The Widow of Saunders Creek (29 page)

Frustration welled up inside me, and if this had been anyone but Corrie, I would have given her a good piece of my mind. “You don’t have to tell me what kind of guy he was, Corrie.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know him the way a wife knows her husband.”

“No, that’s a given.” But she didn’t know him as I knew him either.

“Well, then?”

“It’s not him. That’s all I can say. We experienced that demon all through my growing-up years. After my grandfather’s death, it would lie on the bed with Granny. She felt the impression on his side of the bed. She felt his hand on her hip. Why would Aunt Trudy feel so much energy from Jarrod in a room you barely go into?”

“I don’t know!”

Her beautiful blue eyes filled, and my heart twisted inside my chest. “Corrie, I’m not trying to take something from you, but this can only end badly. I don’t want you to end up getting hurt. And Corrie, neither would Jarrod.”

“Jarrod wouldn’t hurt me.” Anger replaced the pleading in her eyes. “You’re supposed to be my friend. Jarrod’s so-called best friend. Why are you trying to keep us apart? Are you jealous or something? If that’s it, you don’t have to worry. I think we scared him off.” Her voice broke. “He hasn’t shown up since the reading yesterday.”

“Well, I can’t say I believe that’s a bad thing, Corrie.”

“Right. Because you don’t want him in my life.”

There was no getting through to her right now. Only God could
show her the truth. The helplessness I felt ripped into me like the stab of a hundred knives as we sat in the living room, staring at one another on opposite sides of a battlefield.

I watched out the window as Eli drove away. I felt like crying. I had hurt him with my outburst, and that was the last thing I’d ever wanted to do. When Lola came back into the room, I had slipped on my shoes and was headed for the door. “Hey,” she said. “Where’re you going?”

“For a walk.”

“Want me to come with you?”

I shook my head. “I need to think.” Mainly I needed to get out of that house. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to climb those steps and take a chance on a repeat of my frightening experience since Aunt Trudy and the Lancasters had gone. Sam said if I felt fear or distress I should say “Jesus,” but that thought didn’t even occur to me at the time. As I headed toward the bridge, I wondered what might have happened if I had said His name. I approached my place of solitude, anticipating some calm. But then I recognized Ava’s horse, and my stomach sank.

She had looped the reins around one of the posts and sat with her legs dangling, her arms resting on the bottom rail. She turned when she saw me coming. “I’m trespassing,” she said.

I found it hard to be annoyed when she offered such a self-deprecating smile. “It’s okay.” I kicked off my flip-flops and dropped down next to her. “Everyone seems to like to come here.”

“Does that bother you?”

I shook my head. It was true for the most part. Today, though, I would have preferred to be alone.

“You look down in the dumps,” she said. “Most people tell me I’m too nosy, so feel free to suggest I mind my own business, but is this about the reading yesterday morning?”

I shrugged. “Partly. Eli stopped by on his way to his retreat just now. We had words.”

“O-o-oh,” she said. She released a breath. “That’s my fault. I told him how freaked out you got yesterday morning. I guess I should have kept my mouth shut.”

Yeah, probably
. Irritation clutched at me, but I’d had enough confrontation today.

“So he really came down hard on you about the reading, I take it?”

“Not really. Sort of. I don’t know.” I rested my chin against my hands on the rail. “I was pretty hateful to him.”

“Is he okay?”

I shrugged. “He drove off. He didn’t seem mad, just hurt.”

Gathering in a deep breath, she turned to me. “Corrie, I’m going to say something, and trust me, it’s not easy.”

Then don’t say it
. I thought the words but managed to refrain from speaking them aloud. “What?”

“Eli really cares about you.”

My stomach fluttered. “I care about him too.” I deliberately misunderstood, because this wasn’t a topic I wanted to discuss, particularly with his childhood sweetheart.

“I think you know we aren’t talking about the same kind of caring.”

“Look, Ava. I appreciate that you don’t want to see him hurt.”

“I don’t think you do either.”

I nodded. “That’s where I was going with it. I don’t want to see him hurt. I truly do care about him.”

She paused, and I thought maybe she had taken the cue and dropped it. Rather, she seemed to regroup. “Listen, I know there was something in your house yesterday. And I know you want to believe it was Jarrod.”

“You don’t think it was?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. I’m not a medium like my mother. Not for her lack of trying, mind you.” She gave a wry grin. “At any rate, let’s say it is Jarrod.”

“Okay …”

“He’s not flesh and blood. He can’t be a husband to you. The most he can do is let you know he’s there.” Her expression softened. “There’s a real man standing right in front of you, practically begging you to notice him.”

Her words hit their mark, and I had to look away.

“It’s normal for you to feel guilty for wanting to get on with your life. I don’t think there’s a widow or widower out there who wouldn’t feel exactly the same way.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get on with my life. What if I just want to stay alone in that house with Jarrod forever?”

“If you did, why did you run away yesterday morning instead of letting Jarrod keep talking?”

“I don’t know.” I remembered the feeling of panic I’d experienced, the gray cloud coming toward me, and my heart picked up its rhythm. “It didn’t feel right.”

Ava maneuvered her legs out of the space between the deck and the bottom rung. She stood. “I think you already know in your heart that Eli could be the one for you. If you give him up, just know that you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

“Says the girl who already gave him up.”

“Exactly. I have to be going. Mind if I take the road in front of your house so I don’t have to go all the way around?”

“Go ahead, any time you want.”

“I’m going back to St. Louis tomorrow, so this is my last ride for a while.”

“So soon?”

“Yeah, I have to get back.”

I took in the information.

“Well, then I guess whenever you’re home again.”

