Wishing on Willows: A Novel (36 page)

Dad puffed up his chest. “I don’t think that’s the issue.”

“No?”

“I think you’re starting to care too much about this woman.”

“Since when is caring a bad thing?”

“You’re letting your emotions get in the way of your responsibility. You’re losing track of what’s important.”

“And what’s important, Dad? Since you’ve always been the one to decide, why don’t you refresh my memory?”

“Family—that’s what. Or how about giving loyalty and commitment a try? Or maybe for once, finishing what you start.”

The words were like a punch to the gut. “This is not about my marriage.”

“You’re right. It’s not. It’s about this company and your obligation to it.”

“Did you ever think for a second that maybe I don’t want that obligation?”

The stillness returned, hugging the end of Ian’s outburst.

Dad looked stunned, pale even.

“That’s enough, both of you.” Mom stepped between them. “I won’t have you two fighting like this, especially not on Father’s Day.”

Ian closed his eyes.

“Bailey and I will finish making brunch. You two finish your conversation out on the porch. Once you’re done, come inside and we’ll enjoy a meal together. As a family.” She kissed them each on the cheek and disappeared with Bailey into the kitchen.

Ian stepped outside, his muscles tied into knots.

Dad came out behind him and stood in front of the porch railing. He grabbed on tight to the banister, like the wooden boards might rise up and pitch him over. With the truth finally out, Ian had no idea what to say. “How long have you felt this way?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know, Dad. Always?”

“Always?”

“You never asked me what I wanted to do with my life. You had it all planned out the second the doctor said, ‘It’s a boy.’ ” Dad never gave him a choice. Neither had Cheryl. He was so sick of not having a choice.

“Ian, when you were a little kid, you used to ask to come to work with me.”

“That’s because whenever I asked, it made you smile.” Ian looked across
the expanse of the yard, a place where the two of them used to toss the football. Play catch. Practice batting. As a kid, Ian swung as hard as he could, every single time, just to see the pride in Dad’s eyes. That little-boy piece of him still wanted to see it.

“If I pressured you to follow in my footsteps, it’s because I love this company. And I love you. I wanted it to be something we could share.” Dad’s face looked stretched and old. “I had no idea you’ve been miserable all these years.”

“I haven’t been miserable.” There was a comfort in having life planned out, a safe predictability. But maybe God didn’t want him to play it safe anymore. Maybe there was freedom to be found in the uncertain. “But I haven’t been happy either.”

“So where does this leave us?”

Ian stared at the grass. “You paved your own way. You found something you were passionate about and you went after it. Maybe it’s time for me to do the same.”

Dad let out a long, slow sigh. “Could you do me a favor before you do?”

“Of course.”

“Finish strong. We need this deal.”

Ian stepped inside his home, a place that was somehow empty and crowded all at the same time. He trudged up to the master bedroom and pulled out a shoe box from beneath the bed. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a shovel from the garage, and started digging a hole in the backyard while birds chattered in the lilac bushes on the side of the house and bees buzzed around the hydrangeas growing up around the deck and cotton-white clouds polka-dotted the blue sky overhead.

“Finish strong …”

Unlike the way he finished with his marriage. Ian’s parents had no idea. He took another chunk out of the ground, memories that died from neglect resurrecting themselves.

After Cheryl did what she did, she turned catatonic, slipping into a
depression so deep and miry, it left no room for Ian’s anger, so he bottled it up for the sake of his marriage. When Cheryl finally resurfaced, she claimed Ian’s anger as her own. Somehow, he was to blame. It was his fault she got pregnant and terminated the pregnancy. He was to blame for her guilt. Ian tried everything to fix what she broke, but how much could he do when she wouldn’t let him tell anyone? Not a counselor or their pastor. Nobody. So while his marriage disintegrated, his parents scratched their heads, wondering what in the world had happened.

Ian stuck the blade of the shovel into the earth and sat cross-legged in the overgrown grass, cradling the box in his lap, so sick of feeling shame and guilt and anger over something outside of his control.

A cold hand pressed against his shoulder.

Ian twisted around and looked up. The blinding sun outlined the frail shape of a woman, a wisp of a smile tracing her features. He scrambled from his spot in the grass, but Mom pressed her hand against his back and eased herself down beside him. She looked at the hole, then at the box. “What have you got there?”

He let her take it from his lap. She opened the lid and pulled out the contents one by one. A tiny stuffed rabbit, bought at a gas station two years ago. A pink Cubs onesie, for a girl. A small Cubs hat, for a boy. She laid them out on the grass, side by side, her eyes glistening with moisture.

“You would have made one incredible grandma.”

“We didn’t know,” she whispered.

“Cheryl didn’t want to tell anyone.”

She folded the onesie into a small rectangle and returned it to the box. Followed by the hat and the rabbit. She set the cardboard container on the grass. “Life is messy, isn’t it?”

They sat in silence, letting that truth soak and settle, until one of the neighborhood dogs started to bark in the distance—a high-pitched yipping that enticed several others to join in the conversation.

Mom patted his knee. “You know what I’m learning, though?”

“Hmm?”

“Grace comes in all different shapes and sizes. Even the messy ones.”

“Oh yeah?” Ian quirked his eyebrow. “What shape and size have you been experiencing lately?”

“Cancer.”

