A Scarlet Cord (24 page)

While Melanie sliced the last of the tomatoes from Jerry LaSalle’s summer garden, Jerica sat in the middle of the kitchen floor surrounded by fresh new boxes of crayons and markers and crisp tablets of writing paper.

“Can I go to school tomorrow, Mommy?” she asked as she restacked the pile of school supplies for the tenth time.

Melanie sighed and rolled her eyes. “No, sweetie. Three more days.”

“Not tomorrow, but the next day?” her daughter asked hopefully.

“No. Not tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, but the day after that.
Then
you can go.”

“But I’m too ’cited,” she whined. “Can’t I go a little early?”

“I’m excited too, honey, but you’ll just have to be patient. If you went tomorrow, you’d be the only one there. Besides, Thursday will be here before you know it.”

Melanie could hardly believe her baby would be starting first grade—in school all day for the first time. And she
was
excited for Jerica. Autumn had always seemed like a time of new beginnings for Melanie—more even than the advent of spring or the start of the new year. Something about the pungent smell of pencil lead and erasers, and the crisp bite in the evening air, had always held the promise of a fresh beginning and exciting possibilities.

Life had gone on. Each day took her a little farther from the heartbreak of Joel’s disappearance—his deception—and a little closer to hope.

Cornerstone Community Church had recently hired a new director of Christian education. Most of the financial losses had been recouped through donations and insurance, and the addition to the church building had begun to rise from the vacant lot. Even the news media had forgotten all about the scandal as more exciting new stories broke.

Melanie had resigned herself to never fully understanding what had gone wrong with Joel—not because she knew resignation was the right attitude to take, but because she had no other choice.

She still questioned God sometimes—especially when she saw a faraway look come to Jerica’s eyes as the little girl watched her friends climb onto their daddies’ laps in church or play catch with their fathers before a T-ball game.

But finally, more from exhaustion than altruism, she surrendered her will to God. He, after all, had never promised that life on this earth would be carefree or just or easy to understand. She took great hope in the promise of a life beyond this one, which had brought her mostly heartache and sorrow. For her daughter’s sake, she would go on with her life. She would not again expect it to give her joy. Then, maybe, it would not disappoint.

The first day of school came and went in a whirlwind, and unexpectedly, as the days went by, little joys began to work their way into Melanie’s life. Jerica adored school. Within weeks she was picking out words in newspaper headlines and sounding them out on her own. Melanie started finding little notes that Jerica had left for her around the house. Sometimes it was a challenge to decipher the phonetic spelling—what Jerica’s teacher called “kid writing.” But the “good nit mommy” or “wak me up urly” messages reminded Melanie what a delight the discovery of this form of communication had been for her when she was small, and what power there was in the written word.

“Mommy, look what we made in school today,” Jerica said, as she scrambled into the car one September afternoon. Her eyes were shining, her face alight with pride as she took the paper-towel wrapping off her treasure. She lifted up a string of macaroni painted with bright tempera colors. “It’s for you, Mommy. Mrs. Layton said we could keep it if we wanted, but I made mine for you.”

“Oh, honey, it’s beautiful! Are you sure you don’t mind giving it away?”

Jerica shook her head solemnly.

“Well, thank you. I love it.” A horn tooted behind them. “Oh dear, we’re holding up the line. Buckle up, honey … hurry.”

Jerica fastened her seat belt, chattering away about her adventures at school. Melanie pulled onto the street, smiling. It seemed that every day brought something new they could share together. It was a gift to be able to savor it all through Jerica’s eyes and Melanie was grateful for each diversion that kept her eyes on the future and put gentle blinders on what was past.

Yet each morning she awoke with a lingering awareness of a sorrow so deep that she ached—physically ached—from the raw power of it.

On a chilly October night Melanie and Jerica cuddled on the sofa in the family room reading from Johanna Spyri’s
Heidi
. One of Melanie’s most treasured memories of her own mother was the winter they’d read the classic novel together—a chapter each night. Now she sat in front of a crackling fire reading aloud to her daughter and realized with joy that she was handing a tradition down to the next generation.

“Yes, and do you know why the stars are so happy and look down and nod to us like that?” asked Heidi.

“No, why is it?” Clara asked in return.

“Because they live up in heaven, and know how well God arranges everything for us, so that we need have no more fear or trouble and may be quite sure that all things will come right in the end. That’s why they are so happy, and they nod to us because they want us to be happy too. But then we must never forget to pray, and to ask God to remember us when He is arranging things, so that we too may feel safe and have no anxiety about what is going to happen.”

Jerica tugged on the sleeve of Melanie’s sweatshirt. “That’s what the grandmother told Heidi,” she whispered with a knowing nod.

“That’s right,” Melanie said, feeling her throat close over the large lump that had suddenly settled there.
Oh, Father, I know you are arranging things for me according to your plan. Thank you for reminding me of that
. Not sure she could trust her emotions, she stalled, leafing back a few chapters as though looking for the page Jerica meant.

“Remember, Mommy? Heidi told the grandmother that she stopped praying because God didn’t listen to her prayers. But that wasn’t right, was it, Mommy?”

