Past Forward Volume 1 (49 page)

“First, can I apologize? I was worried about
you, and I let it affect my behavior. I was rude.”

Her mind spun with the memory of a dozen
attempts by Bill and Chad both to show that Bill was growing fond
of her. Five short words, “I was worried about you,” illuminated
what had otherwise failed to show. “I understand now. I do. I
wasn’t exactly gracious about all of your help, and well, I’m sorry
too.”

“You said you had something to discuss?”

“I got a call from Suki. Do you remember her
from Boho?”

“Yes…”

She sensed eagerness in his tone. Could he
know what she was going to say before she even spoke? “Well, when I
was there on Wednesday, I showed her pictures of the jumpers I made
for Aggie’s twins. I guess she liked them.”

“I’m sure they were nice…” Bill began.

Willow continued without waiting for him to
finish. “She wants me to move to Rockland and take charge of a
sister store to Boho.”

“They want to open another store?”

This time there was no doubt in her mind;
Bill was excited. She almost didn’t want to continue. “Well, not
another one exactly. They want to open a children’s version.
They’re tentatively calling it
Little Boho Chic
.”

“Catchy.”

She pulled the phone away from her ear and
stared at for a second it as if somehow it would make his
assessment less obnoxious to her. “Insulting. but it’s not my
call.”

“
You don’t like the
name?”

Willow sighed. She knew she was being
ridiculous, but the idea of a store with such a silly sounding name
didn’t appeal to her. “It’s not my style, but that’s not important.
I asked her to call you with their business offer. I don’t know
anything about things like that. You do.”

“So they want you to do what? Do you
know?”

“They want me to design the outfits they’ll
sell, choose which fabrics they’ll use from the ladies store, and
then find fabrics that will be exclusive to the girl’s
section.”

“So they want you to set them up?”

“Well,” feeling silly about her hesitation
to put their offer into words, “They want me to train with a
manager from Boho and then run the store once it’s open. I would
have to move to the city, I think. The bus ride every day would be
horrible.”

Bill immediately launched into an
explanation of all of the benefits to accepting the job, including
how close she’d be to the finest physical therapists in the
area.

“That’s reason enough to forget it. At least
here, I have stairs which they did say are good, and soft dirt to
walk on instead of concrete and—”

“Just think about it—” She heard him swallow
hard. “Pray about it. Remember, your mother chose this life as an
escape from one she didn’t want. She never expected you to feel
obligated to continue it.”

“I’ll think about it. The design aspect
sounds like a lot of fun. I just don’t know if I could stand being
cramped in a little store like that all day every day. I think I’d
go crazy.”

“What did Chad say?” Silence stretched out
between them. Before she could speak, he answered for her. “You
didn’t tell him.”

“It was selfish of me. And wrong.”

He cleared his throat and asked, “Why?”

“Well, I thought maybe if Chad thought I
might not be staying, he’d quit helping me with the harvest, and
well, if I do stay, I’m going to need that food.”

“Chad’s a bigger man than that,” Bill said.
To Willow, it sounded as if he didn’t want to admit it, but she
brushed that aside as her being silly. His next words, however,
made perfect sense. “He’ll help because it’s what he does. He’s a
good friend, not a convenient one.”

“You’re right. I’ll think about it. I really
just don’t know if I’m ready to make such a huge change. I still
wake up and hurry downstairs to wish Mother a good morning. Leaving
here…”

It took the better part of a minute for her
to realize Bill’s words weren’t designed to convince her to accept
the job and move. Gentle and understanding, he encouraged her,
sympathized with her indecision, and just before he disconnected
the call, he prayed that the Lord would give her comfort and
wisdom. For several minutes, she stared at the phone in her lap,
confused.

At six o’clock, boredom attacked Willow from
all quarters. She wanted to escape—go anywhere—do anything but sit
in her room and stare at the four walls. She’d read her book, she’d
memorized every feature of every photo in her birthday album, and
she’d nearly committed her mother’s journal of 1988 to memory. Oh,
and she was hungry. Very hungry.

Fish. Willow wanted dill baked trout. It
sounded heavenly. Fried green tomatoes—oh, they’d be the perfect
side dish. She considered the fallout when Chad arrived after work
and grinned. He wouldn’t be home until ten o’clock. Surely, she
could fix it and get back in bed before then.

Her leg screamed for more painkillers, but
she refused. They made her feel muddle-headed, and she needed her
wits about her if she planned to cook. Just as she started to lower
herself to the first step of the stairs, she remembered something.
When she was ten, her mother had brought home a pair of crutches
from a yard sale in Fairbury. Thanking the Lord for her obsession
with war stories and amputations, she crawled up the attic stairs
and retrieved the crutches.

At the top of the stairs, Willow tossed the
crutches onto the landing, seated herself, and scooted down one
step at a time. When she reached the landing, she pushed the
crutches down a bit farther and smiled with satisfaction as they
leaned perfectly against the bottom few steps. This’d be a piece of
very painful cake.

Willow managed to make it to the back door
in a reasonable amount of time. Her armpits screamed against the
injustice of hard rubber slamming against them with each step. She
knew there were buttons for adjusting, but she opted not to waste
precious time on that.

