Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 119

Book Review: Dark of Night, a work of suspenseful fiction with spiritual truths needed today

Dark of Night by Carrie Cotton

Genre: Supernatural Christian Fantasy

Publisher: Self Published or Indepedently Published

Available: Currently Amazon.

Description: A new life, a new love, and even a new name. For former secret agent Andromeda Stone – now Joanna Carter – a normal, boring life with her handsome husband was the happy ending. But an old enemy resurfaces, determined to leave nothing unfinished, and Andy must step back into the nightmares once again. Andy and Will each face their own worst fears in their search for answers. Will this new mission cost Andy more than she’s willing to pay?
When the journey takes her to deeper and darker places than she’s ever been before, Andy discovers it’s more than just answers she’s looking for.

Review: Dark of Night, Carrie Cotton’s second book in her Dreamwalker series, isn’t simply a work of fiction, it is a call to action, a reminder that there are forces unseen working against us in a realm beyond our comprehension.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12 KJV

This book is the visceral reminder that as people, Christians or not, we are in the midst of a spiritual battle for our soul every day. No, most of us don’t wield physical weapons in our everyday lives, (unless we are in the military or law enforcement) but there are spiritual weapons at our disposal and we can draw on them, reign them into our control with our trust that God is bigger than any evil pressing down upon us and around us.

I would compare this book to those of Frank Peretti who first opened the eyes of many Christians to the reality of spiritual warfare in books such as This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. There are some who believed his stories, like Carrie’s, are simply that — stories, but when a person faces the actual dark tentacles sliding out of the darkest recesses of their mind, blocking out goodness with thoughts of revenge and ruin, like I have a few times in my life, they will realize what they thought was a story is actually true.

It’s scary to have to admit there is truth in Carrie’s book.

Are there people who can walk in dreams and hurt other people? Not that we know of. Are there evil forces that can influence us to the point that evil no longer seems evil and good no longer seems good? I think anyone who is living through what our nation and our world are facing these days knows that there are evil forces; there is a real father of lies whispering in the ears of many, telling them not to trust what God has implanted in them, but to instead trust what the media, society, and politicians tell them is true.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Isaiah 5:20

This isn’t a political book. Don’t misunderstand. This isn’t picking apart issues we now consider political and telling you what to believe. Not in the least. It does not mention our modern issues. There are bigger stakes at play here – the fight for individual souls and the fight to not be overtaken by hatred and evil. This book takes issues that the main character Joanna battles within herself and brings it right down to the personal deep level, reminding the reader that Joanna isn’t the only one who has to resist evil — we all do.

Quote from book, Esther to Joanna (Andy): “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she said passionately. “It doesn’t take brute force or physical weapons to fight these battles, it takes spiritual strength that comes from faith in a very, very powerful God. He is greater, His Word is greater than anything . . . anything . . . in this world, even the hidden things.”

If you are not ready to be spiritually challenged while mentally entertained with fast-paced action, well-written prose, and characters you will fall quickly and solidly in love with (to the point you will cry if harm comes to them), then don’t read this book. But, if you are ready to challenge your faith, your perception of reality, increase your knowledge of a spiritual realm that is in play all around us, and be entertained at the same time, then you need to pick up a copy of Dark of Night NOW. This is a must read for every Christian, but it is also a read that even someone who doesn’t consider themselves a Christian will enjoy.

Quote from book(Jacob to Andy): “You say you believe in God, that you love Him. If that’s true, then you have to trust Him to keep His promises. If we trust Him, truly trust Him, then we can remain in Him and all things will work together for our good – either now or eventually, even the terrible choices of other people.”

Fiction Friday: The Farmers’ Sons Chapter 2

For those who are new here, this is a story in progress. To catch up with previous chapters, click HERE.

Chapter 2

Even now, five months later, he struggled to remember what had happened.

The pain had been blinding, the fear of certain death all consuming. Darkness encroached across  his vision like a hungry specter. When he came to his face was soaked and when he looked up, a barrage of tiny pellets fell at him from the sky, slicing through the clouds.

Forever tethered to Robert’s recollections of that day would be the memories of Alex frantically calling his name; Jason’s eyes full of terror as he kneeled next to him.

Everything within him told him he was going to die. Each breath sent a thousand shards of agonizing pain ripping through his chest, but he had to make Jason understand how much he loved him.

“Jason. . .”

Jason shook his head. “Don’t talk, Dad. Rest.”

He’d gripped Jason’s hand as tight as his weakened state would allow him, urging him to listen.

“Jason. I love you.”

Jason’s eyes glistened. “I love you too, Dad.”

Standing at his bedroom window now, watching the sunrise paint purple and pink across the horizon, he closed his eyes against the memories. Letting out a deep breath he opened his eyes, leaned on the window frame, and looked out over the side yard, toward the barn, Jason’s truck already parked there. It took a team to keep Tanner Enterprises running. The business consisted of four separate farms growing a variety of produce and products to sell to suppliers and in the family’s farm store. Robert and his brother Walt had handled managing the farming side of it for the past four years since their father Ned had retired. After Ned passed away last year, only a couple of years after retirement, Jason had begun stepping into a leadership role even more.

In the months before the accident, after his father died, Robert had considered telling Walt it was time to let it all go, that he didn’t have it in him anymore. That feeling had been the strongest when the bank had called in the loan last spring. He’d known they didn’t, and wouldn’t, have the money to pay it off. Now, though, he was grateful for it all – even the tough days – and not only because Alex’s mom, the wife of a wealthy entrepreneur, had helped pay off the loan that could have ended it all.

Even with the loan paid off the farm was struggling, but there were opportunities on the horizon that would help if they could get the permits and the funding.

“You’ve got that crease in your brow again.”

Annie’s arms wove through his, her hands stretching across his bare chest. Her kiss was warm against his skin, between his shoulder blades and the warmth of it slid throughout him, making him wish he didn’t have work to do in the barn.

“What’re you thinking about?” Her voice whispered concern.

“The accident. The future of the farm. Jason.” He lifted her hand, kissed the top of it. “The usual culprits.”

“The accident is in the past, we’re working on the future of the farm, and Jason —” She moved to his side, manuevered herself in front of him, sliding her arms around his waist. “He’s going to be okay. He and Ellie will work things out.”

A tractor started up outside. Jason had always had a strong work ethic, but Robert knew that wasn’t what was driving him now. “He’s trying to bury himself in work.”

Annie laid her cheek against her husband’s shoulder as he wound his fingers in her hair. “I know.”

“It’s not going to work. It didn’t when I tried it after Dad died.”

The growl of a truck engine cut into the quiet of the morning. Molly had pulled in, probably more anxious to see Alex than start milking the cows. Robert laughed softly. “I can’t believe she’s still driving that old truck.”

Annie leaned her head back and looked at him, cocking an eyebrow. “Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black, considering you’re still driving your dad’s old clunker.”

“Yeah, but Dad had that truck before he even had mine.” They laughed together.

She kissed him softly on the mouth. “She loves it. It’s the last reminder she has of him.”

“I know.” His lips grazed hers as he spoke and then he slid his hands behind her head, up into her hair. Her mouth under his was exactly what he needed to take his mind off it all. Jason, Molly and Alex could start the milking without him. He hadn’t been much help anyhow since the accident, a fact that irritated him beyond belief.

Laying in the hospital room, staring at his broken and bruised body day after day, he’d known it might be months, maybe even a year before he would be able to work normally on the farm again. What terrified him even more had been the thought that he wouldn’t be able to care for Annie the way he always had. The idea of her consumed with worry over him and the farm, knowing she’d take the burden of filling in the void he would leave on her shoulders, had tightened his chest more than once during his hospital stay.

He’d wanted to protect her from the hard moments of life since he’d first really paid attention to her that day at her father’s farm, watching her stack hay bales as easily as any man. He’d seen her before, of course. Their families had been neighbors their entire lives. They had been in the same class at school. Until that day, though, he’d never really noticed her. Not the way he noticed her that day.

 They’d both been 17 and she didn’t look like she needed protecting, but a deeply ingrained desire to do it anyhow had bubbled up in him, spilling over the day he’d softly kissed her in the hayloft of her father’s barn.

He knew he couldn’t always protect her.

He hadn’t been able to shield her from the pain when they’d lost their infant daughter between Jason and Molly, from the reoccurring fear of losing the farm, from the death of his father, who she’d always been close to, or from the aftermath of his accident.

 When he couldn’t protect her, though, he’d been there to walk beside her, hold her close, show her how much he needed her, as much as he needed the air in his lungs.

Her hands slid up his chest, across his shoulders, the kiss deepening, making him forget they were almost 51 now. A pounding on the door startled them both.

“Dad? You awake yet?”

Their lips parted and Robert groaned, pressing his forehead against hers. “It would be nice if we could experience at least a few days of empty nest syndrome.”

Annie buried her face against his shoulder and laughed.

He called over his shoulder, “Yes, Molly. I’m awake. What’s up?”

“The pump is broken again, and Jason says you’re the only one who knows how to fix it.”

Robert tipped his head back, focused on the crack stretching across the ceiling, reminding him he still hadn’t picked up the supples to tackle that project. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be right there.”

“I hated to bother you but —”

“I know. We can’t milk the cows without it.”

Robert kissed Annie’s neck. “We’ll pick this up later.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said, reaching behind him for her robe.

He limped to the dresser to search for a shirt and jeans, hating that Annie had to see him this way, like a crippled old man.

“Isn’t Liz due soon?”

Annie tied her robe closed, much to his disappointment. “Two weeks.”

He pulled the shirt over his head, his eyebrow furrowing. “You think Molly is prepared for living in a tiny apartment with a crying newborn and a weepy new mother?”

Molly had left the farm a couple of months earlier and moved into an apartment in town with her friend Liz, who was facing an unplanned pregnancy.

Annie yawned and tossed her clothes over her shoulder, reaching for the doorknob.

“I doubt it, but she promised Liz she’d be there for her and I’m proud of her for standing by her friend.”

Robert laughed, sliding past her through the doorway. “I am too, but I wonder how many times we’ll find her curled up in the truck taking a nap.”

Outside the front door, a chill in the air greeted him and sent goosebumps up his arm. He paused on the top step of the back door, drawing a deep breath, his head tipped back. He smelled the hay in the barn, the perennials along the side of the house beginning to bloom, soil being warmed by the rising sun.

Looking out across the pasture his eyes fell on the sparkle of sunlight off the dew on the grass, then shifted toward the barn where he heard laughter from his children and Alex, the man who had become like another son to him.

If any good had come from the accident, it had been that it had shown him what really mattered in life. Even if they lost the farm, lost everything material, life would be worth living as long as he had his family. He was eternally grateful for it all – even the hardships that came with recovering and running a farm while he felt like half a man.

