Heart of the Country

  I laughed as I watched. “You’re in a hurry to get to church,” I said as I approached. I took his coffee to help him out. “Must’ve been quite a night. Hope you remember her name.”

  The remark seemed to take him by surprise, and instantly I realized that while that joke might’ve flown with any number of people in my circle of friends, it probably wasn’t appropriate here in a church parking lot in Columbus County. With a guy who once had a fiancée. Ugh.

  I was about to apologize when Lee said, “Actually I remember both their names.”

  My eyebrows rose. Maybe I was wrong. “No kidding.”

  “First was Agnes. Eighty-nine. Heart attack.”

  I bit my fingernail. Yeah . . . I was definitely wrong. “Oh, um, sorry.”

  “Next was Bella. Six. Car wreck.” I immediately noticed his bloodshot eyes, punctuated with dark circles. “Didn’t make it.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Walk with me?” For all the times he’d been courteous to me, he now seemed withdrawn.

  “Sure.”

  We walked across the parking lot together, our conversation empty of all the chatter we’d become accustomed to. Instead, he told me about the family that survived: a brother who was eleven and both parents. I could hardly hold back tears as we entered the sanctuary.

  “I best let you get to your post,” he said without a smile.

  “Sure. Thanks. Very sorry for your night.”

  “It happens. It’s what I do.”

  I took a deep breath and hurried to get my robe on in the choir room, then joined the rest of them in the vestibule.

  “Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you?” Olivia asked.

  I adjusted the collar. “Dad drives like time doesn’t exist.”

  “True enough.”

  I watched Lee, hunched over in the pew, his hands against his forehead, praying, I knew, for that family. I felt sick to my stomach.

  “Heard it was a family next county over,” Olivia said.

  I hadn’t realized she was watching me. “A six-year-old girl died.”

  Olivia nodded. And then the organ started and we sang the opening hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” I could hear Daddy and Olivia, and it was weird, but there was something to our voices being one. A chord of three. A cord of three. I looked at Hardy, who sang with spirited gusto. And the little ones, Victoria and Nell, standing there singing with no hymnbook. They knew it by heart.

  Soon we were dismissed to our seats. Daddy and I sat on the end, Olivia and the girls in the middle with Hardy. We were all sitting together and it felt good. I knew Lee was behind me. I wanted to turn and check on him, see if he was all right, but instead I stayed quiet and listened to the pastor, who was already well into his sermon by the time I really tuned in.

  “. . . The point of the prodigal was not that he had run away. The truth is, we all run at one point or another.”

  I felt my cheeks flush. Was Pastor Jim looking straight at me when he said that?

  “In fact, the prodigal story isn’t about the prodigal at all, but about our Father, waiting with His arms open wide, with the past forgotten.”

  I couldn’t help but look at Daddy. That’s exactly what he did for me, whether he knew it or not. If I had to imagine it, Dad probably felt like a failure. His grief had been so deep and dark after Momma died that there was no room in him to help us through ours. But what I realized as I listened to Pastor Jim was that all along, there had been a hand there, on my shoulder. On his too. On all of ours. It was the hand that Momma talked about when I was very young. She said that God would hold my hand when I felt lonely. Or afraid. Or confused. But she reminded me that His hand would be there in the good times too. She said that it was how she knew she was supposed to stay in Columbus County and how she knew she was supposed to marry Daddy and make her home here.

  “Someday,” she said, “you will hear your heart and listen and follow your dream. You will need His hand to help you.”

  “Where was your dream?” I asked her.

  “My dream happened to be right here at home.”

  I tuned back in to Pastor Jim. Boy, was my mind wandering these days. I was going to have to work harder at listening to more than 30 percent of the sermon.

  “We’re all prodigals,” Pastor Jim was saying, making a large gesture out toward the congregation.

