Ties That Bind (24 page)

C
ynthia Smitherton Reese, the oldest of the four sisters, and the largest, wrapped her arms around me and gave me a huge, breath-stopping hug.

“It was a beautiful service. I am … we're all so touched that so many people came to Dad's funeral,” she said when she released me, smiling through a film of tears and looking around the fellowship hall, which was filled with people for the post-funeral luncheon. Every seat at every table was filled with people who were talking and smiling, sometimes laughing, telling and retelling Waldo stories.

“It's such a comfort to know that so many others cared about him like we did, but your sermon …” She made a single “tsk” noise, sighed and, still smiling, slowly shook her head, as if she simply couldn't find words.

“It was lovely,” Sylvia said, filling in the gap for her sister. “Really lovely. Maybe I shouldn't say this, Reverend, but I was a little disappointed when I realized that you'd be conducting the service instead of Reverend Tucker.”

“I don't blame you,” I said. “Reverend Tucker knew your dad so well.”

“True. But I don't think he could have done it any better than you did. It was obvious that you really spent time with Dad,” Cynthia said. “You know, younger people often don't bother getting to know older people. It's as if, once you hit retirement age, they think you no longer have anything interesting to offer. Once I retired from the station, people I met would barely talk to me, and when they did it was only to ask how many grandchildren I had.” She puffed indignantly.

“I love my grandchildren as much as the next person, but for heaven's sake, that's not all there is to me! But suddenly people started to look right through me, as if I couldn't possibly have any opinions. I produced the news at channel eight for twenty-three years! Opinions were my business! And I'll tell you something else …”

Rose, the next oldest of the sisters, a retired children's librarian who was the polar opposite of her elder sibling, as petite as Cynthia was full-figured and as soft-spoken as Cynthia was opinionated, grabbed her sister's hand. “I think what Cynthia was meaning to say is that we really appreciate the time you spent with Dad.”

“It was my pleasure. He truly was one of the most interesting men I've ever met.”

“You captured him to a tee,” said Gloria, the third sister, a handsome and stylish woman who owned a jewelry store and wore a stunning sapphire brooch that advertised the fact. “I know that he left you that big file with all his clippings and such for you to work with, but you really captured the essence of his personality and his faith.” Gloria wiped away a tear.

Rose murmured comfortingly and put her arm around her sister's shoulders.

“No, no. These are good tears. Think how lucky we all were,” Gloria said, scanning the circle of her sisters' faces, “to grow up with such a wonderful father.”

“He was so proud of all of you,” I said, and it was true. In looks, temperament, and interests, Waldo's daughters were about as different as any four women could be, and yet they were all accomplished, gracious, and caring. Waldo spoke of them often, delighting in their differences even as he worried about them and how they would react to his death.

He asked me once, “Do you think it's possible to love children too much? The girls and I have always been so close, and even closer after Rachel passed. They took her death very hard, you know, but Gloria was the worst. Took years for her to get over it. I don't want them to grieve like that when I'm gone. Tell them I've had a good life, no regrets, and that we'll be together again. Make them understand, Philippa. It's important.”

Searching the faces of the four, seeing smiles through tears, I could tell that they did understand, but I knew it wasn't because of any superior effort or gifted turn of phrase on my part. All I did was stand up and say what I knew to be true.

One by one, the Smitherton sisters hugged me and thanked me. I didn't tell them they were welcome, knowing the gift had not been mine to give. Instead, I said how happy I was to have had the chance to know their father and now to know them. We all cried a little but, as Gloria said, they were good tears.

Cynthia looked as if she might be coming in for another hug, but Sylvia took her by the arm. “We should go greet everyone, Cyn. They'll all be ready to leave after they finish eating. Let's divide into teams. Cynthia and Rose, take the right side of the room. Gloria and I will take the left.”

She spread her arms out behind Gloria's and Cynthia's shoulders, gently shepherding them across the room. I stood watching them for a moment. Gloria and Sylvia didn't even get to their side of the hall before an older couple, together with a younger man who might have been their son, got up to meet them, anxious to share some anecdote about Waldo. Gloria and Sylvia listened earnestly for a moment until the older gentleman, with a twinkle in his eyes, delivered what must have been the punch line, because Sylvia grinned and Gloria threw back her head and laughed.

Good
.
Very good.

Just then the baby, in the form of a ravenous hunger, made its presence known. I went to one of the long banquet tables and loaded my plate with sliced turkey and ham, potato salad, corn salad, cole slaw, baked beans, two rolls, and six pats of butter. The brownies and lemon bars looked good too, but there was no more room on my plate. I headed for one of the few vacant spots at one of the tables that the ladies of the hospitality committee had decorated with white cloths and vases of daffodils. But before I could reach my destination, I felt a finger poking my shoulder. It belonged to Ted Carney.

