused and then nodded. “Thanks. I think I will.”

  She turned and headed toward the church, but Lily stopped her. “Let’s go into my home here.”

  “Are you sure?” Victoria seemed stunned by Lily’s invitation.

  “Absolutely. Please join me.” As Lily unlocked the door of the mobile home, she continued to talk, hoping the flow of everyday conversation would ease the other woman’s obvious tension. “I drove to Mandan and back today, so I’m grateful for the chance to sit down and put my feet up. Come on in.”

  Victoria’s uneasiness dissipated only slightly in Lily’s living room. She walked around the perimeter of the small room, examining the photographs and knickknacks until she apparently realized that she shouldn’t be because she suddenly sat down.

  Lily handed her a glass of iced tea that was already beaded with moisture.

  “Whew, it
’s hot!” Lily exclaimed as she sank onto the recliner. “The only change I would make in this place would be to add an air conditioner.”

  “Is it yours?” Victoria asked. “I’ve often wondered what it was doing here.”

  “It’s here temporarily until the need for flood relief is gone. It’s like the FEMA mobile homes, but it belongs to the district office of the church. I’ll be moving out of it before winter, I think.”

  Victoria motioned toward Lily’s wedding photograph. “Is he your husband?” Then she laughed, a tight, brittle laugh. “Of course he’s your husband. You’re wearing a wedding dress, he’s wearing a tuxedo, and you’re standing together in front of an altar holding hands. Who did I think he was? The washing machine repairman?”

  “Yes,” Lily said softly. “That’s Barry. He died not too long after that in an accident.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” her guest said. “That’s why I like to wear nice shoes since my feet are always firmly in my mouth.”

  Lily stroked the edge of the frame. “I used to feel as if God had cheated me, taking Barry from me so quickly, but He gave me Todd. Barry didn’t even know I was pregnant, but I know he would have been delighted.”

  “Do you miss him?” Victoria asked, her voice smoothing out.

  “Yes. Every day it gets easier, and sometimes it’s almost as if it was all a dream. But I look in Todd’s eyes, and I know it wasn’t a dream. It was real. And I thank God for giving me the chance to live that dream, even if it was only for such a short time.”

  “How can you be so accepting of this?” Victoria asked wonderingly. “Life has come up to you and kicked you hard, but you still welcome it, and look at you, you’re smiling all the time!”

  “Well, not all the time. But one of the things that losing Barry taught me is that each day is a gift. You have to live each day to its fullest. And you know, I’d heard that over and over again, but it didn’t really settle into my heart until Barry died. What I would have given for one more day with him ….”

  “Sometimes it seems like it would just be peachy keen if it would end,” Victoria said darkly. Then she hastily added, “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not thinking of jumping off a bridge or anything like that. I mean that sometimes getting through it all, day by day, seems like I’m slogging through a bog. And I’ve been watching you. Here you are, with a little boy, taking on this job and all. How do you do it and stay so incredibly cheerful?”

  The irony of this conversation hit Lily. Here she was, on the verge of losing everything and possibly being charged with a crime, all because of someone else’s greed, and she was being asked how she stayed so cheerful?

  She pulled together a smile that, remarkably enough, appeared easily. Maybe she was cheerful after all.

  “I have faith,” she said. “Faith that God is taking me where He wants me to go, where I need to go in order to know Him better.”

  “But wouldn’t you know God better, wouldn’t it be easier to believe in Him if He took you to places that were pretty and happy and good? Why does He take you to despair and loss?” Victoria objected. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Well,” said Lily, “I’m not all that well trained in theology, but it does strike me that you learn more when you are challenged. Besides, if God only took you to wonderful places, how could that help you grow? You’d only know what you knew before, that you liked pretty and pleasant places. And that’s a no-brainer. We all like them. We learn from what makes us think and question.”

  As she spoke, Lily had the increasing sensation that she was speaking to herself as much as to Victoria. Increasingly, she began to feel her soul rise to the challenge ahead of her, understanding a bit more why God had put this in her way.

  But she still didn’t understand why God had put this on Todd. That she couldn’t reason her way through at all. He was just a child.

  “I acted like a jerk that day in your office.” Victoria’s abrupt change of subject threw Lily’s thought processes off.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That day. In your office. I was overbearing and horrid, and I’m sorry.” Victoria’s apology came out almost as an accusation, and she immediately shook her head. “No, no. Ignore that. I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. You’ve been very nice to me, and I don’t want to alienate you, too. You must think I’m awful. You must have thought I was awful then, especially with everything I did before then.”

  Lily leaned forward. “Please, Victoria, don’t do this to yourself. I don’t know what happened in the past, and I probably wouldn’t care anyway. What’s done is done. I know people say that all the time, but I really mean it. I don’t hold the past against the present.”

