A Mother's Gift (Love Inspired) (2 page)

“I’m not seventeen anymore,” Dixie insisted. “I’m a twenty-six-year-old adult. I can decide for myself what’s best for me.”

“Dixie, you’re a young, single mother with her whole life ahead of her,” Vonnie pointed out pleadingly. “I don’t want you to spend it alone. Mark wouldn’t want you to spend it alone. That’s all I’m saying.”

Dixie turned aside thoughts of what Mark might have wanted. Being alone was what she deserved, but she could never say that to another living soul. Besides, that wasn’t the point.

“And what about Clark? He needs a father,” Vonnie said.

Dixie jumped on that with both feet. “Mark is Clark’s father!”

“This isn’t about Mark. It’s about you and Clark.” Vonnie thumped her fist against her breastbone. “You know that your father and I loved Mark Stevenson with our whole hearts, but Mark is gone. Don’t use his death as an excuse to stop living. And don’t think I’m going to let you use this nonsense about the Slades to get out of going to church on Mother’s Day!”

Dixie blanched. She had been thinking that a refusal might be justified by her mother’s manipulation, but Vonnie had cleanly swept that ground from beneath her feet. She scrambled for fresh purchase, her chin trembling. “You know what being there will do to me.”

“You have to face it sometime, Dixie. Besides, you’re the one who insisted that the service be at the church rather than the funeral home.”

“Mark loved that church,” Dixie whispered.

“He loved God more,” Vonnie said. “When are you going to stop being angry at God, Dixie?” she asked. “When will you stop blaming Him for Mark’s death?”

“I…I…” Dixie felt the hot tears start, but she shook her head. “You don’t know what it was like. You don’t know….” She bit her lip, hugging herself.

“You’re right,” Vonnie admitted. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a husband, but I know that Mark would not want your anger or your continuing grief. And you know as well I do that he would not want Clark raised as an only child.”

Dixie jerked as if she’d been slapped. Everyone knew that Mark had wanted “a dozen” children. She had, too, before that awful day, but without Mark…“Just because you couldn’t be happy with one child,” she accused thoughtlessly.

Vonnie gasped, but instead of reigniting her temper, Dixie’s crass remark seemed to have saddened her mother.

“Oh, honey, no,” Vonnie said, opening her arms and coming forward. “If I ever gave you that impression, please forgive me. You’re all any mother could ever want.”

Reduced in an instant to regretful tears, Dixie went straight into her mother’s arms. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean that.”

“You are the answers to my prayers, Dixie,” Vonnie said, holding her close. “It breaks my heart, what you’ve been through. Your happiness means more to me than my own.”

Dixie bit her lip, feeling small and selfish. “It’s just so hard…without Mark,” she whispered.

“I know, I know.”

“Every day with Clark, I think of all that his father is missing, and it kills me.”

“Dixie!” Vonnie scolded lightly, holding her daughter a little away so that she could cup her face in her hands. “Mark is in heaven. He’s not missing a thing. But by holding yourself back, you are.”

I should be,
Dixie thought, but she shook her head. Her mother could not possibly understand. As for being angry at God, well, who wouldn’t be?

“It just seems to me,” she muttered in a shaky voice, “that the God of creation could control a little thing like a steering mechanism breaking in a speedboat.”

“Absolutely He could,” Vonnie agreed, leading her daughter to a chair at the table and sitting down next to her. “He could have prevented the martyrdom of the apostles, too, but for reasons we may not understand until we join Mark in heaven, God sometimes allows bad things to happen to His children. But He uses even those bad things for our good, Dixie, if we let Him. Even when those bad things are the results of our own actions, God can use them to bless us if we repent.”

Stricken by that, Dixie suddenly knew what she had to do, but she merely nodded and smiled at her mother. “What about that lunch?” she asked, smiling shakily. “All at once I’m starving.”

Vonnie cupped her daughter’s cheek in one hand, concern written upon her face, but then she rose and cheerily set about building sandwiches while Dixie brought Clark back to the table.

When Sam came in more than an hour later, Dixie realized that she had lingered far longer than she’d planned.

