High Plains Hearts (25 page)

“Where are we going?”

“We’re not going anywhere, honey.”

“But I just heard Ric say—”

“Todd, we can’t just pick up and move.”

“Are we going to live with Gran then?”

The reminder of her situation rose in Lily’s mind like a gigantic monolith, unavoidable now. Where were they going, anyway? She loved her mother, but she couldn’t stay with her.

“No, no, Todd. We’re not going to live with Gran.” She knew anxiety had crept into her voice, but she couldn’t keep it away.

“Then where are we going to live?” Todd insisted.

“Somewhere, sweetheart, somewhere. I just don’t know where.” Inside her chest the claw of tension tightened.

Ric spoke quietly. “Think about this job. These people could use you and your skills. Right now they have nothing. And what you have—knowledge, caring, and time to work—will help them more than you could ever know.” He smiled at Todd. “Disasters are bad enough, but they shouldn’t happen to children.”

“Are we going to live in a tent?” Todd asked. “We don’t have a tent, do we, Mom? If we don’t live with Gran, then where are we going? Are we going back to Chicago? I thought you said—”

“That’s enough, Todd.” Her words shot out like bullets, and she instantly regretted her tone. She knelt beside him and ran her finger down the bridge of his nose. “We’re going to be okay. You know that.”

She sensed him closing up. Suddenly everything in her melted, and she clutched him to her in a near-desperate hug. “Honey, please don’t worry. Leave that to me.”

Something inside her began to move, like a glacier edging its way onward. But as quickly as it began, it stopped. She wasn’t ready.

“We could go where Ric says.” Todd’s voice was muffled against her shoulder.

The block of ice jolted away from her heart a bit, just enough for the pain to penetrate briefly. He was so little, so defenseless against a world that had been totally unfair.

“I will take care of both of us,” she promised him softly in his ear. “God will be with us, like He always has been. He will not leave us.”

“I want to go home.” Her son’s words were so quiet that she wasn’t sure he’d spoken at all until she felt the tears moistening her blouse. “I want to go home, but I don’t know where that is anymore.”

The glacier lurched inside her, nearly ripping her heart from its moorings.

She looked up at Ric. “Let’s talk about that job.”

Ric pulled a map from a manila envelope and pushed it across the table. The dining hall was deserted while the children were on a nature hike and the parents were swimming.

Lily looked where his finger pointed. “That’s Wildwood,” he said to her. “It’s a lovely little town—at least it was until the Rock River left its boundaries and affected 98 percent of the town. Houses, businesses, schools—you name it—they’re gone or at least damaged.”

On the map, roads and highways intersected in red and black lines. An occasional blue squiggle indicated a river, and it was to one of these that he was drawing her attention.

It looked so innocuous, this unassuming curve of blue that wound past the dot marked W
ILDWOOD
.

“What happened?”

“There was more snow than usual this year. This part of the state is very flat, and the snowmelt had nowhere to go except to the river. That’s a lot of water, more than the river could hold within its banks.”

“So one day the water just came up?” She’d heard about it on the news, how all the smaller tributaries had flooded, too, but because it had been at the same time as the situation at the Nanny Group was coming to a head, she’d let it slip past her.

“Along the river’s edge, roads were washed out, and basements took water. Many highways between towns were closed, and the county roads began to go under until many farmsteads and smaller towns were isolated. Then one day in Wildwood, the lift stations failed, and the street sewers couldn’t function any longer, and that was all it took. Wildwood flooded.”

“With all that damage, wouldn’t it be better to just abandon this place? Let the river say it won?”

He shook his head. “And where would they go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere.”

“That’s just it. There isn’t any place for them to go. They can’t just pick up and leave everything and make their town reappear magically in another location.”

“I understand that. But doesn’t it come to a point where you say, ‘That’s it. This and no more’?”

“Possibly. But not in this case. The flooding didn’t take out the town, just inundated it. Most houses are structurally all right but need some internal help. Basements need to be fixed up. People need furniture. Clothing. Help reorganizing their lives. How can I explain to you how damaged they are—not only their homes but their emotional and spiritual selves?”

He reached inside the manila envelope and pulled out a handful of photographs. With one quick motion, he spread them across the tabletop.

She couldn’t lift her eyes from the tableau he had laid in front of her.

The houses were clean, and the lawns were evenly green. Overhead a lapis blue sky sparkled. But along the streets were piles of rubble. Bits of drywall. Furniture soaked and stained. Clothing that was nearly unrecognizable after two weeks of being submerged in floodwaters.

“And this doesn’t even begin to capture the smell,” he added.

She stroked one photograph that particularly caught her attention: a once-pink bear, now darkened to a patchy gray, perched in a discarded child’s rocking chair. One runner was missing from the chair, and it balanced precariously atop the heap.

“Our job,” Ric said, “is helping them clean and repair so they can get on with the business of living.”

“Sure. This is all just stuff anyway.”

She felt Ric stir uneasily. “ ‘Stuff’? I don’t know if I agree with that. What went with the river was often priceless, unless the family was able to salvage it, which is unlikely. Family photographs. Baby pictures. Scrapbooks. The things that can’t be replaced at any cost.”