The two syllables thumped him in the chest. He blinked at Mom as she plucked blades of grass from the earth and let them fall on top of the box. What grace was there to be found in something as horrible as cancer?

“There can be grace in there too, if you want,” she said.

A lump pushed against his Adam’s apple. “Cheryl had an abortion.”

“And she’ll have to live with that for the rest of her life.”

“So will I.”

“I know you will, Ian.” She stood and gently placed the box in the hole. “Even after you bury this.”

“That’s not grace, Mom. That’s pain.”

She picked up the shovel and handed it over. “Sometimes, love, grace
is
pain.”

Confusion knotted his soul. Where was grace in the loss of his child or Robin’s husband, his mother’s cancer, or even his divorce? “I don’t understand.”

“If that pain brings us to the throne of God. If it brings us to our knees before the King of Kings.” She placed her fingers beneath his chin and tipped his face to look up at hers. “Oh, honey, there’s amazing grace in that.”

The high-powered dehumidifier filled her ruined café with a loud humming that drowned out the man’s words. Robin cupped her hand to her ear and leaned forward. “What did you say?”

“We’ll run these for the next couple days. It’s really important we get this place dried up. Don’t want mold growing behind your walls.”

Robin nodded, desperate to get away from the droning. She had no idea a fire could bring about so much busyness in such a short time. Boarding up broken windows. Calling the insurance company. Filling out paperwork. And now a strange, heavyset man roamed around Willow Tree, turning on loud contraptions, knocking on the walls, removing ruined
pieces of furniture, writing notes on a clipboard. Thank the Lord for Gavin, who offered to take Caleb for the day. Robin had no idea what she’d do with her little boy running around.

The man jabbed his thumb toward her piano. “What do you want to do with that?”

She bit her lip and looked away just as the front doors opened and Amanda burst inside. The man turned on a second dehumidifier. The droning doubled, along with her anxiety. As if sensing her distress, Amanda guided Robin outside and sat her on a cement step. The loud humming faded. Fresh air touched her cheeks and fluttered her hair around her shoulders.

“I heard Cecile Arton talking at church about a fire. As soon as she said Willow Tree, I ran here.” Amanda wiped at fine beads of sweat breaking out along her hairline. “And I mean it. I literally ran.”

“Fire restoration contractor,” Robin mumbled.

“What?”

“That man’s a fire restoration contractor.” She picked at the rubber lining of her shoe. She still couldn’t fully process what had happened. One minute Ian was about to kiss her, the next they were zooming across town to her ruined café. “I didn’t even know they existed. But they do. Fire restoration contractor. Have you ever heard of that before?”

Amanda shook her head.

“They work on Sundays too. The guy said there are lots of fires on Sundays. He has movers coming later to take away all the ruined furniture. I can’t decide what to do with the piano.”

Amanda set her hand on Robin’s shoulder.

“Lenny warned me about the oven. I don’t know why I waited so long.”

“You had other things on your mind.”

Yeah, like Ian McKay. A man who should not be on her mind. Robin wrapped her arms around her knees.

“I know this all feels overwhelming right now, but we’ll get it fixed. That’s why you pay that expensive insurance premium every month, right?”

“Ian and I kissed.”

“What?”

“I have no idea how it happened. One minute we were talking, and the next …” Robin’s fumbled attempt at an explanation trailed off. “Why are you smiling?”

“You and Ian kissed?”

Robin buried her face in the crook of her elbow. “I don’t want you to be happy about it.”

“Why? It’s a good thing.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You’re attracted to Ian.”

“No, I’m not.”

Amanda whistled the tune to the Oscar Mayer song. Robin could practically hear her sing-song thoughts.
My bologna has a first name, it’s R-O-B-I-N …

Robin shook her head in her elbow, as if her denial could make everything untrue. “But I can’t be.”

“I can keep whistling if you want.”

Robin removed her face from her arm and looked at her friend. “I can’t be attracted to him, Amanda.”

“Why not?”

“For a thousand, million reasons.”

“You can’t spend the rest of your life being afraid of love.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of.” At least not all the way. Not completely.

Amanda set her elbows on her knees. “What is it, then?”

Robin took a deep breath, unsure if she could put words to her thoughts. Unsure if she wanted to say them out loud. “I don’t want to look back on my life in twenty years and feel happy with the way things turned out.”

“You don’t want to be happy?”

Robin let out a ragged breath and thumbed her naked ring finger. “If the roles were reversed, I’m not sure I’d want Micah to move on. Maybe that makes me the most selfish person on the face of the planet, but I wouldn’t want another woman kissing my Caleb to sleep. I wouldn’t want another woman making love to my husband.”

The thought made her physically ill.

She tugged at a weed growing up from a crack in the cement and looked at her sister-in-law as if she possessed the words that might set Robin free. “Where am I supposed to go from here? Micah and I never had this conversation.”

Amanda didn’t answer right away. She gazed at the black lampposts and the mulberry trees lining the empty street for such a long time, Robin worried she didn’t have an answer at all. But then a fly landed on Amanda’s arm and she swatted it away and looked at Robin with eyes the same shape and color as Micah’s.

“I don’t know what my brother would or wouldn’t have wanted, but I do know you, Robin. I see the way you love people. It’s full and unwavering. It would be a shame for you to withhold that gift from someone who might embrace it, who might need it in his life. I can’t imagine Micah would want you to.”