“I still have to shop for groceries,” she said, to her father’s disappointment.

He walked her out to her car, carrying Clark, and buckled the boy into his safety seat before smiling down at her.

“So we’re on for Mother’s Day?”

Sighing inwardly, Dixie accepted the inevitable. “We’ll be there on Mom’s birthday.”

Sam patted her and kissed the top of her head. “That’s my little girl.”

For a moment, she wished that were so. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to go back and do it all again. This time she would not insist that she and Mark go out and test-drive that used boat. This time she would happily buy new, as he had wanted.

That night, after Dixie put Clark to bed, she got down on her knees and confessed her sin.

“Forgive me, Father. I’ve blamed You for what was my fault. Maybe I’ll never know why You allowed that boat to careen out of control as it did, but I know that we were on it because I refused to buy a new one. I’m sorry for blaming You. I’m sorry for causing my husband’s death. Help me to put aside my pain and worship You again.”

The dream came with the storm that night. Spring being tornado season in Oklahoma, Dixie stayed up late to follow the weather report while Clark slept soundly in his room down the hall. She didn’t sleep all that well since Mark had died, so she certainly didn’t expect to drift off on the couch in the midst of a severe-weather alert, but drift off she did, curled up on the sofa in the den.

The next thing she knew, Dixie found herself standing at the kitchen sink. The morning felt like any other April day in Lawton, bright, a little windy with just a hint of the winter past mingling with the promise of summer to come. Looking up, she saw through the window that the enormous old hickory tree in the backyard had fallen on the swing set. Once more, the dark-haired man was there, this time with Clark safely snug in his arms. Stupendously handsome, his eyes dark and penetrating, he smiled at Dixie, and she felt a shock of recognition, though she knew she’d never seen him before. The man set Clark on his feet, and he was an older Clark, perhaps five or six years old. Hand in hand, they turned away from her, and in a blinding flash of insight, Dixie realized that the handsome stranger was taking her son away!

Panicked, she flew not to the door but to the window behind the round kitchen table in time to see the man let himself and Clark out the gate in the fence. Running from window to window inside, she followed their progress around the house and along the driveway to the sidewalk out front. As they headed off down the street, the man’s hand upon Clark’s shoulder, Dixie pounded on the window glass, raging for them to come back, but even she could not hear herself. Why, she wondered, in the illogical way of dreams, didn’t the glass break so her voice could be heard?

Then suddenly they stopped, and the man bent to whisper into Clark’s ear. Sobbing now, Dixie pressed her hands to the glass and stared at her son, his dark curls tousled by the breeze. The smile on the stranger’s impossibly handsome face brightened, kicking up at one corner, as he snapped a jaunty salute. Abruptly, a sense of relief and well-being filled Dixie. Laughing, both the stranger and Clark waved before they turned and continued on their way.

“We’ll be home soon, Mom.”

Her son’s words resounding in her mind, Dixie closed her eyes, overcome with joy and gratitude. Wherever he was bound, her precious son was safe and well. There was nothing to fear.

Around her, the day came alive with the sounds of the city. Somewhere a cartoon played on a television set. The engine of a passing car hummed, its tires whirring. They would have to replace the swing set, she thought idly. Her father could help with that. Sam would be glad to erect another swing set for his beloved grandson.

Dixie woke gradually, feeling rested, the dream clear in her mind. How silly and nonsensical it seemed in the still light of early morning! She shivered, remembering the sharp, unformed fear and the sudden infusion of joy. Both faded as reality gradually intruded.

The television, she realized, still played softly, but the storm had passed without apparent harm. Dixie shut off the set, got up and went to dress in denim capris and a neat lime-green T-shirt. Because Clark always woke ravenous, she went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, welcoming the chore as she welcomed anything that kept disturbing thoughts at bay. As she busied herself, the dream faded from her mind.

Until she looked out the window and saw that, in the previous night’s storm, the old hickory had split and fallen, crushing the swing set beneath it.

S
tunned by the destruction of his swing set, Clark stood beside his mother in the backyard, enormous tears welling in his vibrant green eyes as he took in the fallen tree.

