Sunday after church, several of the young single women invited Willow to lunch and a movie but Willow declined.  “I had plans for this afternoon but thank you for inviting me.  I hope you ask me again.”

Chad overheard her and wondered what could possibly be so important.  In the foyer, he saw her changing shoes in the corner and shook his head.  “Willow?”

“Hi there.  I love church!  I’m so glad you invited me.  If I can find time, I might start coming to the ladies’ Bible study.  It’d be nice I think.”

Of all the people he knew, Willow Finley seemed the least busy to him but he chose to overlook that observation and pointed to her shoes.  “I’ll drive you home.  You’ve walked enough this week.”

“Oh I don’t mind-”

After a deep breath to help him stamp down his rising irritation, Chad smiled.  “But I do.  It would be rude of me not to offer you a ride.  My mother would be appalled.”

“Really?  Why?  I’m perfectly capable-”

“It’s just a cultural thing.  People don’t leave others to walk more than half a mile or so when they can offer a ride.”

With a shrug, Willow stood and smiled.  “Ok, then I’ll offer you lunch in return.  Mother talked about grandmother inviting people to dinner after church.”

She met him at his truck.  Chad snapped his phone shut and leaned gingerly against the hot edge of the truck bed.  “What do you think about a short drive?”

“Drive?”

“My Uncle Zeke has puppies.  Nice lab mixed mutts.  Not all that bright but loyal, barkers, and they get along well with other dogs.”

As he spoke, he pushed away from the hot metal and jogged around to open her door.  He drove to the highway and paused.  Willow glanced at him sidewise, the blast of the air conditioner sending her hair swirling around her face at the slightest turn of her head.  Chad grinned at the slight nod of her head and flipped the left blinker onto the highway.

“Uncle Zeke says Luke is there with a couple of Aggie’s kids.”

“Who are Luke and Aggie?”  Willow reached for her purse, brought out a scrunchie and a brush, and pulled her hair out of her face so she could stand to turn her face from time to time.

“Luke is my cousin.  He has been working for some gal with eight kids- a widow or something.”

“Wow!” Willow exclaimed in awe.  “I didn’t know people had large families anymore.  Most in Mother’s family had two or three.  I think one of the aunts had a surprise child around the time mom disappeared so she’d be around my age.”

In Brant’s Corners, Chad zipped along the highway pointing out Aggie’s house as he hurried toward the center of town.  On the other edge of town, almost to Brunswick, Chad pulled into a long gravel driveway not unlike Willow’s.  Fields of corn grew in the distance and a flock of chickens scattered as Chad bounced into the yard.

“This feels like home.  Look at all that corn!”

“Uncle Zeke used to farm.  Now he sells cars.”  Her skeptical look told Chad she didn’t believe him.  “Seriously.  He rents out his fields to Mr. Daugherty behind him now.”

Before Willow could respond, a kind looking elderly gentleman started across the yard calling greetings.  “Chad, my boy!  I am so glad you’re here.  Marilyn is in there makin’ lunch.  You goin’ to join us?”

Chad led Willow across the yard and introduced her to his uncle.  “This is the man who taught me to milk a cow, muck a stall, and how to de-tassel corn without getting motion sick.”

“I hear you have a nice little spread of your own.”

Willow nodded.  “We have twenty acres outside of Fairbury but we’ve never farmed it.  We just have a large garden and pasture for the cow.”

A woman’s voice called from the house and Zeke hurried inside to help his wife.  “Come on out to the barn,” Chad urged.  “Luke’s probably in there with the kids.”

They heard the giggles of little girls long before Chad slid the great barn door aside.  A man, a few years older than Chad, leaned over a stall and watched two little girls roll and tumble with the puppies, squealing with ever lick of a puppy’s tongue.  A third child, a boy of around eight sat in the corner with a smaller pup seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around him.

“Hey Luke!  How’s it goin’.”

Luke, shorter than Chad by several inches, pounded his cousin’s back in a great bear hug before turning his eyes to Willow.  “Doing fine but I’ll be better when I’ve been introduced to your friend.”

They watched the children with the puppies until a loud clanging came from the back of the house.  Luke and Chad glanced at one another and took off racing for the back porch.  The boy smiled up at Willow and stood.  “Luke said he and his cousin always raced to dinner.  I wonder who won.”  To his sisters, he said, “Come on Cari, Lorna, Mrs. Zeke has lunch ready.”

The children ignored him.  Willow watched amazed as they continued to play and disregarded his pleas to come along before they got in trouble.  “Mr. Luke isn’t going to take us anywhere again unless you come.”

One of the girls stood as though to follow but the other jerked her back down again.  “Don’t listen to him Lorna.  We can eat later.  Aunt Aggie will feed us.”

Shoulders slumped, the boy slipped out of the barn and as he did so, Willow caught sight of the men returning.  “My mother would be appalled at the idea of anyone not coming to dinner when called.”

The same little voice replied, “Our mommy died so she isn’t ‘palled about anything anymore.”  A carefully calculated expression decidedly used to garner sympathy followed.

