The Beginning: An eShort Prequel to the Bridge (2 page)

She stared out the back window of her small apartment. The only thing louder than the silence was her fear, closing in on her, reminding her that she was alone. Tom didn’t have a break until Christmas—if then. For a long moment she closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she’d gotten a letter from him. A week at least, longer than usual.

Maybe that explained the ominous feeling. Letters were the only reminder that he was still alive, still fighting battles in Vietnam, still doing what he felt called to do as an American citizen. Tom . . . the love of her life.

The Bible talked about two becoming one, and their friends used to tease how that was never truer than for Edna and Tom. They were right. Sometimes Edna couldn’t figure out where Tom ended and she began. They were that close, that inseparable.

Before he went to war, anyway.

The kettle rattled and a low whistle began. She flipped off the flame and poured water into the cup. Beneath her feet the linoleum was cold, typical for late fall in Franklin, Tennessee. But this morning it spread a chill up her body and into her bones. Her teeth chattered as she brought the hot cup to her face and breathed in.

What was this oppressive feeling? Why today? She held onto the cup with both hands, letting the heat work its way through her. The calendar on the wall seemed to taunt her, reminding her how long six months really was. Six frightening, painful, lonely months. She studied October’s little boxes, stared at the place where the square white pages hung near the refrigerator. If only she could look ahead and know the future. Peek in on the time when Tom would be home and they could truly begin their life together.

They’d only been married three weeks when he shipped out.

She sipped her coffee and let herself go back to the beginning. The way she often did when she missed him. Through grade school, Tom had been the one person Edna couldn’t tolerate. Every recess he would run by and tug on her blond ponytail or tease her for being too slow or too smart or any of a dozen reasons. She did everything she could to fly under his radar.

The summer before middle school, Edna begged her mother to enroll her in a different district so she wouldn’t have to spend the next three years taking classes with Tom Carlton. Her mother only rolled her eyes and told her what she always told her.

“That boy has a crush on you, Edna. I keep telling you.”

Edna wanted to wear a disguise the first day of classes, but instead she connected with a group of her girlfriends and hoped for safety in numbers. The plan worked the first week, but the next Monday Tom came up behind her and flicked her hair.

“Hey . . . haven’t seen you.”

Edna turned and felt her cheeks grow hot. “I . . . I’ve been busy.”

“Oh.” He grinned at her. “Well . . . in case I don’t see you around, you should probably know.”

Confusion added to her nervousness. “Know what?”

He started to run off, but as he did he winked at her. “You’re the prettiest girl in sixth grade.”

She literally stopped in place, suddenly not sure which class she was heading to, which way was up. It had never occurred to her after all these years that her mother might be right. After that, she still did her best to avoid Tom Carlton. But by the end of the year she was no longer afraid of him, and in seventh grade they had become friends.

Tom liked to say it took him most of his life to get up the courage to ask her out, but when their freshman year in high school came and the football team had its annual bonfire, he sat beside her. After two hours of small talk he did what he’d wanted to do as far back as he could remember.

He asked her out.

They were inseparable after that, the sort of couple people smiled at when they walked past. Their senior year they were voted homecoming king and queen, and after the dance Tom asked her to marry him. Their future looked brighter than the lights on Broadway in downtown Nashville. Only one thing threatened to dim them.

The draft.

Tom turned nineteen the summer after high school, and a month later he was drafted to join the army offensive in Vietnam. While many of their friends enrolled in college, became conscientious objectors, or feigned injuries and illnesses to avoid serving the United States, Tom wouldn’t hear of it.

“If I’m asked to serve, I’ll serve.” His smile was tinged with sadness. “We’ll get married before I go.” He pulled her close and kissed her. “I’ll get my years of serving out of the way. Then we’ll start real life.”

Six more months and he’d be finished with his tour, done with fighting. Six months. Another sip of coffee. Just a bad dream, that’s all. Her husband was fighting half a world away. Of course she’d have bad dreams now and then. She tried to keep her fingers from shaking. But if it was only a bad dream, why wasn’t the awful feeling gone? Instead, the feeling suffocated her, its tenacious claws set deep.

Half a cup of coffee in slow, nervous sips, and finally she made a plan. She would clean the apartment. Not the usual washing down the kitchen and folding laundry, but deep cleaning. The baseboards along the hallway and the dust on the top rims of the photo frames. A cleaning that would take her all day, and by the time sunset came she would’ve worked the bad feeling out of her system.

Edna grabbed a spray bottle and a rag and headed for the bathroom. She was on her hands and knees washing the floor at the base of the toilet when she heard the doorbell.

The smell of Pine-Sol, the feel of the wet rag in her hands, the pinch of tiled floor against her knees, all of it froze into a single instant, a moment she absolutely knew she would remember forever.
Don’t get up, Edna . . . Don’t do it.
Don’t answer the door. She closed her eyes but the doorbell rang again, and she couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t keep from scrambling to her feet and hurrying blindly to the front of the apartment.

She didn’t check the peephole, didn’t stop to see who was on the other side. She already knew. This was the reason for the feeling, the doom that had smothered her since she opened her eyes that morning.
Not Tom, God . . . please . . . not Tom.
He only has six more months . . .

Her rebel hand defied her heart and suddenly the door was open, and there they were. Two sad-eyed, fresh-faced soldiers in sharply pressed uniforms. One of them had a telegram.

“No!” she shouted. Spots danced in front of her eyes and they quickly began to connect. She couldn’t breathe or move or remember where she was. “Not Tom!”

They were the last words she remembered saying. She began to fall, but she didn’t care. The floor could take her life and that would be a relief compared to living in a world without her Tom. One final thought screamed at her before she passed out. The date. October 5, 1971. A date that would stand forever as a dividing line in time.