“It’s all right, honey,” Dixie told him. “Pop-Pop will build you another, and we can play in the park until it’s ready.”

“Park,” he insisted solemnly, tugging at her hand with his own damp one.

But the storm had saturated the ground, and Dixie knew that mud holes would have swallowed the pea gravel in places. “Tomorrow,” she promised, still shaken by what had happened.

The dream, of course, had nothing to do with the tree falling. That had been a result of the storm. Still, her skin prickled along her spine. They stayed in the house that day and busied themselves away from the kitchen window.

By midmorning of the next day, the first of May, the constant wind had dried the ground to a cushy firmness, so they set off on foot to walk two blocks to the playground, surrounded by a gravel jogging track. As soon as they turned onto the path toward the playground, they heard the clear voices of several children.

Dixie felt a pang of unexpected longing. More children of her own, she thought sadly, would have been a great blessing, but then she looked down at her eager son and smiled, thankful for the child she already had. Laughing lightly, she allowed herself to be tugged forward.

Well before they reached the play area, they drew near a bench where a man dressed in running gear sat in the dappled sunshine beneath a post oak tree. Tall and lean, with short black hair, he wore headphones as if listening to music. With his long legs stretched out before him and his head bowed, he seemed to be listening very intently.

Suddenly, Clark dropped Dixie’s hand and veered toward the man, running full out. Before she could even register what was happening, Clark tripped over the man’s feet and went sprawling, face-first, into the gravel. Stunned, Dixie froze, until Clark gasped and began to wail. Even as Dixie rushed forward, the man calmly leaned over, got his hands around Clark’s little body and lifted the boy to his feet. By the time Dixie arrived, the trauma had given way to a gurgling giggle.

The man placed his big hand flat atop Clark’s head and said, “Okay now?”

“I’m so sorry,” Dixie said, skidding to a halt. “I don’t know what happened, he just shot away from me.”

“No harm done. You must be his mom,” the man said, turning a smile up at her.

Gasping, Dixie stepped back, drawing Clark away from the stranger. It couldn’t be! This was the face of the man in her dream.

Eyes of such a dark brown that they were almost black looked up at her from an all-too-familiar, impossibly handsome face. His smile cut grooved dimples into his flat cheeks, just as she recalled. Up close, his hair was blue-black. She shook her head, but if the man found that odd, he gave no indication. Telling herself that she was imagining things, Dixie stammered her thanks and rushed Clark away.

It couldn’t be the same face, of course. Reason dictated that. Yet Dixie could not escape the notion that this was the man in her dream. Shaken, she glued herself to Clark’s side, but the man, who sat at some distance, seemed to pay them no mind after that. Nevertheless, she cut the visit short and left the park by the side entrance, though it increased the walk home to three blocks.

By the time they reached her modest brick house with its offset garage, she had convinced herself that the man in the park only remotely resembled the man in her dream or that she had seen him somewhere else. Nevertheless, she called her father to come over and take a look at the fallen tree in order to determine what must be done to get up another swing in her yard. The fewer trips to the park—and the less chance of seeing the disturbing dark-haired man with the penetrating brown-black eyes—the better.

Two days passed before Dixie felt comfortable enough to venture out again. The tree, her father had told her, would have to be cut into pieces and moved out of the way before he could tell the extent of the damage to the swing set. Hopefully, only the crossbar would have to be replaced, but a proper length of pipe would need to be found, prepared and painted before repairs could be made. Clark, meanwhile, could not be denied his beloved swinging indefinitely, and so to the park they set off once more.

Chagrined to find the stranger, this time dressed in jeans and a simple beige T-shirt, sitting on the same bench, headphones in place, Dixie hoped to escape his notice. Clark, unfortunately, had other ideas. He began yelling, “Hello! Hello!” while they were still yards away. The man pushed back his headphones and smiled in their direction, removing any hope of avoiding an encounter. Clark tugged fiercely until Dixie released her hold on his hand.

With a sinking heart, she watched her young son race over to the man and crash eagerly into his knees. She heard the man’s chuckle and saw how he placed his hand atop the boy’s head.

