Chapter 55

Saturday morning Willow awoke to sun streaming through her windows and a few inches of snow on the ground.  Wrapped in her favorite robe and feet swaddled in wooly warmness, she stood at the window and enjoyed the beauty of fields of snow.  The dusting over the tree branches gave the farm the feel of fairyland and she sighed contentedly at the sight.

Willow loved snow in the fields and hated it in the yard.  What looked like a white blanked of cotton over fields looked like a slushy mess after a few tramps to the barn, chickens, and back again.  The first day of snow was always a treat in the Finley home.  On that day, they ignored the extra work, extra mess, and concentrated on the beauty because the rest of winter would demand they pay attention to it.  They made snow ice cream, drank hot chocolate, ate chicken soup, and huddled next to the stove reading, knitting, or daydreaming.

The clock struck seven.  If she didn’t get a move-on, the day would be gone before she could relax and enjoy it!  Willow pulled on her favorite jeans, t-shirt, and chamois flannel blouse.  As she hurried downstairs, her fingers expertly braided her hair into a long French braid.  By the backdoor, her boots and over boots sat ready for wear.

By the time she left the kitchen, the stove was crackling, the tea kettle warming, a bowl of dry oats waited for the kettle and a Dutch oven of water sat waiting for heat to do its job.  Outside, Saige barked her welcome and rolled playfully in the snow.  Ice containers waited for a trip downstairs to the ice cellar.  She shivered in the brisk air but knew that with a few minutes work, she’d warm up enough to shed a coat if she wore one.

Grabbing the snow shovel from the barn wall, Willow cleared a strip from the chicken yard and threw open the door.  The huge thermometer on the side of the coop read twenty-six degrees.  “Kind of cold ladies but there’s some bare dirt out there if you want to run around-” The birds were out of their coop before she could say cold.  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you-”

In the barn, she spread a fresh layer of straw in the stalls opposite the inhabited ones and moved the animals across the aisle.  Water, hay, a little grain for the cow and the barn animals were all set.

Willow grabbed a chicken, container of soup, and packet of dog meat from the freezer, poured some milk in the cat pans and glanced around the barn with one final look.  She hadn’t seen the barn cats for a week or two but they’d be waiting for milk again now that it was cooler.  A mouse scurried from one hay bale to the next.  “They’d better catch that thing or I’m cutting off their room and board,” she muttered as she slid the upper barn window open and then shut the door.

In the house, she poured water from the teakettle into her cup and added her tea ball.  Barely covering the oats with boiling water, she set a plate on top and retrieved a jar of peaches from the pantry.  Willow scooped several sliced of peaches onto the plate, replaced the jar lid, and stowed the jar in the icebox.  It needed more ice.

Her chicken in the pot, oats down the hatch, and kitchen cleaned up and looking spiffy, Willow shrugged off her flannel shirt and boots, slipped back on her slippers, and sighed.  It was a beautiful day.  By nine o’clock, she was curled on the chaise reading Alexa Hartfield’s book and sipping tea.

Her eyes closed and she listened to the sounds of her house.  The fire crackled in the stove, Saige barked outside and as she opened her eyes to read once more, she heard the gentle shushing of the page as she turned it.  There was no laughter, no thumping up and down the stairs, no one calling for mom to help with this or that, or good-natured protests of unfair treatment.  There was no furnace to make a strange clicking noise just before the whoosh of warm air shot through the vents.  No sirens wailed; no car doors thumped; all was quiet in her world.

Just after noon, she stretched as she stood to heat her stew and noticed the mail truck at the end of the lane.  Grabbing her keys, her flannel shirt, and a thick sweater, Willow pulled on her boots and stepped outside.  “Want to grab the mail with me Saige?”

Willow rarely got the mail.  Sometimes weeks went by without a single letter or catalog but if they saw the truck stop, the Finley women would take a break in their day and walk to the mailbox to see what might be in it.  Down the lane she walked, Saige dashing in circles, racing ahead of her and then zipping back to urge her onward.  She pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked the box.  She remembered the day her mother returned from the mailbox with Coke drenched, ant covered mail.  She’d spent the next three days building the concrete enshrouded mailbox.   Designed with a cut away bottom, mail dropped from the ‘door’ into the concrete tomb below.  The mailman had a key to the flap door and the Finley women had a separate key to the locked door on the back of the mail monstrosity.  But it worked, and it was normal to Willow now.

Two letters and a new catalog from Hancock’s of Paducah- it was a good day.  The name on the return address of one of the letters made her heart race and she hurried home to read it.  The other letter looked like a bill of some sort. 

Seated on the couch with the light streaming in from the window, Willow opened the letter from David and Carol Finley.