Soon, he’d be able to work even harder next to Jason to protect what generations of Tanners had built, attempt to shield it from economic downturns, changing markets, and fickle consumers.

He winced at each step down the stairs.

Soon, but not yet.

***

Alcott, Angelou, Austen, Barrie, Bronte, Blume . . .

Ellie’s fingers slid over the spines of the books on her bookshelf until she came to the Cs.

“C is for Christie.”

 She slid the book back in its place and stood up, stepping back to admire her handiwork.

All three shelves of books completely organized, in alphabetical order. Just the way she liked it.

Contentment settled over her like a warm blanket. At least she could control one thing in her life.

While all other aspects of her life swirled around her in blistering chaos, this one place, her new apartment above Missy Fowler’s hair salon, offered her a reprieve from it all, a place where she controlled what was out of place and what wasn’t.

It was how she’d always soothed her soul – enacting control over her physical environment when her emotional environment was off kilter and impervious to her influence. Even as a child her toys, clothes, and books were organized neatly and perfectly in her room while her younger sister Judi’s were scattered across the floor like they’d been caught up in a tornado and deposited there.

Judi, now spelled with an “i”, of course.  Her real name was Judy with a “y” but in an attempt to, in Ellie’s mind, stand apart from others, she’d started spelling her name with an “i” in junior high school. It irritated Ellie that everyone, including her parents, catered to Judi, going along with the ridiculous spelling, like they went along with every other eccentric, off- the- wall thing Judi did.

She looked at the clock above the television, realized she was running late, and snatched her purse and cellphone from the small table by the door. Moving from her parents’ farmhouse to this apartment had a number of advantages, one being she was a five minute walk from Little Lambs Daycare, her main job now that she’d resigned from her second job the Tanner’s small country store.

Walking into the sunlight on Front Street she mentally contrasted the difference between living in town and on her family’s farm, beyond the closer distance to work. Living in town was busier, for one, but not as busy as a big city, which was nice. There was the lack of feeling pressured to get up at 4:30 a.m. with her parents and help with the milking, despite the fact they had two young men who already helped. Then there were the most beneficial differences — living alone, having time to herself, and not having to chance passing Jason on the small dirt road leading from her family’s farm while driving to work.

She paused in front of the mirror when she reached the front lobby of the daycare.

Slacks with no scuff marks and no wrinkles. Check.

New shirt, freshly ironed. Check.

Hair neatly combed. Check.

And a new haircut to boot. She lightly touched the edges of the shorter crop, admired again how it fell along her jawline, yet, briefly mourned her decision to lop off the hair she’d grown down past her lower back since she’d been a teenager.

She still didn’t know what had come over her that day in Missy’s shop.

“Cut it off.”

Missy looked at her through her reflection in the mirror with raised eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

She needed a change, to step away from the life she’d always known. She was stuck in a rut, spinning her wheels. She’d already decided she needed a break from who she’d always been with Jason. Now it was time to change the rest of her life. Starting with her hair.

“Cut if off,” she’d repeated.

Missy cleared her throat, picked up the scissors, then paused and looked at Ellie with a doubtful expression. “Ellie, are you sure? Your hair has always been long.”

“I need something fresh, Missy. Don’t worry. I won’t sue you if I hate it. I’ll just let it grow long again. Let’s go. Start cutting.”

Ellie sighed at the memory but also at herself for checking herself in the mirror. Why did she feel the need to be so well dressed and put together for a group of 4 and 5-year-olds? Maybe it was because she actually was uptight, like Judi always said. Uptight, snooty, too-perfect, or whatever term Judi could describe her to prove that Judi was the fun sister and Ellie was the boring one.

She sighed again, hooking her hair behind her ears.

She wasn’t being fair to her sister. It wasn’t likely Judi was trying to prove anything about their differences. She probably didn’t even care; the same way she didn’t care about most things.

 It was Ellie who was stuck on the fact that Judi had always been more carefree, while Ellie felt like she had been born a little old lady. A little old lady who made lists planning out her life, organized her books in alphabetical order, and who’s clothes were hung by style and color coordination in her closet.

She flipped her hair from behind her ears, deciding it looked better that way, cocked an eyebrow as she inspected her shirt again and touched up her lipstick. It was the same color of lipstick she’d worn the night Jason had not-actually proposed to her. She shuddered at the memory. It had been the night she had thought her life had gotten back on track and she’d been able to write, “marriage and children” back onto that list she’d written out in high school. A few weeks later she was scribbling the list out all over again.

 “Hi, Miss Ellie!”

The sweet little voice coupled with bright green eyes under a shock of red hair pulled her from her thoughts.

“Hey, there, Timmy.” She leaned forward on knees slightly bent to bring herself down more to Timmy Murray’s level. “How are you this morning?”

“Mommy says I’m constipated.”

“Oh.” Ellie made a face. “Well, that’s not very good. Is your belly hurting?”

Timmy shrugged. “Nope. Just can’t poop. What are we doing at playtime today?”

Ellie held a laugh back. She didn’t want Timmy to think it was funny he couldn’t “poop.”

“It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait and see.”

Timmy rolled his eyes. “Why do big people always make us wait for everythin’?”

Once again Ellie marveled at the verbal capability of this particular 4-year-old as she took his hand and led him into the classroom.

“Timmy, there you are.”

Ellie’s friend and co-worker Lucy O’Neil patted the table in front of Timmy’s chair. “Remember, we don’t leave the room unless we’re given permission.”

“I saw Miss Ellie and thought I should say ‘hello’.”

Lucy winked at Ellie, flipping a dark brown curl back over her shoulder.

“You still need to ask permission, bud.” She patted Timmy gently on his shoulder and motioned him toward the center of the room. “Okay, let’s all get into our good morning circle to share about our weekend and then Miss Ellie will read to us from a new book called ‘Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep.’ Can anyone tell me what the book might be about?”

“Teddy bears!” Lily Jenkins shouted out.

Lily thought every story was about teddy bears.

Lucy winked. “Well, we will have to see, won’t we? Everyone find your place on the circle and get ready so we can find out, okay?”

Lucy straightened and huffed out a quiet breath as the children filed from their chairs and gathered on the rug. She wore a weary smile as she leaned back against the edge of the desk.

“Welcome back from the weekend, Miss Ellie. Was it a good one?”

Ellie placed her bag on the desk and took a sip of the tea in her mug. A mix of honey and lemon hit her taste buds. Time to sugar-coat the depression.  “It was. Yours?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Long. My mother-in-law came to visit. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love Margaret, but everything is thrown off when she’s there. The kids don’t want to go to bed, she bakes all these cookies and they’re all on a sugar high . . .”

The kids.

Ellie’s chest constricted.

She’d gotten used to her friends talking about their children, but today it only seemed to highlight the fact she was the only one of her friends who didn’t have children to talk about. Well, there was Molly, of course, but she didn’t talk to Molly about children much, or her hope for them. Talking to her about wanting to have babies with her brother would have been awkward all around. Of course, she didn’t have to worry about that conversation anymore. She hadn’t actually spoke to Molly more than to say ‘hello’ at church since her breakup with Jason.

That’s what it was, right? A breakup. They were broken up. That yelling session in the church parking lot had sealed that deal. That’s what she’d wanted. Right?

 “…but it was a nice weekend overall. Mary Anne went home this morning and I have to admit that it is a little lonely without her. The kids loved her bedtime stories. . . Hey, you okay?”

Ellie looked up, reaching across the desk for the book. Time to change the subject before Lucy asked too many questions about how she really was feeling. “I am, but if I don’t start reading soon, those kids are going to get themselves into even more trouble.” She winked and gently nudged Lucy’s arm on her way to the center of the room.

“Brittany, hands to yourself. No, I don’t care if Matthew sat in your spot. Choose another spot.”

She sat herself in the chair in front of the kids and opened the book. “So, everyone, are we ready for a new book with a new character? A loveable bear I have a feeling is going to become a favorite.”

“Yeah!” All their little voices blended together.

“Okay, well, this story starts — ”

“Miss Ellie?”

A sigh. “Yes, Timmy?”

“How come you aren’t married?”

A catch in her chest. “Timmy, honey, it’s story time, not question-and-answer time.”

“My mommy says you’re old enough to be married, but you aren’t.”

A tightening jaw. “Well, Timmy, your mommy —“

Lucy cleared her throat and clapped her hands quickly. “Let’s focus on story time, Timmy, okay?”

Ellie shot Lucy a grateful smile. She really hadn’t been sure what was going to come out of her mouth. She looked at Timmy and winked.

“I’m sure Timmy understands it’s time to use our ears for listening and not our mouth for talking now. Right, Timmy?”

Timmy nodded and stuck his thumb in his mouth, eyes wide.

Ellie took a deep breath and plunged forward with the book, hoping to make it through the day without any more close calls of verbal slapping down of children. It wasn’t their fault she was an almost 30-year-old woman who wasn’t married, didn’t have children, and had never told her now ex-fiance that she might not be able to even have children.

Lucy cornered her at lunchtime.

“That question from Timmy seemed to unsettle you a little. You okay?”

She nodded, tucking her shirt in, and brushing crumbs left over from her sandwich off the tabletop and into her hand.

“I am. Or will be.”

“So, it’s final? You and Jason — you’re finished?”

Ellie dug into her yogurt and stared into it. She would love to sink into the creamy smoothness of her coconut cream Greek yogurt right now and pretend her life wasn’t in complete, partially self-induced chaos.

Lucy leaned close. “Ellie Lambert, I can see it all over your face. Something happened this weekend. You’re not going to leave me in the dark, are you? Your very best friend in the whole wide world besides Trudy, who doesn’t count since she abandoned us.”

Ellie sipped her lemon water and laughed. “Trudy didn’t abandon us. She got married. It wasn’t her fault Brett got transferred to Detroit.”

Lucy rolled her eyes, popping the last bite of her carrot in her mouth. “It was more like she was sentenced to Detroit. Anyhow, what happened this weekend? Hurry.” She nodded toward the children giggling at their lunch table a few feet away. “The natives are getting restless.”

Ellie poured the crumbs into the waste basket behind her desk. “Jason and I had it out this weekend.”

Lucy winced. “Oh.”

“In the church parking lot.”

Lucy’s eyes widened and her eyebrows darted up. “Oh wow. Like in front of everyone?”

Ellie shook her head. “Church had already started.”

Lemons swirled in her water, bumping against heart shaped ice cubes. She drank lemon water every day. How predictable. Like most of her life, except her love life, of course.

“Wow.”

