Francine Rivers - Her Daughter’s Dream

“Mitch told me he had a crush on Mom in high school. He wanted to ask her out, but never got up the nerve. That’s why he came back to Paxtown-to look her up.” Dawn set Uncle Charlie’s picture on the coffee table. “Did you ever meet Mom’s friend, Rachel Altman?”

Granny tilted her head. “So she told you about her.”

“A little.”

“Carolyn brought her home once, just before Charlie went to Vietnam. They were both still attending Berkeley at the time. Rachel came from wealth. She rented a house. That’s when things started to go downhill. They dropped out and disappeared. We didn’t hear from your mother for two years, and then one day, I came home and there she was sitting by the front door.”

Dawn sat on the couch and curled her legs up under her. “Were you angry with her?”

“Angry?”

“She was gone so long. It must have been awful for you and Papa.”

“You can’t even imagine how awful.” Granny sounded distressed. “Don’t ask her about those days. She was worrying just now in the kitchen, thinking it would make a difference in how you feel about her. She doesn’t want to talk about it. We tried a few times to open the subject, but learned to leave well enough alone.”

Dawn wasn’t convinced. “Maybe if she talks about it, it won’t haunt her so much.”

“She put it all behind her and moved on with her life.”

“I’d like to know who my father was.”

Dismayed, Granny shook her head. “Did you ever think she might not know? And asking would just make her feel worse about it.”

“I love her, Granny. No matter what she tells me, that’s not going to change.”

“So do I. That’s why I don’t ask.” Granny’s mouth worked, as though she fought tears. “Just leave things alone. I lost her once; I don’t want-”

The back door clicked open. Mom came in with a box of presto logs and set them beside the fireplace. She gave Dawn a questioning glance. “Is something wrong?”

Dawn shook her head and couldn’t think of what to say.

Mom looked at both of them and headed for the back door again.

Dawn struggled to her feet. Pain stabbed into her side. Sucking in her breath, she went outside and leaned over the rail above the stairs. “Mom, wait.”

Mom glanced at her, expression bleak.

“You don’t have to leave.”

Her mouth curved in disbelief. “You should go back inside and stay warm. You don’t want to catch cold. ” She went down the steps and disappeared around the corner.

Carolyn stepped inside the storage area under the garage and pulled the string attached to a swaying overhead light. She hefted another box of presto logs and set it near the door. She’d take it up in a little while. She wasn’t in any hurry to go back upstairs and walk into another private conversation.

She could use an AA meeting right now. She felt at home among others who had struggled with life. She felt Jesus’ presence there. He’d come to redeem sinners, hadn’t He? He’d raised her up from out of the mire and planted her feet on His sacred ground. Sometimes, she forgot the past entirely, until something or someone reminded her again.

Carolyn breathed in slowly and exhaled. She had other things to think about… and no time to feel sorry for herself.

Most of the stuff under the house would have to be hauled away, like the red vinyl and chrome kitchen stools from the Paxtown house. Why had Mom and Dad hung on to them all these years? The metal frames had rusted and the seats cracked. Dad’s fishing poles, net, creel, and box of flies hung on one wall, along with his brown chest-waders, two pairs of hiking boots, and an old backpack. An old AM/FM radio sat between stacks of National Geographic s bound in bundles of twelve. Dad said they’d be worth something, someday. Water-damaged and worthless now, the whole collection would have to be lugged up to the road and taken to the dump. She wondered what Dad would say if he knew the entire collection was now available on CD-ROM.

Removing a canvas cover, Carolyn found a fertilizer spreader and push mower. The Jenner house didn’t have a lawn. She opened a coffinlike chest and stepped back from the stench of molding blankets and towels. Not even a rat or mouse would make a nest in there. She found Charlie’s old Lionel train, complete with engine, cars, caboose, tracks and railroad signs, station house and town buildings. Christopher would have enjoyed setting this up when he was a little boy. Had Dad forgotten about it or left it in storage because it hurt too much to be reminded of Charlie?

Another box held Charlie’s high school yearbooks. She sat in the red Adirondack chair she’d given Dad for his sixtieth birthday and opened the 1962 Amadon yearbook. Leafing through the pages, she found his senior picture, hair neat and short. She found Mitch’s picture. She loved his smile. She found other pictures of Charlie and Mitch: kneeling in the front row of the varsity football team, helmets on their knees; standing with other members of the basketball team; Charlie, head back as he laughed while hanging out on the senior lawn with friends. Friends had scrawled notes everywhere.

“I still miss you, Charlie,” Carolyn whispered and closed the book. Her brother had always had a contagious laugh. Had he lived, he’d be married with grown children and grandchildren by now.

She put her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. Her heart still ached. Being cooped up and feeling like a third wheel didn’t help. Mom and May Flower Dawn were close. That was good.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

She couldn’t undo the past. She couldn’t reclaim what had never belonged to her.

God, grant me the courage to change the things I can.

Maybe it was time to talk about the past… if she could do so with love. As much as she wanted to say it didn’t matter, it still had the power to torment her. She’d come out to the beach a hundred times and written her sins in the sand, watching them wash away. But the guilt and shame always came back to haunt her.

“God won’t take you where His love won’t protect you,” Boots had told her. “You lived through it. You’re a survivor. The past doesn’t have any power over you anymore.”

Only the power she gave it.

Boots knew about the circumstances of her pregnancy. Carolyn had told her about her life in Haight-Ashbury and Rachel Altman. She’d even confessed her relationship with Ash-sordid, abusive, heart- and soul-crushing. But she’d never told her about the beekeeper who lived next door and what she’d done with him.

God, grant me the wisdom… Your will, not mine be done.

Your will, Lord. Not Mom’s or mine or even May Flower Dawn’s.

Calm again, she stacked the yearbooks on top of the box of presto logs and headed back upstairs.

Mom sat in her recliner, reading a magazine. She glanced up as Carolyn came in the back door. “It must be freezing down there.”

“Cold and damp, but not too bad.” Dawn was asleep on the couch, the white afghan tucked around her. Carolyn set the box of presto logs on top of the other one and put the yearbooks on the coffee table. “She’s awfully pale.”

Mom put the magazine away. “She is, isn’t she? And so thin.”

“Did she tell you what made her drive across the country?”

“Just what she told us already. Pregnant women get strange urges. Maybe we’re like salmon. We want to return to the stream where we were born.”

“Then she should’ve headed for LA.” Carolyn saw Mom wince and wished she hadn’t said it. “I found Charlie’s high school yearbooks.”

Pain flickered across Mom’s face. “I haven’t looked at them in years. I won’t have any room for them when I move.”