Dear Willow,

As Thanksgiving nears, I find myself thinking of you all alone in that large house and wondering how you are doing.  Do you have Thanksgiving traditions or plans?  How did Kari celebrate holidays with you and now that she isn’t with you, what will you do?
These are thoughts that fill my mind as I make shopping lists.  I smiled when I wrote down marshmallow crème.  Oh how your mother hated sweet potato casserole.  I’ll buy a yam and bake it for her as I always do.  I’ve done that for twenty-four Thanksgivings now.  No one eats it; they don’t like it.  I just can’t bring myself not to bake it for her and this year, I guess I’ll bake it for you because now there’s no hope that she’ll ever walk through that door and tell us the nightmare is over.

How I want to invite you to spend a few days with us and yet your grandfather and I aren’t ready for it.  I hope you can understand that.  We steeled our hearts to the pain of losing Kari and some of that steel bars us from you but we want to unlock those doors.  We just don’t know how yet.

We saw your interview in the newspaper.  I was surprised at how freely you discussed the circumstances of your birth and Kari’s disappearance.  It has opened a floodgate of questions for us that we weren’t prepared to handle.  I don’t say this as a means of reproach but as a request.  Please leave us out of anything like that in the future.  We don’t care to relive those times but our media gossip driven culture doesn’t respect that.

Do you ever come into the city?  Perhaps we could meet at one of those quiet little tea rooms and talk- neutral ground with no pressure.  I would like that.  I have a granddaughter that I don’t know and that grieves me. 

You have cousins you know.  Kyle has three children.  Jonathan is just a year younger than you- twenty-three.  Peter is nineteen, and Bethel Anne is fifteen.  Your Uncle Kyle and Aunt Sheryl live in Hillsdale where Kyle is a loan manager for the bank.  When Bethel Anne started middle school, Cheryl took a few refresher classes and went back to work at the hospital as an RN in the oncology department.

This letter is already longer than I intended.  I find that when I start writing, I have a hard time stopping.  Kari used to be that way.  I have a shelf of journals and diaries from age six to age twenty and every letter she wrote home from camp.  I can’t tell you how much those have comforted me over the years.

I pray for you Willow.  I hope you know the Lord, and how precious you are to Him.

Grandma

 

Tears splashed on the letter before Willow realized she was crying.  Again.  How tired she was of her unpredictable emotional state!  It was a good letter.  Honest.  It didn’t offer or expect more of her than was reasonable.  After a second reading, she laid it aside.  Chad would like to see it.

The bill she expected to be for her leg.  Now and then, a bill for some medical personnel that she couldn’t remember and didn’t care about would arrive and she forwarded them all to Bill happily.  However, this time, it wasn’t a bill.  A check fell from the folds of a letter as she opened it.  Made out in her name in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand dollars, the cashier’s check was signed by Steven J. Solari.  She read the letter suspiciously.

 

Willow Anne Finley,

An interesting article came across my desk recently.  Upon verification of a few simple facts, I have proven to my satisfaction that you are my granddaughter.

Had I any idea of your existence all of these years, I would have, of course, contributed financially and supportively to your upbringing.  While I cannot undo the past, I can try to make up for it by aiding your future.  You will find a check enclosed.  They claim it costs 150,000-200,000 to raise a child from birth to eighteen but college adds a significant amount to that and I have allowed for that as well.

I know what you must think of my son.  You can’t possibly think anything that I already haven’t.  He was a severe disappointment to both his mother and I.  Now that he is gone, we are alone, growing older every year, and finding it lonely without our son or the children he could have had.

I know I should not hope that you’d consider meeting with us at some point but I do.  My numbers are on the card I’ve enclosed.  Please call any time.  I haven’t told my wife about you.  She’d be crushed if she knew she had a grandchild and then you chose not to let her be a part of your life.  I cannot do that to her.  Whatever you may think of us, I am not my son, and my wife is a kind gentle woman.

Sincerely,

Steve Solari

 

Willow’s first inclination was to throw check and letter into the fire.  Her hands felt soiled having touched them.  A cold sweat sent shivers down her spine but Willow refused to allow herself to be controlled by her emotions.  She carefully folded both letters and returned them to their envelopes.   In the kitchen, she slipped them between the salt and peppershakers and grabbed the strainer, stockpot, and carried the Dutch oven to the sink.  Time to make soup and eat lunch.  She’d handle emotions later.

***

Chad found her sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by a fabric catalog, paper, pen, and a couple of letters- in shock.  “Willow?”

“I can’t believe it.  I just can’t believe it!”

“What!” 

With a dejected gesture, she waved her hand at the mess on the table and dropped her head on her arms.  Chad picked up the letters and read them.  The letter from the Finleys while lacking in the warmth and urging he hoped they’d show, encouraged him.  Perhaps Willow was on her way to being a part of her family.  However, at the sight of the check and the letter from Steven Solari, Chad’s blood pressure reached dangerous levels.

“What an absolutely inexcusable-”

“I know!  How could I have done something so stupid!”

