Beneath the Night Tree (33 page)

Before he could disappear and make everything go back to the way it had been, I caught him just below the elbows and held him at arm’s length.

“I want to be your mom,” I whispered. He stared at me, and my heart lurched at the realization that I had said those words aloud. I had thought them a hundred times, a thousand, never quite believing that I would be able to share them with my troubled brother. But I just had. And I couldn’t pretend it was a slip of the tongue.

Tears filled my eyes so fast, I didn’t have time to blink them away before they slipped down my dusty cheeks. “She’s gone,” I breathed, my voice wavering. “I don’t think she’s coming back. And I don’t want you to be Simon Wentwood anymore. You’re a part of our family. You always have been.”

Simon didn’t say anything.

“I’ve looked into it,” I continued, reckless in my desire to make him understand. “We can do it legally. She’s been gone so long that . . .” But I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t tell him that he was essentially an orphan. A child abandoned by his mother with little hope that she would ever return.

The truth was, ever since the night when God laid His plan on my heart like a gift-wrapped surprise, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the possibility. We had given Simon a home, and we had given him a family, but I longed to give him a name. Not Wentwood, not his negligent mother’s maiden name, a meaningless tag that tied him to no one and nothing. I wanted to give him our name. A name that we would all share, a name that would unite us as one.

As I wrote postcard after postcard to Janice, as I penned every fear and frustration or railed against her and what she had done, it became more and more obvious to me that she was finally, irrevocably, gone. My last postcard to her contained three short words:

He’s mine now.

But what if he didn’t want to be?

“Simon?” I asked, his name an appeal.

My brother, the boy who was a son to me, wouldn’t look me in the eye. He stared at the toe of his sneaker, scuffing it gently against the cracked concrete of the henhouse floor. The hem of his jeans was frayed, the white fibers gray with dust from our afternoon endeavor. For some reason the sight of his dirty jeans and the large loop of his double-knotted shoelaces nearly broke my heart. I wanted to bend over and make a neat cuff, to retie the laces that were drooping beneath the soles of his shoes.

I didn’t say another word, didn’t raise my eyes from the ground until he pulled away from me. Then my gaze shot to his face, searching the depths of his dark eyes for some indication of whether or not he still loved me after I betrayed the woman he probably still considered his mother. I saw no answers in his fixed stare.

But after a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, he gave me a slight, almost-imperceptible nod.

Something inside me broke open, a mighty dam that held back a flood of hope and doubt and pain and grief. I didn’t really even know why he had nodded, or if I misinterpreted the inclination of his head, but before I could ask him anything, Simon whirled on his heel and raced out of the chicken coop. I was left to ponder the sharp crack of the slamming door and the way the light in the small room seemed to bathe me in hues of saffron and gold.

I wanted so much for us, for our little family of four. And though I had spent the last five years trying to make it all work, I wondered as I stood alone in the henhouse if all of my striving was for naught. Maybe, just maybe, the Lord had laid a path. And maybe, just maybe, my job was to walk it, to put one foot in front of the other the best way I knew how. I couldn’t prevent Grandma’s heart attack or stop Simon’s heart from aching. I couldn’t even protect Daniel from a fall. But I could love them with every ounce of my being. I could keep walking forward, believing that God would continue to make the pieces fit.

Maybe family was simply whom you loved and home was where you found it.

When Parker opened the door to the chicken coop and poked his head inside, I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the crooked floor and probably looked like I was meditating. Or praying. Which I suppose I was, though I couldn’t have formed a coherent word if I tried. I gave Parker a weak smile because he looked concerned, and when I didn’t make a move to stand, he came into the little building and let the door fall shut behind him.

“I just saw Simon . . .” He trailed off, motioning in the direction of the grove. “Everything okay?”

I nodded.

“You look . . . Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” I managed.

My feeble answer didn’t wipe the worry from his brow, and Parker cast around for a moment, looking for a place to deposit the container of juice and stack of three plastic cups he was carrying. In the end he set them on the floor and came to stand over me. He offered me his hands, but I wouldn’t take them. So he shrugged and plunked himself down across from me so that we were sitting knee-to-knee.

“Did something happen with Simon?”

I considered Parker’s question for a moment. Yes, something had happened with Simon. And with Daniel and Grandma and Michael and even him. But mostly this was about me. “Something happened to me,” I said, repeating the words running through my head as if I were reading them off a prompter.

“Are you all right?”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“Julia, you’re acting really weird.”

“I’m feeling a little weird.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to gather up every thought and feeling so I could put them in some sort of logical order. “I don’t think that I can right now. But it’s good.”

“It’s good? You’re sure?”

“I think I know what God wants from me. I think I know who I am.”

Parker grinned at me. “I know who you are too.”

“You do?”

“I have for a long time now.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Really? Who do you think I am?”

“An amazing mother,” Parker said without pause, “a devoted granddaughter, a loyal friend, a hard worker. You’re selfless and patient and kind. You aren’t afraid to sacrifice. You don’t step down from a challenge.”

“You think I’m all those things?”

“Oh, there’s more. You’re smart, talented, and beautiful.”

There was something in his voice that made color rise in my cheeks. I studied my hands in my lap, wishing he would stop, but Parker went on.

“And I think I know what God wants from you. You know all those things I said? They’re nice, but I don’t think any of that captures the essence of you, Julia DeSmit.”

“No?” I whispered.

“Not even close. At the root of it all, at the deepest center, the most secret place, you are
pursued
.”