Life before the doorbell rang, and life after.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he baby was a girl.

That’s what they told Donna when she woke up. Charlie was at her side, tears streaming down his cheeks. He pressed his face close to hers. “You’re alive . . . I can’t believe you’re alive.”

She felt weak and thin. Too thin. “What . . . what happened?”

Charlie eased back, his eyes wide. For the first time since she’d known him, the confident sparkle in his eyes was gone. In its place was a fear that made him look like a different man altogether. “You almost died.”

“The baby, Charlie. What happened to our baby?”

His silence told her more than his words ever could. He swallowed and let his eyes find a spot on the floor. For a long time he only shook his head, as if the details were too awful to speak. But eventually the story came. In tragic bits and terrible pieces, it came.

The contractions were too strong; Donna had been right. Something had gone wrong on the inside, and she had started bleeding—so much that her body had gone into shock and the bleeding became profuse. Every organ, every cell, bleeding out. D-I-C, Charlie called it. He couldn’t remember what it stood for. Or why it happened.

“It took . . . everyone in the emergency room, Donna. No one thought you were going to—”

He couldn’t say the words. Donna’s heartbeat slammed around in her chest. “The baby, Charlie . . . tell me.”

Again he shook his head. “She . . . she didn’t make it.” He looked through her, to the places in her soul where only he was allowed. “They couldn’t save her.”

Donna squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t acknowledge her daughter’s death without first acknowledging the most beautiful part of the story. They’d had a daughter. He was saying something about her blood loss, but Donna couldn’t make out the words. Her question cut him off midsentence. “Charlie . . . What did she look like?”

Charlie stopped talking.

Her eyes flew open. “Please, Charlie. Tell me what she looked like.”

A series of sobs shook him and he hung his head, his hands over his face. After a minute he found his voice. “She was perfect . . . I only saw her for a minute. She . . . she looked just like you, Donna.”

Her baby girl looked like her! Where was she, then? Where was her baby now? How dare someone take her away without letting Donna hold her first? She wanted to ask, wanted to know what cruel doctor had taken her daughter’s body without her permission. But the questions pummeled her heart and left her exhausted. Too defeated to speak.

Charlie stroked her damp hair and brought his face close to hers again. “We’ll get through this . . . we will.”

Before Donna could consider the possibility, the doctor walked into the room. His expression didn’t look much better than Charlie’s. “Mrs. Barton . . . I’m so sorry.”

With all her remaining energy she opened the palm of her hand and stretched out her fingers. Charlie covered her hand with his own, wrapping her fingers with his, skin to skin. The doctor was saying something about their baby’s body being disposed of at the morgue.

“What . . . what about a funeral?”

The doctor blinked, his mouth slightly open. “That . . . that isn’t how we do things. Your baby was born dead, Mrs. Barton.”

“She deserves a funeral.”

Only then did Donna realize she hadn’t cried yet. Her eyes were dry, paralyzed with the news. But at the realization that her daughter was already gone, that there would be no baby to hold, no body to bury, sobs gathered in her chest and a river of sadness began flowing from her eyes.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Charlie held her hand more tightly, “for saving Donna’s life.”

Her husband’s relief touched her, but it didn’t ease the pain. And then, as if there were room inside her for more heartache, the doctor delivered the final blow. “We had to remove your uterus, Mrs. Barton.” He looked like he’d rather stop practicing medicine than say this next part. “You won’t be able to have more children. I’m . . . so sorry.”

Donna didn’t hear what came after that. She closed her eyes and turned toward Charlie, only Charlie. Their daughter was dead, and there would be no babies, not ever. No children running through their home, no sweet laughter, no trips to the park. Just her and Charlie and the empty days that lay ahead.

Time wouldn’t stop for her heartbreak. Somehow, without her approval, the days marched on, a series of unforgiving sunrises fading into a blur of sunsets. From her first day back in their North Carolina townhouse, Donna knew one thing for certain: If Charlie was right, if they were going to be okay, then they needed a reason to live. Charlie’s father had learned of the tragedy and he’d reached out, called Charlie to come home, back to the cement business. But Charlie politely declined. His father called him a fool, and the rift was back.

Alone again, just them and God against the world, they took long walks while Donna tried to regain her strength. Eventually they came up with a plan. Their own pain would grow dim if only they could find a way to help other people. What they needed was something to pour all their energy and love, their passion and longing, into. Something that would take the place of the family they’d never have. It took six weeks before the idea hit them. By then they had searched the map for a new home, a new beginning, and every search led them to the same place.

Franklin, Tennessee.

Franklin with its small-town feel just twenty minutes south of Nashville’s Music Row. Main Street was expanding. A mercantile, a theater, a bank, and three cafés. They could live a few blocks away and figure out how to help, a way to be part of the foundation of a town on the rise.

If only they could help people who were hurting. She and Charlie could pour into their lives, listen to their stories, and point them in the right direction. If they could be a part of changing the lives of others, then their own pain was sure to grow dim.

They would find a church once they arrived in town, but that wasn’t where their helping would happen. Not at an orphanage or a homeless shelter. They didn’t feel God calling them to either of those places. Their help would happen somewhere else, at the most likely place of all. At a place she and Charlie could believe in.

A bookstore.

A small-town bookstore would bridge the pain of yesterday to the promise of tomorrow. By the end of the year they found just the building, a small two-story house on Franklin’s Main Street, a place that had long ago housed Civil War soldiers. It was made of brick and old pine, and it smelled faintly like Lemon Pledge and campfire smoke, a smell that welcomed them from the first time they toured it. They were approved for a business loan, and like that, the catharsis began. With every painted wall and built-in bookshelf, Donna could feel God healing them, sense Him smiling down.