“You already said ‘wow’, Lucy.”

“But — wow. Outside of church. So, what did he say?”

Wasn’t it time for recess? It must be time for recess. No. There was still ten more minutes until recess. Great.

“A lot. None of it good. Not that it was my proudest moment either.”

Lucy was enraptured, her chin propped on her folded hands as if watching the climax of a horror film. In a way, she was.

“Did he say he wanted to break up, or did you?”

Ellie shrugged a shoulder, tracing a line of condensation dripping down the side of her water bottle, avoiding Lucy’s probing gaze. “I guess I did.”

I definitely did. Just admit it.

“I told him we needed I break. That I needed a break to make some decisions.”

“And have you? Made some decisions?”

She shook her head, sipped from the water bottle.

Lucy let out a breath as if she’d been holding it for the entire conversation. “Whoa, El, this is big stuff. I’m so sorry your weekend was so awful. Why didn’t you call me?”

Ellie leaned over and picked up her maroon lunch bag, shoving the water bottle inside. “I was pretty certain you had heard more than enough of my drama to last you a life time. Plus, I needed time to think, to figure out how I feel about all of this, how I feel about my life without Jason.”

Lucy crumbled the wrapper from her sandwich and tossed it basketball superstar style at the trash can. It bounced off the side of the can and rolled across the floor under the desk. “Is that what you want? Really? To be without Jason?”

Ellie retrieved the wrapper and tossed it into the trash can. Was it what she wanted? Really? She didn’t even know how to answer that. Thankfully she didn’t have to.

“Miss Ellie, Brenda says her booger is bigger than mine. Make her stop.”

Without turning toward the sound of the whining voice, Ellie pressed her hand against her eyes, the other hand on her hip. “Lucy, is Timmy holding a booger on his finger right now?”

The sharp intake of breath alerted Ellie to the answer before Lucy even said the words, “Unfortunately, yes.”

The rest of the conversation about Ellie’s floundering love life would have to wait. She reached for a handful of tissues and turned to address the Great Booger Debate, trying her best, again, not to laugh.

Randomly Thinking: Medieval helmets, cats, new beds

One day this week, one of Little Miss’s friends called early in the morning to play an online game with her. Little Miss was still asleep but when she woke up, very bleary-eyed I might add, I let her know the friend had called.  

“Oh! I need to call her!”

 I said, “Why don’t you wake up some first?”

My child bounced her head off her pillow, face first, like she was headbanging, three times, lifted her head, blew her hair out of her face, and said, “Okay. I’m ready.”

I wish I had known that was going to happen because I would have recorded it. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

***

Little Miss likes to sit on one of my husband’s shoulders, cross her legs, fold her hands together in a prayer pose and declare: “I’m your shoulder angel.”

If you have no idea what that means, I invite you to watch these two YouTube skits.

***

We bought The Boy a new mattress last week. In related news, he joked with me last week that it’s my job to get him up in the morning because I’m the parent. I told him he’s going to be in high school next year so he needs to take responsibility and start waking up on his own. However, I decided to test his theory this week by barging into his room at 9:30 and telling him to get up.

“I don’t wanna..” he whined.

I reminded him of his challenge, and he said, “You bought me this mattress for a reason. I intend to use it to its fullest.”

He did wake up, but it took me another hour or so to actually convince him to leave the bed. 

For those who might be new here, we homeschool, which is why he is still home at 9:30 a.m. He often wakes up, rolls over, and starts his work without even leaving his bed. 

I wish I had a bladder the size of his because the first thing I have to do every morning is go to the bathroom. 

***

Welcome to the unsolicitated advice portion of my post. I don’t care if you vaccinate or don’t vaccinate, but neither of those decisions makes you better than anyone else. Bragging about it, either way, is juvenile. Period. No, I have not seen anyone I know personally or in my blog world do this in either direction so I’m not “preaching” to anyone I know in real life or in the blog world. It’s based on comments I’ve seen on news stories or social media posts (though I’m only on Instagram and MeWe now so those comments are luckily rare). We all need to be more mature about things and respect people in their decisions. 

We all have our reasons for choosing how we take care of ourselves medically and I urge people not to assume someone is an “anti-vaxxer” if they decline a vaccine or that someone is a “pro-vaccine freak” if they get it. I’ve been guilty of these types of judgments in the past and even recently but I’m working on changing myself. I have a long way to go. Pray for me and I’ll pray for you about our tendency to judge others about a variety of issues. If you don’t judge, then simply pray for me! *wink*

***

My son has been asking for a knight helmet for a while now. He placed one in the Amazon cart, but I noticed it didn’t have very good reviews, so I suggested he look for one with better reviews. I found one for him and the first review out of 900 was Deus Vult written over and over, so he knew it was the helmet for him. My son has been crying Deus Vult for a while now since his interest in medieval armor started to develop a year or so ago. If you don’t know what it means, it is Latin for God Wills It and it was chanted during the Crusades. 

Many of the reviews were quite creative, including a few that eluded to Monty Python, The Search for the Holy Grail, such as this one: 

“This magnificent helm saved my life.

 Alas, I was a wandering knight cast out by my cruel lord. I embarked on a quest for a spiritual goblet but disaster soon struck. My helm was stolen in the night as I stayed at a local inn. Soon after my squire forsook me and took the coconuts with him. “How now shall I traverse?” I thought. It’s not like coconuts grow on trees. I had already had the good fortune of having a pair of swallows drop one next to me. I’m not sure how it arrived but I’m guessing that they had a strand of tree bark that they fashioned into a….. never mind. I digress. The important thing is that I beckoned to the mighty Amazon and forthwith a new helm came and I defeated the French. I made THEIR fathers smell of elderberries!”

Then there was this one: Perfect for reconquering the middle east and reinstating the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Or this one: Seriously best thing I’ve ever bought. I now see the fear in heretics eyes as I retake the holy land. Deus Vult brothers and sisters of the crusade.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be searching Amazon for medieval helmets with my 14-year-old son, but there I sat reading the most bizarre reviews, at least by my standards, and trying to pick out a helmet he would like. Not a football helmet, but a medieval knight helmet. Yes, he’s definitely our child.

***

When you have cats, you don’t even ask they there is a small red potato in the middle of your living room floor. You also don’t ask why there are socks on the steps or in the foyer or kitchen. Not anymore anyhow. Not after you came back after a showing of your house a year ago and found a pair of socks neatly laid in the center of your living room floor, as if you had placed them there, but you knew you hadn’t and didn’t make the sale. Then, in the weeks that followed, you woke up to more socks in the middle of the floor of the living room, dining room, or kitchen. In those weeks, incidentally, we didn’t have a kitten, so we know exactly who is the weird sock-obsessed cat.

***

 I’m enjoying a fiction story that E. McD is sharing on Pen Wending is sharing. If you would like to follow this pirate short story, you can find the first chapter HERE.

***

The Boy talking to me about video games: “Okay, so you have this comic based in Korea, and they’re going from earth two to earth one and they bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .. zombie virus …. bzzzzzzz parcor bzzzzzz…… so yeah. That’s pretty insane, right?”

Me: uhhhh…yeah. Totally.

***

Well, those are my random thoughts of the week. What are yours? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: ‘Is that you spring?’ The ever growing To Be Read pile and Maverick

Welcome to my weekly post where I recap my week by writing about what I’ve been reading, watching, writing, doing, and sometimes what I’ve been listening to.

This post is going up late today (Sunday) because I completely forgot yesterday was Saturday. I don’t know how to explain that really. My family and I went on a small outing Friday and then again yesterday and in between I became obsessed with rewriting A Story To Tell, my first book, to republish it with a new cover on Amazon. I became so obsessed I totally lost track of time. I don’t plan to spend a lot of time “rewriting” it because I have set up an actual deadline to finish The Farmers’ Sons and I want to stick to that.

Our outings this week weren’t super exciting by most standards but at least we left the house. Friday we took Zooma the Wonder Dog to be groomed and while she was being groomed we visited Books-A-Million again, like we did a few weeks ago. They were having an outside used book sale so I snatched up a few Christian fiction authors I’ve been wanting to read. Christian fiction with a little more edge than an Amish romance (good grief, there are way too many of those out there).

I also found Agatha Raisin Mysteries book by M.C. Beaton in the bargain bin. After getting a few pages in, I think I know why it was in the bargain bin. Not only is it not the best written book, but there was at least one, maybe two typos in the first chapter. The typos made me feel a little better about my own typos since the book was published by a well-known New York Publishing House and still had typos!

I will probably still finish the book, but it wasn’t what I expected. More on this book and the other books I found in the next section.

Zooma looked beautiful after her grooming session, but apparently she did not like the heavy duty blow dryer and bit at the air. When I first came in the woman made it sound like she’d bit her, but thankfully she only bit at the air. Zooma is not a fan of hot hair being blown at her, I guess, but I don’t know a lot of dogs (or people) who are.

They put a complimentary bandana on her which I knew I had to get a couple photos of her in as soon as I could because she wouldn’t want to keep it on. I was able to grab a few photographs of her looking regal before, I’m sure, she found some deer poo to roll in. There is so much deer poo in our backyard left over from the winter and she loves to roll all in it. Apparently, there wasn’t enough space in the woods for the deer to do their business so they used our backyard as their toilet.

Yesterday we drove an hour to find a Chick-fil-A in the dining hall of a local campus. That is literally the only Chick-fil-A near us, with the other ones being about three hours south. My son has wanted to go to a Chick-fi-A for years so a couple of months ago my husband took him to one, but yesterday he took the whole family. I can’t eat any of the food there because of my various food issues, but they had a salad place next door, inside the student dining hall, so I grabbed a salad for myself.

Then, because our day just couldn’t get any more exciting, we stopped at Wal-Mart and Aldis for groceries. I know. We are some crazy, crazy partiers. But at least we did it all on the first official day of spring and it acted like the first day of spring, for the most part, with sunny, yet chilly, weather.

What I’m Reading

I am still a bit behind on my reading. Last week I finished Death Without Company by Craig Johnson and continued reading Dark of Night by Indie author Carrie Cotton.

I also continued reading You Belong with Me by Tari Farris, but it’s not really holding my interest as much. It’s a pretty standard romance at this point.

I also continued King of the Wind with Little Miss and we will probably finish that this week. This book has been a little more depressing than the other Marquerite Henry books, but it is still good.

At Books-A-Million I snatched up a couple of Colleen Coble books because I’ve been wanting to read her but her books are pretty expensive in paperback and on Kindle. I also grabbed a Francine Rivers book I haven’t read yet.

I grabbed the first book of a Ted Dekker series that I already had the second book of. Both were bought at two different places, both on clearance.