  But then my mind slipped back to the past, and I thought about Luke. It struck me that maybe that was all we had in common anymore . . . that we were both prodigals. Should I have run? Should I have given him a second chance? I’d barely let him try to explain before I took off. But what was there to explain? What else was there to say? He’d lied to me and possibly committed a crime.

  Time had again passed. I missed some witty story or joke from Pastor Jim. The roar of laughter snapped me back to attention.

  “So . . . how do we treat the prodigals who return to us?”

  I gulped, maybe audibly, and fought the urge to look at Olivia. But at the same time, I had to ask the question, what would I do if Luke tried to return to me?

  Before I knew it, time had flown once again and I was following Dad out of the church and down the steps. A hand touched my arm.

  “Faith,” Pastor Jim said, “thank you so much for singing in the choir. You have the voice of an angel.”

  “And you apparently have the voice of a prophet,” I said with a gentle smile.

  He laughed. “It’s easier to be a prophet in a small town.”

  “I guess so. Well, I enjoyed the sermon.” I was pretty sure I heard most of what God intended.

  “Thanks. And welcome home.”

  I sensed Pastor Jim was about to remark further, but Dad must have too, because out of nowhere his arm wrapped around my shoulder and his hand shot out toward the pastor. He pumped the handshake like Jim was a water well. “Thanks, Pastor. Always enjoy your sermons.”

  As we walked to the truck, I saw Lee. He was headed toward his truck. Usually he did quite a bit of mingling.

  “Dad, give me a minute, will you?” I hurried to catch up with him. “Lee, wait.”

  He turned, surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t see you. I’m in my own little world.”

  “Look, I feel . . . stupid. I am so sorry about this morning. Stupid joke.”

  “No worries. Just a bad day. It happens.”

  “Anyway, you’re welcome to join us for Sunday dinner if you’d like.”

  “Oh, um, thanks, but—”

  “I’m sure you’re going home. Getting some sleep.”

  “Next shift starts in . . . oh, great, two hours.” He reached for his door handle.

  I touched his arm. “Lee, who do you talk with about this stuff?”

  “Other than God?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  Lee shrugged. “I don’t.”

  “Try me. Sometime. If you’d like.” Even as I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have. But the air was filled with the tingle of dancing in the gray areas of life.

  “Faith, sweetie, loadin’ up over here.” Dad. Bringing me back to reality.

  Lee stared at me, and we had a moment. Just a glance. But we seemed to understand each other.

  “It’s going to be okay. You know that, right?”

  “If you do.” He smiled, gave a quick, distant wave to Dad, then got in his truck.

  Back by Dad’s side, I was greeted by my nieces.

  “If heaven had music,” Nell said, “I think it would sound like your voice.”

  “Aww, sweetie, that is so kind. Thank you.” I bent down to give her a hug.

  Victoria tugged on my shirt. “You wanna wrestle later?”

  I laughed as I knelt down further. “I’m not sure my muscles are strong enough for you.”

  “She is pretty weak,” Olivia chimed in with a smile that did nothing to cover up the insult.

  I ignored her. “Vic, maybe you could show me some of your moves later.”

  She followed a high five with a knuckle
bump and then a ruffle to my hair. “Awesome.”

  “All right, let’s get back to the house,” Dad said.

  “Calvin, you wanna pull a couple of trout from the river after dinner?”

  “Not today, Hardy. Feeling a nap coming on.”

  “Since when does my daddy pass up fishing?” Olivia asked, sliding her arm around his waist. “Still coming for dinner, though, right?”

  “It’s Sunday, isn’t it, darlin’?”

  “Can I bring something?” I offered though immediately regretted my intrusion into their moment. Olivia took everything wrong, so I figured she’d take that wrong too. She hesitated, looked at Dad.

  Then, “Okay. That’d be nice. Why don’t you bring dessert?”

  “Okay.”

  “Something easy, you know. Don’t go to any trouble.”

  “It won’t be as fancy as what you make.” I grinned. “We might all have to settle for Rice Krispies treats.”

