After the Rains (21 page)

The music of children’s laughter floated across the playground, and an April sun turned the afternoon air balmy. Natalie walked across the winterbare lawn, gathering abandoned toys as she went. Here and there the cracked, parched earth beneath her feet had given way to brave blades of yellow-green grass. She came upon a set of building blocks at the edge of the yard. Stooping to collect them, she looked across the lawn. From this angle, closer to the ground, she could see that a fine, green haze covered the yard. With one good, soaking rain and a few days of sunshine, the whole lawn would wear a mantle of green. What a difference they would see in the barren countryside when spring truly made its appearance. Her heart felt lighter at the mere idea, and she thought how much she had
come to enjoy her work here at the childcare center. Somehow it didn’t seem right. Wasn’t the whole point of community service supposed to be punishment—or at least restitution?

She looked up and spotted a toddler on the glider near the swing set. The little girl’s bright pink shoestring sailed back and forth with her as she swung. “Wait a minute, Jessi,” Natalie called out.

She left the pile of toys lying where they’d accumulated and trotted across the playground. Jessica Benson slid off the glider and stood waiting for her, an inquisitive expression on her cherubic face.

Kneeling beside the little girl, Natalie smoothed away a sweat-damp curl that clung to her rounded cheek. Natalie smiled. “Let me tie your shoe before you trip on this shoestring, okay?”

The petite girl nodded and plopped down on the ground beside her. Offering her foot to Natalie, she gazed up at her with wide, blue eyes. With her strawberry-blond curls, pale eyelashes, and a button nose sprinkled liberally with freckles, she reminded Natalie of someone. A lump formed in her throat as she realized that it was Sara. Sara Dever had probably looked much like little Jessica when she was a toddler. And Sara’s children could have looked like this child. Natalie wondered how often Maribeth Dever would be confronted with moments like this. She didn’t like the direction her thoughts were taking, and yet it somehow seemed wrong for her
not
to ponder such things.

She swallowed hard and realized that the old ache was still there. Like this lawn she knelt upon, fresh green shoots of happiness had cropped up here and there in her life, but underneath, the ground was still hard and black and unyielding. When, she wondered, would the quenching, soaking rains fall to soften the hard soil of her heart? “Please, Lord,” she whispered, “help me.” It was all she knew to pray. But it was a beginning.

She finished tying the girl’s shoe. “There you go, punkin. You be careful now, okay?”

“Okay, Miss Natalie,” Jessi chirped as she ran off to play.

Natalie walked slowly to the other side of the playground to collect the pile of toys she’d left there.

It was strange, and rather frightening, that time was passing so
quickly. Her physical scars from the accident had healed so that she scarcely thought of them anymore. Her time in jail was a vague memory that appeared only in an occasional nightmare. At Bristol High, the whole incident seemed to have been forgotten. The high-school yearbook was being dedicated to Sara and to Brian Wagner. It was as though, with that action, their classmates had paid their dues to the memory of two good friends. They could get on with their lives now. Natalie wondered when
she
would move on.

Evan Greenway had not been back to school since the tragedy, but rumor had it that he was staying with an aunt in Kansas City while undergoing physical therapy at a facility there. He was supposedly working on his GED at the same time, but no one seemed to know whether he would be back to graduate with their senior class.

The parties out at Hansens’ had come to an abrupt halt after the accident, and then the harsh winter had set in, keeping everyone indoors and close to home. But just two weeks ago, Natalie had heard that they were having a big “bonfire” out on the property. She wondered if anybody thought it made a difference if they called it a bonfire instead of a beer party. She had no desire to go and was disgusted that nobody seemed to have grasped the connection between those parties and Bristol’s greatest tragedy in years.

This last semester of her high-school career had been odd. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the accident and Sara’s death; or maybe it always felt weird to be ending a time in your life that you’d never been able to imagine being over.

Of course, how many high-school students spent time in jail or spent their evenings attending alcohol and drug rehabilitation sessions? And her hours here at the community childcare center—three or four hours after school every day for the past few weeks—had ruined any possibility of other extracurricular activities at school. When she got home each evening, most of her remaining hours were spent on homework and filling out college applications and admissions forms.

There were less than three weeks to go before her community service would be complete. A nagging thought itched at her subconscious mind:
Two days in jail and a few short weeks of entertaining adorable toddlers were not going to do the trick, would not convince her that justice had been done. The court system, the law, could dish out what they saw as punishment for her crime, but it was going to take a far more powerful detergent to absolve a guilt as immense as hers.

Daria Hunter clenched a wad of tissues in the damp palm of her hand. She glanced up at Cole, who sat beside her in the gymnasium bleachers. Beneath the sun-roughened skin of his square, clean-shaven jaw, a muscle tensed. Daria knew he was struggling as much as she was to contain his emotions.

“Natalie Joan Camfield,” the principal solemnly intoned the name, as the president of the school board held out the imitation leather folder containing Natalie’s diploma. Wobbling a bit in a new pair of heels, their daughter crossed the gym floor and stepped onto the temporary dais.

Daria knew Natalie was feeling nervous and uncertain about this moment in the public eye, but she managed to look poised and happy as she accepted her diploma. While Cole stepped into the aisle and snapped pictures, Daria tried in vain to hold back a flood of tears.

