Wild Iris Ridge

“Daddy checked it out of the library for us once but we were reading something else and never had time for that one before we had to return it.”

“Now you have your own copy and don’t have to take it back to the library. Why don’t we start it tonight?”

“Okay!”

“Faith, do you want to stay out here and read your book or come into Carter’s room and listen to Charlotte’s Web?”

“I’ll come with you.”

Carter led the way back to his room, still decorated the way Jessie had left it, with a Western Americana theme: red, white and blue, with horseshoes holding up some shelves and a trail of stars stenciled around the ceiling.

It was a cute room for a boy, perfect for an active kid like Carter.

The sharpness of loss clutched at her chest again. Jessie had loved her family, being a mother, making a comfortable home for them. Of all the gross inequities in the world, Lucy considered it so unfair that this loving young mother with her life ahead of her would be taken from her family by a health condition nobody could have anticipated.

The room had two twin beds, maybe in anticipation for the day when Carter would have shared this room with his brother, who had been too gestationally immature to survive outside the womb after Jess went into cardiac arrest so suddenly.

Carter jumped onto one of the beds, and Lucy forced herself to push the sadness away.

“Daddy usually reads to me from the other one. You can do that, too.”

She eased down onto the bed, and Faith curled up at her feet, pulling a throw over herself and listening raptly while Lucy began reading the story about a runt piglet and the spider who was a very brave friend—and a good writer, too.

By the time she finished the first chapter, Carter’s eyelids were drooping. Judging by his energy level every time she saw him, she completely understood why. An object in constant motion eventually had to run out of steam. She didn’t know if that was an actual physics principle, but it definitely applied to five-year-old boys.

He closed his eyes at the same moment she marked her page and closed the book. She slid off the bed and pulled his blanket up over his shoulders, awash with tenderness for this funny little man.

“You got through a whole chapter. That’s great. My dad usually falls asleep after about two pages while he’s reading to Carter,” Faith confided in a whisper.

Like his son, Brendan put in a long, busy day, as well.

“I guess it’s lucky for both of us I made it this far. Shall we go into your room and read about Anne coming to know Matthew and Marilla?”

“Yes!”

Together, they walked down the hall to Faith’s room, all pink and lavender and yellow, sweet as Faith herself.

“Oh. Look at that! That’s the chair you told me about on the phone a few months ago. I’d forgotten about it, but it’s just as lovely as you said.”

It was a slim Queen Anne recliner with curvy lines and a pretty material that seemed to bring together all the colors of the room.

“Dad said somebody who liked to read as much as I do needed a comfortable reading nook. He bought me the light and everything. And it wasn’t even my birthday. It was a just-because present. Those are the best.”

“I agree.” She smiled. “Do you want the chair or the bed for reading?”

“I’ll take the bed.” Faith settled in, hands clasped on her chest expectantly.

Lucy settled into the recliner—which was, indeed, comfortable—and proceeded to read a chapter from the book about an orphaned girl trying to make her way in her new home.

“I think that’s enough,” she finally said, though she would have read all night if she could, she was enjoying it so much.

“Anne is so funny,” Faith declared.

“She is,” Lucy responded.

The girl was quiet as Lucy rose from the recliner, laid the book on her bedside table and tucked in her quilt a little more snugly around her.

“I wonder how her mom died,” Faith finally asked, her voice low.

This poor little child, who had lost her own mother too young. Lucy wanted to cry suddenly that Jess would never have the chance to know the funny, sweet, courageous girl her daughter was becoming.

“If I recall from reading the series all those years ago, she was only a baby when both of her parents died of an illness.”

“That would have been easier,” Faith said, her voice solemn. “She probably didn’t know them enough to miss them.”

“Oh, honey.”

She reached down to the bed and hugged Faith, wondering if the girl was open with her father about her grief or if she tried to protect him from it, as appeared to be her nature.

“It’s normal to miss your mom,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “You know that, right? Some part of you will always have a little hole. My mom died almost twenty years ago, and I still miss her.”

Despite her emotional and psychological issues, Betsy had still been her mother. Lucy knew she probably missed what she wished she had in a mother more than the actual person, but the loss was no less acute.

“More than anything,” she went on to Faith, “I wish that I could patch that hole for you and take away your sadness. But that would also mean taking away all your wonderful memories of your mom, and I would never, ever want to do that. You’re sad because you miss her. I miss her, too. Your dad and Carter do, too.”

“I know,” Faith said, her voice small. “I miss her so much sometimes. Carter doesn’t remember her much. He was only three. I do, though.”

“He’ll remember her most through the memories you and your dad share with him about her.”

“Sometimes I’m mad at her, too,” Faith said in a rush, as if the confession had been churning inside her for some time, just waiting for a chance to slip out.

Lucy was almost positive Faith hadn’t shared this with her father. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the girl’s hand into hers. “That’s normal, too, honey.”

“Why did she even need another baby? She had me and Carter. She would still be here if she hadn’t decided to have another baby.”

Just how much did Faith know about the circumstances around Jessie’s death? Lucy chose her words carefully. “Your mom used to tell me when we were girls that she wanted a half-dozen kids, just like the Brady Bunch. Three boys and three girls. She loved your dad’s big family and wanted one, too. It’s not that you weren’t enough for her, honey. She just had so much love in her heart and knew another baby would make that love grow even more.”

“It didn’t, though.”

Lucy sighed. “She didn’t know she had a problem with her heart. None of the doctors even knew. She spent all her life with it and had you and Carter and it never gave her any trouble. She had no reason to think having the new baby would be any different from having you or your brother.”

She hugged Faith, feeling the slenderness of her bones beneath her nightgown. “You know she would never have chosen to leave you, right?”

Faith sniffled a little but didn’t cry. “I guess.”

“You were her sunshine. Always. I know it hurts not having her here, but the best thing you can do is think about all the good you still have. Your dad, Carter, your grandpa Caine and all your aunts and uncles and cousins.”

“You.”