  Hardy said, “I love Rice Krispies—” Olivia’s expression cut him straight off. “As a cereal. A little milk. How they crackle and all that. Too bad they don’t, um, crackle when they’re in, uh, treat form.”

  Man, Olivia had a knack for causing people to turn instantly awkward. Situations too. Pretty much anything.

  “Okay then,” Dad said, genuinely confused by Hardy and the Rice Krispies conversation. “We’ll see you later.”

  I climbed into the truck with Dad and he gave me one of those looks that any girl knows, if she knows her father at all.

  I felt like I was eight as I asked, “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. What is it?”

  “You’re making dessert. I didn’t even know you could cook.”

  I laughed and laid my head against the window, gazing at the interminable sea of corn that lined the sliver of black tar road leading us home. “I want to do it for her.”

  “Who?”

  “Olivia.”

  “You have nothing to prove here.”

  “I know. I do. I promise I know that now,” I said, almost convinced of it myself. “But for Olivia, that’s what you do. That’s home. And family. And love. It’s all wrapped up in cake.”

  Dad’s face lit up. “So you’re doing cake?”

  “No. Sorry. Can’t even make the boxed kind. But,” I said, “I did learn to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch from my sister-in-law.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm? Too good for chocolate chip cookies?”

  “Hmm, I didn’t know you had a sister-in-law.”

  His expression broke my heart. I shook my head, didn’t look at him. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Candace.”

  “Candace. From New York?”

  “All New York. Nice, but very proper. Very social. Has a hard time dressing down.”

  “You looked very nice today, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So that means Luke has a brother or a sister?”

  “Brother. But . . . they’re not close. They used to be. But they had a falling-out.”

  “Maybe they’ll reconcile.”

  “Doubtful. There’s too much history. Bad blood.”

  “When you got your blood running in each other’s veins, there’s not enough history in the world to keep you from one another.” He rolled up his window an inch or two, though he was driving so slowly there was hardly a breeze anyway. “You ever gonna call him?”

  “Luke knows where I am, has my number. If he wants to find me, he can.”

  “That’s fine as long as you’re okay with the idea that he might not.”

  I couldn’t even fathom it, to tell you the truth.

  “Luke and I are great at the fairy tale. It’s the real-life part that we have trouble with.” For whatever reason, that teared me up. But I was kind of a basket case anyway. I knew what I knew. That his possible indictment wasn’t the first time we’d lost our grip on reality. If it hadn’t been this, it probably would’ve been something else.

  “Don’t worry. That’s the truth for just about everybody.”

  I glanced at him. “I have a hard time believing that about you and Mom.”

  “Well, she died, didn’t she?”

  I nodded, taken aback by Dad’s bluntness. The man was a master at beating around the bush and then planting a whole new one. “Yeah. She died.” I balled my fist up, put it against the window, and propped my cheek there. “I should’ve brought him here. I’m sorry.”

  “You never have to be sorry with me, baby. I just want you to be proud of who you are.”

  “I’m proud of you.” When Dad squirmed, I let him off the hook. “Anyway, I just wanted to do that for Olivia. Make something for dinner.”

  “Then that’s the right reason to do it,” he said. “And no, I have nothing against chocolate chip cookies as long as they’re not made with fake sugar or applesauce or something horrible like that.”

  “I’ll give you one right out of the oven,” I said.

  Dad grinned all the way home. He looked tired, so I let him rest and took a stroll out to the stables. Silver’s ears twitched as I brushed him. And before I knew it, I’d saddled him up and was riding west, unaffected by the brisk fall breeze.

  Dad had told me he was thinking of entering Silver into the fair next month. Thought the two of us could work to get him ready, bring him to the fair together. I wanted to resist this in a way, falling back into the old times, the way things were. Because even though I wasn’t there, a huge part of my heart was still planted in New York. And there was so much I had to come to terms with. Eventually Luke and I were going to have to talk, at the very least to resign ourselves to the idea of divorce. Eventually I was going to have to return to New York.

