She talked as if he were an entertainer strolling down the red carpet, and it was likely jealousy talking, but as he’d told the young couple he counseled, any exchange that didn’t include personal attacks had the potential of moving the conversation forward. She was trying. It was his turn to do the same. “I do see you, baby, and you’re the most beautiful thing in my life. That’s why I’m here.”
“No, you don’t. You’re so busy, you haven’t noticed I’m….” A sad smile curved her lips. “Michael, I’m pregnant.”
Pregnant? He rocked to his feet. “You, you’re pregnant. Baby pregnant? Are you sure?” A baby. A real baby. That’s why she’d insisted they get a bigger house and a safer car. Why she turned moody, went to bed early, and suggested separate bedrooms to get more sleep. A ridiculous smile stretched his face. “We’re pregnant? How pregnant?”
“Almost sixteen weeks.”
“Sixteen?” He dropped back to his seat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’d hoped you would notice, but you were too…” She looked away, unable to say it. Could he possibly have been so busy that he’d overlooked a pregnancy for nearly four months?
“You have a gift, Michael. I had hoped you could take part in our baby’s life, but if it’s God's will that you serve Him as you have been, I’m willing to raise her while you do.”
“It’s a girl? We know that already?”
A sheen coated Veronica's eyes, brightening the blue within. “No, but I asked God for a girl. I need someone to love. Someone who’ll love me.”
“Baby, I do love you.”
“I know, but I need a friend, too. It’s been a long time.”
The perception he’d had of Veronica’s life blurred, then shifted. As he once had done while preparing for trial, he cast himself as his opponent to anticipate their strategy. The image of his wife waiting alone for hours at a time in a town that wasn’t her home, of her sitting in the pew, surrounded not by friends, but by those who likely wanted to be associated with the pastor, of her traveling across country by herself because she had no husband or family to accompany her, all while he stayed so busy he often forgot to call, stunned him.
“Oh,” was the only sorry excuse that came out of his mouth.
She held out her hands, and using him for support, she stood, then pulled him to his feet. “King David danced because God—not David or his army—brought the ark back to Jerusalem. If you’re going to sacrifice your relationship with me and your daughter, make sure you’re dancing for God’s glory and not because you enjoy the success or attention. God deserves better than that, and so do we.”
I want you to see me. He repeated the words in silence as she looked at him, her expression filled with love and disappointment. She’d been his heart, his best friend, and his greatest supporter until when? He’d been so caught up in his ministry—or was it success?—that he couldn’t say at what point he’d been lured away. “I guess we have a lot to discuss.”
“Yes, we do.” Veronica laced her fingers through his. “Over breakfast. You’ll have to eat my eggs, though. I don’t think they’ll stay down.”
“You have morning sickness? How did you manage to hide that?”
“I didn’t. You always left before it hit.”
Michael brushed his fingertips across her cheek. “Will I get in trouble if I say that’s a blessing?”
She laughed. Until that moment, he didn’t realize how much he’d missed the sound.
Steve
phwump phwump phwump phwump phwump
The drum that had kept him company began to slow.
phwump phwump phwump phwump
He floated in the darkness.
“Tell them you’re sorry,” his dad urged. “Your mother is upset.”
They need hope, Dad.
phwump phwump phwump
“You saw how the others died. It’s not worth it, son.”
To live is Christ. To die is to gain.
“This is your life!”
Phwump phwump
Yes. Eternal life.
The earth trembled, and a blinding light split the darkness.
Veronica and Michael
Reclining in my arms as he had during the happy years of our marriage, Michael called Dave Johnson. After learning of the rumors swirling about Michael’s disappearance on the heels of mine and Tara’s, who’d resigned abruptly, we announced the good news and asked him to spread the word. Dave told Michael to take the week off and hung up before he could decline. Not that Michael would have. I think he finally understood.
On Friday, we left Richmond in my mother’s Volvo. Michael started to refuse the gift, but with a humility I hadn’t witnessed since he surrendered to the call, he took the keys and hugged her.
Though Dave had arranged for someone to fill the pulpit on Sunday, we attended morning service and accepted congratulations along with diapers, baby clothes, and Dallas Cowboy baby bottles. Lingering speculation about my disappearance died when I explained my desire to break the news to Michael at the place where he’d proposed, while collecting my mother’s advice and my old baby clothes. Anything beyond that belonged to me and Michael.
The following day, Michael changed his schedule. After detailing his encounter with Tara and his mistake of allowing himself to be alone with another woman, he decided to work from home each morning until the staff arrived. The change gave me an opportunity to sleep in. On Monday, without the slam of drawers opening and closing as Michael got dressed, I awoke at eight fifteen to an empty bed. I found my husband in his pajama pants, sitting at the table that dominated the breakfast nook, staring at his laptop monitor.
He pushed back his chair. “Morning, gorgeous. Sit. I’ll get you some juice.”
I kissed him as he passed by, then took the chair beside his. “I appreciate the extra sleep.”