As the second girl met Willow’s eyes, genuine tears in her own, Willow realized that she was dealing with identical twins.  “My mother just died a couple of weeks ago and I want to please her now more than ever.  It breaks my heart to think of her in heaven and disappointed because I behave badly.”

At the barn door, Luke and Chad exchanged uncomfortable expressions.  This wasn’t something either had anticipated.  Luke started forward but Chad grabbed his arm.  “Wait.  She has them listening, look,” he whispered.

The little girls exchanged looks and then gazed frankly at Willow.  “Did your mommy really die?” queried the child with tears splashing on her cheeks.

“Yes.  I miss her.”

“Did she die in a car axe-dent like our mommy?”  The first girl’s lip quivered slightly.

“No, she died in her-” Willow paused.   Would hearing about dying in your sleep frighten a child?  She wasn’t sure.  “Something was wrong in her head and it killed her.”

Silence filled the barn until Willow felt a little smothered by it.  Finally, the twin who was obviously the leader of the pair asked hesitantly, “Do you really think mommy would be mad if we played with the puppies?”

“No.  I think your mommy would love for you to play with the puppies but I do think she would want you to listen to your big brother and eat lunch first.”

Lorna, brushing the tears from her eyes, stood decidedly.  “Come on Cari.  I don’t want to get in trouble ‘gain.  I’m going in.”

Willow took the child’s hand and turned away from the shocked Cari.  As they neared the barn doors, Willow felt Cari’s hand slip into her empty one and she smiled down at the girl.  “Do you have a favorite puppy?   I have to pick one to take home.”

***

While Chad made the pup comfortable on the back porch, Willow changed out of her nicer dress.  She tossed it in the hamper and then pulled it out and glanced at it objectively.  It was somewhat faded and the style was very different from any she’d seen in Rockland or around Fairbury.

On the one hand, the Finley women hadn’t needed dressy clothing.  Their lives were simple and while her mother always insisted on keeping one dress for trips “to town,” she hadn’t been particular about the fabric or style.  Both women loved beauty and put an incredible amount of detail into everything they did but for the first time in her life, Willow felt dissatisfied with her wardrobe.

Dress in hand, Willow jogged down the stairs and out to where Chad was introducing Othello to the puppy and setting up her bowls.  “Chad, what do you think of this dress?”

Chad choked back a laugh and scrambled to find an answer that wasn’t destined for a noose around his neck.  “I think it looks made for you.”

Nodding her agreement, Willow disappeared inside once more.  Chad watched the screen door shut behind her and wondered how else he could have answered the question.  He carried the pup inside with him as he followed to see how big of a hole he’d started to dig.

Willow saw Chad enter with the dog and shook her head.  “Take her outside.”

With a deep sigh, he nudged the dog outside and turned to apologize.  “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“What?  I’m not upset.”

The confusion on Willow’s face verified her words and left Chad scrambling more than ever.  “Oh.  The dog and the dress- I just assumed…”

“I don’t understand.  I said I don’t want the dog inside.  I just wanted to know what you thought of that dress.  I noticed it’s very different from a lot of what I see other women wearing.  It made me wonder.”

Chad’s mouth opened to protest and then closed.  It was genuine.  She wasn’t saying what she thought he wanted to hear and she wasn’t stuffing down her own emotions.  Willow meant it.  She didn’t want a puppy in the house and she accepted his comment about her clothing at face value.  A lifetime away from the pretense of society had created someone who spoke her mind and assumed the same of others.

“Well, I will agree that some of your clothing is a little different than you usually see but I just think it defines you.  Have you seen Alexa Hartfield?  It seems like she never wears the same style twice.”

Willow grabbed an armful of jars of canned peas and carried them to the empty shelves of the pantry.  Chad followed with another armful and watched as she organized them carefully as he brought jar after jar into the room.  As she added the jars to the corner, Chad counted forty-eight pints of canned peas.

“That’s a lot of peas.”

With a nod, Willow backed him out of the pantry.  “It’ll get me through fall and winter anyway.  We usually can double that but I thought it’d be silly to can food for Moth-” Swallowing hard, Willow tried again.  “I didn’t need to can as much this year but we planted the same amount.  I don’t know what to do with all the extra peas though.”

“Sell them?”

She looked at him sharply.  “How?”

They discussed the possibility of selling her excess produce as she grabbed a stack of buckets and went out to the garden.  Chad watched her pick tomatoes until he thought he knew how she determined which to pick and then grabbed a bucket and went to work.  As he dropped the first filled bucket beside the empty ones, Willow shook her head.

“You’ll ruin your shoes.”

“They can be cleaned.  What’ll you do with all this?”

Willow grabbed another bucket and started on another row throwing an occasional tomato worm in an empty bucket as she worked her way through the row.  “Tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes.  I can have spaghetti and spaghetti in winter with sauce and we add the tomatoes to stews and chili.”

