April 15 2004-

Another year, another tax return signed, sealed, and postmarked.  Bill is kind to indulge me by mailing it to me so I can mail it in with that postmark hand stamped by Fran Kraus herself.  I wonder if she knows that I know her name.  She sees me a handful of times a year. I quit going in the Post Office in December.  The first few years she asked about my Christmas cards and then she quit asking and just looked pityingly at me.  I chose to forgo it all.

I’ve been feeling guilty about Willow’s lack of education in the finance department.  If I was a better mother, I would help her learn it but she has such a good head on her shoulders. Her logic regarding how she values things is so sound that I hate to mess with it.  The monetary value she places on things has to do with their worth to her as an individual rather than their worth to society.  She’ll never be a slave to consumerism.  Why mess with that?

In my defense, I have tried to whet her interest.  When I order, I have her check my math so she is at least familiar with what I pay for things although honestly, I don’t think she notices or cares.  The not-so-little-anymore twerp sure finds my math errors though.  She can do such complex mathematical calculations in her head!  It’s been so long since I used a calculator, mine was dead when Bill Franklin needed it.

We’ve crossed the two million mark.  This is good.  This is very good.  I think she’ll be well provided for now.  I don’t know why, but I can never picture myself old here.  I still feel like the twenty year old that I was when I came.  Too old for my body and too young to know what I was doing.  I think part of me died that October.  That’s a lie.  Most of me died.  Part of me lived.

Libby Sullivan’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears.  “How very alone she was.”

“Willow is like that now. Not in the same way of course, she isn’t suffering from a festering wound that refuses to heal-”

“You’re talking like Kari now.”

Chad’s weak smile confused him.  “I know.  She’s influencing my thoughts, my actions, and even my dreams.”

Libby listened for some time and then spoke very slowly and distinctly.  “Chad, I don’t know exactly how important Willow is to you personally but there is something you should know.”

His mind still focused on the journal entry, Chad nodded absently.  “Mmm hmm.”

“Chad!”

His head sapped up sharply.  “What?”

“Did you hear me?”

“What?”

Nudging his foot with hers, Libby Sullivan tried again.  “I said, I don’t know how important Willow is to you right now but here is something you ought to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Willow doesn’t need the complications of romantic entanglements in her life right now.  She needs time to adjust to basic friendships first.  She’s never had that.”

“Aunt Libby, I’m not in- I mean I don’t care about- well, no that’s-”

“Chad,” she interrupted laughing.  “Take a deep breath.  I’m not going to dance around you at Thanksgiving and taunt ‘Chaddie’s got a gurl-friend’ like Cheri did that year when you were what, twelve?”

“Well, I was just taken aback.  Do you think I’ve given her the wrong impression?”

“Well honestly, I don’t know her well enough to be sure,” she began.  “But Willow doesn’t seem like someone desperate for romance.  She’s not likely to assume any more than you specifically state.  She seems very literal.”

Chad’s relief was visibly evident.  He was slowly growing to enjoy his new friendship but the idea of sending an inaccurate message bothered him.  He’d done that once in high school; he’d never make that mistake again if he could help it.

“Chaddie-my-Laddie?”

“Yes Aunt Libby Libby Libby Label.”

Her eyes narrowed.  “Don’t mock me my boy.”  She reached across the couch and grabbed Chad’s hand just as she had when he’d poured out his heart after speaking disrespectfully to his mother, after lying to his basketball coach, and when Linnea Burrell accused him of trifling with her affections.  “Willow isn’t Linnea.  You’ve been gun-shy of anyone with hair below the ears ever since.  Relax and enjoy your friendship.”

Chad took the journals, stood, and thanked Libby.  “I can’t wait for Luke any longer but tell him I stopped by.”

“Chad?”

“Yeah?”

Libby walked to her door her arm in her nephew’s and hugging him fiercely at the door, “Go talk to your father.  He’s a wise man.  He can help you.  Luke is a good man.  He’s my son and I love him.  But Chad, your father can give you something Luke can’t- experience.  Go talk to him.”

“Dad still feels rejected because I chose college and the academy.  I can’t seem to talk to him anymore.”

Libby let the screen close behind Chad before she suggested, “Go to his store.  Ask if you can talk to him in his office- on his turf. Let him see you seek him out.  He’ll listen and he’ll help you.”

