Up in Smoke (20 page)
Authors: T. K. Chapin
S
now began falling as we pulled onto our street. Leaning up to look out the windshield, I said, “It’s the first snowfall.” I glanced over at Susan as she held my hand that sat on the console between us. She beamed. She loved the snow. Winter was her favorite season. The quietness that the blankets of white laid across the greater Spokane area was her favorite part of the holiday. It was quiet and beautiful.
“It never gets old, no matter how many times I see it,” she said, grinning as she kept her eyes on the flakes coming down in front of our headlights.
“It is beautiful,” I replied.
Pulling into the driveway, I saw cars parked all along the side of the curb. I noticed Cole’s car was among them. “You invited Cole over for Thanksgiving?”
She leaned to see where I was looking and her eyebrows furrowed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He was supposed to park a block down,” she replied with a heavy sigh.
“What?” I asked.
Her eyes fixated on the garage door in front of us that the headlights were beaming on. Watching as the snowflakes fell between the headlights and the garage, I waited for her to say something.
She sighed and said, “It’s your retirement party-slash-Thanksgiving.”
Looking over at Susan, I said, “I’ll pretend to be surprised. It’ll just be our little secret.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling. I could tell she was happy.
We got out of the car and headed up to the house. She kept her arm intertwined with mine all the way up to the door. It felt so good to have her back in my arms. Her warmth and her love were coming back to me.
Walking into the dark house, I flipped on a light and everyone jumped out and yelled, “Surprise!”
A few of the kids had streamer poppers and yanked the cord on them, shooting streamers up into the air. I jumped a little from the noise. Cole, Kane, Ted and Micah all had fistfuls of confetti that they tossed up in the air over my head. A rainfall of colors fell across my vision as I looked across at all the people who had come. Even Brian came, though he had finished at the station a while ago. Beth came up to me and hugged me.
“Happy Retirement, Dad,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck. I saw Jonathan standing a few paces back. I smiled at him and motioned him over. He joined the hug.
While the snow might have begun to fall outside for the first time this winter, and the temperature was chilly, my heart was eternally warmed by all the people that had come. Jensen shook my hand after my hug with Beth.
“You’ve served the city well, and you will forever be known as one of the brotherhood,” he said confidently. His eyes glistened for a moment before he patted my shoulder and walked past me.
Laughter, turkey and a heaping serving of good times took us late into the evening as the snow piled outside in the yard and atop the cars. At one point, when everyone went outside to let the kids run around in the snow, Susan pulled me aside into my study upstairs. Sliding the door shut behind her, she looked at me. Those pretty eyes still seemed to be hiding some amount of fear behind them.
“I started that counseling with the pastor once a week last month. I’m trying to trust you. I want to trust you, but you hurt me so badly that it’s going to take time. I don’t want you to ever hurt me again, Rick. Can you promise me that?” she asked, coming closer to me. “Tell me everything is going to work out.”
I put a hand on each side of Susan and looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m never going to hide anything from you again. I promise.”
“Why do I still feel like you could be lying?” Her eyes began to water. “I thought you saying something like that would make me feel better, and I don’t. I’m scared, Rick.” She dipped her eyes into her hands, and I wrapped my arms around her.
Kissing her forehead, I said, “Stop your solo sessions, or keep them, but make a group session with me, too. We’ll fix this, dear, and we’ll be able to, regardless of our age, because we’ll have God’s help. It’s going to take time. You have to have faith that it’ll work out.” I wrapped my arms tighter around her and held her a little bit longer. “We’ll have our faith in each other and our trust in God, that he’ll bring us through this.”
She lifted her eyes to meet mine.
I leaned my forehead against hers as I peered into her eyes. “Our wedding day might be just a series of photos in a scrapbook now, but it’ll forever be the best decision I’ve made in my life, Susan. I love you.”
The End.
Embers & Ashes Series
Amongst the Flames
(Book 1)
Out of the Ashes
(Book 2)
Up in Smoke
(Book 3)
After the Fire (Book 4)
Winter
Love’s Enduring Promise Series
The Perfect Cast
(Book 1) FREE
Finding Love
(Book 2)
Claire’s Hope
(Book 3)
Dylan’s Faith
(Book 4)
Stand Alones
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Prologue
Each of us has moments of impact in life. Sometimes it’s in the form of
love
, and sometimes in the form of
sadness
. It is in these times that our world changes forever. They shape us, they define us, and they transform us from the people we once were into the people we now are.
The summer before my senior year of high school is one that will live with me forever. My parents’ relationship was on the rocks, my brother was more annoying than ever, and I was forced to leave the world I loved and cared about in Seattle. A summer of change, a summer of growth, and a summer I’ll never forget.
Jess leaned her head against the passenger side window as she stared out into the endless fields of wheat and corn. She felt like an alien in a foreign land, as it looked nothing like the comfort of her home back in Seattle.
She was convinced her friends were lucky to not have a mother who insisted on whisking them away to spend the
entirety
of their
summer out in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington. She would have been fine with a weekend visit, but the entire summer at Grandpa’s? That was a bit uncalled for, and downright wrong. Her mother said the trip was so Jess and her brother Henry could spend time with her grandpa Roy, but Jess had no interest in doing any such thing.