“Why, it’s my little friend from the other day. What’s your name, son?”

Before Clark could answer, Dixie rushed over to take her child by the hand. “I’m sorry. A two-year-old thinks everyone he’s encountered before is a friend.”

“In this case, he’s right,” the man said, smiling. “But two?” He placed his hand atop Clark’s head again. “He’s much too tall for two.”

“Almost three,” Dixie amended. “Three in early July.”

“Still, even for a three-year-old, he’s a tall one.”

“Swing,” Clark said. “My swing broke.”

“That’s too bad. A boy needs his own swing.”

The man gave Clark his full attention, and Dixie watched with dismay as her little boy honed in on that, like a sunflower that lifts its head to the noon sunlight. Perhaps her mother was right and Clark did need a fatherly influence beyond that of his grandpa. Was that what God was trying to tell her with her dream?

It could not be anything else. Still, this man’s resemblance to the fellow in her dream was a figment of her imagination, nothing more. She was quite sure of it. In fact, she refused to believe that the dream contained any message at all. And yet, as she hurried him away, her son looked back at that stranger on the bench with undisguised longing.

Certain programs and organizations provided wholesome male influence for children, didn’t they? Dixie made a mental note to check out what might be available in the Lawton area. Mark would not want their son to suffer for lack of male attention and guidance any more than she did.

Then again, Mark would want to be the one to give him everything that he needed.

Oh, Mark,
she thought,
I’m so sorry.

Her parents were waiting in the foyer when Dixie led Clark, in his new Sunday best, through the door of the church where she had grown up, found Christ, been baptized, married and buried her husband.

“How handsome!” Vonnie exclaimed, dashing tears from her eyes as she stooped to embrace her grandson.

“Thank you, sugar lump,” Sam whispered, wrapping his arms around Dixie for a quick hug.

Vonnie straightened Clark’s clip-on bow tie and brushed the buttons of his checked shirt with an adoring hand before Sam swept the boy up, posing with him so Vonnie could compare their navy-blue bow ties. Sam’s had a stripe of red running through it. A collection of crazy bow ties was Sam’s claim to fame, so of course Dixie had chosen a sedate version of the same for her son. Vonnie was still gushing over them when the outer door opened behind Dixie.

Vonnie turned, exclaiming, “Bess! And Joel. My, how wonderful you look.” She moved forward for hugs. Dixie turned to encounter the top of a dark head of short, inky-black hair. Even before he moved back from the embrace and lifted his face, Dixie felt her skin prickle with gooseflesh.

“You!” she gasped. “You’re Joel Slade!”

“Dixie? It was you in the park!” he exclaimed, his smile as wide as his face. He put out his hands, patting the air as if hunting for the boy. “And my little buddy,” he said. “That would be Clark, yes? How wild is that?”

To Dixie’s horror, two things happened at once. Clark launched himself at Joel Slade, his “friend” from the park, and she realized what had escaped her before—Joel Slade was not only the man in the park and, arguably, the man in her dream: Joel Slade was also blind.

Joel laughed, hugging the warm little body tight. So this was Clark. Clark!

“You’ve already met,” Vonnie Wallace said.

“Imagine that!” his mother chimed in, excitement in her voice.

Despite his sternest warnings to himself, Joel couldn’t help sharing her excitement just a little. To think that it had been Dixie Wallace and Clark in the park! It seemed unbelievable.

Correction, not Dixie Wallace. It was Dixie Stevenson now. Why had he never learned to think of her by her married name? Maybe because he’d last seen her in person almost a decade ago. He smiled, picturing her at seventeen.

She’d been a fresh beauty back then, with her long hair hanging down her back in a rich, rumpled swath of browns, golds and bronzes, her gently arched brows slightly darker. The widow’s peak at the top of her forehead had emphasized the heart shape of her face, with its narrow chin, plump lips and large, dark eyes. He hadn’t been able to tell their color from across the parking lot, but he knew from her school photos that they were an unusual shade of spruce-green. She had been pretty enough back then to make him wonder if he was doing the right thing by joining the Marine Corps. Had it not been for the tall, slender fellow on whose arm she had hung, Joel might even have tried to attract her interest back then, as his mother had always urged him.

