A Morning Like This (21 page)

“If you lecture me about breakfast, then I’m going to lecture you about your walker.” Abby laid her own fingers over Viola’s
on her arm. “It’s dangerous to climb.”

“Floyd will be back any minute with the dogs. He’ll be so glad to see that the feeder’s up. I certainly didn’t want him to
try to do it.”

As Abby reached for a spoonful of lemon curd, she noticed an ancient flaking-leather photo album on the floor beside her chair.
“What’s this?” She bent to pick it up.

“Oh, the funniest pictures. You wouldn’t believe.”

“Can I look?”

“Of course you can.”

Abby flipped open the album and came face to face with the Uptergrove’s wedding pictures from 1943.

There stood a handsome young man, his boyish face as scrubbed and shiny as a farm-fresh tomato, his shoulders square in his
formal Navy whites.

“Is this Floyd?”

“Yes,” Viola answered. “Isn’t he handsome?”

At his side, wielding a cake knife with lily-of-the-valley waving from the handle, stood a minuscule girl with dark hair,
glowing eyes, and lips emboldened by deep lipstick, who looked like she might take on the whole of the German army if it kept
her from getting her man.

“Oh, Viola.” Abby sighed. “You were so beautiful that day.”

One never knew exactly the right thing to say when examining pictures a half-century old. When someone looked so lovely, it
seemed a shame to voice surprise.

“Of course I was beautiful that day,” Viola said. “It was my wedding day. A day when a woman makes a covenant to her love
and to her Lord, meant to last a lifetime.”

“Oh.” As if she’d touched something forbidden, Abby drew her hand away.

“All those bride magazines, selling fancy lace and satin dresses. All to capture what can’t be captured: the reflection of
a woman’s face looking into the face of her God.”

Abby began to gather her things. “I’d better go.”

“Nothing can be more beautiful than that.”

“I’m already late for work.”

“The kids have already given us a golden anniversary party, and now they want a sixtieth, too. I hope you and your precious
family can come.”

“I-I hope so, too.”

“My family is coming from Kansas and they can get wild, so beware. At our fiftieth, Miley put gunpowder in an eggshell. The
cat went too close to the fireball and got its whiskers burned off. Did you know that a cat without whiskers runs into walls?”

They made their way outside again. Pine siskins and chickadees had already begun to feast at Floyd’s hand-made feeder. Abby
stopped to watch, reticent at the old-fashioned innocence of it, not wanting to head out into the reality of her own life.

Viola stepped up beside Abby, her brow furrowed deeply. “Is there something—” She paused, as if she hadn’t any right to ask.
Then, as gently as a hand might be offered to a frightened mongrel dog, Viola offered her hand again to Abby. “Oh, my. I can
see it in your face. There is something, isn’t there? Something new to pray about.”

“Covenants are sometimes hard to keep,” Abby said.

“Covenants are always hard to keep,” Viola said. A clasping together of fingers, older woman to younger one. “Has he done
something to hurt you?”

As the chickadees and the siskins and the sparrows bobbed and swayed on the feeder, tears pooled in Abby’s eyes. She nodded
and for a moment the words wouldn’t come. Then, “I don’t think I’ll be able to talk to you about this, Viola.” Old grievances
mixed with new ones. “You and Floyd have had such a wonderful life together.”

A woman called him on the phone on our anniversary, and he phoned her back. She stayed in a motel. She made a trip here, and
David agreed to see her
.

“Abby?”

Right when I needed my husband the most, he didn’t think he loved me
.

He’s thought about that for nine years—nine years—before he said anything
.

The birds twittered in the tree for a long time while they watched. At last Abby said aloud, “When I asked him if he had second
thoughts about marrying me, he wouldn’t deny it. He wouldn’t say that I was wrong.”

Viola leaned forward on the walker, which tottered with her slight weight. “Oh, honey.”