All the books, except two, were hardcovers.

A run down of the books I grabbed:

The 49th Mystic by Ted Dekker (to join Rise of the Mystics)Strands of Truth by Colleen CobleOne Little Lie by Colleen CobleAnd the Shofar Blew by Francine RiversThe Ezekiel Option by Joel RosenbergThe Dead Ringer by M.C. Beaton

I’m not sure when I will get to all of those books, but I’m sure I’ll be passing them on to my mom first because she reads faster than me.

As for The Dead Ringer by M.C. Beaton (as mentioned above), this is the 28th book in the series, written right before she died in her mid-80s, so it is possible that this book wasn’t even written by her. It would probably be a better idea for me to read a couple of the earlier books in the series, when she was in her prime. Right now the book reads more like a how-to narrative. I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m pretty certain I will still read it, though.

On our way to the groomer Friday, the local library called and left a voicemail on my cellphone to let me know the library is open again. I thought it was funny they said they were calling their most loyal patrons and I’ve actually only been to the library twice in a year.

I’m sure I will wander down there soon but for now I have to finish a couple of books I promised two indie authors I would finish.

What I’m Watching

I’m still working my way through the Agatha Raisin movies, and still making fun of them, but still enjoying them.

This week we also watched an episode of the old Maverick show with James Gardner and then, since I had never seen it all the way through (that I can remember), we watched Maverick with Gardner and Mel Gibson. We watched it with our son and had to explain to him that when we were teenagers Mel Gibson was the hottest actor around.

We did fill him in on Mel’s fall from grace as well and I pointed out it happened after Passion of the Christ, which he himself had predicted it would. Mel told Jim Cavaziel when they started filming Passion of the Christ that forces would come against them and he was right.

What I’m Listening To

I’m still listening to Needtobreathe and since Zach Williams dropped a new single, I’ve been listening to him as well.

What I’m Writing

Last week I rambled about my insomnia battle, which I thought I’d let you know cleared up after I stopped taking the magnesium glycinate at night. I have no idea why I can’t take magnesium glycinate at night, but I can’t. It did, however, make me feel very good the next day, even when I didn’t have a lot of sleep. I tried taking it during the day this week but found, ironically, it made me sleepy during the day. Or, I could have simply been tired during the day because I was actually getting sleep and my body was completely confused.

I also shared some random thoughts, as one does here on my blog.

On Friday, I shared a short section of Lily, a novella or novel (haven’t decided which yet) that I will be working on sometime in the future.

I hope to share more from The Farmers’ Sons this Friday.

So that’s my week in review, how about yours? What have you been reading, watching, listening to or doing? Let me know in the comments.

Fiction Friday: Lily

Chapter 2 of The Farmers’ Sons isn’t ready yet so I’m sharing something I started a few weeks ago. I’m not sure where I’m going with this one but it’s based on a secondary character in A New Beginning and it’s all I have so far.

Lily

That social worker said it wouldn’t hurt to have that baby. She lied. It hurt like that place Mama said I was gonna go for getting pregnant in the first place. I never felt so much pain and thought I was going to die. They wanted me to hold the baby, but I didn’t want to. He weren’t mine anyhow. He belonged to those people I’d met at the agency and he was squawking and hollering; all red and squishy and ugly. I told them to take it away and let those people who were going to be her parents deal with it.

I don’t remember much after that. I slept for hours and hours. Everything in my body hurt and I was so weak I could barely stand. When I opened my eyes, it was dark, and I knew I had to get out of there. I didn’t want to watch that social worker give that baby to those people. It was weird. Having something growing in you for nine months is weird. Pushing it out your private area while you scream is weird. Giving that baby to people you only met once is weird too.

It’s all as weird as what that man did to me that left that baby in my belly in the first place.

The nurses didn’t even hear me leave.

The social worker weren’t even there.

Wasn’t. That social worker said I’m supposed to say wasn’t instead of weren’t.

What do I know? Mama stopped making me go to school in third grade after she married that man who hit me a couple times before Mama kicked him out. She didn’t kick him out because he hit me. She kicked him out because he stole her booze money.

My clothes were in a drawer by the bed at the hospital and I changed into them quickly but cried because it hurt so bad all over. The area where that baby came from hurt the worse. Blood ran down my leg and I wiped it away. I had to get out of there.

I walked a long way to get to Mama. Thought I wouldn’t make it. My stomach ached from hunger and my body screamed for sleep. I could barely lift my hand to pound on the door to her apartment.

“How did you even find me?”

She spat her words at me after I’d finally managed to slam my fist against the paint chipped metal a few times.

“Mama, I’m tired and hungry.”

“What do you want me to do about it? Didn’t those social workers feed you anything?”

“Mama —“

Don’t call me Mama. You know I don’t like that. You’re bleeding all over the hallway. You have that baby yet?”

I nodded weakly and winced when her hand encircled my upper arm and she ripped me forward into the dark apartment.

“Get in here and stop bleeding on my rug.”

She shoved me down the hallway toward the living room and I collapsed on the couch, clutching at the musty smelling cushions as the room began to spin.

I thought I’d die there. It seemed like days before there were voices at the door and strong arms lifting me. Maybe it was days. I don’t really remember.

It was the last time I saw Mama and now I’m living here in this place with a bunch of trees and empty fields and a stream like I saw a picture of once in a book.

I don’t know what life will be like now, but anything has got to be better than where I come from.

Chapter 1 beginning

That baby was squawking again. Lily Parker rolled over and looked at the ceiling, the room lit only by the light of the moon.

Why didn’t that baby just shut up already?

She was sick of listening to it.

She could never figure out why people wanted babies. They were loud, smelly, and couldn’t do nothing for themselves.

She hadn’t wanted that baby.

All she’d wanted was the stuff that made her feel good, made her forget about Mama and how she hated her.

If it hadn’t been for that, she’d have never let that man do what he did to her.

How was she supposed to know she’d end up with a baby in her? No one had ever told her how babies was made.

She heard Edith’s footsteps in the hallway, going down the stairs, then back up again a few minutes later.

Edith’s voice was groggy. “I’m warming the bottle. Hold him until I get back.”

Warm it quieter, Lily thought, rolling to her side, pulling the covers up over her shoulder.

Maybe she should have been taking care of that baby, but she didn’t know how.

She wanted Edith to be that baby’s mama, even though she wasn’t the one who’d birthed it.

Lily didn’t like calling her Edith. She thought she should call her Mrs. Sickler like she used to call her teachers before Mama stopped sending her to school. Edith said she didn’t have to call her Mrs., though, so she didn’t. Jimmy told her to call him Jimmy so that’s what she called him.

She closed her eyes tight against the screaming.

“Make it stop already,” she grumbled, pressing her palms against her ears.

Babies were so dumb anyhow. She was never going to have one. Not for real. Not one she had to care for. Not ever.

Randomly Thinking: Fancy Cat Litter, Weird Wildlife Shows, Funny Dads, and Other Random Thoughts

Welcome to my random thoughts post. Continue at your own risk.

***

My husband, son, and I were talking about TV shows and how when people get hit in the head or beat up, they’re rarely taken to the hospital. I was mentioning how Agatha Raisin has been hit in the head numerous times and they rarely took her to a hospital, if ever. Instead, James poured her a glass of whiskey and told her to lay down. So, then my husband theorized that the subsequent episodes after that initial one where she was hit were all a dream she was having while she was in the hospital. My son said, “Yeah. In real life, she’s actually in the hospital with part of her skull caved in.” 

Ah, teenagers. They’re nothing if not talented at graphic descriptions.

***

My son will sometimes say to me, “Someone looks like they need a hug,” and he’ll hug me. He’s a teenager but he’s not afraid to say, “I need a hug,” and come get one. Now Little Miss is saying “someone looks like they need a hug,” and she will offer hugs, mainly to me and the dog. 

The other day when Little Miss said to Zooma the Wonder Dog, “Ah, Zooma, do you need a hug?”, The Boy said, “I need a hug.” 

Little Miss looked at him with a very bored expression and responded, deadpan, “Go get a hug from Mom.”

***

My son pointed out this week that the Swedish Chef’s hands are real while the rest of him is a puppet. Neither of us were comfortable with this discovery.

***

Little Miss gets very excited about new clothes, even underwear and socks so this week she got a pack of new underwear and decided to open them to check them out. She was having a hard time since they had taped each pair closed. 

“What?! What is this?! There is,” flinging tape off her fingers. “So much tape here! Whoever wrapped this is an overachiever!”

She’s definitely been hanging around her brother too much lately.

***

I just had to share this gem that Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs left on my last Randomly Thinking post. “My week has been weird but because I am a weirdo. I have been updating my friends about our experiences with Pretty Litter everyday – per their request — I am not just randomly sending them updates on my cat’s using the litter box. Lol. However, the litter gives me anxiety because it is supposed to show if your cat has health issues so I find myself looking at them often to check.”

I just — well, I had no idea what to say about that but it certainly made me giggle because it sounded like something I would buy and then obsess over.

Luckily, if you want to know more about this litter, Erin has written a blog post all about it for you.

***

My husband and I were talking at dinner one night and something (I can’t remember what now) triggered a memory for me of a call a college friend received from her dad. To explain, her dad was a somewhat serious, solemn fellow who had a very dry sense of humor. We came into the dorm one day from lunch and I went to my dorm room and Rebecca went to hers. A few moments later I heard laughter filtering down the hallway (neither of us had closed our doors yet). She comes to my room and says, “Lisa, you have to come hear this.”

She pressed the button on her answering machine, which was sitting on the floor of her sparsely decorated room, and the monotone voice of her father came through.

“Um, Rebecca, this is your father. I just wanted to remind you that, um, in order to spend money from your bank account there has to actually be money in your bank account. The bank called me today and I’ve put more money in there but you can’t keep spending money from your bank account if you don’t have money in there.”

It’s hard to describe when you can’t hear her dad’s voice, but if you can imagine a man speaking very serious with a deep voice, sounding completely unamused, then you have her father. 

My memory of him makes me think of the British comedian Jack Whitehall’s father, who I’ve seen clips of in the past and now they have a travel show on Netflix, for those of you who have Netflix.

(Please be aware that there is a swear word in this clip.)

Rebecca’s father was a little bit like Jack’s dad, but without the dirty language. 

***

My daughter is now obsessed with this wildlife show on Youtube hosted by a guy called Coyote Pearson. So, yeah, this is my fault. We watched one video as part of our desert unit and it got out of control. Now she wants to watch it all the time, so I have to watch this slightly weird American travel to different countries and get bit by creatures he’s not supposed to be bit by. He’s a bit like the redneck version of Steve Irwin, without the southern accent. To continue with the above about Rebecca’s dad, he also doesn’t use dirt language. He’s completely clean but I have this awful feeling that one day we will hear about him dying doing something very stupid trying to “get the shot.”

