Hearts Awakening (30 page)

“Pappy brought us here once, but it didn’t look pretty like it does now,” Daniel replied.

“It’s too late to plant flowers here to replace the ones the weeds strangled, but maybe you and Ethan would like to help me plant some in the spring,” Ellie suggested.

“We don’t need flowers. My mama liked river stones. Come on, Ethan.” With his brother following right on his heels, they ran back to the basket and returned with handfuls of dark river stones. They laid them around the base of Rebecca’s headstone.

“The stones look beautiful there,” she said. She reached into her apron pocket and fingered the silhouette of her mother. “I’m sure your mama would like that much better than flowers. Maybe another day we can collect more stones, and you could put them around all the other headstones, too.”

Standing with his brother near the top of the headstone, Daniel looked up at her, his eyes wide with expectation. “Can me and Ethan really come here again?”

She smiled. “Yes, you may, but you can’t come out here alone. Your father or I need to come with you and Ethan until you’re both a little older.”

When Daniel frowned at her response, she frowned, as well. “I wish I could visit my mother’s headstone,” she said.

“Your mama’s in heaven, too?” Daniel asked.

Her heart started to race in anticipation of confronting Daniel with what he had done, although his question confused her. If she was right to assume Ethan had told Daniel the silhouette existed, then he should have told Daniel that her mother was dead, too, unless Ethan had not told him everything.

“My mother died three years ago. I can’t visit her headstone because it’s a long, long way from here, but I have something else that’s very precious to me, something that reminds me of her and how much she loved me.” She kept her voice as soft and gentle as she could.

Trusting in God to continue to guide her, she took the silhouette out of her pocket and held it up for both boys to see. “This is a silhouette of my mother’s image. I hadn’t even realized someone had taken it until I found it yesterday, hidden inside the pillowcase with your mama’s pillow.”

When Ethan’s little face crumpled and giant tears tumbled down Daniel’s cheeks, she caught her breath. She was not surprised that both boys were crying, now that they both knew they had been caught stealing. She was determined to use their transgression to help them learn from this mistake, but she would need the Lord’s help to lead them to accept her place in their lives, as well as their hearts.

And so she waited, patiently and prayerfully, for the boys to exhaust their tears, with all of their futures hanging in the balance.

Twenty-Nine

“I didn’t take it. I didn’t,” Daniel cried, his cheeks glistening with the last of his tears. “Ethan did it. He took it, not me.”

Still resisting the urge to take each of the boys into her arms to console them, Ellie held firm against Daniel’s lie. “Ethan can’t open the chest drawer by himself, can he?”

Daniel sniffled back a few tears, but his face was berry red. “No.”

“Then you must have opened the drawer for him.”

“Yes.”

“After he told you about the silhouette?”

He nodded, albeit reluctantly.

“Did Ethan take the silhouette out of the drawer?” she asked, knowing how literal a child could be when it was necessary or convenient.

Another nod, but this time, Daniel reached over to put his arm around his younger brother, as if protecting him. “He loses stuff, so I kept it for him.”

“But why? Why would you help him keep something that belongs to me? And, Ethan, why would you take something that you knew was so important to me?” she asked gently.

She hoped Ethan would be tempted to respond, but as always, he let his brother speak for him. “He said the lady in the picture looked like our mama,” Daniel whispered and arched his back the same way his father tended to do when he was being defensive. “She does. Ask Pappy if you don’t believe me. She really does. Ethan just wanted to be able to look at the picture when he was feeling sad.”

Her heart trembled, unleashing the memory of watching Ethan trace the image over and over again the day he had found the silhouette when he was helping her to unpack. Knowing that she was right to believe Daniel when he claimed Ethan talked to him mattered very little now when so much more was at stake. “Is that why you took my wooden wedding ring, too, and hid it from me? Because it reminded you of your mother’s?” she asked. She slipped the silhouette back into her pocket, doubtful that Rebecca would have worn a ring as simple as the one Jackson now wore on the leather thong around his neck.

Daniel dropped his gaze, as silent now as his brother.

She waited, giving the boy time to answer. Her patience, if not her confidence that she was doing the right thing, was stretched nearly to the breaking point when he finally spoke again.

“I didn’t take the ring. I found it on the floor in the kitchen under the cookstove.”

She sighed. She had looked under the cookstove twice, but Daniel had apparently taken the ring already. “What were you doing looking under the cookstove?”

“Ethan lost one of our blocks again. I was trying to find it,” he explained. “I thought you didn’t want the ring anymore, so I kept it.”

“Your father gave it to me. Why wouldn’t I want it?”

Daniel shrugged his narrow shoulders. “ ’Cause it wasn’t pretty. My mama only liked to wear things that were pretty.”

Ellie swallowed hard, recalling all the pretties Rebecca had kept at the Sunday house. “You kept my ring without asking me first if I wanted it back?”

“Pappy bought you a new one. It’s lots prettier,” he countered.

“Yes, he did, but that’s not the issue,” she insisted. “You and Ethan were both wrong to take something that didn’t belong to you. You upset me. And you upset your father.”

The moment she mentioned their father, each boy unleashed a fresh round of tears. Still, she held her ground, knowing it was important for each boy to feel remorse, even if it was simply because they had gotten caught or feared the punishment their father would mete out. Recognizing what they had done as a sin that their heavenly Father would forgive them for was something she and Jackson needed to continue to help them to learn.

“Pappy’s terrible mad, isn’t he?” Daniel managed between hiccoughs.