On the car ride to Grandpa’s farm to be dropped off and abandoned, Jess became increasingly annoyed with her mother. Continually, her mother would glance over at Jess, looking for conversation. Ignoring her mom’s attempts to make eye contact with her, Jess kept her eyes locked and staring out the window. Every minute, and every second of the car ride, Jess spent wishing the summer away.
After her mother took the exit off the freeway that led out to the farm, a loud pop came from the driver side tire and brought the car to a grinding halt. Her mom was flustered, and quickly got out of the car to investigate the damage. Henry, Jess’s obnoxious and know-it-all ten-year-old brother, leaned between the seats and glanced out the windshield at their mom.
“Stop being so annoying,” Jess said, pushing his face back between the seats. He sat back and then began to reach for the door. Jess looked back at him and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to help Mom.”
“Ha. You can’t help her; you don’t know how to change a tire.”
“Well, I am going to
try
.” Henry climbed out of the car and shut it forcefully. Jess didn’t want this summer to exist and it hadn’t even yet begun. If only she could fast forward, and her senior year of high school could start, she’d be happy. But that wasn’t the case; there was no remote control for her life. Instead, the next two and half months were going to consist of being stuck out on a smelly farm with Henry and her grandpa. She couldn’t stand more than a few minutes with her brother, and being stuck in a house with no cable and
him
? That was a surefire sign that one of them wasn’t making it home alive. Watching her mother stare blankly at the car, unsure of what to do, Jess laughed a little to herself.
If you wouldn’t have left Dad, you
would have avoided this predicament.
Her dad knew how to fix everything. Whether it was a flat tire, a problematic science project or her fishing pole, her dad was always there for her no matter what. That was up until her mother walked out on him, and screwed everybody’s life up. He left out of the country on a three month hiatus. Jess figured he had a broken heart and just needed the time away to process her mom leaving him in the dust.
Henry stood outside the car next to his mother, looking intently at the tire. Accidentally catching eye contact with her mother, Jess rolled her eyes. Henry had been trying to take over as the
man of the house
ever since the split. It was cute at first, even to Jess, but his rule of male superiority became rather old quickly when Henry began telling Jess not to speak to her mother harshly and to pick up her dirty laundry. Taking the opportunity to cut into her mom, Jess rolled down her window. “Why don’t you call Grandpa? Oh, that’s right… he’s probably outside and doesn’t have a cell phone… but even if he did, he wouldn’t have reception.”
“Don’t start with me, Jess.” Her mother scowled at her. Jess watched as her mother turned away from the car and spotted a rickety, broken down general store just up the road.
Her mom began to walk along the side of the road with Henry. Jess didn’t care that she wasn’t invited on the family trek along the road. It was far too hot to walk anywhere, plus she preferred the coolness of the air conditioning. She wanted to enjoy the small luxury of air conditioning before getting to her grandpa’s, where she knew there was sure to be nothing outside of box fans.
Jess pulled her pair of ear buds out from the front pouch of her backpack and plugged them into her phone. Tapping into her music as she put the ear buds in, she set the playlist to shuffle. Staring back out her window, she noticed a cow feeding on a pile of hay through the pine trees, just over the other side of a barbed wire fence.
I really am in the middle of nowhere.
The blistering hot June sun shone brightly through the upper side of the barn and through the loft’s open doorway, illuminating the dust and alfalfa particles that were floating around in the air. Sitting on a hay bale in the upper loft of the barn, Roy watched as his nineteen-year-old farmhand Levi retrieved each bale of hay from the conveyor that sat at the loft’s doorway. Each bale of alfalfa weighed roughly ninety pounds; it was a bit heavier than the rest of the grass hay bales that were stored in the barn that year. Roy enjoyed watching his farmhand work. He felt that if he watched him enough, he might be able to rekindle some of the strength that he used to have in his youth.
While Roy was merely watching, that didn’t protect him from the loft’s warmth, and sweat quickly began to bead on his forehead. Reaching for his handkerchief from his back pocket, he brought it to his forehead and dabbed the sweat. Roy appreciated the help of Levi for the past year. Whether it was feeding and watering the cattle, fixing fences out in the fields, or shooting the coyotes that would come down from the hill and attack the cows, Levi was always there and always helping. He was the son of Floyd Nortaggen, the man who ran the dairy farm just a few miles up the road. If it wasn’t for Levi, Roy suspected he would have been forced to give up his farm and move into a retirement home. Roy knew retirement homes were places where people went to die, and he just wasn’t ready to die. And he didn’t want to die in a building full of people that he didn’t know; he wanted to die out on his farm, where he always felt he belonged.
“Before too long, I’ll need you to get up on the roof and get those shingles replaced. I’m afraid one good storm coming through this summer could ruin the hay.”
Levi glanced up at the roof as he sat on the final bale of hay he had stacked. Wiping away the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, he looked over to Roy. “I’m sure I could do that. How old are the shingles?”
