Song of the Brokenhearted (24 page)

But as she rounded the turn from the smaller highway to the interstate, her lukewarm coffee toppled over, spilling across the seat and over her leg.

She pulled into a parking lot where she saw a sign for a dollar store and decided to look for some paper towels. After wiping off her leg with some baby wipes, Ava started thinking of more things she'd forgotten on this ill-planned excursion.

Ava carried Emma in her car seat and set her in the small shopping cart, nearly filling it. Emma kicked her legs in and out at the bright lights and Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations covering the wall near the entrance. As a child, Ava had been used to the five-and-dime, but she hadn't been in a discount store in decades. She pushed down an aisle of ornaments, decorations for parties, cosmetics, and cleaners with a number of well-known brands. Some of the items looks like they'd been packaged in the '60s, but other things—the majority— were fresh and useable. There was even food—Ava had no idea that dollar stores sold food, though since her organic kick had started several years earlier, she wouldn't be serving up dollar TV dinners to her family anytime soon. But what a deal, she thought as she wheeled around a woman with a basket full of items.

With her dwindling funds, Ava had to conserve. Dollars added up quickly . . . surprisingly so, she realized, as she counted the items filling up the small spaces around Emma's car seat.

She'd picked out some snacks, cups, a few candy bars, and diaper wipes that smelled a bit like ammonia, but they were a brand she recognized.

As Ava rounded a corner with her cart, she nearly bumped into Corrine Bledshoe.

“Well, Ava,” Corrine said with surprise.

“What are you doing here?” Ava asked, as if accusing her of a crime.

“I'm buying some canned goods for the food bank. What are you—” Corrine broke off as her eyes drifted to Ava's shopping cart with Emma chewing on her bare toes.

“Who is that?”

“What?” Ava said, retrieving Emma's discarded sock from atop a package of thank-you cards.

“You have a baby in your cart.”

Ava bit her lip and couldn't help chuckle. Of course she would run into Corrine at a moment like this. The irony tickled her funny bone.

“Why are you laughing?” the woman asked, frowning.

“I'm sorry, it's just . . . here you are and here I am.”

“And why is that funny? Are you babysitting for someone?”

“I'm shopping. And no, I'm not babysitting.”

“Is she yours?” Corrine appeared more than a little confused, and Ava could practically see the math going on in Corrine's mind as she tried to estimate if it were possible for Ava to conceive a child. This made Ava laugh even further.

“No, she's not mine, but in a way . . . I have to go. Sorry.”

“Wait!” Corrine said, but Ava sped away toward the entrance of the store. She scooped up the car seat from the shopping cart, leaving everything inside and rushing out the door. Oh, how Corrine was going to have a field day with this one.

The thought turned her back around. She wasn't going to let anyone get the better of her. Lugging the car seat back through the entrance, she reached her shopping cart just as someone was about to take it.

“Sorry, that's mine.”

Corrine was pushing her cart around the corner of a display of canned corn with her ear leaned against her phone. Ava zipped up to her.

“Corrine, I just have to ask you. Have you ever had anything go wrong in your life?”

“Hang on, it's her,” she whispered and set the phone against her chest. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you have had anything go wrong in your life.”

Corrine shrugged. “Of course.”

Ava had heard about Corrine's husband's alcoholism and her recent estrangement from her son, but in Bible study and planning events, Corrine never let on that there was a problem.

“Do you think it's your fault every time something bad happens?”

“I examine my life and spirit and seek to find anything that God wouldn't approve of in me.”

“And does everything get better then?”

“Some things are out of our control. I'm not saying that you have sin in your life, but someone in your house obviously must. It's the same with my house.”

Ava felt a sudden sadness for Corrine and her entire family. They lived with the sense that God came at them constantly searching for ways to harm them. Ava couldn't change that.

“Oh, Corrine. God's grace is offered so that we don't have to live in fear that any mistake or any struggle will produce some awful circumstance.”

“God's grace is for our salvation. We still have consequences for our actions.” She glanced down at the baby as if to bring home the point.

Ava sighed, knowing that some people couldn't escape the prison cell despite how Christ had opened the door. She'd grown up with such fear, and she'd been allowing her grandmother's beliefs to infuse her life, blotting out what Christ had done for each of them. The prison door was open. She needed to stop walking back inside and acting as if it were locked again.

“Have a nice night.”

“But—” Corrine called after her. Ava headed toward the register.

Okay, Father, I surrender everything. Show me what you want me to face that I've been trying to escape
.

Emma cooed contentedly as Ava drove onto the highway heading south out of the suburbs and into the vast, open Texas prairie.

The sun was dipping low in the sky, but Ava was prodded forward by the need to face both the past and her future. She hadn't planned anything—this was her being spontaneous, she thought with a mustered-up sense of adventure.

She called Kayanne to fill her in on their location and route. Luckily Kayanne was getting ready for a date and didn't have much time to grill her but extracted a promise that Ava would call tomorrow.