***

“Mr. Tesdall, please come to register seven.  Mr. Tesdall, please come to register seven.  Thank you.”

Chad shuffled a few feet from the check stand and waited until his father appeared between the double doors at the back of the store.  When the renovations were finished, those doors would be more than vinyl flaps.  Christopher Tesdall saw his son standing at the front of the store and nearly panicked.

“Chad, is something wrong?”

“Do you have time to talk in your office Dad?”

Chad’s father had spent several years coming to terms with the gap between his children and himself.  While he’d encouraged and even pushed them all to go to college, get their degrees, and pursue their educational dreams, he felt isolated from them.  He’d worked hard; saved every penny he could manage, and spent hours trying to find every grant and scholarship applicable to his children.  Chad’s grades weren’t as high as Chris and Cheri so Christopher and Marianne had taken out a small home equity loan to cover what their savings couldn’t but Chad never knew.

Now, with his dream of degrees for all of his children nearly accomplished, he felt inferior to them.  Their debates over psychology and their campus experiences were foreign to him.  He’d never been in an environment where near indoctrination by unprincipled people tried to destroy his faith.  He felt ignorant, even backward at times.

In his store, his employees and bosses alike respected him.  He knew his job and he did it well.  He could predict food trends months in advance, the rise and fall of prices, and if a particular brand-trial would succeed or flop.  He managed seventy-five employees and their schedules.  Yet with all of these skills, he felt awkward around his children.

“Why?”  Christopher’s eyes were constantly roaming the store checking for slacking baggers, overly full lines, and any hint of untidiness.  He ran the cleanest store in the Rockland metro area and he was proud of that.

“Dad, I need your help,” Chad pleaded.

“Come on then,” Christopher agreed and then added defensively, “You’d think with the money I spent on your education, I’d be the one coming to you.”

The words felt like an axe to the heart.  Chad never understood why his father demanded his children excel academically and then complained that they did exactly what he asked.  “Well, I learned the law dad, but I’m not Chris.  I didn’t learn psychology.”

“You discuss it enough,” Chad’s father asserted as he pushed the door open to the office.

“I learned criminal psychology, Pop.  I don’t know much about the average Joe.  I just know how to peg ‘em when they quit being normal and slip into the warped.”

Chad’s instinctive use of the old name ‘Pop’ broke down a section of Christopher’s wall.  His son needed him.  “What’s up, son?”

“Did mom tell you about Willow?”

“The girl that lost her mother a while back?”  Christopher prayed his son hadn’t lost his senses and gotten a young woman pregnant.  Marianne thought Chad had finally found a nice girl but then Marianne thought that about every girl he ever spoke to or about these days.

“Yeah.  She’s- well she’s different dad.”

Marianne was right.  He had gotten soft on this one.  Hopefully, she wasn’t from some snooty family.  Maybe she could build a bridge where he’d failed.  “Your mother thought you were becoming, well, attracted to her.”

Christopher knew he was on the wrong track the second Chad’s fists dug into his pockets.  Even seated in a chair, the old habit held fast.  “Her too?”

“I take it your mom’s mistaken again.”

“That’s an understatement.  Willow is not looking for, and nor does she need, any romantic entanglements.”  Aunt Libby’s phrase came to his lips naturally.  How strange.

“So why are you here, son?”

Chad visibly relaxed.  That ’son’, tacked onto the end of his father’s sentence, was what had attracted him to Chief Varney.  He’d wanted a job in Brandt’s Corners or even Brunswick but when Chief Varney had wrapped up his job offer with, “Son, we’d love to have you in Fairbury,” that had cinched the deal for him.  Since he couldn’t start in Rockland, he’d go where someone reminded him of his father.

“Oh dad, I don’t know what to do with her.  She’s amazing.  Really, you should meet her.  I think you’d really like her.  She runs that little farm of theirs like it was breathing.”

“And this is a problem?”

He felt a little silly.  “Well Pop, she’s been isolated.  Severely.”  He paused.  The entire community of Fairbury and probably a significant portion of Brant’s corners and Brunswick as well as Ferndale all knew about Willow’s startling announcement late last spring.  “She only knew her mother.  No one else.”

“No family, huh?”

“Extensive family in Rockland and some in Chicago I think but, no, she didn’t know anyone.”

