Song of the Brokenhearted Read online

  “Missing technology already?”

  “It’s pretty nice to scroll through all my papers at once. And no ink on the fingers.” He rubbed his fingers together.

  Ava opened the lower oven and set the casserole dish inside. Then she tapped out a text to Sienna, hoping she didn’t wake her but missing her daughter too much to keep the words in.

  The only thing missing this morning is you, Ava typed and hit Send. She pictured those words traveling across the state of Texas, then New Mexico, Arizona, clipping the edge of Nevada, and up California to her daughter at Stanford University.

  No one had wanted Sienna to attend Stanford—too far from home, too liberal, not Texas. It made Ava secretly proud that her daughter would venture into the unknown. But then, Ava’s one year outside of Texas living with Aunt Jane had been much more than her own parents had done. Her entire life looked nothing like her parents’, but Ava hoped her own daughter wouldn’t feel the need to build a life wholly contradictory to the family she’d grown up in.

  “I need to go in to the office today,” Dane said, glancing up from the paper.

  Ava’s Sunday morning peace rattled like windows in an earthquake. Before she could respond, he continued.

  “And . . . could you hold off using the credit cards for the next week? I may switch them over to a line of credit or consolidate a few, and I want to make sure the balances on all of them are accurate.” Dane kept his face in the paper, and Ava took a moment to consider his words. In all their years of marriage, Dane had never asked her to avoid using their credit cards.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.

  “Of course. It’ll be worked out soon. I know wedding and Christmas shopping is on the horizon—it’s just a few weeks.” He chuckled slightly, but Ava knew him well enough to know he was concerned about something.

  She let it go. He’d talk when he was ready.

  “Have you noticed the willow tree?” Ava asked, standing at the window with her coffee cup cradled in her hands.

  “Yeah, I think it’s dying.” Dane turned another page.

  “No, you think so?” Ava muttered as she swallowed back an ache at the back of her throat. She set her cup on the counter and headed outside. The gentle autumn morning met her with the scent of leaves, freshly cut grass, and swimming pool.

  Ava padded in her slippers, weaving around patio furniture at the pool and down the path to the tall willow. She touched a long weeping strand of leaves, and several fell off into her hand.

  “No,” she whispered. This wasn’t the normal changing of the seasons. Something was definitely wrong with the tree. A sudden wave of panic flooded over her as she gazed upward into the branches and cascade of leaves. She wanted to paste the leaves back onto the branches.

  It doesn’t matter that much, she tried chastising herself. Compared to the heartache and tragedies she witnessed every week, like the family last night, a tree was nothing. But this willow was important to her. It had been growing in their backyard for fifteen years, given to her by her brother as a gift when Jason was born. Clancy had dug it up from the land they’d grown up on. Her brother knew her attachment to the weeping willows, and Ava had cherished this tree all these years. Through the ups and downs of the past decade and a half, it was a reminder of how far she’d come, and she’d spent countless moments of prayer sitting on the bench Dane had built beneath its branches.

  Years earlier, Ava had saved the willow tree from landscapers who wanted to pull it out because it interfered with the Mediterranean style. Their plans had a tall fountain drawn in its place. The pool guy complained about the leaves cast in the water with every summer breeze. But Ava would never risk it being moved, and she certainly would have never removed it.

  “You must make it through this. You’re my prayer tree,” Ava whispered, looking up at its weave of branches that stretched toward the blue sky, then fanned into the shape of an umbrella dripping all the way back to the ground. She’d never asked her brother but wondered if Clancy had dug the tree from the stand by the riverside. As a young child, she’d hidden within the umbrella fan with her books and dolls. Ava hadn’t told her family those stories. While most of her life was an open book, there were a few secrets to keep within a tree.

  The baked French toast was in the oven, she needed to check in with Hannah, and a morning with her men couldn’t be wasted. Yet Ava resolved to watch the tree and to find out how to save it. It was only a tree. But she couldn’t just let it die.