Saige nearly knocked her over with overblown
excitement. Willow rolled the puppy away with the bottom of the
crutch every few steps until she felt like her arms as well as legs
were fighting to keep her upright. Once at the freezer, she
discovered a new problem. She had no way to carry the fish back to
the house.

Feeling quite foolish, Willow wrapped it in
a kitchen towel, stuffed the ends in her teeth, and hobbled back
across the yard. Every step sent the frozen fish swinging into her
breastbone. “Great. More bruises. I’ll get a tote for the
tomatoes,” she told Saige as she shoved the dog away again.

It took her nearly an hour from the time she
left her bed until the time she collapsed, exhausted, into her
kitchen chair. A washed tomato sat beside the sink and her frozen
packet of fish lay soaking in a bowl of water. She was disgusted.
It took her an hour to do a five-minute task.

Her stomach growled. She wanted that trout.
Steeling herself against the waves of pain sure to follow, Willow
stood and grabbed her trusty skillet. She’d have to make a fire in
the stove. Trying to grill with the pup working hard to send her
sprawling across the yard seemed even more dangerous.

Ignoring the heat, the pain, and the
exhaustion, she fried her fish and tomatoes. The scent caused Saige
to scratch mercilessly at the door. Willow banged her crutch at the
bottom of the screen, but the pup ignored her and scratched even
more. By the time Willow took her last bite, the puppy wiggled
around her feet and a torn screen announced the score. Saige: 1.
Willow: 0.

Chad glanced around the yard as he made his
way to the back door. A ripped screen and the lingering scent of
fried trout shocked him. He took the back steps two at a time and
burst into the kitchen. A dirty frying pan sat on the stove.
Stifling heat in the room prompted him to glance in the wood box.
It was no longer full. A plate lay turned upside down on the floor.
His next step sent a fork flying through the air.

Saige flew from the direction of the living
room and yapped excitedly around Chad’s legs. “What are you doing
in here girl? Who was out here?”

Chad pushed the puppy outside and shut the
door. He wandered into the living room and stepped in a pile of
excrement. “Oh ugh. Saige!” He stepped out of his shoes and set
them on the back step, scrubbed up the “dog pile,” and wandered
through the house looking for puddles and other piles. “That puppy
is more trouble than she’s worth,” he muttered.

Crutches at the base of the stairs startled
him. “Oh she didn’t.
She didn’t!”
Of course, she did. He
knew it. He had to get Chief Varney to mobilize his wife and the
ladies’ Bible study or Willow would kill herself trying to
be
herself.

He peeked in on her, relieved to find her
sleeping soundly. The glass of water beside her bed was empty, so
he filled it and carried it back. The heat felt oppressive to him,
but she seemed comfortable as she slept.

Downstairs, Chad grabbed one of Kari’s early
journals and began reading. He needed to wind down and Kari’s
insights into life on the farm and into Willow’s personality
relaxed him like nothing he’d ever read.
Of course, maybe if you
read something other than the Bible, you’d find that other things
relax you too.
The thought appeared and then evaporated as he
turned the page.

Halfway through September 1993, Chad
involuntarily sat upright. He reread the section, hoping he hadn’t
read what he thought he had. His heart sank, and he rushed to the
kitchen searching for Willow’s reference journals. He read through
the handwritten index and finally turned to the page on hay
cutting.

Sickened, Chad pulled his phone from his
pocket. He dialed the number of the station and waited for Joe to
pick up. “Joe, I’m going to be sick tomorrow.”

“Calling in lies huh,” Joe teased.

“Nope. Not a lie. I either go to work and
get sick, or I take preventative measures. Right now, I could
hurl.”

“What’s wrong?” Joe’s concern sounded hemmed
in mirth.

“I botched Willow’s hay. I piled it into the
barn without letting it dry. I’ve got to get it out of there or
it’ll mildew. According to Kari’s journals, it can even cause some
kind of spontaneous combustion thing and burn down the barn.”

“I’ll work for you. Fix the hay.”

“Hey Joe,” Chad added as an
afterthought.

“Yeah.”

“Pray.”

Layer after layer, Chad spread the alfalfa
back over the field. He considered using the yard, the driveway,
and every other nearby area, but Saige was likely to bother it.
When he told Willow of the problem, she burst into irrational fits
of weeping.

Chad heard snatches of words like failure,
shop, make it, and the worst, “maybe Bill was right.” Unsure of
whether he should comment or just comfort, he took the safe route,
patted her shoulder, handed her a roll of toilet paper (which she
tossed aside in favor of handkerchiefs), and prayed. Remembering it
as he spread hay in the sun to dry, Chad wondered if there was more
to her tears than he’d first imagined.

At noon, Chad came inside and scrubbed his
hands, arms, and face in the kitchen sink. He downed a small
pitcher of cold water, refilled it, and shoved it back into the
icebox. The sound of Willow thumping across the living room floor
sent him to help her. “Here, let me—”

“I can do it,” she growled.

“What do you want for lunch? I’m
famished.”

The fire in her eyes died as quickly as it
had blazed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been in a bad mood all morning. Can
you fill up on a salad?”

Chad didn’t have the heart to tell her that
a salad was the last thing he thought was filling. “I’ll go see
what I can find.”

“There’s chicken in the freezer. It’s in the
top door shelf to the left. Labeled chicken pieces. If you put them
in warm water they’ll defrost.”