Wildflowers (10 page)

“Got it.” Brad put his empty plate down on the counter. He pulled out a pen and made a few notes in the margins of
Genevieve’s order form. “Mind if I take this with me?”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

“When do you want the tables delivered?”

“Tomorrow?” Genevieve’s expression echoed the question in her voice.

Leah explained about how the old tables were needed by Shelly for the May Day weekend.

“How about this,” Brad suggested. “Why don’t you tell Shelly the tables are on loan until your new ones arrive? I’ll help Seth take them over to the camp for May Day, but we can do that Friday, can’t we?”

“What will we use for tables at the café Saturday?” Leah asked.

“You could close for the day,” Brad suggested. “Half the women in Glenbrooke will be at Camp Heather Brook anyway. Or set up folding tables. It’s not Pasadena, Gena. People around here will understand if you have to wing it for a few days. We have a card table you can use.”

“I have two,” Leah said. “That’s a good idea, Brad. We’ll get creative with some tablecloths, and I would guess most customers will barely notice.”

Brad’s idea worked out better than Genevieve thought it would. By the time she and the girls headed home late Friday night, all the catered food had been prepared for Saturday’s event at Camp Heather Brook, and the dining room was a colorful hodgepodge of card tables covered with a variety of cloths. Some of the tablecloths came from Genevieve’s stash at home, and a few came from the salvaged stack of linens they had pulled from the storage shed weeks earlier.

“Do we have to go out to the camp now?” Mallory asked once they were in the car.

“No, Leah took all the food over there an hour ago. She’s going early tomorrow morning to prepare the food in the camp kitchen. That’s why I need the two of you to help me serve breakfast here tomorrow morning. We’re closing at ten-thirty, and that’s when the three of us will go to Camp Heather Brook.”

“We’re going to miss the brunch part,” Mallory said.

“Yes, but we’ll be there for the rest of the fun. Last year the May Day event went until after two o’clock.”

“I hope they have a craft again this year,” Mallory said. “That was my favorite part last year.”

“Mom, can we stop at Dairy Queen on the way home?” Anna asked from the passenger’s seat. “I’m starving.”

Genevieve glanced over at her fourteen-year-old. “How can you be starving? Plenty of food was available to you at the Wildflower for the past five hours!”

“I know, but I didn’t want any of that food. Do you mind? I’m really hungry for French fries, and you don’t serve French fries at the café.”

“Me, too,” Mallory piped up from the backseat. “I haven’t had French fries in forever. Could we please stop, Mom?”

Genevieve gave in. Anna and Mallory had been real troopers, setting up tables, sweeping the floor, and even cleaning the restroom. She drove several miles out of her way to Dairy Queen and restrained from giving any lectures on nutrition.

The hamburgers, shakes, and fries her daughters soon held in their laps made them giddy with appreciation.

“I don’t think you’ve ever taken us to Dairy Queen.” Mallory slurped her strawberry shake.

“Of course I have.”

“I don’t remember when you ever did,” Mallory said. “Dad always takes us there. He orders a peanut butter blizzard.”

Genevieve didn’t know that. Steven liked ice cream, but she never would have guessed he had a favorite blizzard flavor, especially not peanut butter.

“When does Dad get home?” Anna asked.

“Sunday,” Genevieve said. The proclamation didn’t bring joy to her the way it did to the girls. She felt as if this time when Steven left she had gone into a deeper place of suspended emotions. She barely had thought of Steven or wondered about him during the five days he had been gone. It was as if he were so separated from her everyday life that he existed as only a memory. She assumed that she and the girls were also a suspended memory for him while he was gone.

Genevieve found three messages waiting for her on voice mail when she got home. One was from Leah reminding her that if Mr. Olestrum came in for breakfast, like he usually did on Saturday mornings, Genevieve was supposed to use the egg substitute instead of real eggs because his wife was watching his cholesterol, but he wasn’t supposed to know he was being served egg substitute.

With a grin, Genevieve erased the message. The next one was from her eldest daughter, Josephina. Fina’s voice
bubbled over with excitement. She had gotten the job she wanted with a sports club a mile from her apartment in Arizona. As soon as her classes ended in three weeks, she would begin to teach summer volleyball clinics.

Genevieve leaned against the kitchen counter and listened to Fina’s message again. She sounded so happy.

The realization that Genevieve wouldn’t see her twenty-one-year-old daughter for several more months entered her heart like a previously unknown variety of pain. She was delighted, of course, that Fina got the job and that she could spend the summer in Arizona the way she wanted. But Genevieve was now separated even further from a part of herself; her firstborn was truly on her own.

Genevieve saved the message. She had a feeling she would need to hear her daughter’s voice again later and be reminded of how excited Fina was about the job. This strain of reality would take a while to soak in.

The third message on her voice mail was from Steven. “Good news,” he said. “My schedule was changed. I’m in San Francisco now. I’m on standby to catch the next flight home. It might be as late as three o’clock tomorrow afternoon before I can get there. Maybe sooner. Oh, and Gena, I have twenty-three days off. We should be able to get to some of that yard work you’ve been wanting to do once the weather cooperated. I love you, Gena. Give my love to the girls. See you soon.”

Steven sounded happy to be coming home. He sounded just as happy about coming home as Fina was about not coming home.

Genevieve didn’t know how she felt about anything or anyone anymore. All she knew was that the day had been full, and she was tired.

“Girls,” Genevieve called down the hallway as she headed for her bedroom, “I’m taking a bath and going to bed. You both need to be in bed by ten o’clock at the very latest. Understand?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Good answer.” Genevieve turned on the bath water. “I love it when they just say yes instead of coming up with a bunch of excuses.”