  Three

  FIVE WILLOW TREES HAD STOOD ALONG THE RIVERBANK OF HER childhood home. Her young imagination had seen pioneers coming out west in wagon trains, settling along the bank of the Black Rock River, and carefully planting the willow trees. Maybe it had been a little girl like her who’d planted the trees, pushing the seedlings down into the soft earth and wondering if they’d someday grow.

  Ava found herself daydreaming about those willows in the following weeks, surprising herself with details she’d forgotten.

  Yet matched against daydreams, her schedule of real life took precedence. She stared at her electronic tablet every morning in wonder at the passing of days. Would there ever be a year she wasn’t shocked at how quickly the months flew away? Jason’s Friday night football games, Bible study, the funeral for the Gibson family, emergency calls to her ministry, and fall church events were just a few of the commitments filling up the boxes on her calendar. Ava kept moving “TREE” to the next day, then the next, and the next, without any action toward saving its life.

  Dane kept working late, asking her to do things that he usually did. More and more she attended church and social events alone.

  “It’s temporary. Some issues with investors and other things, but nothing to worry about,” he said, and promised to make it up to her once the company passed through their little crisis. He was distracted and seemed gravely worried, so she let her annoyance mostly slide off her back. His lack of availability wasn’t new, and he’d always made up for it in the past. And she was busy too. Her Broken Hearts ministry was growing in demand as more people experienced hard times.

  One night, Ava heard an incessant ringing, demanding that she wake. She grabbed her cell and recognized the number as Randy Hemstead's, one of the church’s pastors.

  “Hello?” she said, trying to sound already awake. She pulled out her notepad from her bedside table to write down the details. She suppressed a yawn and slipped away from Dane’s gentle snores and onto the second-story balcony overlooking the backyard. After she hung up the phone, she leaned on the railing, gazing down at the shimmer of blue water around the underwater pool lights. The scent of chlorine mixed with the smell of autumn leaves.

  A soldier had been killed in a training mission. He left a young pregnant wife with two little boys.

  Ava put on her slippers and walked down to her computer in her built-in desk between the kitchen and living room. Her phone rang again as the computer loaded. Her heart never failed to skip a beat at the thought that one day the call would be about someone she loved.

  The woman was crying and croaked out her name.

  “It’s all right. Take your time.”

  After several seconds the woman apologized and explained who she was.

  “You were in Bible study last spring with my neighbor June Reilly, and I visited a few times,” she said between sniffles.

  “Yes, Rose, I remember you.” Ava recalled that June had asked them to pray for Rose’s marriage.

  “I’m sorry to call so late, but the church website said you were available at all hours, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “My husband. He’s been drinking more and more. Tonight, I was really afraid of him.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “No. He broke a bunch of things in the house, but I locked myself in the bathroom.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Passed out on the couch. I’m in my car in the d
riveway.”

  “That’s good. Don’t go back into the house. Do you have someplace to go? We can get you a hotel room for the night.” Ava wrote down Rose’s name on her tablet.

  Rose’s voice faded a moment, then she said, “That’s my best friend calling me. I couldn’t reach her earlier.”

  Ava paused, worried about the young woman. “Please call back if you need anything. I can meet you or get you someplace safe for the night.”

  “Thank you.”

  After they hung up, she turned on a few lights in the kitchen and put on a kettle for some chamomile tea.

  She opened a new file in the program a techie guy at church had created for the ministry. There were hundreds of files filled with stories of loss.

  Ava opened an e-mail and sent a message to her team, asking for prayer and for any thoughts on how to specifically help the two families. She e-mailed her florist, a church member who gave the ministry all its flowers at cost, and ordered a huge bouquet for the soldier’s family. At times Ava felt like flowers were an empty gift. Then she’d remember her Aunt Jenny’s passing. The flowers had meant more to her than she could have ever imagined.