Hannah Dickson was next to cross the stage. Daria wondered if anyone besides her and Don and Maribeth Dever realized that Sara would have been next in line behind Natalie to receive her diploma. Daria took one look at Natalie’s face as she returned to her seat, and she knew that she, too, was remembering Sara.
Please, Lord, let this be the last hard thing. Let this be the last time Nattie has to mourn her friend so deeply—and so publicly. Let college be a new beginning for her
.

Daria looked down the row and spotted Don and Maribeth Dever. She immediately felt guilty for her prayer. Daria knew Sara’s parents were here for Natalie’s sake. Maribeth had a serene smile on her face, but this had to be one of the most difficult days of her life since Sara’s death. So many dreams had died with their daughter. Daria couldn’t even imagine. Guilt stabbed her again when she whispered a prayer of thanksgiving for her own three beautiful, healthy daughters.

The posters were gone from her bedroom walls, the paraphernalia of her childhood cleared off the tops of the dressers and off the shelves. Her life had been reduced to a dozen cardboard boxes that were now stacked neatly in the back of Daddy’s SUV. Even the wallpaper had been stripped in preparation for the anxious future occupant of the room.

Now, while Natalie packed the last of the clothes from her closet, Nicole whirled around the room, crowing, “I can’t believe I’m finally getting a room of my own!” Eyeing the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the closet door, she ventured, “Hey, Nattie, are you gonna take that mirror with you?”

“Probably not, but don’t get too attached to it yet,” she told her sister. “Man, I can’t get out of here fast enough to suit you, can I?”

Nicole looked at her closely, as if trying to determine whether she’d hurt her sister’s feelings.

Natalie offered a reassuring smile. “Hey, I don’t blame you. I’d be all over it too. But do me a favor, will you?” She affectionately elbowed her sister out of the way and brought another load of clothes from the closet. “Give me a few minutes alone to finish packing.”

“Okay, okay … sorry,” Nicole said with a sheepish grin.

Her sister slunk from the room, leaving the door open a crack behind her, and Natalie was left alone. She slipped a sweater off its hanger and folded it slowly. The air around her echoed with a strange emptiness, and for a moment she was overcome with sadness. There were happy memories here, yes. But there were a lot of difficult ones, too. More of the latter, it seemed—or maybe they were just too recent. She’d begun to feel that it was a gift that she’d be able to leave those behind. College seemed to promise a new beginning. Yes, she would think about that, force herself to dwell on the hope the future held for her.

Though she hadn’t a clue what she wanted to study, it had always been assumed that she would go on to college. But the uncertainty of her situation had greatly limited her choices. In the end they’d decided it would be simpler to attend a college in the state. Her mother and father—Nate—had
both graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and Natalie was strongly drawn to that school. Then she’d received a letter of acceptance from Kansas State University in Manhattan that essentially made the decision for her.

Nicole was ecstatic about Natalie’s decision, since Jon Dever was at K-State too. “Now I can come up and visit both of you,” she’d chirped when she heard the news.

Natalie didn’t tell her that Jon’s presence there was one of her biggest reservations about going to the school. But on such a large campus the chances of their running into each other with regularity were probably slim. Still, it gave her pause. She had seen the way he looked at her since the accident, the vague sense of disdain in his eyes. It broke her heart, but she didn’t blame him. Still, she feared the old feelings were still there, buried not far enough beneath the surface.

Take away my wrong desires, Lord
, she whispered within her spirit. She sighed as, almost immediately, a psalm she’d memorized in a long-ago Sunday school class came to her.
Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart
.

Yes, Lord … put your desires in my heart
. It was new to her, these two-way conversations with her heavenly Father. There was not one moment she could point to when she’d suddenly decided to seek God wholeheartedly. But through the awful time of Sara’s death and the aftermath of the tragedy—and especially since her talk with Nathan Camfield—she had slowly begun to take her questions, her problems to the Lord and then to listen for his quiet, gentle voice in reply. She was learning that she could trust him, and there was no denying that a new peace had begun to fill her heart. Yet neither could she deny that there was still an ache there … a longing for something she couldn’t quite grasp.

She thought of her two fathers. Sometimes she felt she didn’t belong to either one of them. When Nathan Camfield had come back to the States after the accident, they had shared a warm, close time, and yet that very closeness had caused her to feel like a traitor to Daddy.

It seemed she and Daddy were so often at odds. She wasn’t sure why. Since the accident—no, even before then—he had distanced himself
from her. Or maybe it was the other way around. She felt awkward in his presence, and he seemed to feel the same. And yet, her throat ached with the sweetness of treasured memories of him. In her little girl’s mind, she could see the view from his broad shoulders as he carried her all the way to the end of the lane to get the mail and pick a bouquet of wildflowers for Mom.

She walked to her bedroom window and peered out over the backyard vista that was as familiar to her as her own face. Outside, the cotton-woods whispered their ancient song, and she could almost hear Daddy’s deep laughter the way it had sounded the night they’d captured dozens of fireflies and put them in a Mason jar. They had sat on a blanket in the grass on that hot summer night, their firefly lantern and a billion twinkling stars the only light for as far as she could see.