The back of her throat felt dry. Papery. Her stomach twisted. Lily turned back to the photographs and the graphic display of devastation that was scattered in front of her.

She studied the single photograph that had held her attention. Inside her chest, a small invisible hand clutched her heart.

She realized why the picture took her by emotional storm. This could be Todd’s bear. Only the color was different. His was brown, a rich chestnut brown. She’d bought it two years before as part of a department store promotion. It had originally sported a red plaid bow and a tiny green vest, but those had disappeared within days.

Nevertheless, the bear stayed with him. It was in their cabin at Shiloh now.

And there was more beyond the bear. The owner could have been Todd. And certainly the loss was physically a teddy bear and a rocking chair, but how much more had been taken by the river?

“It’s going to be difficult,” Ric said, interrupting her thoughts. “These folks have been through a lot, and their stories will tear your heart out.”

“I’m tough.”
No you’re not
, the silent voice inside her soul answered.
You are ready to fall apart. You are in absolutely no condition to go into a place that is as hurt as this place, where people are struggling with despair, when your own battles are not fought and certainly not won
.

“Are you saying you’ll take the job?” Ric leaned across the table and clutched her fingers eagerly.

The photograph fell to the table. The answer was on her lips before he finished. And when she answered, her heart spoke.

“Yes.”

The trees whispered among themselves, and Ric sat on the grounded end of the teeter-totter, letting the cool June breeze wash over him.

“God, I think we did it.”

He spoke softly, although no one was out this late. He hadn’t been able to sleep, thinking of what awaited him in Wildwood.

The congregation at Resurrection had insisted he fulfill his commitment to Shiloh, made before the flooding had occurred. As the youth minister who worked with children from the time they were infants until they graduated from high school, he’d been torn between his responsibility at the church and his promise to work at Shiloh, but Pastor Mike, the head clergyman at the church, had encouraged him.

“You need a break,” he’d told Ric.

It was probably true.

The flood had crept in, slowly at first—a few inches in this basement, low-lying yards taking on water. At last the Rock River had been overwhelmed and left its banks entirely.

Wildwood had just under 30,000 residents, and it hadn’t garnered the attention recent flooding had in larger cities, like New Orleans or Nashville.

As a smaller community, Wildwood was at a disadvantage in recovery. The folks who drove the refuse trucks, the electricians who had to replace each electrical box, the technicians for the cable company—all were struggling in their own homes, trying to get them back to normal.

His second-floor apartment hadn’t been damaged, but the lower level had been affected. He’d worked day and night, not just in his building but wherever residents had needed help.

The chore seemed endless. Even in his dreams, he hauled out damaged belongings, power-washed basements, and swabbed walls with bleach. Perhaps more important was the task of keeping the children of Wildwood occupied while their parents toiled on, trying to balance post-flood cleaning with attending to their day jobs.

There was so much work.

And yet each day still had only twenty-four hours, and every human body needed sleep.

He lay back and rested his head on the red-painted board of the teeter-totter. The enamel was flaking off, a sign of its heavy use this summer. When he stood up, his back, he knew, would be covered with crimson flecks.

“You are good, God,” he said aloud as he surveyed the sky above him. Without city lights to challenge the brightness of the stars and the moon, the glow overhead was astonishingly reaffirming.

The same sky covered them all—from the greatest cities of the world to this little camp in the plains of North Dakota.

He’d felt guilty enjoying his time at Shiloh while his flock toiled on, but now he could return with the promise of help.

He would come back with hope.

It was in short supply lately in Wildwood. People were getting tired, and the full impact of what they’d lost was finally gnawing its way into their hearts.

Plus there was so much to do. The day before he’d left for Shiloh, he’d met with the Parenting with Christ study group in the church. Once the most vibrant class in Resurrection’s offerings, its membership had dwindled to only a few couples.

“It’s just so hard,” one of the young women said with a sigh. “I want to do this, but we need—my children need …” Her words had trailed off as she’d fought tears.

It always seemed to circle back to this. Did they do this? Or that? What got short shrift? Life was now unbelievably complex.

But Lily, even though she undoubtedly didn’t realize it, would take much of the burden from their shoulders. Just knowing their children would have a safe, secure place to go would be one less worry as they labored through rebuilding everything that made their lives.

Right now she had, understandably, no idea of the scope of the job ahead of her. But he had seen her expression when she saw the teddy bear, bedraggled by the floodwaters.

Her heart had spoken so loudly that he heard it.

He smiled at the stars sprinkled overhead, a vast array of silver white lights in a black velvet sky.

Whatever God had planned for him was making him very happy.

And it was tied in with a young woman whose eyes, when she forgot her own worry, sparkled like the very stars above him now.

“Thank You,” he said to the One who had created the celestial display, the curtain of heaven itself. “Thank You.”

Todd crowed with delight when Lily told him they were moving to Wildwood. “There’ll be boys there,” he said with assurance. “Boys who will be my friends.”

That hand on her heart squeezed again. Her son needed friends.

“There’ll be boys there.” Lily stroked his reddish gold hair. “And they’ll be needing friends. You’ll be just the ticket.”