  But eventually was as far away as I wanted it to be. So I lost myself in this country. Among the corn and the emerald tracks of soybeans. Below a sky so thick with blueness that the clouds looked like the white sands of the Caribbean.

  This once was my storybook land. Fields of wildflowers. Deer leaping and bounding over oceans of green, waving grass. I lay over Silver, my cheek nestled against his mane, my fingers combing over his muscular body.

  I wanted to stay here. Right here. This was perfect peace. Here I swam in the waters of tranquility.

  But it ended with the distant wail of sirens that grew louder with every slow breath. I heard the same sirens the day my mother died. And had heard them in my head for years afterward.

  They weren’t in my head today. An ambulance raced past me, pulling with it the grass and the dust.

  And my heart.

  33

  OLIVIA

  “DADDY! DADDY, hold on! God, please . . . Wake up—”

  Hardy knelt beside me. The girls stood nearby, huddling next to one another. Crying. “Girls, can you wait outside for the ambulance and tell them where to go when they get here?”

  Nell nodded, guiding her sister out.

  “He’s still breathing,” Hardy said.

  “Hang on. Help is coming,” I whispered to Daddy, my lips near his ear. Outside, the sirens were getting closer and closer.

  Even as I held Daddy, I wondered where in the world Faith was. Her car was out front. Had she taken that old horse for a ride? She had no business riding him around. He could barely stand up.

  Voices. And then the EMTs were hurrying through the front door. I stood and stepped back, allowing them in. “Please, please help him.”

  Hardy rushed to my side and put his strong arm around me. I leaned into his chest and he covered my cheek with his hand. “This can’t be happening.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Dad?” Faith’s shrill voice came from the back of the house. Hurried footsteps; then she appeared in the living room. Tears. I hated her tears. “What happened?” she asked nobody in particular.

  I stomped over to her. “What have you done?”
br />   “Me?”

  “I would’ve never left him! Never! That’s why I came over, because everybody that knows Daddy at all knows he never passes up a chance to fish. He didn’t look right. Didn’t you notice that? Or were you too busy talking to Lee about all your drama?”

  It should’ve felt awful coming out, but it didn’t. I could finally breathe, for the first time since I found Daddy unconscious on the floor.

  He’d hit his head, and it was bleeding down the side of his face. Faith stared at him as the EMTs worked at getting him on the gurney. She held a hand to her mouth. It was shaking. I glanced at Hardy, who looked like he regretted witnessing everything that I’d just said.

  “We need to get him to the hospital,” the dark-haired EMT said. He turned to Faith, who stood closest to him. “I need a list of any medications he’s on.”

  Faith shook her head, looked at me. I stepped forward. “I’ve already got that in my purse. I also have his doctor’s phone number.”

  They wheeled him outside. Dad wasn’t moving at all.

  “I’ll ride in the ambulance,” I told Hardy as I followed, grabbing my purse on the way out. “Can you get the girls to Rebecca’s house?” My voice cracked and quivered.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Hardy said, helping me into the ambulance.

  Faith was coming out of the house, still crying. She stood and stared at me, wordless, motionless.

  I took in a deep breath. Steadied myself. “Get to the hospital as fast as you can. Go ahead and grab his medications. They’re on his sink in the bathroom.”

  “Okay.” She nodded frantically. “What else?”

  “Grab his billfold. It’ll be on the kitchen counter. Has his insurance card.”

  “Okay.”

  “Faith,” I said, and her searching eyes stayed still, looked deeply into mine. “It’s going to be okay.”

  The doors shut and I sat on the small bench across from Daddy as the EMT took his vital signs.

  “How long to get there?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” the EMT said. “He’s stable. That’s a good sign.”

  “Daddy, I’m here. Right here,” I said, taking his hand. But I couldn’t say anything more without getting choked up, so I sat there like a pathetic lump on a log, staring out the back of the ambulance, wondering if they could drive faster.