“You know what happened yesterday, Viola? Braden forgot his baseball cleats for practice so I had to drive home to get them.
Down where the road makes that jog by Puzzleface Ranch, this… this moose came out in front of me. The whole time it was happening,
I kept remembering David saying to me, ‘Apply the brakes and hit the animal square, Abby. Worse thing you can do is to try
to swerve. When you swerve, you catch the right front fender on it and then you flip.’ The whole time it was happening, I
was saying, ‘Okay. Okay, David. I won’t swerve, I promise. I’ll plow right in.’ ”

“When you asked him about it, about him having second thoughts, he didn’t say he was
sorry
he had married you, did he?”

“This policeman saw me slam on the brakes and he stopped me to make sure I was okay. The moose was fine. But, I couldn’t…I
started crying… and I said, ‘My husband’s had an affair and isn’t this ridiculous? I’ve been so strong in front of everybody,
and with a total stranger, I break down?’ ”

“Because there’s a big difference in that, don’t you know? Between David having second thoughts then, and not being sorry
now?”

“He had his affair after we got married, Viola. And he’s a Christian man.”

“Well, goodness. You think just because he’s a Christian man, he’s got to be perfect?” Viola left her walker on the sidewalk
and began to make her way without it. “You think because he did it after he got saved instead of before, you think that makes
him any less forgiven?”

“No,” Abby said, “but it ought to make him changed.”

Viola had settled herself on the pine stoop. She slapped the planks beside her. “You just set here a minute and listen. You
just set here. Those ladies over at the shelter can keep.”

Abby sat as she’d been told.

“The worse trouble you can get into, you know, is feeling something strong and lecturing yourself that you’re not supposed
to be feeling it. Christians have a bad way of doing that—thinking they’re supposed to live above something and not letting
it touch them.”

“I’m not even trying to be good, Viola.”

“Disappointment? I can’t feel that, I’m a Christian. Hate? I can’t feel that! I have to be good.”

“I feel betrayed. And angry. And rejected. And hurt. I thought we had been happy. I thought we had done so well.”

“You feel what you’ve got to feel and you admit you’re feeling normal human things and then you tell God you’re willing to
let Him stir around with those human things and do something supernatural with that. You certainly don’t try to stir around
with them yourself.”

Abby bent forward on the steps and gripped her ankles. She turned her face toward the sun. Viola continued.

“Because if you don’t, if you nurture that betrayal and anger and hurt, that’s when you get separated from where you’re supposed
to be. That’s when you get separated from the Father.”

Nothing I’m standing on is solid, Lord. Nothing around me is the way it seemed to be
. Abby began to rock, hanging on to her ankles. “I don’t know how to have it and not nurture it, Viola. I don’t know how to
stop it from playing over and over again in my mind.”

“Humph,” Viola snorted. “I can tell you a story about that.”

“What?”

“You know Hoyt and Alvie Strong down the street?”

“Sure I do.”

“Well, Alvie got excited about planting herbs not long ago. Brought this long terra-cotta pot home from Spudville. Filled
it full of dirt and set it out on the porch. Then her sister came to visit and she never got time to put anything in.”

Abby still rocked.

“Something started growing up out of the dirt. They were asking all the neighbors ‘What’s this?’ and nobody knew. Not until
Deputy Clarkson stopped by and said, ‘Go get rid of that thing, Hoyt. You’re growing marijuana on your front porch like it’s
an herb garden.’

“ ‘How can that be marijuana?’ Hoyt said. ‘Alvie’s been feeding it Miracle-Gro.’ ”

That story brought a little smile. Abby wagged her head, laid her chin on her knees.

“That’s the way it is, then,” Viola said. “Let God do the rest. He already knows what you’re thinking. He already knows what’s
growing in your dirt.”

“Oh, Viola.”

“You just don’t look for anything extra to feed a weed with. You don’t give it anything that’ll make its roots go deeper.”

T
he telephone call came early Wednesday, only minutes after David had left for the bank and Abby had stepped in the shower.
When she first thought she heard a ring, she had soap in her hand and was working up a wet, loose lather over her shoulders,
dousing off the suds.
Lord, what does it matter if I’m nurturing what I’m feeling? I’m angry and I’m hurt and I’m… I’m
justified.