“Aww Willow, it’s not your fault.  You didn’t tell that reporter anything-”

Her shocked face stopped him.  “Reporter?  What are you talking about?”

“Solari’s letter.  His contacting you is unconscionable.”

“Oh that,” she dismissed.  “I’m still processing those.”

“Well,” Chad tried again, “If that’s not the problem, what is?”

“I was so upset about it all that I went through my fabric catalog, wrote down every piece of fabric I liked and bought them all!”

“This is bad why?” 

Willow’s shocked face searched his for signs of intelligent life behind Chad’s eyes.  “Let me rephrase then.  I just spent over three hundred dollars on fabric that I don’t need just because I didn’t want to think about the implications of those letters.”  As he opened his mouth to reply, she added quickly, “And I called to place my order!  We don’t do that!”

Despite a heroic attempt to suppress them, chuckles followed her horrified ejaculation.  “So she is a normal woman after all!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s common knowledge, Willow, that a significant portion of American women deal with stress by their favorite sport- shopping.”

Her amazement was evident.  “What am I going to do with three hundred dollars worth of fabric?  I don’t need any clothes for ages yet!”

“Make them for someone else.  Make clothes for Aggie’s children or for Christmas presents, or make quilts or whatever else you can do that you do but you never let yourself do that you wanna do…”

“But three hundred-”

Chad picked up the Solari’s check.  “Well, you could always cash this…”

“That is just- it’s just- just not funny.”

Changing the subject, Chad made a show of sniffing the air.  “Do I smell chicken soup?”

“Yeah.  I almost forgot to add the vegetables.”

“Is that bread?” 

She tossed him the potholders.  “Here.  It’s probably done.”

He’d underestimated the effect her mini shopping spree had on her  Silently he pulled the bread from the oven, ladled soup from the Dutch oven, sliced and buttered the bread, and cleared the table for dinner.  As he worked, he saw some of what his father had warned him.  His natural inclination was to wrap an arm around her shoulders and reassure her but now-

Impatiently he brushed aside his new misgivings.  He’d take it to the Lord later but right now, she needed a bit of strength that she couldn’t manufacture for herself and subconsciously, she was probably expecting it.  As he placed her bowl in front of her, he sat on his heels at her side and draped an arm around her shoulders.  He waited for her to meet his gaze and then smiled into her eyes.

“It’s ok Willow.  You can afford an occasional extravagance.  Be thankful that it won’t mean not eating for a month and let it go.  Now you know you’re just as vulnerable as the next person and you’ll be prepared.”

As she took a bite of her soup, she grinned back at him.  “Maybe I should be stupid more often.  This is nice.  I wasted my day moping about those letters.  My snow day was a bust.”

“It’ll snow again.”

“But it won’t be the first snow.”

Chad remembered an entry from Kari’s journals about snow days.  “Oh, I think you can just pretend like this one didn’t happen.  You weren’t even home when it started snowing so you really should wait for one where it’s actually snowing.”

“That’s cheating!”

“Not,” he hedged, “When you make the rules.”

***

That night, in his apartment, Chad prayed.  For what seemed like hours, he poured out his heart to the Lord regarding his own life, Willow’s life, and whatever their relationship was.  His father was right.  He saw her as another little sister to pester, protect, and occasionally pamper.  He treated her much as he had Cheri when she’d returned from what he called, ‘the pit.’

Something, however, wasn’t right in his spirit.  He knew his father’s cautions had unsettled him on another level.  He bared his soul to the Lord and took a peek at himself wondering why the idea of Willow marrying was so distasteful to him but found no answers.  He didn’t love her.  Well, not as he saw his father loved his mother.  So many confusing thoughts whirled through his mind but always returned to the same question.  What would happen if Willow did marry?  The idea that once would have sent him clicking his heels for joy as he escaped the confines of a friendship he hadn’t sought, now filled him with dread that life could change so drastically.

He flipped open his phone.  As he waited for Luke to answer, Chad grabbed the last Coke from his fridge and settled into the corner of his couch with his free hand massaging his temples.  “Hey Luke.  Got a few?”

“Couch is open.  Will this be cash or credit?”

“How’s my tab?”

“Staggering but I’ll let it slide,” Luke agreed with mock reluctance.”

“You have the gift of giving.”

“But not the gift of gab so why don’t you do the talking?”

Luke had a fairly good idea what Chad’s problem was.  He’d watched the interchange between Chad and Willow and the reaction of his aunt and uncle.  Things were getting interesting at the very least.

“Of course, it’s Willow again.  You were right to send me back here and I thank you.”  Chad waited for Luke’s response but then smiled as he realized if he waited, his minutes would be flying off his phone.  “Dad thinks I need to be there for her as well but-” He sighed.  This seemed so logical when he was thinking to himself but aloud it sounded strange.