Ellie shook her head. “He’s not angry with you now. He’s disappointed in you. Simply apologizing won’t be quite enough this time, will it?” she asked, reminding them of the apologies she had accepted after they had disobeyed her and ended up in the mud puddle, then tracked in mud on her newly scrubbed floor.

Daniel’s eyes widened. “But we’re really, really sorry, aren’t we, Ethan?” he asked, receiving a nod in reply.

“Being sorry for what you’ve done is important, but it’s your father’s place and my place to make sure you learn never to steal something again. If that means a punishment of some sort, I’m sure we’ll be fair to both of you, especially if you remember that stealing is a sin and you need to ask for God’s forgiveness, too, when you say your prayers tonight.”

“When do we have to tell Pappy?”

She smiled. “I’m hoping we can all sit down and talk this through later today. In the meantime, I have something I want to give back to you to remind you that God’s angels are always here to help you when you’re tempted to do something wrong.”

The boys looked at her as if she was a bit touched by the sun for offering them a present, but they eagerly followed her back to the basket. “Before I give this to you, I want you to understand that you have to share it.”

“We will,” Daniel promised for both of them, although his gaze remained skeptical.

She lifted out the canvas pouch she had stored inside the basket and removed the Jacob’s Ladder she had repaired. When Ethan reached for it, she let him hold it. “You both remember this, don’t you?”

Daniel nodded. “But ours broked.”

“Broke,” she corrected gently. “But it’s not broken anymore. I fixed it for you, with your mother’s ribbons. The ones Ethan brought home the day you took your mother’s pillow, remember?”

When Ethan had trouble getting the blocks to fall, end over end, Daniel helped him, but all Ethan wanted to do was finger each of the ribbons. “I remember this toy. Mama gave it to us.”

“Did she tell you the story of Jacob?”

“She said he dreamed about angels on a ladder that reached all the way up to heaven. They climbed up the ladder and down again and up and down and up and down,” Daniel replied as he used the blocks to demonstrate. Annoyed, Ethan grabbed at the blocks and held them still, and Daniel surrendered the toy to his brother.

As the boys took turns playing with the Jacob’s Ladder, Ellie had visions of many repairs to the toy that lay waiting for her in the days ahead. But she also had hope that one day soon, these two precious boys would discover there was still room in their little hearts to love her as well as their mother. Inspired by how nicely they were sharing the toy, just as they always shared their blocks, she took the silhouette of her mother out of her pocket again.

She caught both boys’ attention. “I have an idea,” she said, encouraged by the way Ethan’s eyes lit up the moment he saw the silhouette again. “Instead of keeping this in my drawer, I think I should ask your father to make a frame for it, and one for my father’s silhouette, too. That way, I could hang them up where we can all see them anytime we want,” she suggested and handed the image of her mother to Ethan. “I can’t let you keep the silhouette, but I’d like to share it with you. Would you like to carry it back home for me?”

His eyes fairly danced with joy and he bobbed his head so fast his little cowlick danced, too.

Not to be outdone, Daniel puffed out his chest. “We share our blocks from Grandpa, too.”

“And you share your bedroom, too,” she added. Instead of mentioning the makeshift tent they also shared, she tried to expand the concept of sharing to the adults in their lives.

“Does anyone else you know share their things?”

Daniel shook his head. “Pappy doesn’t like to share his dessert ’cause he wants to eat all of it.”

She chuckled. “That’s true, but he shares everything he works for and his house with you. He doesn’t keep them to himself. Can you think of anything else he shares with someone?”

Ethan appeared to be ignoring her. He was too engrossed rubbing the silhouette image with his thumb, and she tried not to worry that he was smearing dirt on it.

Daniel, on the other hand, was fully engaged in their conversation. “After that big, big storm, with all the wind and rain and stuff, Pappy shared his old boots with you ’cause you didn’t have none.”

She brightened, too pleased with his example to correct his grammar. “Yes, he did. He shared his old boots with me several times since then, but I couldn’t keep them. They belong to your father,” she offered and smiled at each of them. “Your father is a very kind and generous man, and he loves you both very much. He knows how much you miss your mama, but he needs someone to help him to take care of both of you. That’s why he married me,” she said.

She paused to glance down at Rebecca’s headstone for a moment before looking back at both of the boys. “Do you think your mama would mind very much if your father shared me with both of you?”

Daniel studied his mother’s headstone for a very, very long time. Even Ethan turned his attention away from the silhouette he was holding to do the same. When Daniel finally looked up at Ellie again, his gaze was troubled. “We wouldn’t have to keep you, would we?”

She blinked back tears, hopeful that one day they would not only want to keep her, but love her. “No,” she murmured. “You wouldn’t have to keep me, but I’d be there for both of you whenever you needed something, like the new clothes I made for you or the toy I repaired for you.”

“Or griddle cakes. Me and Ethan need them for breakfast every day,” Daniel suggested.

“Or griddle cakes,” she said, chuckling.

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t think Mama would be mad at us, as long as we just shared you with Pappy and didn’t keep you for good. If she comes back, she’ll just be mad with Pappy,” he reasoned, still shifting from understanding his mother was in heaven to believing she might come back someday.

“I don’t think she’d be mad at you at all, Daniel,” Ellie ventured and stooped down in front of Ethan. “What do you think, Ethan? Do you think it would be all right if Pappy shared me with you, too?” she asked, hoping he might be tempted to speak to her for the first time.

But that precious boy did not speak, leaving Ellie to wonder if he would ever accept her at all.

Thirty