A deep smile set into Roy’s face as he thought about when he and his father had built the barn back when he was just a boy. “It’s been forty years now.” His father had always taken a fancy to his older brother, but when his brother had gone away on a mission trip for the summer, his dad had relied on Roy for help with constructing the barn. Delighted, he’d spent the summer toiling in the heat with his dad. He helped lay the foundation, paint the barn and even helped put on the roof. Through sharing the heat of summer and sips of lemonade that his mother would bring out to them, Roy and his father grew close, and remained that way until his father’s death later in life.
“Forty years is a while… my dad re-shingled his barn after twenty.”
“Shingles usually last between twenty and thirty years.” Roy paused to let out a short laugh. “I’ve been pushing it for ten. Really should have done it last summer when I first started seeing the leaks, but I hadn’t the strength and was still too stubborn to accept your help around here.”
“I imagine it’s quite difficult to admit needing help. I don’t envy growing old –no offense.”
“None taken,” Roy replied, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of a car coming up the driveway over the bridge. “I believe my grandchildren have arrived.”
“I’ll be on my way then; I don’t want to keep you, and it seems to me we are done here.”
“Thank you for the help today. I’ll write your check, but first get the hay conveyor equipment put away. Just come inside the farmhouse when you’re done.”
Roy climbed down the ladder and Levi followed behind him. As Roy exited the barn doors, he could see his daughter faintly behind the reflection of the sun off the windshield of her silver Prius. Love overcame him as he made eye contact with her. His daughter was the apple of his eye, and he felt she was the only thing he had done right in all the years of his life on earth. He’d never admit it to anyone out loud, but Tiff was his favorite child. She was the first-born and held a special place in his heart. The other kids gravitated more to their mother anyway; Tiffany and he were always close.
Parking in front of the garage that matched the paint of the barn, red with white trim, His daughter Tiffany stepped out of the driver side door and smiled at him. Hurrying her steps through the gravel, she ran up to her dad and hugged him as she let out what seemed to be a sigh of relief.
Watching over her shoulder as Jess got out of the car, Roy saw her slam the door. He suspected the drive hadn’t gone that well for the three of them, but did the courtesy of asking without assuming. “How was the drive?”
“You don’t want to ask…” she replied, glancing back at Jess as her daughter lingered near the corner of the garage.
Roy smiled. “I have a fresh batch of lemonade inside,” he said, trying to lighten the tension he could sense. Seeing Henry was still in the backseat fiddling with something, Roy went over to one of the back doors and opened the door.
“Hi Grandpa,” Henry said, looking up at him.
Leaning his head into the car, Roy smiled. “I’m looking for Henry, have you seen him? Because there’s no way you are, Henry! He’s just a little guy.” Roy used his hand to show how tall Henry
should be
and continued, “About this tall, if my memory serves me correctly.”
Henry laughed. “Stop Grandpa! It’s me, I’m Henry!”
“I know… I’m just playing with you, kiddo! I haven’t seen you in years! You’ve grown like a weed! Give your ol’ Grandpa a hug!” Henry dropped his tablet on the seat and climbed over a suitcase of Jess’s to embrace his grandpa in a warm hug.
“Can we go fishing Grandpa? Can we go today?”
Roy laughed as he stood upright. “Maybe tomorrow. The day is going to be over soon and I’d like to visit with your mother some.”
Henry dipped his chin to his chest as he sighed. “Okay.” Reaching into the back trunk area of the car, Henry grabbed his backpack and then scooted off his seat and out from the car. Just then, Jess let out a screech, which directed everyone’s attention over to her at the garage.
“A mouse, are you kidding me?” With a look of disgust, she stomped off around Levi’s truck, and down the sidewalk that led up to the farmhouse.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Tiffany asked, which caused Jess to stop in her tracks. She turned around and put her hand over her brow to shield the sun.
“What, mom?”
“Your suitcases… maybe?” Tiffany replied with a sharp tone.
Roy placed a hand on Tiffany’s shoulder. “That’s okay. Henry and I can get them.”
“No. Jess needs to get them.” Roy could tell that his daughter was attempting to draw a line in the sand. A line that Roy and his late wife Lucille had drawn many times with her and the kids.
“Really, Mom?” Jess asked, placing a hand on her hip. “Those suitcases are heavy; the men should carry them. Grandpa is right.”
Henry tugged on his mother’s shirt corner. “I think you should let this one go, Mother.” He smiled and nodded to Roy. “Grandpa and I have it.”
Tiffany shook her head and turned away from Jess as she went to the back of the car. “She’s so difficult, Dad. I hate it,” Tiffany said, slapping the trunk. “She doesn’t understand how life really works.”
“Winnie,” Roy replied. “Pick your battles.” The nickname
Winnie
came from when she was three years old. She would wake up in the middle of the night, push a chair up to the pantry and sneak the honey back into her bedroom. On several occasions, they would awaken the next day to find her snuggling an empty bottle of honey underneath her covers.
“I know. It’s just hard sometimes, because everything is a battle with her lately.”
“She’ll come around. You just have to give her some time to process everything
.
”