The Shores of Moses Lake Collection by Lisa Wingate

Author:Lisa Wingate [Wingate, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042040, FIC027020, FIC042000
ISBN: 9781441229151
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Love is the mystery of water and a star.

–Pablo Neruda

(Left by an anonymous tourist who visited unnoticed)

Clay’s visitors came and went as night faded into morning, while next door Amy’s parents, Blaine’s family, and Mama B sat vigil around her room. Ruth arrived with the morning light, leaning on the elbow of her favorite nephew. In the doorway, she held Uncle Herb’s hand, patted it between hers, smiled at him, and nodded. “We’ve done it,” she said, and then crossed the room to stand over my brother’s bed and point the no-no finger at him. “Never, never again, anything like that. To live peacefully is to live well. You remember that from now on.”

Clay’s grin was tired and lopsided, his lip swollen and bruised on the left, the oxygen tube bumping awkwardly under his nose. He waved at Mom and Uncle Charley, who were exiting the room to make space. “I think I’ve had . . . enough. . . . adventure . . .” His words grew raspy and trailed off. He swallowed, wincing with the effort, a little mischief twinkling in the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. I was almost glad to see that the mischief was still there, even after the beating he’d taken and the carbon monoxide inhalation in the trunk of the car. “ . . . for a while,” he added, and I wanted to smack him one.

Lips pressing into a line, Ruth turned to me. “You should talk some sense into him.”

“We could tie him to the bed,” Uncle Herb suggested. “Charley’s got an old lariat rope in his truck.”

We laughed together, eager to diffuse the tension in the room. For an instant—just an instant—I saw the image of Clay from my dream. We’d come so close to really losing him. We could have lost him. Watching him laugh now, then draw his eyebrows together, wincing, then give in and laugh again, I regretted all the petty thoughts, resentments, and fears that had kept me away from him, from my family for so many years. Our time together as adults almost ended before it began, and if it had, it would have been my fault as much as anyone’s.

I’d been so busy focusing on my self-determined parameters of what I felt my family should be, that I’d missed the beauty of what they actually were—fragile, flawed, heroic, imperfect, champions of lost causes. Each with things to learn and things to teach. God had knit us together like plantings in a garden—wild and unique above ground, blooming in different ways at different times, the roots intertwined deep beneath the soil. No matter who else passed through my life, no one would take the place of my brother. He would always be the only one with whom I shared the quiet beginnings of life, the awkwardness of growing up, the secret hiding places of childhood, the early hours of Christmas mornings waiting for Santa Claus, the arguments over space in the backseat of a car, the walk to school on the first day, and the rough times after things didn’t go so well.

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