Chad found himself sitting at the table eating fresh strawberry shortcake, sans the whipped cream, while Willow chopped tomatoes.  “How do you have so many early tomatoes?”

“We plant early with water walls and cover with canopies when they get big enough to come over the top and we get a late frost.”

Chad saw a journal lying on the table.  “Is this one of the journals you use to know when to do what?”

Willow glanced at the book in his hand.  “No, that was one of Mother’s journals- her first I think.  You can read it if you like.”

Feeling awkward at the idea of reading someone’s private thoughts and memories, Chad started to put down the journal but curiosity overcame his reservations.  He opened it to the place marked and read the entry.  Halfway through, he sat it down and poured himself a glass of cold water from the pitcher in her icebox.  He saw her wipe sweat away from her forehead and passed the glass to Willow before he poured another glass for himself.

Chad settled back in the chair and picked up the journal, reading the entry from the beginning.

December 1983-

The house is quiet.  It is also cold.  I use the heater because I have to but I need a woodstove for next year.  The fireplace is worthless.

I already feel better physically.  I don’t feel as sick and I am not nearly as tired.  The nightmares won’t leave.  I’m afraid to sleep but exhaustion forces me.  I wake up screaming or crying but there is no one there to comfort me.  I don’t know if I can do this.  Can I be so alone?

What if I can’t bring myself to keep the baby?”

Chad looked up again.  Willow had read or was about to read this entry.  How would she feel about her mother’s fears and uncertainties?

Willow caught his gaze and smiled sympathetically.  “She was amazing, wasn’t she?”

“Amazing?”  Chad didn’t know how to respond.  Had Willow read the passage yet?

“Yes.  She was all alone, terrified, plagued with memories and dreams that she wanted to forget.  She worked to learn everything she’d need to survive here- with me.  She did it not even knowing if she had the strength to raise me.”

“So many women would have had an abortion.”

Surprise flooded Willow’s face.  “Why would Mother kill me?  It wasn’t my choice to be conceived.”

“It wasn’t your mother’s either.  She had the one excuse even some Christians understand.”

Willow shook her head.  “Mother was too sensible for that.  She’d never try to erase a wrong by committing another one.”

Chad watched as she washed tomato after tomato.  Once they were clean, she piled them back in the buckets and left the kitchen.  A glance out the window showed her leaving for the barn.  He grabbed two buckets and followed her quickly.

“How many more do you need?”

“There are three more buckets on the floor by the sink.  I could get these on the stove if you would bring them out.”

Chad brought the buckets, both kitchen chairs, and the journal.  He tried to offer help but she waved him back insisting she didn’t know how to work with someone “in her way.”  While Willow cooked whole tomatoes and boiled jars, Chad opened the journal once more and finished the entry.

On a brighter note, I’ve made a few decisions.  I’ve been reading Thoreau and I am struck by the line “live deep and suck the marrow out of life.”  I want to do this.  I have decided to live purposefully but unlike Thoreau, I don’t think the answer is in a Spartan life but in one that is lived embracing the beauty around you and in creating beauty wherever you can.  We will do this, this child and I.  We will do whatever we do to the glory of God.

Christmas is coming.  I wonder if mom is making shortbread.  Are they looking for me?  I thought about sending a card but I’m afraid.  If I give them hope that I’m alive, won’t I risk discovery?  If Mr. Solari knew about the baby, I think we’d be in danger.  Paying off a son’s mistakes is one thing.  The possibility of a scandal involving a child is another- especially if I could prove the rape- I think we’d be in danger or at least the baby would.

It is late.  I must sleep.  As in the old children’s prayer, I pray the Lord my mind to keep.  Keep far away from the sleep robbers of memories and fears.

***

Hours later, after a ham sandwich, several dozen quarts of canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, and most of the journal later, Chad reached the entry of Willow’s birth.  His eyes widened in horror and then a cold look came over his face.  He thanked Willow for dinner, declined several attempts to draw him into conversation or a game, and left abruptly.  Willow watched him go wondering if somehow she’d offended him.

She watched the two specks of red from his brake lights of his truck pause at the end of her driveway and wondered why they didn’t disappear onto the highway.  She opened the screen door and stepped back onto the porch and then sighed and retreated into the house once more.  He had her number.  If there was a problem, he’d call.

Meanwhile Chad sat, head resting on his hands as they gripped the steering wheel and wept.  For several minutes, he fought to control his emotions but anger boiled over and he railed at God.  “Why Lord?  Why was she so scared?  Why was she so alone?  Where were You?”

Using his sleeve to mop his face, Chad’s features slumped into the picture of defeat.  “And why is it that every time I think I have her settled so I can walk away, something drags me back?  She has the pup.  She has Othello.  She has the animals and that Franklin guy.  She shouldn’t need me too!”

Furious, he pealed out of the gravel lane onto the highway sending rocks flying and squealing his tires.  Willow heard the sound and shook her head.  She grabbed the pile of fabric catalogs and slipped back downstairs muttering, “Lord, that guy needs to get a life.  He doesn’t want to be here so why does he even come?”