For ten minutes, Chad shared the conversation he’d had with his father and then with the Lord. He told Luke about his misgivings at the idea of Willow marrying and that the longer time went on, the more convinced he was that perhaps he shouldn’t marry.  “That’d take care of one of us anyway.  Maybe if I was just upfront with her.  Would it sound weird to tell her, ‘Look, you’re like my other little sister and I want to keep treating you like that but if you ever get married, I’m probably going to have to change how I show it’?”

Again, silence reigned.  Each minute that passed sounded like a cash register’s ‘cha-ching’ in his ear.  Finally, Luke answered.  “I understand Uncle Christopher’s concerns and I think they are valid.  I also see your point and yes, that’d probably work but before you say anything or change anything in your relationship…”

Chad waited again.  He waited.  And waited.  “Yes?”

“I think there is something else you could consider.  It’d solve both the problem of how you respond to Willow when she marries and how you respond to the fact of her marriage.”

“That’s why I pay you the big bucks.”

“Well actually-”

“Now, now, don’t get all wrapped up in the details, just give me your solution oh wise Swami of mine,” Chad teased as he relaxed sinking into the couch again and feeling like life was all right again.  As a child, he’d always felt that if mom or dad couldn’t solve a problem it was ok.  That’s what God made Luke for- his own personal problem solver.

“Marry her yourself Chad.”

“Oh not you too!”

A pregnant pause passed before Luke continued.  “I’m not talking about heart throbs and romance although I recommend them highly…”  Luke cleared his throat.  “I just think that a good friendship like yours is a good enough reason to marry.”

“Marry so that no one else can. Somehow that doesn’t sound very ‘giving myself up for my wife’ kind of thing.”

Luke tried again, pausing often to reconsider his words and choose them carefully for best impact.  “Chad, you love Willow.  You love her in the most important way for a husband to love his wife.  You serve her.  You ‘agapae’ her.  This is exactly what she needs.  That is giving yourself up for her and you do it daily.  You’ve done it since the first day you drove away from her farm, to Ferndale, and bought that cell phone so she wasn’t alone and unable to get help if she needed it.  You didn’t want to go but you did.”

He took a deep breath.  This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear and Chad wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anymore.  “And ten years down the road when she meets the man she should have married- the man who can love her both as a servant husband and as Solomon, she’ll resent me for removing the chance for her to have the kind of marriage she should have dreamed about her whole life.”

Luke’s quiet calm voice came across the line and touched Chad’s heart in a way it had never before been affected.  “Chad, once she marries you- or anyone else for that matter- there is no ‘man she should have married’ down the road.  And, perhaps the reason she hasn’t dreamed of the perfect romantic ‘happily ever after’ fairytale is because the Lord was preparing her for a life with a stodgy old guy named Chad.”  He paused.  “I’ll send a bill next week.  Night-”

“Wait, there’s something else.”

“Now what?”

Knowing he was setting himself up for major teasing, Chad forged onward bravely.  “I got Willow’s Christmas present in the mail today and there’s a problem.”

“What is that?”

“It’s not assembled.”

Laughter rang out across the airwaves and taunted Chad as Luke retorted, “Then assemble it man.”

“It’s wood.”

“That was low.  Wood as in raw wood, wood as in screw together wood, or wood as in, stain it and go?”

Chad grinned.  He had Luke interested.  He needed that advantage before he confessed his goof.  “Well, kind of all three minus the screws but add the glue.”

“What is it?”

“A dulcimer kit?”

Sighing, Luke replied sarcastically.  “Why do you sound like that’s a question and you don’t know.”

“Because I’m waiting to be bashed over the head with it.”

“Why did you buy a kit?  You always hated models.”

“I didn’t know I did.  I went back to the website after I bought it and in tiny print it says, ‘not assembled.’  Apparently that means it’s a kit rather than you need to string it and pop the pegs in and you’re ready to go.”

Luke’s response was disheartening.  “You’d better get to work.  It’s just barely a month away-”

“Will you help me?”

“Will you take Leith home while Aggie and I are off wherever we end up going after the wedding?”

Chad grinned.  A week with a teenaged boy and no women to complain about what they ate.  This would be fun.  “Of course!  That’ll be great.  What are you doing with the other kids?”

“Well, I don’t know.  I’m trying to find a way to send a few here and there so that it’s not too much work for any one person.  Mom’ll keep whoever is left but I don’t want to over work her and I want to be gone for a couple of weeks so-”

“What about Willow?  Think Aggie would let them go to Willow’s farm?  I think they’d have fun.”

“I’ll get back to you on that.  On a scale of one to ten, what do you think she’d say to a request like that?”  Luke held his breath expectantly.

“Nine point five at the lowest.”

“I’ll stop by sometime this week and look at your mess- er gift.”

“Will I ever be out of debt Luke?”

“Start praying.  If Aggie says yes and Willow agrees, we’ll call you paid in full.”

“Yes!”