“Get it while you can. From what everyone tells me, once the baby is born, we’ll be awake until she leaves for college.” He turned, sloshing orange juice over the edge of a glass that would one day be replaced with a sippy cup. “I just realized we’ll have to pay for college.”
“And her wedding.”
He pretended to smack his head against the refrigerator door, but grinned. Like me, Michael had fallen into the habit of referring to our child as she. I had less success convincing him to name her Sarah Sayers.
He put the juice glass on the table and sat in front of his laptop. “I received an email from Dave this morning. They found the missionary.”
“Alive?”
“Barely. The doctors at Luke’s Hand said he was severely dehydrated and was a heartbeat away from death. It’s a miracle he survived. I haven’t turned on the TV yet, but according to Dave, it’s all over the news.”
In Richmond, during long talks that stretched into the night, Michael told me he’d been asked to use his influence to help secure the missionary’s release. A request he and Dave had to modify so my husband could chase after me.
That my journey had further endangered the life of a man in the field caused as many tears as Mr. Thatcher’s death, along with shame. A conviction my husband shared after seeing himself through my eyes. While we endured a light affliction in a land of peace and prosperity, and yet longed for more—me for Michael, and Michael for the prominence he confessed he was beginning to enjoy—this man and others faced death and persecution on a daily basis, emptying themselves in hostile lands for the sake of the cross. Examples of true sacrifice, which I stored in my heart.
Michael leaned back in his seat. “Like you said, God brought the ark back to Jerusalem.” After a moment in which I silently thanked God for restoring His servant in the field and my husband’s affection to me, Michael started jabbing keys. “Maybe we’ll get to meet him in person. When he gets back to the States, I’ll invite him to Dallas for an interview. From the sound of it, he has a story to tell.” A story that might have turned Michael into a media darling had he succ
essfully intervened.
He stopped typing. “Let’s shop for the crib today.”
“Do you have time?”
He flashed the boyish smile I loved. “I have the entire day. It’s Monday, remember?”
Upon hearing his playful reminder, another person would have thought we’d spent a thousand Mondays together. I took it as a promise of a thousand to come.
“I’d like that.” I placed my glass on the table. “Now, tell me what your week looks like.”
He drew me into his lap, and while he rattled off a list of tasks that involved reaching the lost and encouraging others in the faith, my heart danced over God’s love and continued mercies.
Lessons from the Landscape
Short Stories of Faith
Table of Contents
An Ornamental Peace
Her mother kept her at arm’s length during life. Would she explain why after death?
Fighting Chance
A mother tries to connect with her son through North Carolina’s past. Flash fiction.
The Greatest Fan
An elderly musician about to embark on a new phase of life reflects on his legacy in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.
Hear the Wind Blow
A missionary is about to face the women who taunted her during high school, but sharing the love of Christ is the last thing on her mind.
Honeysuckle Creek (General Fiction)
Can she reclaim the lazy days she lived in the shadow of Shenandoah?
Moonbow
Flash fiction set in Kentucky’s breathtaking Cumberland Valley.
Poplar
On the eve of her high school graduation, a Forestry student wonders if there’s a secret in her past. Set in Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest.
Saints and Sinners
A woman and her children (characters from Fighting Chance) suffering grief share a cathartic moment in Bath, North Carolina.
Shining Rock
A widow seeks solace atop Cold Mountain.
An Ornamental Peace
I never kept a diary, at least not the kind in which you bare your soul and the emotions that torment it on a regular basis. Not since the age of twelve when my best friend found mine and told everyone who I liked, including the boy I had named in those sacred pages. The experience taught me never to write anything I didn’t want someone to read. That anything I said could be used against me in the court of life. A Texas mother had learned that lesson after two of her sons were killed in an attack that nearly robbed her of her own existence. Though evidence indicated someone beside her husband had been in the house that night, a jury convicted her of murdering her kids. All because of a vague statement she’d made in her diary.
I’m sure if she had known of the horror to come, she would have gone back and clarified herself. Used precise nouns and verbs to explain her meaning. But she didn’t have the chance.
Surely my mother would have done the same.
The call came while I was at work. That night, I listened to the message as I tossed a handful of feta cheese into a salad.
“Hon, it’s Aunt Mary.” My aunt’s voice blipped in places indicating she’d called while driving through the mountains. “Your mom is pretty sick. The doctors say she doesn’t have much time. I’m on my way now, and I expect to see you there.”
I put the remainder of the cheese in the fridge and set the salad on the table, unhurried despite the urgency in my aunt’s voice. My mother claimed to face death on a regular basis, so it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. The family never knew if she exaggerated her doctor’s diagnoses or if fate mistook her for a cat. Whatever the reason, she always recovered.
Until three days ago.
The funeral was lovely, as Mother would have expected it to be, with no carnation in sight. She hated the flower, and in instructions left to direct the event, she’d ordered the funeral home to remove any they spotted in floral arrangements. I brought a handful of them. Since I was responsible for the bill, they let me.