I said to my daughter, as he reached for a sea urchin on one episode, “He’s not very bright is he?”

He got stung once.

She shook her head. “No. He’s not very bright. He’s been bitten by everything.”

He was bitten again by holding it in his palm.

“Nope,” she said. “Not very bright.”

***

I’m sure you’ve never wondered what it is like inside my mind, but in case you ever have, this is it:

So, those are my random thoughts for this week. How about you? What are your random thoughts? Let me know in the comments!

The tale of two sleeps and my little sleep

Insomnia is something I have dealt with a lot over the years so the recent bouts I’ve had off and on for a few weeks (and steady for about a week) is not unusual for me. Since I just finished another round of the dreaded insomnia, I had found myself reading more about sleep patterns and realizing that being up for a couple hours, after 3-4 hours of sleep and going back to sleep for a couple more, as I have been doing,is not actually that unusual, or at least it wasn’t back in the “old days.”

Apparently, in the days of no electricity, people would go to bed when the sun set, sleep a few hours, and then get up in the middle of the night to engage in various activities, such as reading (if they could afford candles), tender — ahem — moments with their spouses, taking a moonlit walk, smoking tobacco, visiting neighbors (can you imagine that? Bob and Mary show up at your door at 2 a.m. and they’re not drunk looking for weed like they might be today if they stop at your house?), and praying for about an hour or two. Then they laid back down and slept for another 2 to 4 hours until sunrise.

There is even a name for this type of sleep. It is called biphasic, segmented, bimodal, or diphasic sleep and some people still sleep this way today. It is popular in Greece, from what I have read.

According to Medical News Today, “Those who practice biphasic sleep typically sleep for a long duration at night, for 5-6 hours, and have a shorter period of sleep or siesta during the day. The shorter period of rest typically lasts 30 minutes and gives an energy boost to finish the day. However, a siesta can last for longer, perhaps 90 minutes. An extended siesta of 90 minutes allows a person to have one complete cycle of sleep.”

There are many books or historical documents that refer to the two sleep periods, according to an article I read on the BBC.

He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream.” Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840)“Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning.” Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)“And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake.” Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale

Some medical journals back in the 1600 to 1700s even suggested that if a couple wanted to conceive a child they — ahem — come together after the first sleep when they would be more rested, according to Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech who published a paper about biphasic sleep.

There are so many references from past literature and documents to two sleeps that it is clear it “was common knowledge” and commonly practiced Ekirch says.

As I was reading various articles, I learned that some who study sleep today believe that humans are meant to sleep a few hours at a time, wake up and stay awake, and then sleep again for another few hours. The idea of sleeping eight straight hours is fairly new, some researchers say, and also not always realistic. In many countries the idea of sleeping eight hours straight isn’t the norm.

The industrial revolution helped phase out the idea of two sleeps, mainly because there wasn’t time for it anymore. People needed their sleep to be combined so they could spend the daylight hours working in places like factories. Improvements in street lighting, lighting in the home, and a surge in coffee houses that were open all night also phased out the idea of two sleeps. Nighttime was more active now and the time for when people could engage in two separate sleeps started to disappear.

What didn’t disappear, however, was the normal human physiology we were created with, so there seem to be some people who actually function better with sleeping less at night and then taking a long nap in the daytime or laying down in the morning for a couple more hours.

Sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs told the BBC that the idea that a person must have eight straight hours of sleep has caused a myriad of mental health issues for many people, mainly anxiety that they can’t sleep the full, non-interrupted eight hours they think they’re supposed to have. That nighttime activity often extends into daytime anxiety.

Jacobs believes that it is possible that the time between the first and second sleeps could have been a time that allowed humans to regulate stress naturally. That time is now gone because most people spend the time laying awake panicking about the sleep they are not getting.

Not too mention we now live in a world where we work or entertain ourselves late into the night, barely giving ourselves enough time to relax and fall into natural sleep, let alone enough time to actually obtain eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. We squeeze every last drop of our days out, failing to give ourselves the time to relax and be patient if we do wake up and are unable to fall right back to sleep. We lay down at 11 and expect to be up at 7 after having perfect sleep. It’s just not plausible or realistic, say many sleep specialists.

I am one of the lucky insomniacs who doesn’t work outside the home, so if I don’t get enough rest at night, I am able to lay down for an hour or two more, having a type of “second sleep.” And luckily this insomnia thing only seems to happen around a high hormonal or stressful time and not every night. I wish I could say I always stay calm during those two hours or so I am sometimes awake in the middle of the night, but I can’t. I do what many articles say not to do — I panic and think about how negatively I’ll be effected the next day by not getting enough sleep.

But knowing that it isn’t that unusual for some people to sleep in two separate periods of sleep is comforting to me on those nights I wake up after a few hours and can’t fall back to sleep. “There isn’t necessarily something wrong with my sleep, I tell myself. “I’m simply harkening back to the days of my ancestors, channeling them so-to-speak, and stealing from them a practice that most of them saw as completely normal.”

Post Script: As I am writing this P.S., I have actually had two nights in a row without laying awake for two hours for no reason at 4 a.m. or 3 a.m. So far it is looking like the magnesium glycinate I was taking to help me sleep, which has been working for months, is now doing the opposite. It was making me more alert and actually giving me the insomnia.

After a search online, it appears that this happens with some people and it may be that they build up a tolerance to it or that they were so deficient in magnesium when they first started that it lulled them into sleep but now their body is processing it better and it is going where it needs to go to make them feel better. I appear to be in the second group because even though I wasn’t sleeping last week, I was feeling better and had a clearer head than I had in months. I’m actually wondering if I am one of those people who do a little better with less sleep. If I sleep more than eight hours I often feel groggy.

I’ve decided to try to take the magnesium during the day now and guess what? It will probably make me sleepy again. That’s how things work for me.

Sunday Bookends: Melting snow, I am a super slow reader, and starting over with The Farmers’ Sons

Welcome to my weekly post where I recap my week by writing about what I’ve been reading, watching, writing, doing, and sometimes what I’ve been listening to.

What’s Been Occurring

The snow has finally melted after two-and-a-half months of it covering the ground. There are still traces of it here and there, mixed among the squishy, yellow and ugly grass, but we expect it will be gone by next week. With the snow gone we could see the damage left by the heavy snow and the damage by the deer eating the bushes down to stubs because they couldn’t find enough to eat during this winter.

We took advantage of the warmer weather by exploring outside one day at my parents’ while The Boy helped my dad load some wood from a tree that fell during high winds last month. We plan to use the wood for our woodstove on the chilly days we know will still come because Pennsylvania always brings warm days mixed with cold well into April. While they loaded wood, my daughter, who doesn’t always like messes, squished her hand in mud and jumped up and down in the water in the ditch by the road.

Zooma the Wonder Dog chased sticks and tried to jump for the ones The Boy was breaking up sticks for the kindling pile.

Our neighbor even journeyed out with their new little Shitsu puppy. It was like people had been sleeping all winter and woke up this week. Of course, we’d seen our neighbors in the winter too – outside, shoveling and shoveling and shoveling and shoveling.

The warmer weather has been nicer for me this week because with it has come sun and I’ve needed that to counteract the effects of hormonal insomnia that has settled on me.

What I’m Reading

I am reading the same books I’ve been reading for the last couple of weeks because I am a super slow reader. I pushed aside the more political non-fiction simply because I need a break from political everything and anything, not because I don’t enjoy the writers.

For fiction I am reading a supernatural suspense book called Dark of Night by independent author Carrie Cotton, which will be released March 25.

It’s a very good and edge-on-your seat novel. I will post more information on it when I finish it later this week, but for now, here is the description:

A new life, a new love, and even a new name. For former secret agent Andromeda Stone – now Joanna Carter – a normal, boring life with her handsome husband was the happy ending. But an old enemy resurfaces, determined to leave nothing unfinished, and Andy must step back into the nightmares once again. Andy and Will each face their own worst fears in their search for answers. Will this new mission cost Andy more than she’s willing to pay?
When the journey takes her to deeper and darker places than she’s ever been before, Andy discovers it’s more than just answers she’s looking for.

I also hope to finish up the second book in the Longmire series, Death Without Company by Craig Johnson this week.

For a lighter romance, I am reading Tari Farris’ You Belong To Me on days when I can’t handle anything too stressful or heavy (which is actually almost any day lately).

Little Miss and I finished Sea Star this week and are back to reading King of the Wind also by Marguerite Henry. This is one of the first full books, if not the first that I read by myself. I still remember picking it out at the library. It was the photo of the stallion on the front that caught my eye because I loved horses and always wanted one even though my dad always told the story of how his horse bit him when he was a kid and how much work horses are.

The book was hardcover, large, like 8 inch by 11 inch, but thin so it did perfectly under my arm when I carried it home from the school library. I loved that book but now that I’m reading it again with Little Miss, I am surprised that some of it didn’t scare me back then. The talk about sultans cutting off heads and killing people in villages to test muskets was graphic and I skipped over it for Little Miss. I was probably in sixth grade when I read it and she’s only six so she can wait a few more years and read it on her own.

What I’m Watching

I’m continuing on with Agatha Raisin. I’m on to the second season which is actually three 90-minute movies. The first season was eight 44 minute episodes. I believe the third season is also three 90-minute movies.

My husband and I finished the mini-series version of And Then There Were None, based on the novel by Agatha Christie. The BBC produced it and it left me feeling very creeped out, even more so than the book did. I wouldn’t say I recommend it, unless you enjoy horror films and psychological thrillers. The actors were excellent, which is probably why it creeped me out so much. I did not like how they changed some parts of the book, especially the ending (although the change wasn’t that drastic since the outcome was still the same). The movie was a lot more graphic than the book and added some extra details to make it more visually exciting, I guess you would say.

I needed some lighter fare after all the murder movies and shows we watched this week, so we watched a couple of episodes of Lovejoy (a British show about an antique dealer who seems to always get himself in trouble or ends up tricking some bad guys out of money) and I also watched a show about farmers on Acorn TV. In other words, we watched a lot of British television again this week.

I also enjoyed this clip from comedian Tim Hawkins and I think many of my readers will too (you just all seem like those type of cool people, you know?)

What I’m Listening To

I had Needtobreathe’s latest album on loop this week and love it. I find it inspiring for when I want to write a little more “artsy”.

My husband has been listening to Cory Asbury’s live album, and I am going to download that because I really enjoyed what I heard on the live feed I found on YouTube.