“No, it wasn’t.” Melanie brushed a strand of hair off Jerica’s forehead. Love for her daughter welled up inside her. “You have a good memory, squirt,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Keep reading, Mommy. You can read and cry at the same time. Grammy does it all the time.”

Melanie grinned sheepishly, cleared her throat, and flipped back to their bookmark.

The two children now sat up and said their prayers, and then Heidi put her head down on her little round arm and fell off to sleep at once, but Clara lay awake some time, for she could not get over the wonder of this new experience of being in bed up here among the stars. She had indeed seldom seen a star for she never went outside the house at night, and the curtains at home were always drawn before the stars came out. Each time she closed her eyes, she felt she must open them again to see if the two very large stars were still looking in, and nodding to her as Heidi said they did. There they were, always in the same place, and Clara felt she could not look long enough into their bright sparkling faces—

Melanie and Jerica were both sniffling a little when the jangle of the telephone broke the mood. They each grabbed for a Kleenex from the box that sat on the coffee table in front of them, dabbed at their eyes in unison, then broke into giggles at their seemingly choreographed movements.

“This better be important,” Melanie sniffed, blowing her nose and disentangling herself from the afghan that had covered them.

She went to the kitchen and checked the caller ID. Smiling, she picked up the phone. “Matthew! Hi, there.”

“Hey, Mel. How’s it going?”

“We’re doing good. How about you guys? Everybody okay?”

“More than okay.” Her brother’s voice held a huge grin.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“We just found out that we’ve got another baby on the way.”

“You’re kidding? Oh, Matt! That’s wonderful! But I thought you guys were done with babies.”

“Well, so did we. But then, what do we know?”

Matt’s excitement was contagious. They laughed and rejoiced over the news for several minutes before Melanie insisted that he put Karly on the phone.

“Oh, Karly, I am so happy for you! Maybe this will be your little girl!”

“Well, I’m not going to carpet the nursery in pink just yet, but it is nice to think about. Hey, when are you going to come and see us?”

Suddenly Melanie missed her sister-in-law and friend like crazy. Matt had been to Missouri after Joel disappeared, but it had been almost a year since she’d seen Karly and the boys.

“You know,” she said, thinking aloud, “I have three weeks of vacation coming … Maybe I’ll just use some of that time and fly out there.”

“Oh, Mel, I’d
love
that. How soon could you come?”

“Well, I hate to take Jerica out of school … but I guess your boys will be in school too. Maybe it would be best to leave her with Jerry and Erika. I know they’d be thrilled to have her to themselves for a few days. If I can get away the first week in November, would that work for you?”

“That would be perfect. I’ll miss seeing my favorite niece,” Karly said, “but this way we can make it a whole week of girls’ days out. We can shop and do some sightseeing while the boys are in school and just have a chance to catch up on everything. Oh, I can hardly wait!”

Melanie caught Karly’s enthusiasm, and her heart soared at the prospect of seeing her dear friend and spending some time with her brother and nephews in Bergen County. She said good-bye to Matt and Karly and immediately dialed the LaSalles’ number. She felt a too-familiar twinge of guilt at the thought of leaving Jerica, but it would be good to get away for a while.

That night, after she climbed into bed, Melanie reached for the drawer of her nightstand, looking for the little book of devotions she’d been reading each evening before falling asleep. It was a habit she’d developed at Pastor Steele’s suggestion, and she had to admit it did help to take her mind off the worries of the day and the nagging reminders of all she’d endured the past year.

The drawer caught on something, and when she finally yanked it open, she sat up to sort through a month’s accumulation of junk. Removing a nearly empty bottle of lotion and a stack of church bulletins from the front of the drawer, she dug further, unearthing some drawings Jerica had made that she hadn’t had the heart to toss.
Absently she swung her feet over the side of the bed and got serious about cleaning out the drawer. Making little stacks to file and others to toss, she reached in one last time and drew out a long envelope with her name on it.
Joel’s letter
.

She had read the single page three times a day in those first weeks after its arrival in her mailbox, looking for answers that weren’t there. But over the past few months she had nearly managed to put it out of her mind. She hesitated. Finally, she let out a shallow breath and lifted the worn flap of the envelope. As she slid the letter out, the silken cord coiled into her lap, and she felt herself spiraling into the abyss of confusion that had marked too many months of her life. It still puzzled her why Joel had chosen to leave her this silly piece of braided cord as a remembrance of him—a token whose meaning he had refused to explain to her.

Perhaps it was time to throw it away. And the letter, too. They certainly weren’t mementos she wanted to hold on to forever.

Almost against her will, she unfolded the letter and read the words she knew by heart—gentle, loving words that didn’t match the cruelty they’d inflicted upon her heart. And upon Jerica’s. Slowly, she wrapped the cord around her hand, then slipped the tidy loop from her fingers and tucked it back into the envelope with the letter. Carefully, she placed the envelope in the back of the drawer, purposefully burying it beneath other books and papers.

For reasons she didn’t fully understand, she couldn’t destroy these reminders of Joel. Not yet. Not when they still evoked such deep feelings in her heart … of having loved, and been loved by, him.

Twenty-One