Chapter 55- Part 2

***

Chad found her sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by a fabric catalog, paper, pen, and a couple of letters- in shock.  “Willow?”

“I can’t believe it.  I just can’t believe it!”

“What!” 

With a dejected gesture, she waved her hand at the mess on the table and dropped her head on her arms.  Chad picked up the letters and read them.  The letter from the Finleys while lacking in the warmth and urging he hoped they’d show, encouraged him.  Perhaps Willow was on her way to being a part of her family.  However, at the sight of the check and the letter from Steven Solari, Chad’s blood pressure reached dangerous levels.

“What an absolutely inexcusable-”

“I know!  How could I have done something so stupid!”

“Aww Willow, it’s not your fault.  You didn’t tell that reporter anything-”

Her shocked face stopped him.  “Reporter?  What are you talking about?”

“Solari’s letter.  His contacting you is unconscionable.”

“Oh that,” she dismissed.  “I’m still processing those.”

“Well,” Chad tried again, “If that’s not the problem, what is?”

“I was so upset about it all that I went through my fabric catalog, wrote down every piece of fabric I liked and bought them all!”

“This is bad why?” 

Willow’s shocked face searched his for signs of intelligent life behind Chad’s eyes.  “Let me rephrase then.  I just spent over three hundred dollars on fabric that I don’t need just because I didn’t want to think about the implications of those letters.”  As he opened his mouth to reply, she added quickly, “And I called to place my order!  We don’t do that!”

Despite a heroic attempt to suppress them, chuckles followed her horrified ejaculation.  “So she is a normal woman after all!”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s common knowledge, Willow, that a significant portion of American women deal with stress by their favorite sport- shopping.”

Her amazement was evident.  “What am I going to do with three hundred dollars worth of fabric?  I don’t need any clothes for ages yet!”

“Make them for someone else.  Make clothes for Aggie’s children or for Christmas presents, or make quilts or whatever else you can do that you do but you never let yourself do that you wanna do…”

“But three hundred-”

Chad picked up the Solari’s check.  “Well, you could always cash this…”

“That is just- it’s just- just not funny.”

Changing the subject, Chad made a show of sniffing the air.  “Do I smell chicken soup?”

“Yeah.  I almost forgot to add the vegetables.”

“Is that bread?” 

She tossed him the potholders.  “Here.  It’s probably done.”

He’d underestimated the effect her mini shopping spree had on her  Silently he pulled the bread from the oven, ladled soup from the Dutch oven, sliced and buttered the bread, and cleared the table for dinner.  As he worked, he saw some of what his father had warned him.  His natural inclination was to wrap an arm around her shoulders and reassure her but now-

Impatiently he brushed aside his new misgivings.  He’d take it to the Lord later but right now, she needed a bit of strength that she couldn’t manufacture for herself and subconsciously, she was probably expecting it.  As he placed her bowl in front of her, he sat on his heels at her side and draped an arm around her shoulders.  He waited for her to meet his gaze and then smiled into her eyes.

“It’s ok Willow.  You can afford an occasional extravagance.  Be thankful that it won’t mean not eating for a month and let it go.  Now you know you’re just as vulnerable as the next person and you’ll be prepared.”

As she took a bite of her soup, she grinned back at him.  “Maybe I should be stupid more often.  This is nice.  I wasted my day moping about those letters.  My snow day was a bust.”

“It’ll snow again.”

“But it won’t be the first snow.”

Chad remembered an entry from Kari’s journals about snow days.  “Oh, I think you can just pretend like this one didn’t happen.  You weren’t even home when it started snowing so you really should wait for one where it’s actually snowing.”

“That’s cheating!”

“Not,” he hedged, “If you make the rules.”

***

That night, in his apartment, Chad prayed.  For what seemed like hours, he poured out his heart to the Lord regarding his own life, Willow’s life, and whatever their relationship was.  His father was right.  He saw her as another little sister to pester, protect, and occasionally pamper.  He treated her much as he had Cheri when she’d returned from what he called, ‘the pit.’

Something, however, wasn’t right in his spirit.  He knew his father’s cautions had unsettled him on another level.  He bared his soul to the Lord and took a peek at himself wondering why the idea of Willow marrying was so distasteful to him but found no answers.  He didn’t love her.  Well, not as he saw his father loved his mother.  So many confusing thoughts whirled through his mind but always returned to the same question.  What would happen if Willow did marry?  The idea that once would have sent him clicking his heels for joy as he escaped the confines of a friendship he hadn’t sought, now filled him with dread that life could change so drastically.

He flipped open his phone.  As he waited for Luke to answer, Chad grabbed the last Coke from his fridge and settled into the corner of his couch with his free hand massaging his temples.  “Hey Luke.  Got a few?”

“Couch is open.  Will this be cash or credit?”

“How’s my tab?”

“Staggering but I’ll let it slide,” Luke agreed with mock reluctance.”