Last night my son and his friend and I listened to some classic Johnny Cash. It was weird to hear a 14 and 15-year old singing Cash, but always cool. Some

What I’m Writing

I completely dismantled the original chapters of The Farmers’ Sons this week after a bout of depression about my writing and insomnia Sunday night into morning. One good thing about the insomnia is that I get a few hours, then wake up, so during that wakeful period I brainstorm for the book or future books and sometimes I even get up and write it down. It’s nice to have that quiet time with no interruptions to write.

I knew I could make my fiction writing better, so I started trying to do so this week, focusing more on how I used to write when I was a youngin’, though hopefully less dramatic than I was then. I like what I came up with better than what I shared before. I shared the first chapter, rewritten, on Friday.

I’ll be working on more chapters this week, and I am also working on a piece of flash fiction for the summer issue of Spark Flash Fiction magazine. I wrote some flash fiction in the past and enjoyed it. Those pieces could only be 300 words and this one can be up to 1,000.

I also shared an update on how homeschooling went for us in February and what we are doing now for the kids’ lessons.

Welp, that’s my week in review. How about yours? What have you been doing, reading, watching, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments.  

Fiction Friday: The Farmers’ Sons Chapter 1 (restart)

So, I have restarted The Farmers Sons (name subject to change). I mean trashed the other chapters and started all over. I have not, however, trashed the prologue. Not yet anyhow. I will most likely try to figure out how to add it to later to the story, but probably will not have Jason be a volunteer fire fighter. He won’t have time for that with trying to run the farm with his family, while Robert is recovering.

The previous draft was steering the story in a direction far away from how I imagined Jason and Ellie’s story going and it also needed tighter writing. This next draft will still include some of the elements of the previous versions.

For anyone who is new here, I share a chapter from the (almost) first draft of a novel I am working on each Friday. The chapter will most likely have typos, grammatical errors, missing comas, and even plot holes and it’s not the final version of the novel that I release at a later date.

I share the stories and publish the novels for fun so feel free to comment. The first book in this series is also available for sale on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords and various other sites. You can find more info about that HERE.

The sun cut across the barren field, slicing it in half, leaving one side to the darkness, the other to the light. A similar scene played out inside Jason Tanner. A metaphorical sun worked hard to push back the darkness, leaving him split in the middle, one part dark, one part light; one part hope, the other part hopeless.

Bitter coffee burned at the edges of his exhaustion but did nothing to clear the fog in his mind. How many days had it been? Nine? Maybe ten since he’d slept more than five hours a night, waking before dawn, stumbling to his pickup, driving to the barn, fingers numb from cold, watching his breath puff misty white around him.

This morning was no different, other than he’d actually remembered to brew himself a pot of coffee. He had poured half into his thermos and left the other half for Alex. They’d both need a few more pots to get through this week, this day even.

Alex stepped next to him on the farmhouse front porch, mug in hand. “This coffee is awful.”

Jason winced, not from the insult but in agreement as the sludge slid down his throat. “The worse it is, the more it will wake us up.”

Alex sipped coffee from his mug, scowling at Jason over the edge. “Is that like ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?’”

If there was any consolation to where Jason found himself it was that he wasn’t alone in the weariness that had seeped into his marrow in the last five months.

He looked at it in the eyes of each of them — his sister, his best friend, his mother, his uncle, and most of all his father, sitting helpless in a chair on the porch each morning, his eyes completing tasks his body couldn’t, not yet anyway.

He tightened the lid to the thermos, jerked his head behind him toward the kitchen. “Fill the other thermos and let’s get going. The cows don’t care how tired we are.”

Alex grunted. “I’m not sure I want to drink anymore of this. Maybe I can use it to clean the rust off that old tractor behind the barn instead.”

They climbed into separate pickups, pulling up to the barn, one behind the other. Molly stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, waiting for one of them more than the other. She looked through Jason and he had a feeling she wouldn’t have even noticed if he hadn’t been there.

Alex’s arms slid around her waist and pulled her close, a sight Jason still wasn’t comfortable with. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to his little sister and his best friend dating each other, but he’d been too tired since his father’s accident to let it bother him much more than sending a shudder of disgust through him from time to time.

“Save that for later.” His tone denoted a touch of teasing, spun together with genuine aggravation. “We’re behind schedule.”

They locked eyes, small smiles playing at the corners of their lips. It was obvious they were ignoring him. He’d have to start the milking without them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alex pull Molly closer and lower his mouth to hers. Revulsion tinged with jealousy swirled in his stomach. Revulsion over Alex kissing his little sister right there, outside the barn door where Jason had to see it; jealousy because he wished he was holding Ellie the same way. He didn’t know if she’d ever let him hold her that way again.

Several agonizing moments of listening to smooches and laughter later, Alex playfully bumped him in the arm on his way to gather the feed. “It’s never too late for a sweet kiss from your sister, buddy.”

His teasing did nothing to make Jason feel less uncomfortable. “Dude, seriously. Stop that. I don’t even want to know.”

There were moments he regretted convincing Alex to move up to the farm, like right now, bogged down with thoughts of Alex kissing Molly. Most days, though, Alex was like family, as much as a brother as he was a best friend.

His dad’s voice came from behind him. “Are we ready for the big release?”

He’d never get used to seeing his dad leaning on that cane and hoped soon he wouldn’t need it.

“Yep. Just finished up.”

It was an annual tradition for the family to release the cows into the pasture from the barn where they’d been sheltered from the cold weather of winter. It was also a tradition for them to do it together. Jason wasn’t surprised his dad didn’t plan to miss it, making his way to the barn with Jason’s mom beside him.  

Robert Tanner tipped his head toward his daughter. “Molly, do the honors.”

The cows were already standing at the gate, anxiously sniffing the cool spring air. They surged forward within seconds after Molly pulled back the gate and stepped aside.

She affectionally patted a couple on their rumps as they passed. “Get on out there, girls.”

Jason propped his arms across the top bar of the fence, watching the young heifers kicking up their legs, bumping into each other, mouths open, stretched into almost human looking smiles. It was his favorite time of year, letting them loose from their six months inside the barns, six months of being protected from wind and rain, cold and snow.

Robert leaned on the cane with both hands. “Now, that’s a sight I like to see.”

Jason nodded in silent agreement. “It was always Grandpa’s favorite time of year too, other than harvesting the sweet corn.”

Robert laughed softly. “Yeah, he did like his sweet corn.”

Annie Tanner propped a hand on her husband’s shoulder, watching the cows spread out across the hillside. “More like addicted to it.”

Jason pulled his eyes from the joyful scene in the pasture, leaning back against the fence, gesturing at his dad’s leg. “So, two weeks and that cast will be all the way off, huh, old man?”

Robert cocked an eyebrow, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s with you and Alex calling me old man? You both know I could kick your rear ends across this pasture even with a broken leg.”

A broken leg? More like a shattered leg when a tractor had tipped on it four months ago.

“We rarely have survivors when a tractor falls on a farmer.”

The words from the doctor had been chilling but accurate. Eerily accurate. Somehow Robert Tanner survived what so many other farmers hadn’t, thanks to the stump of an old maple tree left from when Ned Tanner cut it down five years before. Jason was grateful time had gotten away from them and they had never got around to pulling the stump from the ground.

Besides the shattered femur, Robert had also had a cracked pelvis, a puncture wound to his back, a collapsed lung, and internal bleeding. It was the bleeding that had led to a minor stroke during surgery and a six-week coma. The cracked pelvis was proving the most difficult to heal physically. Robert’s loss of independence had been the hardest to heal emotionally.

Jason grinned at his dad. “Looking forward to you pulling your weight around here again.” The smile broadened. “Old man.”

Robert lifted a hand from the cane and playfully punched his son in a muscular bicep. “Go clean those stalls out, little boy. Do it right or this old man will show you a thing or two about what it means to be a real man.”

Jason laughed and tapped his dad gently on the shoulder as he walked by.

You’ve already shown me what it means to be a real man, he wanted to say, but didn’t. He didn’t have time for sentimental pauses in his day. There was too much work to do, too many stalls to clean out, too many hours to spend distracting himself from the hole Ellie had carved in his heart two days earlier outside the church.

***

The sight of her standing outside the sanctuary talking to her friend Lucy had taken his breath away. She’d cut her hair short. Gone were the dark, straight strands that had fallen down her back in a long braid since he had known her. Her hair was still straight but hit just below her ears now. curved along the smooth, delicate line of her jaw..

He ached to reach out, trace that line with his fingertips, slide his hand behind her head and kiss away the distance between them.

The open laughter she’d been sharing with Lucy a few seconds earlier faded the moment her eyes met his. She looked away immediately, but in that brief moment he’d watched her face transform from cautious joy to closed down indifference.

He should have taken it as a sign to continue into the sanctuary and leave her alone. Unfortunately, he’d never been good at listening to others, or to his own intuition.

He slid his eyes from her to Lucy, now standing in awkward silence, her head tipped toward the floor. “Good morning, Lucy. Having a nice weekend?”

Lucy glanced up, flashed a tight smile. “Yes. I am. You?”

“It’s been okay.”

What was he going to say? It’s been torture, miserable, like being stranded in the middle of a raging sea during a storm without a lifeboat? It was true, but it wasn’t exactly the pre-church banter most people engaged in. Not to mention it was none of Lucy’s business how his weekend had really been. He had a feeling she was part of the problem, part of the reason Ellie had been ignoring his calls.

Lucy’s hazel eyes darted to Ellie, then back to Jason. She let out a quick, quiet breath, chasing it with, “Well, I’m going to go find a seat, so . . . yeah.” She leaned her head close to Ellie, her hand on her forearm, as if they were sharing a secret. It was futile. Jason still heard her, her whisper echoing in the now empty lobby. “You going to be okay?”

Ellie nodded, flashed a quick, obviously tense smile. “I’ll meet you inside.”

Lucy nodded back, looked at Jason, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. She looked away, turning her attention to Frank Troutman standing in the entryway with the bulletins. Frank smiled, handed Lucy a bulletin, and she cast one more look at Ellie over her shoulder before going inside.

Ellie bent her ankle back and forth, looked past him out into the parking lot, both hands hugging her Bible to her chest like a shield against him.

“I miss you.”

The words flew out of him before he even realized he was saying them out loud.

Something flashed in her eyes.

An emotion he couldn’t read.

He couldn’t read her. At all. He wasn’t used to that, to her closing herself off to him.

Her hands hugged the Bible closer against her.

“I miss you too.”

The words were what he’d wanted to hear, but not in the monotone, emotionless way she said it. Her voice was detached, a thousand miles away from meaning anything. Her gaze moved from side to side, focusing anywhere but on him.