“I don't want to keep you from your lunch, Reverend, but …” He looked down at my overflowing plate and lost his train of thought. “You must really be hungry.”

“Oh. Well, preaching burns up a lot of energy. As much as running six miles, some people say.”

“Really? I never knew that. Anyway,” he said, shifting his eyes left and right and lowering his voice to make sure no one could overhear him, “I wanted to talk to you about Waldo's will, the bequest he left the church, bless him. It's a pretty substantial sum and will certainly allow us to cross a few items off our wish list, but it won't take care of everything. We're going to have to make some choices, and I think we need to be very careful about how we go about doing that.”

“I couldn't agree more,” I said, working hard to shut out the enticing, salty-sweet aroma of ham and baked beans and focus on the conversation.

Ted nodded earnestly. “A thing like this can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how we handle it. It's so important that, as a church, we reach a consensus on what to do with the money.”

“Absolutely.”

Ted smiled. I pinched off a tiny piece of roll and nibbled it while he talked.

“Good. Now what I propose is that we call a meeting of the whole church to present some options, open the floor to discussion, and take a vote. We need to get everyone on the same page.”

I swallowed, listening to him repeat Bob Tucker's words as if they were his own. “A very wise suggestion, Ted. How can I help?”

“Perhaps you could draft a letter to the congregation that we could both sign—show of solidarity, you know. And we should get a date on the calendar for the meeting right away. The quicker the better. You know how out of hand these things can get if people start talking.”

“I can draft a letter first thing tomorrow. Or even this afternoon if you'd like.”

“Tomorrow is fine,” he assured me. “You've had a busy day, a busy week really. And you handled it all so well. I mean that. The service was wonderful, so was the eulogy. Very moving. Gave me a few things to think about myself.”

“Waldo was a good man.”

“He was, bless him. And he'd have been pleased with today. Well done, Reverend.” He smiled and moved as if to shake my hand but, realizing they were both occupied holding the heaping plate, he laughed.

Looking up, he spotted Miranda talking to Cynthia and Rose on the opposite side of the room and walked quickly away. “I should say hello to the Smitherton girls. Enjoy your lunch!”

I did. Very much.

T
he walls of the workroom, like all the exterior walls in the quilt shop, are exposed red brick, but you notice it more up here, maybe because the light that streams in from the two tall, wood-framed windows makes it more noticeable. It's such a plain space—four walls, two windows, a few quilts hanging from wooden rods, a honey-colored wood floor, and a painted black door with a brass knob. That door is solid. When you shut it, you shut out the noise of the world as well. That's why this is my favorite room in the shop.

I don't like gossip, I never have, but as I sat in that quiet room with the sun streaming onto the table, casting a beam of light that intensified the colors of the fabrics, folded each length into tidy squares exactly the same size as all the others, unconsciously slowing my breathing to match the soft whispered whoosh of the little cherub who slept so peacefully against my breast, and let the tension drain slowly from my body, I realized that my agitation didn't stem from gossiping tongues but from my own heart.

I was jealous.

It took me a little while to realize it, but not because I'm unfamiliar with jealousy. I've spent plenty of time in my life feeling jealous of what someone else has, way too much time. It's embarrassing to admit, but it's true. Whenever I find out that someone is having a baby, I am jealous. Maybe that's why, when Evelyn came up with the idea of the mothers-to-be quilting class, I immediately volunteered to stay up here and watch the children; I didn't want to spend two hours a week in the shop with all those women who had what I had been denied. I don't think jealousy was the whole reason I volunteered to be the babysitter, but it was at least a piece of it. And even though I did all I could to support Mari when she was pregnant with Olivia, I was jealous of my sister too. I stuffed it down as quickly as I could, but it was still there.

And I've been jealous of others, so many, sometimes even strangers on the street, who looked to be in love, who had what I longed for, the protection and affection and attention of a man, the security and delight that must come when someone singles you out from all the world as
the
one, the pride that comes from knowing that you were chosen.

When you pull it apart and take a good hard look at that kind of jealousy, it looks pretty ugly, because it is. It took me a long time to acknowledge that ugliness and even longer to make any progress in expunging it.

The antidote to jealousy, I discovered, is to shift your focus from what other people have to what you have; in other words, to count your blessings. It sounds like a simple solution, but if you practice it diligently—and sometimes I've been more diligent than others—you can overcome the habit and remove the ugliness from your heart, cutting it out like a cancer and replacing it with contentment. It works, it really does. Over the years, I've gotten to be something of an expert on jealousy, so I know what I'm talking about.

