Past Forward Volume 1 (10 page)

A glance at Willow and his mind was back on
the crisis at hand. “Feeling sick again?”

She nodded. “The room is spinning. I feel
so…” Her eyes closed automatically.

“Don’t close your eyes. Focus on the seat
ahead of you. Closing your eyes doesn’t help. Focusing will.”

Willow concentrated on the seat until the
wave of nausea passed. “It worked. I feel better,” she whispered
back.

Wordlessly, Chad took the bucket from her
and passed the bottle of water. “Do you still want to try to
go?”

“I don’t think I can stand. I’d rather wait
until it’s over if I won’t get sick again.”

Chad showed her how to predict which scenes
would send her stomach reeling. “The camera… when it starts
whirling like that, look down. It’s making you motion sick, I’ll
bet,” Chad murmured, ignoring the shushing of a few nearby
moviegoers. As for Chad, he’d never seen anything like it. If she
were this ill in a chick flick, she’d never make it through an
action film.

The lights blinked and then glowed as the
credits rolled. Willow stood and collapsed back into her seat. “I
don’t know what is wrong with my legs and ears.”

“Ears?”

Willow shook her head like a puppy doused
with water. “Yes they’re buzzing and ringing and my head feels
mushy.”

“Maybe now lay back and rest your head on
the back of the seat and close your eyes?” The cleanup crew
entered, visibly irritated to see people still sitting there, but
Chad ignored them.

Ten minutes later, she sat up gingerly. “I
feel better. Let’s try to get out of here before those girls get
any angrier at us.”

She stood, holding onto the backs of the
seats, and shuffled down the row to the aisle. Behind them, the
girls made snide comments about their slowness and the mess of
popcorn at their feet. Chad tried to keep his cool, but when the
quips turned crude, he lost his patience.

“You had a choice between vomit and popcorn.
I chose popcorn. Next time I’ll let her toss her cookies over the
floor for you to clean up.”

At the front doors, Chad left Willow leaning
against the glass wall and hurried back to find the girls. “Hey,
I’m sorry. I had no right to snap at you like that.”

One attendant passed him without a word, but
the other said, “That’s really cool, apologizing when we’re the
ones who trash talked you. I hope she feels better. Flu?”

“Motion sickness.”

“In
Eight Cousins
?” The incredulous
look on the girl’s face was priceless.

“First time at the movies.”

“What
!”

The other girl shook her head as Chad pushed
open the heavy door. “Wow.”

They walked along Elm Street to Main and
back to the town square where Chad had parked his truck. Each step
in the balmy night air seemed to strengthen Willow, until a
relieved chuckle escaped. “I can’t believe I got sick in the
movies!”

“Well, it was a first for me too,” Chad
began. Once he knew she felt better, he regaled her with details of
his popcorn bucket retrieval adventure.

They sat on his tailgate sipping water from
bottles and watching the teens cruise by on their way home from
Rockland or the theater. Chad pointed out how they’d make a pass
one direction, double back, and then head home. “They’re not
allowed to actually ‘cruise’ the streets, but they’ll make a double
pass.”

“Why can’t they cruise?”

“The chief and his cronies at the city
council think it encourages disreputable behavior.”

Willow stared at him confused. “Driving up
and down the street at slower than normal speeds is disreputable?
They’d rather the kids go find some place to break in and party
perhaps? At least on the street you know where they are and what
they’re doing!”

“We need you to be their advocate with the
chief. I don’t know what the appeal of cruising is, but I loved it
when I was a kid, and my dad did it when he was a kid; there is
just something cool about making that loop with a car full of your
friends.”

She pointed at a Beetle convertible that
crawled past and then made a loop. “Didn’t that one go past a while
ago?”

“I’ll bet he took the girlfriend home. He’s
probably heading home himself, but he’ll make a double pass because
he can.”

“Do they get tickets if the police come
around?”

Chad’s head nodded. “Yep.”

“What for?”

“Endangering other drivers, and if the car
sits in one spot idling for more than five minutes, loitering.”

Indignant, Willow jumped from the tailgate
and tossed her empty bottle in a nearby garbage can. “I think
that’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard anything so inane. Mother
always said that if you treat a kid like he’s going to get into
trouble, he usually will.”

Chad’s eyebrows rose in question as he
opened her car door. She slid into her seat talking as she buckled
the seatbelt. “Well, Mother said that people had a ‘boys will be
boys’ attitude, and it fed the actions that prompted the statement
in the first place. I remember her being very incensed at something
someone did when she was in town once, and she talked about it all
the way home.”

“What happened?”

“A couple of little boys chased a little
girl and pulled up her dress and laughed at her tears. The child
ran to her father, crying, and the father told her mother, ‘boys
will be boys, no harm done.’”