“You have the gift of giving.”

“But not the gift of gab so why don’t you do the talking?”

Luke had a fairly good idea what Chad’s problem was.  He’d watched the interchange between Chad and Willow and the reaction of his aunt and uncle.  Things were getting interesting at the very least.

“Of course, it’s Willow again.  You were right to send me back here and I thank you.”  Chad waited for Luke’s response but then smiled as he realized if he waited, his minutes would be flying off his phone.  “Dad thinks I need to be there for her as well but-” He sighed.  This seemed so logical when he was thinking to himself but aloud it sounded strange.

For ten minutes, Chad shared the conversation he’d had with his father and then with the Lord. He told Luke about his misgivings at the idea of Willow marrying and that the longer time went on, the more convinced he was that perhaps he shouldn’t marry.  “That’d take care of one of us anyway.  Maybe if I was just upfront with her.  Would it sound weird to tell her, ‘Look, you’re like my other little sister and I want to keep treating you like that but if you ever get married, I’m probably going to have to change how I show it’?”

Again, silence reigned.  Each minute that passed sounded like a cash register’s ‘cha-ching’ in his ear.  Finally, Luke answered.  “I understand Uncle Christopher’s concerns and I think they are valid.  I also see your point and yes, that’d probably work but before you say anything or change anything in your relationship…”

Chad waited again.  He waited.  And waited.  “Yes?”

“I think there is something else you could consider.  It’d solve both the problem of how you respond to Willow when she marries and how you respond to the fact of her marriage.”

“That’s why I pay you the big bucks.”

“Well actually-”

“Now, now, don’t get all wrapped up in the details, just give me your solution oh wise Swami of mine,” Chad teased as he relaxed sinking into the couch again and feeling like life was all right again.  As a child, he’d always felt that if mom or dad couldn’t solve a problem it was ok.  That’s what God made Luke for- his own personal problem solver.

“Marry her yourself Chad.”

“Oh not you too!”

A pregnant pause passed before Luke continued.  “I’m not talking about heart throbs and romance although I recommend them highly…”  Luke cleared his throat.  “I just think that a good friendship like yours is a good enough reason to marry.”

“Marry so that no one else can. Somehow that doesn’t sound very ‘giving myself up for my wife’ kind of thing.”

Luke tried again, pausing often to reconsider his words and choose them carefully for best impact.  “Chad, you love Willow.  You love her in the most important way for a husband to love his wife.  You serve her.  You ‘agapae’ her.  This is exactly what she needs.  That is giving yourself up for her and you do it daily.  You’ve done it since the first day you drove away from her farm, to Ferndale, and bought that cell phone so she wasn’t alone and unable to get help if she needed it.  You didn’t want to go but you did.”

He took a deep breath.  This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear and Chad wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anymore.  “And ten years down the road when she meets the man she should have married- the man who can love her both as a servant husband and as Solomon, she’ll resent me for removing the chance for her to have the kind of marriage she should have dreamed about her whole life.”

Luke’s quiet calm voice came across the line and touched Chad’s heart in a way it had never before been affected.  “Chad, once she marries you- or anyone else for that matter- there is no ‘man she should have married’ down the road.  And, perhaps the reason she hasn’t dreamed of the perfect romantic ‘happily ever after’ fairytale is because the Lord was preparing her for a life with a stodgy old guy named Chad.”  He paused.  “I’ll send a bill next week.  Night-”

“Wait, there’s something else.”

“Now what?”

Knowing he was setting himself up for major teasing, Chad forged onward bravely.  “I got Willow’s Christmas present in the mail today and there’s a problem.”

“What is that?”

“It’s not assembled.”

Laughter rang out across the airwaves and taunted Chad as Luke retorted, “Then assemble it man.”

“It’s wood.”

“That was low.  Wood as in raw wood, wood as in screw together wood, or wood as in, stain it and go?”

Chad grinned.  He had Luke interested.  He needed that advantage before he confessed his goof.  “Well, kind of all three minus the screws but add the glue.”

“What is it?”

“A dulcimer kit?”

Sighing, Luke replied sarcastically.  “Why do you sound like that’s a question and you don’t know.”

“Because I’m waiting to be bashed over the head with it.”

“Why did you buy a kit?  You always hated models.”

“I didn’t know I did.  I went back to the website after I bought it and in tiny print it says, ‘not assembled.’  Apparently that means it’s a kit rather than you need to string it and pop the pegs in and you’re ready to go.”

Luke’s response was disheartening.  “You’d better get to work.  It’s just barely a month away-”

“Will you help me?”

“Will you take Leith home while Aggie and I are off wherever we end up going after the wedding?”

Chad grinned.  A week with a teenaged boy and no women to complain about what they ate.  This would be fun.  “Of course!  That’ll be great.  What are you doing with the other kids?”