I placed the bouquet atop the closed portion of her casket. Leaning over, I whispered, “See, Mother? If you had bothered to take a closer look, you would have seen they’re perfectly fine flowers.” It was the only time she didn’t disagree with me.
After the funeral, I drove back to the house in which I was reared, accompanied by family members and friends. The grass, a bright green after months of dormancy, had been trimmed, and white blossoms covered a half dozen dogwood trees scattered around the yard. They were my mother’s favorite. In the spring and fall, their delicate branches had a wispy look that reminded me of a Japanese tea garden. A look Mother called an ornamental peace. The image represented our relationship like no other could.
For the next hour, people who had loved my mother and whom my mother had loved in return approached me balancing plates of pulled pork and collard greens. “Your mama was such a nice lady. I do wish the two of you could have made amends before she left for glory,” several said.
I smiled and nodded, pretending I hadn’t heard the rebuke in their hushed tones. No one understood the complexities that had existed between me and my mother. I know because I never understood them myself. It seemed the moment the doctor sliced the bond between us at my birth, we began living in separate worlds. What meals we took together were spent in silence or with her on the phone discussing her antique business. When I realized she had more interest in work than she did in my grades, I posted a Do Not Enter sign on my heart and kept it there. We existed together until I left for college.
When the last of the mourners left the house, the only common ground my mother and I had shared, I went upstairs to the master bedroom and opened the curtains. The house sat atop a steep hill, and from the bedroom window I could see the skyline of downtown Raleigh. Late afternoon sunlight had cast a golden hue across the yards and houses. A glow that paled, I supposed, to what Mother was seeing in heaven.
The room was as I had last seen it—clean, tidy, tastefully decorated with the antiques she so loved. Perishable treasures that now belonged to me. I opened a dresser drawer and then another, rummaging through the personal effects as carefully as I could out of respect, and then did the same with the chest and the nightstands on both sides of the bed. Nowhere could I find a diary or notebook that contained a record of my mother’s life or her thoughts regarding her only child.
Maybe she didn’t keep a journal for fear someone would judge her for the contents she would have recorded. Maybe she didn’t feel the need to answer for herself. As she once reminded me, she’d fed and clothed me throughout the years, and provided me with a nice house that kept me warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I gathered she felt this was enough, that anything beyond that bordered on unreasonable expectations.
I sat on the bed near the footboard and looped my arm around the post. A friend once encouraged me to reach out to my mother, warning me I would someday regret not doing so. Alone now in her room, I felt no regret. Despite my mother’s lack of parenting skills, she had Christ as her king. Someday, when it was my turn to cross the river, we would, as Stonewall Jackson put it, rest under the shade of the trees. Dogwoods, no doubt. Then, in the place where Christ dries all tears, I would ask my mother why and she would tell me. Afterwards, we would find new ground to share, that of worshipping our King.
Until then, I would move into my mother’s house where the best she could offer was an ornamental peace.
Fighting Chance
I dipped the paddles into the black water, stirring the lake as I would sauce in a pan. Despite the ache in my arm, the rented rowboat surged forward. Perched on a bench in front of me, my eight-year old son waved a matching set of paddles in the air.
“Chance, we’ll get there faster if you put those in the water.”
“Go where? There’s nothing out here.” Dressed in faded jeans and the Ironman tee his father had given him for his birthday, Chance slumped in his seat. The paddles jutted toward the sky.
“Man, I can’t believe I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with my mom. And I can’t even go swimming.”
Sunbeams bursting through gray clouds glittered on the choppy water. I glanced around the shallow, natural lake located in the extreme nowhereness of coastal North Carolina. A place so desolate, most of the people I knew back in Winston-Salem had never heard of it.
I checked the handheld GPS I’d purchased for the act of desperation. “Just a few more feet. Help me paddle.”
Chance bloated his cheeks and gave one of the numerous huffs I’d heard over the past few months, but the oars splashed into the water and the boat glided several feet. After a mighty heave on my part, we reached the spot.
“Here, stop.” Using one paddle to maintain our position, I glanced over the side. Though black in color like most of the creeks and rivers cutting swathes along the coast, the acidic water was somehow clear, allowing us to see the sandy lake bed below. “Let’s sit here a minute.”
Chance threw his paddles into the bottom of the boat. As he exuded an anger that had become the norm after his father moved out, I pictured the happy boy he once had been. As I waited—prayed—for the water to still, I fought the silent reminders of mistakes I’d made as a parent and my failures in helping my troubled son and his grades. Just when tears threatened to spill from my eyes, mixing their salt with the freshwater rippling below, I pointed to an object protruding from the sand at the bottom of the lake. “There, Chance. Look.”
He leaned over the side, rocking the boat. I grabbed his shirt and tilted in the opposite direction to create a balance I couldn’t achieve at home.
Chance peeked over his shoulder. “Wow, Mom. It’s a log. We came all the way here to see a log. Can we go home now?”
Eternal Weight of Glory And Other Short Stories Page 4