“I’d thrash any boy of mine for that kind
of—”

Willow interrupted, shaking her head in
agreement. “That’s what Mother was talking about. She said that if
that father had expected his sons to protect little girls and treat
them like beloved little sisters rather than objects to ridicule,
the chances of that happening were much slimmer.”

The truck started, and Chad backed into the
square and joined the slow procession of cars. He made the
obligatory loop and backtracked once before he turned toward the
highway. “I think your mom was right.”

The night sky was pitch-black as they drove
toward the Finley farm. The new moon allowed the stars to shine
brighter than ever as they sped along the highway. “Two firsts for
me tonight. Well, three actually.”

“Three?”

“I went to a movie and I went cruising.”

“That’s two,” Chad protested.

“I got motion sick.”

“Will you try another movie some time?”
Chad’s curiosity got the better of him and as the words left his
mouth, he realized it sounded like another invitation.

“Oh, movie. Yes, I’ll be going back.
Probably next week. Didn’t you say that you can see them in the
afternoon?”

“The matinee, yes. They’re cheaper then,
too.”

“I’ll go next Wednesday when I meet Bill and
Ms. Freeman, Mother’s lawyer. It’ll be a nice diversion after all
that stuff.” She grinned. “Now I know how to watch without getting
sick.”

At her door, Chad looked out across the
pasture in the direction of the grave. “Does Othello still sleep
out there?”

“Every night, the moment it gets dark, he
barks a few times and then trots off. He’s back at daybreak,
waiting to go with me to milk Wilhelmina.”

“Think he’d handle another dog?”

She eyed him curiously. “Probably a younger
dog, why?”

“I’d feel better if you had a dog around
here. We don’t know if Othello would come back if someone was
prowling—”

“I’ve got the gun.” Willow sounded
flat—matter-of-fact.

“And a dog’s bark would probably scare off
anyone before they got close enough for you to shoot.”

“I’ll think about it. Thank you for the
movie; I had a great time. Goodnight.”

Without another word, she slipped inside the
door, shut, and locked it behind her. He jogged down the steps and
climbed back into his truck.
Lord, having her as a friend might
not be so bad. I thought she would be more clingy or something, but
she’s not, thank heaven. Maybe this won’t be too bad.

Willow undressed and pulled on her camisole
and bed shorts. After brushing and braiding her hair, she tidied
her room praying,
Lord, Chad’s a nice friend. I enjoy having him
around sometimes, but he’s kind of clingy. Please give him
something to do somewhere else a little more often. I’m starting to
feel a little smothered.
She pulled the covers over her and
turned down her oil lamp.
At least he didn’t invite himself
along to my next movie. Although, if he hadn’t invited himself to
this one, I might have been in trouble, so that was good.

While the cicadas’ songs
drifted through the window, Willow lay in bed thinking. Her mother
had spoken once of hating to feel like someone’s “project.” She’d
warned Chad of it once, but it seemed as if he had ignored or
forgotten it. However, knowing that someone out there cared enough
to make her a project felt better than the extreme loneliness that
came in those moments when she realized that without a few near
strangers, she was truly alone. Shame filled her heart as a sense
of the Lord’s presence washed over her.
Ok, not
quite
alone...

Tuesday morning, Willow opened her mother’s
door and stood in the doorway. She’d put off this moment as long as
possible, but the time had come. She needed her mother’s private
journals.

The more days that passed, the harder it had
become to enter the room. She glanced at the bowl by the bed and
grimaced. The peonies were withered and dry. The bedspread still
lay folded on the bed waiting for her to shake it into place. The
breeze fluttered the curtains in the windows and the sun sent the
dust dancing in a shaft of light across the floor.

A high shelf between the closet and bedroom
door boasted a row of twenty-one journals and a hand-painted hatbox
that doubled as a bookend. Willow stared at the shelf. She’d never
been allowed to touch her mother’s private journals. “You’ll know
when it’s ok, Willow. You’ll know. Until then, leave them alone,”
her mother had always said when she asked what her mother wrote in
them. She glanced at the bedside—there was one for that year in the
drawer there.

Willow reached for the first one. Thumbing
through the months, she found July. The sight of her mother’s
cramped writing wrung her heart, squeezing it until it felt as
though no blood was left. Different paragraphs jumped out at her
causing her to realize she wanted to read them from the beginning.
Among those pages, a side of her mother she’d never known
emerged.

I’m contracting again. My brilliant plan to
walk into Fairbury when the time came wasn’t so brilliant. It’s
pouring rain out there. Rain in July. Just my luck. Ouch. That one
hurt. Do I try to stay here? Should I try walking and just accept a
ride. Pray I’m not killed? I don’t know.

Well, that was gross. Why did it never occur
to me that my water breaking would be like wetting my pants? I’m
gathering things between contractions. I just hope something
doesn’t go wrong. We could die here. Maybe a phone wasn’t a bad
idea after all.