  Ava closed her laptop and grabbed a notepad to make a list for tomorrow. Her pen holder was empty, and she grumbled at how everyone stole them from her desk with its convenient location in the house. She walked into the den and opened the drawer of the large oak desk. Papers covered the slot where Dane kept his pens. Then Ava noticed what the papers were. They were bills, and all of them had red ink. Late.

  Ava shuffled through each one: credit cards, electric bill, phone, Internet . . . Dane was meticulous about paying bills on time to avoid late charges. The balances on their cards showed that he hadn’t followed his rule of paying them off every month in quite a long while.

  Ava returned the bills and closed the desk drawer. Why wasn’t Dane sharing this with her? The moment she thought it, she knew the answer. He’d told her when they married that he would always take care of her. He’d never wanted her help with their finances, knowing it wasn’t her strength and it was unusually stressful for her. After her tumultuous childhood when she and her brother had struggled to have food in the cupboards, Dane promised her security. He said it was another way of showing her how much he loved her, how much he hated what she’d endured, and how proud of her he was for overcoming such a harsh beginning.

  But clearly they were in trouble. Maybe Dane was dealing with it as he said. Maybe he’d gotten behind in paying bills lately with all the long hours at work. Ava would ask, and she could help him. She was familiar with online bill paying—she did it for her ministry every month.

  Ava returned to her kitchen desk, forgetting the pen and deciding she’d done enough for the night. She put her teacup in the dishwasher, then turned off the lights and headed back to bed. As she slid in beside Dane, she studied the outline of his strong shoulder and listened to his deep exhales. She touched the hair at the back of his neck. She pulled away as he groaned and rustled the covers before settling back into sleep.

  Ava gravitated between being upset that Dane was hiding his problems from her and feeling grateful that he wanted to protect her.

  When sleep wouldn’t come, Ava decided to pray.

  She prayed for the families she’d been meeting through the ministry, starting with the Gibson family who’d be struggling forward in the awful days after the funerals. Next she prayed for the children and wife of the soldier and their journey of life without a husband and daddy, then for Rose, whom she hoped was safe with her best friend now.

  Ava’s prayers moved to Sienna in California and Preston, her fiancé, then Jason in his first year of high school and Dane with his many issues at work, and for their finances and the heavy burden he was carrying in silence. The list moved forward as her eyelids got heavy.

  “Everything all right?” Dane muttered in his half-asleep voice, turning toward her and draping an arm around her waist.

  Ava considered the question. For those families, nothing would be the same again. And everything wasn’t all right for Dane and the stack of late bills in his desk.

  She kissed his cheek and settled into her pillow, knowing he was already back to sleep.

  Her eyes opened at a memory.

  “It always comes in threes,” her grandmother loved to say, always seeming hungry for doom.

  “See, what did I tell you?” she’d say whenever anything went wrong. “This is just the beginning.”

  Ava turned over and tried shutting out the sound of her voice. For a long time she’d lived without her grandmother’s doomsday voice haunting her. Why was it back?

  The problem was, her grandmother had often been right.

  Four

  WHEN AVA WAS A LITTLE GIRL AND THOUGHT ABOUT GOD, SHE always pictured her daddy. She’d remember him standing waist high in the slow current of the Black Rock River wearing his white dress shirt and slacks from the thick JCPenney catalog as he dipped people beneath the lazy green waters. Baptism days were Ava’s favorite. All the parishioners left the stuffy church for the huge shade trees lining the river, carrying large picnic baskets, coolers, and thick quilts to stretch out over the lawn.

  Daddy would raise his hands toward heaven as he talked about John the Baptist and the Jordan River. He told of the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. The way he spoke, with his moving arms and his deep passionate voice, brought the story to life. For years Ava believed she’d seen that dove descend and thought that Jesus might have been baptized by her father on one of those summer dipping days. He’d pulled people up into the new air with his eyes looking into the blue sky and shouted, “Hallelujah. Praise be to God!”