He was right. I knew Parker was right because I had seen it myself. God chased after me, and I ran stumbling in the dark, ignoring His advances. I pined for lost mothers and fell from dizzying heights. I never stopped long enough to turn and look Him full in the face. To see that everything I was looking for had been right there all along.

I was surprised when I felt Parker’s finger lift my chin—and even more stunned when I realized that we were face-to-face. “You’re going to be just fine, Julia,” he whispered.

There was something about the way those words fell in the stillness of the warm afternoon sun that made me catch my breath. But not because they encompassed a dream or a hope, a desire I had for myself and my family. Parker’s quiet assertion carried the weight of a promise because it was more than just a passing wish.

It was the truth.

Unbound

Parker spent the night that night.

I know how that sounds.

And believe me, even in the split second that the invitation spilled out of my mouth, I fully grasped the fact that a casual sleepover in our living room would likely only intensify the rainbow of colors and hues that comprised our already-complex relationship. But it wasn’t my fault. Not really. I blame it wholly on Parker. On the look in his eyes as he studied Daniel’s face, on the way I could almost see his heart break while my tough little boy tried to hold back tears of pain.

The ER doctor had informed us that studies had proved painkillers could delay or even hinder bone healing. After the quick injection of whatever miracle drug the nurses administered, we were told to avoid pills altogether and give Daniel children’s Tylenol only when absolutely necessary. I was so relieved at my son’s less-than-fatal diagnosis that I didn’t bother to push the issue. But when he woke up in a fog of pain, I regretted my lackadaisical acceptance that a broken bone was a bearable sort of suffering.

One look at Parker’s expression as he descended the stairs at suppertime with Daniel cradled in his arms told me he felt the same way. He looked helpless, grieved, as if the creases in his son’s forehead were marks that cut him to the bone. Daniel was making little mewling sounds, breathless gasps that indicated just how much his swollen ankle throbbed in its fiberglass cast, and with each one, Parker cringed. It was obvious that he felt Daniel’s pain at the deepest part of his being.

“Stay,” I said softly.

Parker just nodded.

We curled up on the couch and watched movies, our ragtag family shoulder-to-shoulder as we tried to keep Daniel’s mind off the ache in his ankle. I held my son in my lap, but his legs were propped up on a pillow in Parker’s lap so that without even knowing it, Daniel was embraced by both of his parents. For an instant I longed to tell him, to whisper the truth in his ear, but the timing wasn’t right. I felt like the moment was coming, I could see it approaching on the horizon, but it wasn’t quite here. Not quite yet.

On my other side, Simon had tucked himself under my arm so that he could whisper to Daniel as we tried to focus on
Up
. It was a movie the boys had seen a dozen times, but Daniel was still afraid of the dogs, and the only thing that calmed him down was the steady stream of Simon’s made-up narrative. Whenever the snarling pack of canines appeared on-screen, Simon launched into a rapid-fire monologue, a story line that I couldn’t make out but that made a thin, pained smile appear on Daniel’s face.

I was so proud of Simon, so grateful for the distraction of his private game with Daniel, that I carefully laid my arm across his shoulders. He didn’t shrug me off.

It wasn’t until about halfway through the movie that I realized Grandma was watching us. She was in her favorite chair, the same chair where she had knitted more blankets than I could count. The same chair where she suffered a heart attack and we almost lost her. But when I felt her watching us and turned my gaze, I found Grandma looking healthy and whole. Radiant.

She beamed at me.

Grandma wasn’t the sort to beam. Her joy was a steady sort of happiness, the kind of contentment that comes from understanding who you are and where you fit. As a smile grew on my own face, I realized that my grandmother was the most joyful person I knew. Satisfied. And yet it buoyed my soul to see her look at me like this—as if nothing could please her more than the sight of her family together.

I wasn’t sure how Parker fit into the picture, and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to know. But as Grandma and I grinned at each other wordlessly, another sort of realization settled over my shoulders. I twisted a little, wishing the weight would lift. It didn’t. And though it cleft my heart to admit it, I knew what I had to do.

Parker and I took turns trying to settle Daniel down after the movie, and in the end I gave him a dose of Tylenol and a cup of chamomile tea that was half warm milk with a heaping teaspoon of honey. It made him drowsy enough to let me cuddle beside him in bed, a luxury that I hadn’t experienced since he “grew up” and became a kindergartner. I cupped my hand against his cheek and told him stories until his breathing was slow and even. Then I held him against me and prayed over him until I ran out of words to say. I prayed for safety and health and healing. And contentment and love and holiness.

When I finally descended the stairs, everyone but Parker had retired to bed. He was sitting on the couch in the living room, looking for all the world like a lost little boy. He looked vulnerable. Forlorn.

“It’s hard seeing your child hurt, isn’t it?” I asked from the doorway.

Parker glanced up and gave me a somber nod. “I want to take it away from him.”

“I know. But it doesn’t work that way.”

“Tell me about it,” Parker sighed. “I’ve been praying all afternoon that God would let us switch places. Hasn’t happened yet.”

I laughed a little. “It’s not going to. But I think that’s okay. Maybe a painless life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.”

Parker tilted his head and regarded me. “That’s either very wise or just a bit sadistic.”

“I trust you’re familiar with the Beatitudes?” I teased.

“Yeah, but that stuff doesn’t apply today, does it?” By the way his mouth curled up at one corner, I knew that Parker was playing along. It felt nice to find that we were on common ground.

I sat in Grandma’s empty chair and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “I have to ask you a favor,” I said carefully, hoping he wouldn’t question my motives or drill me for answers that I wasn’t ready to give.