Normally, I can spot jealousy coming from a distance of fifty paces, but this time it caught me by surprise. This time was different. Until now, I've always been jealous
of
someone, of someone else's relationship, or security, or status. This time, I was jealous
for
someone, for Paul.

The time that has passed since I first met Paul can be measured in weeks, yet I feel I know him, perhaps better than I've ever known any man. It all sounds so fast, and it was. But at the same time, it wasn't.

I liked Paul, almost from the first. He's funny and smart and interesting, I mean
really
interesting. He knows a lot about a lot of things and can talk about them—and not just work or sports. He reads news magazines and can discuss politics, really
discuss
it, not just rant or give his opinion, but engage in an actual exchange of ideas. He reads books, too, novels, not just thrillers or murder mysteries, though he likes some of that, but classics, things by Hemingway and Nabokov and even Jane Austen. When he told me he'd read
Pride and Prejudice
twice, my jaw fell open.

And he's likeable. Most men I know don't have friends, only competitors. Not Paul. He met Tom, Russell, Billy, and Steve when he was eight years old and stayed friends with them through school and life, playing jazz in a basement bar in Chicago every other Wednesday for seventeen years. I think that says something important about him. And, of course, he's a fabulous father—patient but firm, a wonderful example to James and all the kids in the youth group.

He such has a beautiful smile, white but not too white, no bleach for Paul, and his teeth are straight. Well, all but that one on the upper left that leans a little bit and has a chip off the bottom, but I like that. It gives him character. And that night at the Rooster Tail, I realized he's handsome, really handsome. Funny how I didn't notice that from the first.

Maybe it would have been better if I hadn't. I have dreams about Paul now. Sometimes there are other people in the dream—Philippa, Olivia, James, my parents, and once his friends from the band were in it, though since we've never met, I don't know how I knew it was them, I just did. Sometimes it is just the two of us. The dream always ends with Paul holding me in his arms, just holding me close, and it feels so incredibly good, so safe and right. Then I wake up and realize he's gone, that it was only a dream, and I feel so empty that I can't go back to sleep, sometimes for hours.

I know I sound like a schoolgirl with a crush, but there is more to it than that—just as there is more to Paul than a man who is funny, smart, interesting, likable, and handsome, much more.

One day, when we were sitting on a pile of snow, taking a break during a sledding party we'd organized for the kids, he told me more about his relationship with his ex-wife. Melanie was a court reporter. He met her on a Wednesday, had taken her out and taken her home on a Friday. Two and a half months later, she was pregnant. A justice of the peace married them the following month.

Melanie was ten years younger than Paul and they didn't have much in common. The marriage was rocky from the first, but when James was born and Paul held him, three weeks premature and mewing like a kitten, wrapped in a blue hospital blanket and wearing a tiny knitted stocking cap, Paul fell head over heels in love with his son and decided, for all their sakes, to do everything he could to make the marriage work. It wasn't enough.

Four years later, in spite of all the counseling and Paul's best efforts, Melanie left. Furious with his wife and with himself, Paul took a long walk along the shores of Lake Michigan in freezing weather. By the time he reached Navy Pier, he realized he had to make a change. He decided to go back to the beginning, to the things he had learned as a child, things he'd known to be right but had walked away from. And he decided to put away his anger and forgive Melanie, learn from his mistakes, and try to be a better man.

Paul is so many things that are fine. But that conversation was the moment I realized that Paul was … a man. Not a perfect man but a
real
one, a man of character and integrity, the kind of man I had ceased to believe existed. Knowing all that, how could I not be jealous for him? How could I stop myself from falling in love with him?

I had to. That was all. I just had to. Paul wasn't mine.

I have spent so many years chasing after things and people that didn't belong to me, that God hadn't intended for me. Every time I did, I had humiliated myself and damaged relationships with people I truly cared about.

It had happened with my sister, but I was not going to let that happen again, not ever. Not with Philippa. Not with Paul. Not with Olivia.

That morning, sitting alone in the workroom, thinking, praying, remembering, folding, and folding, and folding, was my walk on the shores of Lake Michigan.

That was the moment I resolved to focus not on love that was never meant for me but on the love that had come to me at the proper time and according to a plan that I still could not begin to understand, the love I had longed and prayed for, the love of a child who needed me though she would not speak to me and who, by the whim of a judge or a wrinkle in the law, might yet be removed from my life but could never be erased from my heart, the child I loved so very much, the gift I never expected to receive: Olivia.