“Well, I don’t know.  I’m trying to find a way to send a few here and there so that it’s not too much work for any one person.  Mom’ll keep whoever is left but I don’t want to over work her and I want to be gone for a couple of weeks so-”

“What about Willow?  Think Aggie would let them go to Willow’s farm?  I think they’d have fun.”

“I’ll get back to you on that.  On a scale of one to ten, what do you think she’d say to a request like that?”  Luke held his breath expectantly.

“Nine point five at the lowest.”

“I’ll stop by sometime this week and look at your mess- er gift.”

“Will I ever be out of debt Luke?”

“Start praying.  If Aggie says yes and Willow agrees, we’ll call you paid in full.”

“Yes!”

Chapter 55- Part 1

Saturday morning Willow awoke to sun streaming through her windows and a few inches of snow on the ground.  Wrapped in her favorite robe and feet swaddled in wooly warmness, she stood at the window and enjoyed the beauty of fields of snow.  The dusting over the tree branches gave the farm the feel of fairyland and she sighed contentedly at the sight.

Willow loved snow in the fields and hated it in the yard.  What looked like a white blanked of cotton over fields looked like a slushy mess after a few tramps to the barn, chickens, and back.  The first day of snow was always a treat in the Finley home.  On that day they ignored the extra work, extra mess, and concentrated on the beauty because the rest of winter would demand they pay attention to it.  They made snow ice cream, drank hot chocolate, ate chicken soup, and huddled next to the stove reading, knitting, or daydreaming.

The clock struck seven.  If she didn’t get a move-on, the day would be gone before she could relax and enjoy it!  Willow pulled on her favorite jeans, t-shirt, and chamois flannel blouse.  As she hurried downstairs, her fingers expertly braided her hair into a long French braid.  By the backdoor, her boots and over boots sat ready for wear.

By the time she left the kitchen, the stove was crackling, the tea kettle warming, a bowl of dry oats waited for the kettle and a Dutch oven of water sat waiting for heat to do its job.  Outside, Saige barked her welcome and rolled playfully in the snow.  Ice containers waited for a trip downstairs to the ice cellar.  She shivered in the brisk air but knew that with a few minutes work, she’d warm up enough to shed a coat if she wore one.

Grabbing the snow shovel from the barn wall, Willow cleared a strip from the chicken yard and threw open the door.  The huge thermometer on the side of the coop read twenty-six degrees.  “Kind of cold ladies but there’s some bare dirt out there if you want to run around-” The birds were out of their coop before she could say cold.  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you-”

In the barn, she spread a fresh layer of straw in the stalls opposite the inhabited ones and moved the animals across the aisle.  Water, hay, a little grain for the cow and the barn animals were all set.

Willow grabbed a chicken, container of soup, and packet of dog meat from the freezer, poured some milk in the cat pans and glanced around the barn with one final look.  She hadn’t seen the barn cats for a week or two but they’d be waiting for milk again now that it was cooler.  A mouse scurried from one hay bale to the next.  “They’d better catch that thing or I’m cutting off their room and board,” she muttered as she slid the upper barn window open and then shut the door.

In the house, she poured water from the tea kettle into her cup and added her tea ball.  Barely covering the oats with boiling water, she set a plate on top and retrieved a jar of peaches from the pantry.  Willow scooped several sliced of peaches onto the plate, replaced the jar lid, and stowed the jar in the icebox.  It needed more ice.

Her chicken in the pot, oats down the hatch, and kitchen cleaned up and looking spiffy, Willow shrugged off her flannel shirt and boots, slipped back on her slippers, and sighed.  It was a beautiful day.  By nine o’clock, she was curled on the chaise reading Alexa Hartfield’s book and sipping tea.

Her eyes closed and she listened to the sounds of her house.  The fire crackled in the stove, Saige barked outside and as she opened her eyes to read once more, she heard the gentle shushing of the page as she turned it.  There was no laughter, no thumping up and down the stairs, no one calling for mom to help with this or that, or good-natured protests of unfair treatment.  There was no furnace to make a strange clicking noise just before the whoosh of warm air shot through the vents.  No sirens wailed; no car doors thumped; all was quiet in her world.

Just after noon, she stretched as she stood to heat her stew and noticed the mail truck at the end of the lane.  Grabbing her keys, her flannel shirt, and a thick sweater, Willow pulled on her boots and stepped outside.  “Want to grab the mail with me Saige?”

Willow rarely got the mail.  Sometimes weeks went by without a single letter or catalog but if they saw the truck stop, the Finley women would take a break in their day and walk o the mailbox to see what might be in it.  Down the lane she walked, Saige dashing in circles, racing ahead of her and then zipping back to urge her onward.  She pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked the box.  She remembered the day her mother returned from the mailbox with Coke drenched, ant covered mail.  She’d spent the next three days building the concrete enshrouded mailbox.   Designed with a cut away bottom, mail dropped from the ‘door’ into the concrete tomb below.  The mailman had a key to the flap door and the Finley women had a separate key to the locked door on the back of the mail monstrosity.  But it worked, and it was normal to Willow now.