  “You really don’t know?” Victoria seemed unable to keep the astonishment from her voice.

  “No, I don’t. Does it have anything to do with your son and his need for day care?”

  Victoria shook her head. “No.”

  “Then I don’t care.”

  The other woman paused, as if weighing Lily’s response. “I think I should tell you anyway. It’s all tied together.”

  “You need to tell me only if you want to, and only if it’s applicable to getting your son in day care,” Lily reminded her.

  “Okay.”

  Victoria put her head in her hands for a moment and then began. “I grew up very poor. And I do mean ‘poor.’ I lived with eight brothers in a house that was made of bits and pieces of other houses basically nailed together. I was the only girl.”

  She stopped, and Lily waited as the blond woman took a breath. “Sorry,” Victoria said. “I have such bitterness over it all. I keep trying to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen, but it did, and to be honest, that’s what really hurts.”

  “Do you want to stop?” Lily asked gently. “You don’t have to continue.”

  “No. I want to tell it all. Maybe bringing it out into the open will make it cleaner, make it go away.”

  Lily’s heart swelled with worry. She not only had more than enough on her own plate, but now she was about to hear something that had obviously prevented this woman from living fully.

  Lord, help me as she needs me. It was the only prayer she had time for.

  “I suppose lots of kids wear hand-me-downs,” Victoria went on, “but I had to wear them from my brothers. Mom tried to make them a little more feminine, but let’s face it—overalls are overalls. And patches are patches. It’s not chic when it’s from necessity.”

  Lily nodded. “I understand.”

  “So as soon as I could, I got out of there and didn’t look back. I got married and got out of that, too, with a nice big settlement and Edgar. I feel the same way about him that you do about Todd.”

  “Of course,” Lily murmured.

  “I started Wedding Belles before I got divorced, though, and it took off. I was making money hand over fist, and I loved it. I wore nice clothes. I lived in a big house. I drove a big car. Life was good, really good, I thought. And then my husband and I split up.”

  Victoria stood up and walked around the room, her hands busy on Lily’s display of photographs. “Sorry, I’m a bit nervous,” she apologized as she sat down again. “Anyway, I liked having all this money. And I especially liked having people know that I had money. So when the time came to expand the church, I volunteered to pay for it. All of it. Crazy, huh? Pastor Mike tried to talk me out of it, but I wanted to be the great woman, the current-day saint who saved Resurrection.”

  Lily felt as if she were being held back in her chair by centrifugal force. This was an amazing story.

  “And it was about that time that the money from the divorce settlement came to an end, and there I was, left with only what I had from the store. I thought there wouldn’t be a problem—it had always done well—but sales dropped off. Business slowed to a crawl.”

  Victoria lifted a now tear-streaked face to Lily. “I’m broke. Totally broke.”

  “And the addition to the church?” Lily pro
mpted gently, fearing the answer.

  “I couldn’t pay. But the worst part is that I couldn’t say why. My stupid pride wouldn’t let me. The same way it wouldn’t let me fill out those papers. Lily, if you saw how much I made now, you’d be horrified.”

  “So the people in church don’t know why you wouldn’t pay for the addition?”

  “No. They think I wouldn’t do it because it wasn’t done to my satisfaction or because it wasn’t named after me, depending on who you talk to, but the upshot of it all is that I never told anybody the real reason. I couldn’t bear to.”

  Her pain washed across the room like a wave, so strong it was nearly tangible. Lily got up and crossed the room. She sat beside Victoria on the couch and put her arm around her. “That little girl in the hand-me-downs still hurts, doesn’t she?”

  Victoria nodded, the tears returning again.

  “Let’s pray for her,” Lily said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Dearest Lord, we need Your help. Take the pain of the past away from Victoria and hold her in Your hands and open her eyes to a future that is bright because it is made by You. Guard her, Lord, from self-doubt, from fear, and from uncertainty. We know You can do it, and we trust in Your power. We ask it in the name of Your Son, the ultimate gift of Love. Amen.”

  And, as she prayed for Victoria, Lily knew she prayed for herself.

  “I feel better already,” Victoria said at last. “It’s like a weight has been lifted from my chest. I can breathe.”

  Lily patted her hand. “That’s good. You shouldn’t carry this burden around with you. It’s not good for your heart and your soul, and above all, it’s not good for Edgar.”

  Victoria looked at her watch and gasped. “I’d better get home. He’s with a sitter, and I know he’s already asleep, but I’ve got to kiss him good night anyway. Thanks again, Lily. You are so kind and forgiving. How can I ever thank you?”