Leaning his arms on his desk and clasping his hands out in front of him, Christopher tried for a little clarification.  “Didn’t know how?”

“Dad, the only contact number we had to call was her financial advisor.”

“Poor little rich kid, huh?”  He was disappointed.  He’d had hopes-

“Well, yes and no.  She has millions but she doesn’t comprehend what that means.”

Understanding dawned.  The poor girl.  Her mother should have made better preparations than leaving it to an understaffed police force like Fairbury to take care of her child.  “How severe is it?”

“Is what?”

“Her mental condition.  Can she live there alone or-”

His laughter surprised his father.  “She’s not mentally challenged like you mean.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Chad.”

“How quickly the son sets,” Chad thought to himself.  “Well, she’s almost like an Amish girl thrust into our world except that there was no community for her.  Just her mother.”

“She saved son?”

“Yes.  I didn’t want to go back out there at first but I arrogantly thought that maybe I was supposed to expose her to Jesus.  Instead I got a sight of faith I’ve never imagined.”

“So why didn’t the church-,” Christopher began.

“How can the church do anything with someone they’ve never met?”

“How can someone claiming to belong to Christ avoid His body?  That’s like the hand saying to the leg, ‘I don’t want to bother with you’.”

It took Chad several minutes to explain fully the situation.  Every answer he gave was met with surprise and an even more difficult question until Chad thought he’d go crazy.  “So that’s why she doesn’t understand money.”

“She has a couple million invested somewhere because of some guy named Steve with a Steve Jr. who is a creep and this Steve had enough money floating around to fork over a certified check for her mom to get out of town.  Sounds like the Steven Solari.”

“Television guy?  The one whose son died a few years ago- murdered?”

“Probably a coincidence.” Chad’s father asserted.  “So this is all interesting, and I’m glad you wanted to share with me and all but can you tell me what the point is?”

Chad explained the financial situation.  He knew that the minute his father realized that one man had the power to destroy a young woman’s future if that man did something foolish or careless with her accounts that his father would understand.  “She truly thinks her annual seed budget should be more than my annual car payments.”

“How’d this girl ever get through school?”

Maybe his father wasn’t the best person to ask after all.  “Willow never went to school, dad.  Her mother tried, though not hard enough I’ll grant you, to teach her monetary value but she liked that her daughter wasn’t affected by modern consumerism.”

For several minutes, Chad tried to explain his concerns.  Finally, Christopher interrupted him.  “So, in other words, she’s a poster child for why homeschooling is a bad idea.”

“I wouldn’t say that- she has a better education than I do in many respects and I’ve never met homeschoolers that truly on their own.  They usually have extended family, friends, churches, other homeschoolers- This is more of an example of why extreme isolationism or sheltering is not a good idea.  When they get into the so-called ‘real world’ they’re vulnerable.”

“Why ’so called?’”

“Well, ever since I left for college, I realized that there are a lot of different ‘real worlds’ out there.  The rich kids don’t have a clue about life in the inner city real world.  The town of Fairbury interacts in the big city real world but they don’t really know what it’s like to live there.  And then there’s Willow.  If you don’t do it yourself to survive, then she’s clueless.”

Christopher didn’t want the conversation to end.  It was the first man-to-man discussion he’d had with Chad since high school where neither of them were on the defensive.  He felt petty knowing he relished his son’s need and desire for his advice.

“Well son, I think you’re being wise to be concerned.  This Bill may be a good man but good men make mistakes and unfortunately, sometimes they give into temptation.  He knew Willow’s mom was watching him carefully but he has to know the daughter doesn’t have a clue.  That’s an awful lot of temptation.”

“How do I help her understand without losing her unique perspective?  I don’t want to take away who she is.  I just want to help protect her from unscrupulous people who might take advantage of that.  You know, she figured out how to know if her investments were increasing reasonably or not.”

The men talked.  They bonded.  Years of division dissolved into a level meeting ground of mutual respect.  While the store ran like the smoothly oiled machine that it was, father and son fixed the kinks in the machine of their relationship; though not a smooth operation yet, it ran.

The intercom paged Christopher once more ending their discussion.  “I’ve got to go, son, but I’m glad you came.  Bring her home at Thanksgiving.  This girl needs a family and Cheri always wanted a sister.”

“Dad, I told you-”

“We’ll informally adopt her- no marriage licenses necessary.”