Joel’s senses had told him several things even as he’d accepted the boy’s weight. For one thing, the boy hadn’t come from the direction of his mother’s voice. For another, a fond, familiar odor, like clean leather and fresh motor oil, had touched Joel’s nostrils. He’d noticed it the first time they’d met since his return home. Joel smiled again, shifting the boy so he could put out his right hand.

“Sam? Is that you?”

The older man’s burly mitt grasped Joel’s. Stiff and dry, calloused from years of toil, it conveyed a genuine welcome, as had Vonnie’s hug.

“How you doing there, Joel? Glad you could make it.”

Joel turned his head slightly to dampen the sounds of people passing through and gathering in the foyer: footsteps, voices, sniffles here and there, gusting breaths, the rustle of fabrics. “It’s good to be back, Sam. I’ve missed this church.” He caught the sound of gulping and trembling breaths nearby. Dixie? Almost certainly.

He knew then that he had shocked her with more than just his identity. She hadn’t realized that he was blind. He’d wondered about it that second time in the park. Given the way she’d reacted at their first meeting—the stunned silences, the gasping and gulping, the swiftness of her subsequent movements—he’d thought that she’d realized that he’d lost his sight and was repelled by it. After the second meeting, though, he’d wondered. Something about her reaction at that time had made him think that she had missed the signs. If he had known who she was, he would have told her, but even after two years he wasn’t comfortable baldly announcing his blindness to every stranger, not that she’d given him much opportunity for that.

The boy’s arms tightened about Joel’s neck, and he felt that little head lower to his shoulder. At the same time, he felt her move closer. He was sure it was Dixie. He recognized the floral smell of her shampoo and wondered how long her hair was. She had worn it very long as a girl, but it had barely touched her shoulders in the last photo he’d seen. Was it the same length or had she cut it even shorter, as so many busy moms seemed to do?

Shutting off that line of thought, he concentrated on the boy. That warm little body cradled against his chest made gladness rise inside of Joel. The worst part of blindness for him was the isolation. He had never been so aware of his own skin as he was once he could no longer see beyond it. He literally craved touch now.

Patting the boy’s back, he said, “How are you, buddy? Been to the park lately?” A nod against his shoulder. Joel winked in the general direction of Sam. How many times since he’d been back had Sam proudly told him that his grandson had been named after him? “I think it’s time for an actual introduction.” He found the boy’s right hand with his and gave it a shake. “You are Clark Samuel Stevenson, and I am Joel Andrew Slade.” A piano began to play. Joel instantly shut it out. “You can call me—” The boy was plucked abruptly from his grasp. “Joel,” he finished.

At the same time, Dixie said, “Mr. Slade doesn’t need to stand around holding you, Clark. Besides, it’s time to go in.”

Mr. Slade.
Joel felt a flash of angry disappointment, even though he’d assumed that his blindness would repel her, which was one reason he’d foolishly asked his mother to keep it from her. He’d first told himself that it was because he was nothing to her and then because a mourning woman didn’t need to know of anyone else’s concerns. The truth was that he hadn’t wanted any strikes against him before he even showed up in person.

Why it should matter, he didn’t know. It was just that he couldn’t get that face out of his memory, those two faces, one of them glowing with happiness, the other tiny, wrinkled and newborn. Some days he wished he’d never seen that photo of the two of them in that hospital bed.

His mother’s arm slipped through his, giving it a supportive, encouraging squeeze. He returned it, plastering a smile on his face. Assuming that they were all about to move into the sanctuary, he stepped forward, only to feel a variety of warm presences. Sam. Dixie. Now Vonnie. Where, he wondered, was Clark? Murmurs and whispers told him that Dixie’s parents had flanked her, one on either side.

“Ready?” Vonnie.

“Just think about today.” Sam.

“We’re right here.”

They moved off, and Bess urged Joel to follow.

“A time for worship and celebration.” Sam again.

“Take my hand.” Vonnie.