Two letters and a new catalog from Hancock’s of Paducah- it was a good day.  The name on the return address of one of the letters made her heart race and she hurried home to read it.  The other letter looked like a bill of some sort. 

Seated on the couch with the light streaming in from the window, Willow opened the letter from David and Carol Finley.

Dear Willow,

As Thanksgiving nears, I find myself thinking of you all alone in that large house and wondering how you are doing.  Do you have Thanksgiving traditions or plans?  How did Kari celebrate holidays with you, and now that she isn’t with you, what will you do?
These are thoughts that fill my mind as I make shopping lists.  I smiled when I wrote down marshmallow crème.  Oh how your mother hated sweet potato casserole.  I bought a yam for her and baked it as I always did.  I’ve done that for twenty-four Thanksgivings now.  No one eats it; they don’t like it.  I just can’t bring myself not to bake it for her and this year, I guess I baked it for you because now there’s no hope that she’ll ever walk through that door and tell us the nightmare is over.

How I want to invite you to spend a few days with us and yet your grandfather and I aren’t ready for it.  I hope you can understand that.  We steeled our hearts to the pain of losing Kari and some of that steel bars us from you but we want to unlock those doors.  We just don’t know how yet.

We saw your interview in the newspaper.  I was surprised at how freely you discussed the circumstances of your birth and Kari’s disappearance.  It has opened a floodgate of questions for us that we weren’t prepared to handle.  I don’t say this as a means of reproach but as a request.  Please leave us out of anything like that in the future.  We don’t care to relive those times but our media gossip driven culture doesn’t respect that.

Do you ever come into the city?  Perhaps we could meet at one of those quiet little tea rooms and talk- neutral ground with no pressure.  I would like that.  I have a granddaughter that I don’t know and that grieves me. 

You have cousins you know.  Kyle has three children.  Jonathan is just a year younger than you- twenty-three.  Peter is nineteen, and Bethel Anne is fifteen.  Your Uncle Kyle and Aunt Sheryl live in Hillsdale where Kyle is a loan manager for the bank.  When Bethel Anne started middle school, Cheryl took a few refresher classes and went back to work at the hospital as an RN in the oncology department.

This letter is already longer than I intended.  I find that when I start writing, I have a hard time stopping.  Kari used to be that way.  I have a shelf of journals and diaries from age six to age twenty and every letter she wrote home from camp.  I can’t tell you how much those have comforted me over the years.

I pray for you Willow.  I hope you know the Lord, and how precious you are to Him.

Grandma

 

Tears splashed on the letter before Willow realized she was crying.  Again.  How tired she was of her unpredictable emotional state!  It was a good letter.  Honest.  It didn’t offer or expect more of her than was reasonable.  After a second reading, she laid it aside.  Chad would like to see it.

The bill she expected to be for her leg.  Now and then a bill for some medical personnel that she couldn’t remember and didn’t care about would arrive and she forwarded them all to Bill happily.  However, this time, it wasn’t a bill.  A check fell from the folds of a letter as she opened it.  Made out in her name in the amount of two hundred fifty thousand dollars, the cashier’s check was signed by Steven J. Solari.  She read the letter suspiciously.

 

Willow Anne Finley,

An interesting article came across my desk recently.  Upon verification of a few simple facts, I have proven to my satisfaction that you are my granddaughter.

Had I any idea of your existence all of these years, I would have, of course, contributed financially and supportively to your upbringing.  While I cannot undo the past, I can try to make up for it by aiding your future.  You will find a check enclosed.  They claim it costs 150,000-200,000 to raise a child from birth to eighteen but college adds a significant amount to that and I have allowed for that as well.

I know what you must think of my son.  You can’t possibly think anything that I already haven’t.  He was a severe disappointment to both his mother and I.  Now that he is gone, we are alone, growing older every year, and finding it lonely without our son or the children he could have had.

I know I should not hope that you’d consider meeting with us at some point but I do.  My numbers are on the card I’ve enclosed.  Please call any time.  I haven’t told my wife about you.  She’d be crushed if she knew she had a grandchild and then you chose not to let her be a part of your life.  I cannot do that to her.  Whatever you may think of us, I am not my son and my wife is a kind gentle woman.

Sincerely,

Steve Solari

 

Willow’s first inclination was to throw check and letter into the fire.  Her hands felt soiled having touched them.  A cold sweat sent shivers down her spine but Willow refused to allow herself to be controlled by her emotions.  She carefully folded both letters and returned them to their envelopes.   In the kitchen, she slipped them between the salt and peppershakers and grabbed the strainer, stockpot, and carried the Dutch oven to the sink.  Time to make soup and eat lunch.  She’d handle emotions later.

***