“Okay, sure. Thanks.”

Her boots thumped across the wood as she walked the few steps to her horse. As I expected, she wasn’t quite finished. “And just for the record, if I could go back and do things differently with Eli, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” she said as she climbed into the saddle. “I’d be married to him and would likely have a couple of his babies. So be glad I was an idiot. But try not to make the same mistake.”

I watched the horse walk away, carrying Ava across the bridge. The sun had started to set, and the water below reflected its final rays of the day. I struggled with her words but even more with my feelings. How did I feel about Eli? True, he seemed to get me, maybe even more than Jarrod had, even after seven years of marriage. I laughed a lot with Eli.
I had laughed with Jarrod too but not about conversation so much as TV shows and things like that. Outside sources.

I heaved a sigh. It wasn’t fair to compare the two men. I loved Jarrod for who he was, and if I were ever to move on with Eli—if—the relationship would have to be separate from what I felt for Jarrod.

Suddenly I realized I was thinking of my feelings in the past tense. As though I didn’t love him anymore. Everything in me rebelled. I did still love him. I still searched for him.

But he was gone. That thing in the house couldn’t be Jarrod.

The thought came to me as though the very nature around me had spoken. Maybe Jarrod was there, as well as something else, something more sinister. That was possible, wasn’t it? Had the other thing, the evil thing, scared me off so that I couldn’t hear Jarrod?

I pondered the two sides of my confusion for a time, rationalizing on one hand, listening to my heart on the other.

As I walked back to the house a few minutes later, my mind replayed the entire conversation with Ava. She was meddlesome, but she seemed to truly care for Eli and want him to be happy. In a way, it made Jarrod’s hold on me seem almost selfish. I pushed the thought away as fast as it had come. I was his wife. Of course he wouldn’t want to see me with another man, even if that man was Eli.

An image flashed before me, unbidden, from someplace my imagination had never stretched to before. In my mind’s eye, I saw a scene on the wall in Eli’s chow hall. I gasped and stopped short to process it. As I stood there on my little path, surrounded by trees, the ground illuminated by beams of light, the image began to take shape.

I felt a presence, so unlike the things I’d been experiencing at my
home. A feeling of hope filled me, maybe even just a twinge of joy, for the first time since Jarrod’s death. I wanted to do something to show Eli how much I appreciated everything he had done for me over the past few weeks, giving up precious time to make sure my home was beautiful.

I grabbed my phone from my jeans pocket and dialed the first person who came to mind.

“Sam,” I said, my feet picking up speed as I envisioned the task before me.

“Corrie, honey,” she said, her tone rife with concern. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, breathless. “I have a surprise for Eli, but it’s going to take the whole time he’s gone to accomplish, and I need to get into his chow hall tonight. Can you help me?”

I could sense her hesitation on the other end of the line. “I have a key, but I’ve promised not to give it out. Can you tell me what you have in mind?”

By the time I explained what I wanted to do, I had reached my house.

“What do you think?” I asked, holding on to my next breath for fear she might turn me down.

Without missing a beat, she gave me her answer. “Come by and get the key.” Her voice shook with emotion. “Honey, Eli does a lot of good for a lot of folks. What you have in mind will be nothing short of a kiss from heaven to him.”

The wonderful aroma of paint began to fill the air in the chow hall, and I prayed as I worked, though I hadn’t spoken to God much in years. Not one-on-one. The hope that infused me while I walked home stayed with me, dispelling any doubts that muddled my brain. I worried from time to time that Eli might not really want me to do this.

I had a brief moment of panic when I realized that even with my new paints, I had nowhere near enough to cover a wall. But Sam had me covered and called Jerry. Thrilled to be part of the surprise for Eli, he opened his art store, and neither he nor his wife would even consider payment for the supplies. So of course I bought another of Billy’s paintings—this time it was a picture of kittens playing around my barn. Nothing spooky or dark. I joked I was going to have to charge him if he kept using all my props.

Sam called me three or four times before ten that night, asking how it was going. Finally, I had to laugh. “Sam, I’ll never get it done in time if you don’t let me work.”

I had never been the sort of artist who painted murals, so I had to rely on instinct to take over. This one challenged everything I had preferred in the past, and it began to take shape in an impressionistic style I hadn’t used since art school. I found myself leaning toward a type of surrealism in certain areas of the wall. Those parts spoke peace to my soul as the image formed. I worked until the wee hours of the morning
that first night and went home exhausted yet exhilarated at the same time. My heart soared with expectation of the next day’s work, and I drifted into a peaceful sleep on the couch.

After only four hours of sleep, I rose, nearly panicked that this was my only day to finish before Eli returned early Sunday morning. But as the images began to emerge on the wall, I grew more and more optimistic that the painting would be finished in time.

Apparently, word of my project had spread around town, because several of the townsfolk, including Jerry and Verna, showed up to take a look. But Lola stayed on hand to answer the door and prevent anyone from coming in. I was determined that Eli would have the first look.

At lunchtime, Lola made a quick trip to the café. She returned with burgers and fries and a look of complete incredulity on her face.

“What?” I asked.

“The owner wouldn’t let me pay for it.”

“Did you forget to take money?” It wouldn’t have been the first time. I grabbed a fry and popped it into my mouth.

“No, I opened my purse, and the girl said it was on the house, so I asked to speak to the manager, just to be sure.”

“And?” Lola had a way of dragging out a story.

“And he said, ‘I heard what your sister’s doing for Eli, and you can consider this our little contribution.’ I was going to argue because I know how you are about paying your own way. But he said, ‘Eli fixed my heater last winter and wouldn’t take a dime. Been lookin’ for a way to bless him back.’ ”