Emma's noises softened, and Ava glanced back. In the mirror she could see Emma's head resting against the side of the car seat, unmoving in sleep. The ticking of the VW and the open road at twilight filled Ava with a sense of nervous excitement. She'd never taken off without another adult—her aunt, a friend, or Dane was always with her. Night dropped like a stage curtain over the plains, and small towns stepped up and fell back from the country highway.

Eventually Emma stirred and began suckling at the air, grunting as she did, cueing Ava that the hours had passed between feeding times. She pulled into a Dairy Queen parking lot to prepare a bottle from the warm distilled water she'd packed in a thermos. She picked up Emma and settled herself into the front passenger seat with the baby in her arms.

Emma put her hands around the bottle, staring at Ava with round, dark eyes. She drank anxiously at first, then settled into a gentle rhythm. She paused to reach up with a chubby hand for Ava's face. Her soft fingers brushed Ava's cheek, then returned to grasp awkwardly at the bottle.

“It's just you and me, little one,” Ava whispered with a growing awe at the little life in her arms. She was so small and beautiful. In the great big world, this one child could become lost in the shuffle. Fear suddenly crept toward the windows of the VW. Ava clicked the door locks and prayed for God's protection and guidance, which brought the strength of peace encapsulating them.

Across the road, Ava saw a billboard for a familiar hotel with luxury beds. They'd need a place to stay tonight, but their funds had dwindled far below the rate of her usual hotel choices. How much did a decent motel cost these days? She thought of the comfort of home only several hours back. Ava chastised herself for venturing out so unprepared.

Her cell phone rang and she saw Dane's face appear on the screen.

“Hello?” she whispered as Emma's eyes fluttered open and then her lashes dropped like a butterfly's wings back closed, open and closed again.

Dane's voice crackled with static. “Hello . . . where . . . you . . . thing . . . all right?”

“I can't hear you,” she whispered again.

“Try . . . ter . . .” and the line went dead. Ava was relieved she didn't have to confess to her husband that she was sitting in a parking lot in the middle of Texas with an infant in the car.

Dane didn't call again as she waited, and Emma's body grew heavy and limp. She shifted the baby onto her chest as she considered what to do and adjusted the seat back down. She closed her eyes . . . for just a few minutes.

A sound she didn't recognize stirred her. Ava jumped at the face staring at her, only inches away. Emma pushed herself up with her hand and let out a protesting grunt, then chewed on her fist hungrily.

“Where, what?”

Dawn softened the bleak horizon. The inside of the VW was cold, as were the baby's cheeks and hands.

“No way, we slept here!” Ava's eyes bounced around the fast-food parking lot as she pulled Emma's blanket back over her. She'd slept for hours with Emma on her chest. Anything could've happened.

Her heart pounded and her face burned with heat, but all thoughts of what could have happened were interrupted as Emma released a wail, letting Ava know exactly what she expected.

They'd been cooped up in the van for long enough, so Ava made use of the bathroom inside Dairy Queen to change the baby. Then she ordered herself a breakfast sandwich, made a bottle, and somehow got both of them fed inside the restaurant.

After getting Emma strapped back into the car seat, Ava searched for her phone. It had fallen beneath the seat and it beeped as the battery was dying. Dane had called back and left a voice mail saying he was worried. Sienna had called, stunned by the news of Bethany's baby at their doorstep and the vanishing act of her predictable mother.

“I'm both excited and worried about you. Giving me a taste of my own medicine, huh? Call!”

Corrine's message said, “Ava, I gathered with a few gals from the church. We prayed together for you. We are in agreement in our concern for you. Please return my call so that we can join you in prayer and seeking what God is trying to show you. I called Kayanne and she said you were on a road trip. But you can't run from your troubles. God will find you. Now I know you don't like me, but I want to be there for you. I am here for you.”

Ava smiled at the message as she got back on the road, unwilling to let any more aggravation inch its way inside of her. Corrine was trying to help her. She didn't know that Ava had been running from a portion of her life and self since she was seventeen. This was the first journey back to that place.

What do I believe? What is true?

There was a difference between the two. What she believed and what Corrine believed were quite different despite their joint professed love of Christ. But what was true had no bearing on what was believed. Truth was truth, and she prayed as she drove that what she believed was in line with Truth.

I have hidden Your word in my heart, so that I won't sin against You, Lord
.

That was the best she could do. Pray, infuse her life with God's word, and trust Him to guide her in the ultimate Truth.

They rumbled along the rural highways with Ava feeling less and less equipped for the journey. Emma slept or rode along agreeably, and they stopped every few hours for snacks and restroom visits. The wind whipped dust devils across the open fields and occasionally tumbleweeds rolled along the highway, so big that she had to swerve out of the way.

God, what am I doing? Tell me to go back or go forward. Show me the way
.

There was no answer. No still, soft voice in her head, only loud doubts crowding each other out to be heard. There was no bulletin board on the highway that gave some direction like, “This Way! You've Almost Made It.”

God, am I doing the right thing?

The engine light on the old VW fluttered on and off on the dashboard, and the gas gauge had made a sudden plunge toward E. The baby would need food soon and a diaper change. It was Sunday afternoon and only small towns dotted the landscape with long intervals between, and most shops closed down for the day.