  But that was a lifetime ago. It seemed like someone else’s life, as if she’d watched it on a movie or read it in a storybook. Thirty years had passed since she’d seen her daddy face-to-face . . . thirty years since he’d walked the earth as a free man.

  Her father nurtured Ava’s faith, but later she blamed him for losing it. If God was like her daddy, how could she believe in His promises? How could she believe in His love?

  The God she’d sung about with a heart so full it might explode was no longer there. For a long time, He became a dark void like the space that filled a starless night. The sky would be dark and empty, covered up by unseen clouds, and it became hard for her to believe that stars existed behind such dense darkness. Her brain knew the truth about the stars, just as she never fully stopped believing God was somewhere, but for a while, God disappeared behind the darkness.

  Ava missed her daughter’s phone call during Thursday morning Bible study. She stood in the foyer of church, adjusting the autumn leaves that decorated the welcome desk, and listened to the voice mail.

  “Mom, I’m coming home this weekend. Friday afternoon flight—will text you the details. Can’t wait to see you guys and watch the game together. Love you!”

  Ava caught how her daughter’s voice sounded different—a few tones higher than normal. It surfaced the memory of a summer Sienna had called from camp the year before seventh grade.

  “Mom, I’m sick and need to come home,” she’d said. Sienna had claimed stomachaches despite how her friends begged her to stay. This was her third year of college, not summer camp, and though Dane had given her a credit card to fly home whenever she wanted, she’d never actually used it.

  Ava tapped a text off to Dane with the news, and despite her concern, she couldn’t wait to see her girl.

  “Ready?” Kayanne came around the corner from the ladies room, picking up her Bible and study book. “By the way, you told me to remind you before lunch we need to ask a florist or garden person what’s wrong with your tree. Oh, and I brought a list of what we’re doing for Private Grant’s family. The funeral is on Monday.”

  Ava looked up with the phone in her hands. “Uh . . . hmm.”

  “Hey, you told me to remind you. I have the text message.”

  “No, not that . . .” Ava thought about her plans for
the next few days. She opened the calendar on her phone, hoping to rearrange her schedule so she’d get plenty of time with her daughter.

  “You’re canceling on lunch? Why?” Kayanne popped her hands onto her hips. Her purse slipped off her shoulder and down to her elbow.

  They’d been friends since the first years of marriage, raised children together, and shared shoulders when Sienna left for college and William joined the air force. Their roles had diverged five years earlier when Kayanne’s husband left her for another woman. Yet their friendship had strengthened since that time, even though their lives no longer looked like carbon copies of each other's.

  Ava slipped the phone into her bag and wagged a finger at her friend. “Hold the indignation, it’s usually you canceling on me.”

  Kayanne smiled. “You got me there.”

  “I need to drop off gift baskets to those families, but Sienna left a message that she’s coming home tomorrow.”

  “Wonderful. What’s the occasion?”

  “No idea. It has me wondering, but of course I can’t wait to see her.”

  “Just Sienna? Or Preston too?”

  “Apparently Sienna only.”

  Kayanne frowned. “That’s weird.”

  Ava loved Kayanne’s bluntness, which was exactly why many of the polite churchwomen disliked her.

  “She wants to see Jason play football. Her voice sounded off to me.”

  “Interesting. And her perfect fiancé isn’t coming with her?” Kayanne squinted her blue eyes in thought.

  “Don’t be sarcastic. I couldn’t dream up a better guy for Sienna. He grounds her where she needs grounding but supports her in everything. And I adore him.”

  Kayanne rolled her eyes. “He comes from a great family, he’ll take care of her financially, and he’s a good Christian boy.”

  “As if I care about the family part,” Ava said, though sometimes she noticed she felt a sense of pride that her daughter was marrying into a well-connected tribe. “This would have been solved if she and William had married like we planned when they were babies. Everything would be perfect.”