She drizzled water over her knees and focused on soaping her feet.
Lord, how could I ever lay that down?
She ran a washrag along the sleek curves of her arms, and passed it twice, three times, around the nape of her neck.

The phone rang again. And again. Abby turned off the water and listened.

Whoever it was wasn’t giving up. She climbed out of the shower dripping wet. She toweled off as best she could and wrapped
the towel around her middle, then opened the door to the bedroom and picked up the phone. She balanced the receiver between
her ear and her shoulder blade. “Hello?”

A beat went by, then two, and no one said a word.

“Hello. Hello?” The whir on the other end, which meant long distance. “Who is this?”

“I’m sorry,” the voice finally came, as breathy as a whisper. “I’m calling to…” The woman hesitated. “Mrs. Treasure?” Another
long pause. “Abigail Treasure? Is this you?”

Of course it is, Abby almost said with sarcasm. Who else would it be answering my phone? “Yes, this is Abigail.”

She hadn’t dried off nearly enough. Droplets were sliding down her legs. She shivered and futilely tried to swipe them with
a corner of the towel.

“This is…” A pause. A woman’s voice, one that Abby vaguely recognized. “I don’t know if you know me. But I think you do.”

Abby froze, her towel clutched in her fist. Reality hit her and her legs turned to mush.
Of course. Of course
. “Yes, I know who you are.”

“This is Susan. Susan Roche. I didn’t know if you knew my name.”

Abby made a long, slow descent to the floor. “No. I didn’t.” She flattened her back against the bed and sat there. “Now I
do.”

A rush of words. “I know David has explained it all by now. He said he did.”

“Yes.” How strange, hearing another woman speak her husband’s name in such an intimate way. “He has.”

“Is it…? Do you go by Abigail?”

“Sometimes I do. Yes.” Abby waited. She listened, interpreting the other woman’s silence. “I’m sorry,” she said after there
was nothing left to do but to speak again. “I really don’t want to talk to you.”

“I can understand that. I feel the same way.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell me why you’ve called, then.”

A moment, and then all pretension of pride was gone. “Well, I need—” All false respect gone, any false posturing Susan Roche
might have intended. “I need you to tell David something. I need you to tell him that Samantha is missing.”

“Who?” And then Abby realized. “Oh, I—I see.”

“I thought he’d want to know.”

A chill shot up Abby’s spine. “Yes, I’m sure he will.”

“Will you tell him?”

It seemed so surreal, discussing this subject in such a formal way. As if they were struggling through cloudy, chilling water
together. “Of course I’ll tell him. Of course I will.” She hesitated. “Do you feel free to give me any details?”

“She was at camp. A good camp. Camp Plentycoos, where sick children go to spend a week and remember what it’s like to be normal
again.”

“She disappeared from camp?” In spite of Abby’s contention with this woman, she couldn’t escape a mother’s pity as well. This
is awful. What would I feel like if this were Braden?

“Sam was so excited because they were sewing beads on moccasins this session. And she had a paint horse named Oliver with
the sweetest brown heart on his forehead. I thought it was going to be so good.”

“Do you have any idea—” Abby couldn’t go on. What did you ask at a time like this? Do you know if she left? Do you know if
somebody took her?

“She stuffed pillows in her sleeping bag last night so they’d think she was sleeping. No one realized it until she missed
breakfast this morning.”

“Did she leave a note or anything? Do you think she ran away?”

“No note. No nothing. If she’d gotten a ride from somebody and tried to come home, she would have been here by now.”

“You know I’ll tell David. I’ll go tell him right now.”

“That’s what I was hoping. I would have just phoned him at the office, but I didn’t want him to be alone when he hears—”

Abby glanced at the clock. Gooseflesh raised on her arms. Yes, that’s exactly where David would be this moment. Susan Roche
knew David’s schedule just as well as his own wife did. Abby stared at the fist tangled around the phone cord as if the gnarled,
curled knuckles twisted into a ball weren’t her own.