She stopped and stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Yes. They said yes without any excuses. Where did I just hear someone talking about that?

She took off her shoes, and then it came to her.
The Bible study at the Wildflower. That was Teri’s observation about the man who was healed. He made excuses when Jesus asked if he wanted to be made well
.

All Genevieve’s thoughts and feelings did something they rarely did. They mingled. It was as if all her feelings lined up on one side of the dance floor while all her thoughts stood stoically on the other. In her imagination she couldn’t tell which one made the first move—whether it was a thought or a feeling—but suddenly they were mixing and mingling. Thoughts and feelings together on the same dance floor of her mind for the first time in ages. They seemed to all be in position, waiting for the music to begin.

Genevieve stared into the mirror, studying the dark flecks in the orbits of her gray irises. The whites of her eyes
carried faint bloodshot streaks. The shadows under her eyes darkened as the steam rose from the tub and fogged the mirror. She was lost. Lost in herself. Hidden away.

She turned off the water, and in the split second of silence that followed, a distinct thought flashed through her mind.
Do you want to be made well, Genevieve?

For a moment she stopped breathing. It was as if all the imaginary eyes on the dance floor in her mind were fixed on her, waiting for her answer. All her routine excuses hovered overhead, like balloons ready to drop at a New Year’s party.

“Do I want to be made well?” Genevieve repeated aloud. She realized that she hadn’t asked herself if she
needed
to be made well. That was a conclusion she had come to some time ago. Something was definitely wrong in her life and needed to be repaired.

But she had fought hard to ignore that conclusion.

Before a single excuse “balloon” could drop, Genevieve looked into the still water that now filled her bathtub. “Yes.” She heard herself whisper without hesitation. “Yes, I want to be made well.”

A
n orchestra didn’t suddenly come alive in Genevieve’s mind when she stated that she wanted to be made well. Her feelings and thoughts didn’t let out a cheer and begin to dance together in a gleeful frenzy, as she half-expected. Instead, everything went quiet. All the images evaporated, and in their place a strange, settling peace came over her.

Her request to be made well was the first bit of a prayer that she had uttered in a long time. More than a prayer, it was a response. The unusual peace that came with her response was profound.

She lowered herself into the tub and drew in a deep breath, then another. Her lungs filled with the warm, moist air as she tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Was that God’s voice or my splintered psyche?

He called me by my name
.

Or did He?

Did God just heal me?

Just like that?

What exactly did He heal me from?

I know something has been wrong for a long time, but I don’t know exactly what it is
.

How can God heal me when I don’t even know what my “infirmity” is?

Genevieve had difficulty identifying what she felt. She still didn’t feel excited about seeing Steven tomorrow. The long list of past hurts didn’t seem to have been lifted from her heart.

The settling peace that had come to her presided over her thoughts, not her feelings. Her mind was able to rest. Her heart, however, was still a locked fortress.

After her soothing bath, Genevieve went to bed and slept deeply. In the middle of the night, the phone rang. She stumbled out of bed and reached for the phone.

“Is this Genevieve Ahrens?” the woman’s voice on the other end asked.

“Yes.” She squinted at the display on the alarm clock. It was 4:37.

“I’m calling from the Glenbrooke Emergency Dispatch. We sent out a fire unit to Main Street approximately one hour ago. One of our volunteers, Kyle Buchanan, asked that I call you.”

“A fire?” Genevieve was jolted wide awake.

“I don’t have any details yet. Kyle wanted you to go down right away.”

“Yes. Okay. Thank you.” Hanging up and flipping on the
light switch, Gena fumbled with a pair of jeans and pulled a fleece sweatshirt on over her pajama top. She woke the girls and hustled them into the car with her. They peppered her with questions all the way, but Genevieve had no answers for them until she turned down Main Street and saw the fire engine pulling away from the front of the café.

“I can smell the smoke, Mom,” Anna said as Genevieve parked the car. “Should we get out?”

“No, let’s wait a minute.” Genevieve anxiously peered into the darkness. The front of the café seemed unaffected. The awning, bicycle, and flowerboxes all looked fine in the streetlight’s dim glow. “It might be all right,” she said. “A false alarm, maybe.”

“Can’t we get out, Mom?” Mallory asked. “We won’t go in or anything.”

“No, honey.” Genevieve rolled down her window. The smell of smoke became overpowering. “Let’s wait a minute.”

She recognized Kyle’s truck parked at the end of Main Street. He appeared around the corner of the building wearing full firefighting gear.

“He’s waving for us to come over there.” Anna opened her door.

“Okay, stay with me, girls.”

“We will, Mom. Don’t worry,” Anna said.

As soon as they neared the café, they noticed the shattered glass on the sidewalk. The heat from the fire apparently had blown out the windows. The glass shards looked like frozen, sharp-sided snowflakes resting on the flowers and the sidewalk.

“Oh, Mom.” Anna pointed to the black soot smears that shot up the front of the building. “Look.”

In her shock at the sight, Genevieve thought for a moment that if the windows were the eyes of the café, then the smoke was like great smudges of mascara. Her Wildflower Café had been crying. And she hadn’t been there.

Kyle met them and reached for Genevieve’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’m so sorry to be the one to break this to you, Gena. I thought it might help if you got here now rather than later this morning.”

“How bad is it?”

“The kitchen is gone,” Kyle said.

Genevieve held her breath.

“And the dining room sustained enough smoke and water damage that I have a feeling the insurance will consider it a complete loss.”

Genevieve felt as if the whole world suddenly tilted to the left.

“The bicycle is fine.” Anna examined her contribution to the café with care.

“Can we see inside?” Mallory slipped her hand into her mom’s.