She’d never talked to him in that tone, at least not before the afternoon she’d overheard him talking to Alex.

The memory of that moment had sent a chill straight through him. He felt the same heaviness as that day, the same all-consuming desire to pull her close; to tell her again how sorry he was, how wrong he was to wait so long to tell her the truth.

“The service is about to start.” Her voice silenced his internal dialogue. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

He grabbed on to her words. “When will we talk? I’ve been trying to talk to you for almost four months.”

A muscle in her jaw jumped. Her eyes met his, darkened emotion smoldering there. “I said I needed time, Jason.”

“I know what you said but — “

“We need a break, Jason, okay?”

“We’ve been taking a break.”

“I need a break. A long break.”

He could hear the strain in her voice, the struggle to keep her tone low and even. The doors to the sanctuary closed as the worship team started the music. She gestured curtly toward the glass doors leading outside and darted past him, shoving the front doors open. He followed, taking a step back when she swiveled to face him, eyes flashing. There was no mistaking her emotion now.

It was pure rage.

Let her be angry. 

He wanted answers, and he wasn’t waiting anymore to get them.

“How long of a break? A few days? A couple of weeks? Months? Permanently?”

She raised her hand, palm out, against the assault of questions, peppering at her like bullets out of a howitzer.

“I don’t know. Stop asking me.” Each word snapped out of her like sharped-edge glass cutting at his skin.

 She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out again. Her expression had softened when she met his gaze again.

“I don’t know who I am anymore, Jason. Who I ever was, really. I built my identity around you, around us, for so long and now . . .”

The wall was up again. Her tone flat as she lowered her gaze to the asphalt of the parking lot. “You’re not who I thought I was. Nothing feels the same. I don’t feel the same. I need to see what life is like without you for a while, decide if —”

He didn’t even try to hide his anger. “Decide what? Is this like college again? When you wanted a break? Whatever that meant.”

“I didn’t want a break. You wanted the break, Jason.”

Her recollection skills were clearly lacking. He scoffed, pointed his finger at her accusingly. “No. You said we should take a break and figure out if we were supposed to be together. That if we missed each other, that would tell us what we needed to know. I didn’t want a break, Ellie. You did. You were the one who couldn’t make up you mind. And now you can’t again. Apparently, I’m the only one of us that doesn’t have to ask if we’re meant to be together. I know we’re supposed to be together.”

Her cheeks flushed. “I only suggested the break, Jason.” She folded her arms tight across her chest. “You were the one who seemed thrilled with the idea. Obviously you didn’t miss me that much or you wouldn’t have — ”

“No.” The rumbling timbre of his protest echoed across the parking lot. “No way. That is not fair. I told you what happened. I told you how I thought you didn’t want me. How lonely and messed up I was in college. I told you how upset I was after that night, how I — .”

Her words spilled over his, drowning them out. She tossed her arms to the side. “You told me all that seven years after the fact. Seven years, Jason. I mean, if you hid that from me, what else did you hide from me? What else are you hiding from me now?”

Jason shook his head, hands on hips, looked at the black surface under his feet to calm the storm raging inside him. An ant climbed toward a crack in the asphalt, running along an uneven line of tar. He focused on it, on the freedom it had, and for a split second considered stomping the life out of it to keep it from having the freedom he couldn’t. He lifted his eyes back to hers, releasing the ant from his judgment, killing his own peace with what he said next.

“There’s nothing else, Ellie, but if you don’t feel you can trust me then fine.” His voice trembled under the effort to rein in the rage. “Take your break or whatever it is you’re calling it. Throw away everything we’ve had together for the last ten years. Walk away. If that’s what you want, do it.”

A breeze caught her hair, whipped a few strands across her face. She didn’t push them away. “Jason, don’t be a jerk. How did you think I was going to take all this? Finding out the man I thought saved himself for me was sleeping around in college behind my back?”

He tossed his arms up, slammed them down against his legs. “I wasn’t doing anything behind your back. You’d broke up with me. And I wasn’t sleeping around!” His voice thundered. He took two steps toward her and held up a shaking finger a few inches from her face. “It was one mistake. One stupid mistake. I told you that.”

She met his rage, gaze for gaze, harsh words for harsh words, slapping his hand away from her. “If it was so stupid, why didn’t you tell me when we started dating again? Why did you wait?”

He stepped back, laughed darkly. “What like how you told me about going out with my cousin? Oh wait. You didn’t tell me about that. I found that out from Brad.”

He didn’t miss the fleeting flash of surprise in her eyes before a facade of calm concealed it. She regarded him with a well-practiced poker face, saying nothing.

He didn’t back down. “Yeah. That’s right. You had secrets too, so maybe I should be worried about what you’re not telling me.”

She suddenly gulped back a sob, tears filling her eyes. When she stepped back from him she raised her arm in front of her face, as if to protect herself, as if he’d physically slapped her. In one quick move she pivoted, her back to him, walking swiftly across the parking lot toward her car. He chased after her, reached out, grasped her around her upper arm.

The growl in her voice when she wrenched free stunned him. “Don’t touch me.”

She sucked in a ragged breath, swiped the back of her hand across her tear soaked face, and worked at the key in the door of her car, her entire body trembling.

Panic curled up into his throat, threatening to choke the air out of him. His head felt like a hot-air balloon and the earth intangible around him. “Ellie, we can work this out. Don’t do this.”

She wouldn’t look at him. The lock clicked open, and she slid the key out, flung the door open. Her grief-stricken expression as she looked at him from the driver’s seat dissolved his anger into desolation.

“I don’t think we can, Jason. I really don’t. It’s like I don’t even know you, like everything you are, that we were, was a lie.”

The slam of the door reverberated in his ears long after she closed the door and sped away. He didn’t know how long he stood there, his mind numb from a conversation that had reeled out control.

When he turned toward the church, he saw Molly ashen faced, arms hugged around her as if to protect her from the truth she’d overheard, the truth of who her older brother really was.

Fiction Friday: The Farmers’ Sons Chapter 1

So, I have restarted The Farmers Sons (name subject to change). I mean trashed the other chapters and started all over. I have not, however, trashed the prologue. Not yet anyhow. I will most likely try to figure out how to add it to later to the story, but probably will not have Jason be a volunteer fire fighter. He won’t have time for that with trying to run the farm with his family, while Robert is recovering.

The previous draft was steering the story in a direction far away from how I imagined Jason and Ellie’s story going and it also needed tighter writing. This next draft will still include some of the elements of the previous versions.

For anyone who is new here, I share a chapter from the (almost) first draft of a novel I am working on each Friday. The chapter will most likely have typos, grammatical errors, missing comas, and even plot holes and it’s not the final version of the novel that I release at a later date.

I share the stories and publish the novels for fun so feel free to comment. The first book in this series is also available for sale on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords and various other sites. You can find more info about that HERE.

The sun cut across the barren field, slicing it in half, leaving one side to the darkness, the other to the light. A similar scene played out inside Jason Tanner. A metaphorical sun worked hard to push back the darkness, leaving him split in the middle, one part dark, one part light; one part hope, the other part hopeless.

Bitter coffee burned at the edges of his exhaustion but did nothing to clear the fog in his mind. How many days had it been? Nine? Maybe ten since he’d slept more than five hours a night, waking before dawn, stumbling to his pickup, driving to the barn, fingers numb from cold, watching his breath puff misty white around him.

This morning was no different, other than he’d actually remembered to brew himself a pot of coffee. He had poured half into his thermos and left the other half for Alex. They’d both need a few more pots to get through this week, this day even.

Alex stepped next to him on the farmhouse front porch, mug in hand. “This coffee is awful.”

Jason winced, not from the insult but in agreement as the sludge slid down his throat. “The worse it is, the more it will wake us up.”

Alex sipped coffee from his mug, scowling at Jason over the edge. “Is that like ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?’”

If there was any consolation to where Jason found himself it was that he wasn’t alone in the weariness that had seeped into his marrow in the last five months.

He looked at it in the eyes of each of them — his sister, his best friend, his mother, his uncle, and most of all his father, sitting helpless in a chair on the porch each morning, his eyes completing tasks his body couldn’t, not yet anyway.

He tightened the lid to the thermos, jerked his head behind him toward the kitchen. “Fill the other thermos and let’s get going. The cows don’t care how tired we are.”

Alex grunted. “I’m not sure I want to drink anymore of this. Maybe I can use it to clean the rust off that old tractor behind the barn instead.”

They climbed into separate pickups, pulling up to the barn, one behind the other. Molly stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, waiting for one of them more than the other. She looked through Jason and he had a feeling she wouldn’t have even noticed if he hadn’t been there.

Alex’s arms slid around her waist and pulled her close, a sight Jason still wasn’t comfortable with. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to his little sister and his best friend dating each other, but he’d been too tired since his father’s accident to let it bother him much more than sending a shudder of disgust through him from time to time.

“Save that for later.” His tone denoted a touch of teasing, spun together with genuine aggravation. “We’re behind schedule.”

They locked eyes, small smiles playing at the corners of their lips. It was obvious they were ignoring him. He’d have to start the milking without them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alex pull Molly closer and lower his mouth to hers. Revulsion tinged with jealousy swirled in his stomach. Revulsion over Alex kissing his little sister right there, outside the barn door where Jason had to see it; jealousy because he wished he was holding Ellie the same way. He didn’t know if she’d ever let him hold her that way again.

Several agonizing moments of listening to smooches and laughter later, Alex playfully bumped him in the arm on his way to gather the feed. “It’s never too late for a sweet kiss from your sister, buddy.”

His teasing did nothing to make Jason feel less uncomfortable. “Dude, seriously. Stop that. I don’t even want to know.”

There were moments he regretted convincing Alex to move up to the farm, like right now, bogged down with thoughts of Alex kissing Molly. Most days, though, Alex was like family, as much as a brother as he was a best friend.

His dad’s voice came from behind him. “Are we ready for the big release?”

He’d never get used to seeing his dad leaning on that cane and hoped soon he wouldn’t need it.

“Yep. Just finished up.”

It was an annual tradition for the family to release the cows into the pasture from the barn where they’d been sheltered from the cold weather of winter. It was also a tradition for them to do it together. Jason wasn’t surprised his dad didn’t plan to miss it, making his way to the barn with Jason’s mom beside him.  

Robert Tanner tipped his head toward his daughter. “Molly, do the honors.”

The cows were already standing at the gate, anxiously sniffing the cool spring air. They surged forward within seconds after Molly pulled back the gate and stepped aside.

She affectionally patted a couple on their rumps as they passed. “Get on out there, girls.”

Jason propped his arms across the top bar of the fence, watching the young heifers kicking up their legs, bumping into each other, mouths open, stretched into almost human looking smiles. It was his favorite time of year, letting them loose from their six months inside the barns, six months of being protected from wind and rain, cold and snow.

Robert leaned on the cane with both hands. “Now, that’s a sight I like to see.”

Jason nodded in silent agreement. “It was always Grandpa’s favorite time of year too, other than harvesting the sweet corn.”

Robert laughed softly. “Yeah, he did like his sweet corn.”

Annie Tanner propped a hand on her husband’s shoulder, watching the cows spread out across the hillside. “More like addicted to it.”

Jason pulled his eyes from the joyful scene in the pasture, leaning back against the fence, gesturing at his dad’s leg. “So, two weeks and that cast will be all the way off, huh, old man?”

Robert cocked an eyebrow, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s with you and Alex calling me old man? You both know I could kick your rear ends across this pasture even with a broken leg.”

A broken leg? More like a shattered leg when a tractor had tipped on it four months ago.

“We rarely have survivors when a tractor falls on a farmer.”

The words from the doctor had been chilling but accurate. Eerily accurate. Somehow Robert Tanner survived what so many other farmers hadn’t, thanks to the stump of an old maple tree left from when Ned Tanner cut it down five years before. Jason was grateful time had gotten away from them and they had never got around to pulling the stump from the ground.

Besides the shattered femur, Robert had also had a cracked pelvis, a puncture wound to his back, a collapsed lung, and internal bleeding. It was the bleeding that had led to a minor stroke during surgery and a six-week coma. The cracked pelvis was proving the most difficult to heal physically. Robert’s loss of independence had been the hardest to heal emotionally.

Jason grinned at his dad. “Looking forward to you pulling your weight around here again.” The smile broadened. “Old man.”

Robert lifted a hand from the cane and playfully punched his son in a muscular bicep. “Go clean those stalls out, little boy. Do it right or this old man will show you a thing or two about what it means to be a real man.”

Jason laughed and tapped his dad gently on the shoulder as he walked by.

You’ve already shown me what it means to be a real man, he wanted to say, but didn’t. He didn’t have time for sentimental pauses in his day. There was too much work to do, too many stalls to clean out, too many hours to spend distracting himself from the hole Ellie had carved in his heart two days earlier outside the church.

***

The sight of her standing outside the sanctuary talking to her friend Lucy had taken his breath away. She’d cut her hair short. Gone were the dark, straight strands that had fallen down her back in a long braid since he had known her. Her hair was still straight but hit just below her ears now. curved along the smooth, delicate line of her jaw..

He ached to reach out, trace that line with his fingertips, slide his hand behind her head and kiss away the distance between them.

The open laughter she’d been sharing with Lucy a few seconds earlier faded the moment her eyes met his. She looked away immediately, but in that brief moment he’d watched her face transform from cautious joy to closed down indifference.

He should have taken it as a sign to continue into the sanctuary and leave her alone. Unfortunately, he’d never been good at listening to others, or to his own intuition.

He slid his eyes from her to Lucy, now standing in awkward silence, her head tipped toward the floor. “Good morning, Lucy. Having a nice weekend?”

Lucy glanced up, flashed a tight smile. “Yes. I am. You?”

“It’s been okay.”

What was he going to say? It’s been torture, miserable, like being stranded in the middle of a raging sea during a storm without a lifeboat? It was true, but it wasn’t exactly the pre-church banter most people engaged in. Not to mention it was none of Lucy’s business how his weekend had really been. He had a feeling she was part of the problem, part of the reason Ellie had been ignoring his calls.

Lucy’s hazel eyes darted to Ellie, then back to Jason. She let out a quick, quiet breath, chasing it with, “Well, I’m going to go find a seat, so . . . yeah.” She leaned her head close to Ellie, her hand on her forearm, as if they were sharing a secret. It was futile. Jason still heard her, her whisper echoing in the now empty lobby. “You going to be okay?”

Ellie nodded, flashed a quick, obviously tense smile. “I’ll meet you inside.”

Lucy nodded back, looked at Jason, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. She looked away, turning her attention to Frank Troutman standing in the entryway with the bulletins. Frank smiled, handed Lucy a bulletin, and she cast one more look at Ellie over her shoulder before going inside.

Ellie bent her ankle back and forth, looked past him out into the parking lot, both hands hugging her Bible to her chest like a shield against him.

“I miss you.”

The words flew out of him before he even realized he was saying them out loud.

Something flashed in her eyes.

An emotion he couldn’t read.

He couldn’t read her. At all. He wasn’t used to that, to her closing herself off to him.

Her hands hugged the Bible closer against her.

“I miss you too.”

The words were what he’d wanted to hear, but not in the monotone, emotionless way she said it. Her voice was detached, a thousand miles away from meaning anything. Her gaze moved from side to side, focusing anywhere but on him.

She’d never talked to him in that tone, at least not before the afternoon she’d overheard him talking to Alex.

The memory of that moment had sent a chill straight through him. He felt the same heaviness as that day, the same all-consuming desire to pull her close; to tell her again how sorry he was, how wrong he was to wait so long to tell her the truth.

“The service is about to start.” Her voice silenced his internal dialogue. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

He grabbed on to her words. “When will we talk? I’ve been trying to talk to you for almost four months.”

A muscle in her jaw jumped. Her eyes met his, darkened emotion smoldering there. “I said I needed time, Jason.”

“I know what you said but — “

“We need a break, Jason, okay?”

“We’ve been taking a break.”

“I need a break. A long break.”

He could hear the strain in her voice, the struggle to keep her tone low and even. The doors to the sanctuary closed as the worship team started the music. She gestured curtly toward the glass doors leading outside and darted past him, shoving the front doors open. He followed, taking a step back when she swiveled to face him, eyes flashing. There was no mistaking her emotion now.

It was pure rage.

Let her be angry. 

He wanted answers, and he wasn’t waiting anymore to get them.

“How long of a break? A few days? A couple of weeks? Months? Permanently?”

She raised her hand, palm out, against the assault of questions, peppering at her like bullets out of a howitzer.

“I don’t know. Stop asking me.” Each word snapped out of her like sharped-edge glass cutting at his skin.

 She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out again. Her expression had softened when she met his gaze again.

“I don’t know who I am anymore, Jason. Who I ever was, really. I built my identity around you, around us, for so long and now . . .”

The wall was up again. Her tone flat as she lowered her gaze to the asphalt of the parking lot. “You’re not who I thought I was. Nothing feels the same. I don’t feel the same. I need to see what life is like without you for a while, decide if —”

He didn’t even try to hide his anger. “Decide what? Is this like college again? When you wanted a break? Whatever that meant.”

“I didn’t want a break. You wanted the break, Jason.”

Her recollection skills were clearly lacking. He scoffed, pointed his finger at her accusingly. “No. You said we should take a break and figure out if we were supposed to be together. That if we missed each other, that would tell us what we needed to know. I didn’t want a break, Ellie. You did. You were the one who couldn’t make up you mind. And now you can’t again. Apparently, I’m the only one of us that doesn’t have to ask if we’re meant to be together. I know we’re supposed to be together.”

Her cheeks flushed. “I only suggested the break, Jason.” She folded her arms tight across her chest. “You were the one who seemed thrilled with the idea. Obviously you didn’t miss me that much or you wouldn’t have — ”

“No.” The rumbling timbre of his protest echoed across the parking lot. “No way. That is not fair. I told you what happened. I told you how I thought you didn’t want me. How lonely and messed up I was in college. I told you how upset I was after that night, how I — .”

Her words spilled over his, drowning them out. She tossed her arms to the side. “You told me all that seven years after the fact. Seven years, Jason. I mean, if you hid that from me, what else did you hide from me? What else are you hiding from me now?”

Jason shook his head, hands on hips, looked at the black surface under his feet to calm the storm raging inside him. An ant climbed toward a crack in the asphalt, running along an uneven line of tar. He focused on it, on the freedom it had, and for a split second considered stomping the life out of it to keep it from having the freedom he couldn’t. He lifted his eyes back to hers, releasing the ant from his judgment, killing his own peace with what he said next.

“There’s nothing else, Ellie, but if you don’t feel you can trust me then fine.” His voice trembled under the effort to rein in the rage. “Take your break or whatever it is you’re calling it. Throw away everything we’ve had together for the last ten years. Walk away. If that’s what you want, do it.”

A breeze caught her hair, whipped a few strands across her face. She didn’t push them away. “Jason, don’t be a jerk. How did you think I was going to take all this? Finding out the man I thought saved himself for me was sleeping around in college behind my back?”

He tossed his arms up, slammed them down against his legs. “I wasn’t doing anything behind your back. You’d broke up with me. And I wasn’t sleeping around!” His voice thundered. He took two steps toward her and held up a shaking finger a few inches from her face. “It was one mistake. One stupid mistake. I told you that.”

She met his rage, gaze for gaze, harsh words for harsh words, slapping his hand away from her. “If it was so stupid, why didn’t you tell me when we started dating again? Why did you wait?”

He stepped back, laughed darkly. “What like how you told me about going out with my cousin? Oh wait. You didn’t tell me about that. I found that out from Brad.”

He didn’t miss the fleeting flash of surprise in her eyes before a facade of calm concealed it. She regarded him with a well-practiced poker face, saying nothing.

He didn’t back down. “Yeah. That’s right. You had secrets too, so maybe I should be worried about what you’re not telling me.”

She suddenly gulped back a sob, tears filling her eyes. When she stepped back from him she raised her arm in front of her face, as if to protect herself, as if he’d physically slapped her. In one quick move she pivoted, her back to him, walking swiftly across the parking lot toward her car. He chased after her, reached out, grasped her around her upper arm.

The growl in her voice when she wrenched free stunned him. “Don’t touch me.”

She sucked in a ragged breath, swiped the back of her hand across her tear soaked face, and worked at the key in the door of her car, her entire body trembling.

Panic curled up into his throat, threatening to choke the air out of him. His head felt like a hot-air balloon and the earth intangible around him. “Ellie, we can work this out. Don’t do this.”

She wouldn’t look at him. The lock clicked open, and she slid the key out, flung the door open. Her grief-stricken expression as she looked at him from the driver’s seat dissolved his anger into desolation.

“I don’t think we can, Jason. I really don’t. It’s like I don’t even know you, like everything you are, that we were, was a lie.”

The slam of the door reverberated in his ears long after she closed the door and sped away. He didn’t know how long he stood there, his mind numb from a conversation that had reeled out control.

When he turned toward the church, he saw Molly ashen faced, arms hugged around her as if to protect her from the truth she’d overheard, the truth of who her older brother really was.