Past Forward Volume 1 by Chautona Havig Read Free Book Online

couple and try it.” He
paused at the expression on her face. As though he could read her
mind, he continued, “I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything
wrong with your mother. You’d just said that she told you that you
should live your life how you like it, and I thought—”
    Her smile, though weak, relieved him.
“You’re right. She did say that, and I know she meant it. She didn’t want to have to deal with sheep and the mess that
comes with them, but she didn’t mind if I did. I think at some
point I would have received a pair of lambs for a birthday or
Christmas…” She looked far away for a moment and then added, “… or
maybe Easter.”
    A wide array of art supplies, fabric, and
similar materials were stacked on shelves, in baskets, and
something about the style of the baskets made Chad wonder if the
Finley women hadn’t made them too. “Is there anything you two don’t
do?”
    “Pottery. It was too expensive to ship clay.
We considered going to black and white film so we could do our own
photo developing, but we love color too much.”
    While upstairs, Willow showed Chad her room,
her mother’s room, and a large room organized as a storage pantry.
“We keep our overflow canning and things in here. Those bins with
the locks are where we store Christmas and birthday presents. That
closet holds out of season clothes and…”
    She explained their organization system as
they returned downstairs. Chad hardly listened. Instead, he
mentally calculated everything she’d described. The women had hand
painted their bathroom wall to look like wallpaper and every piece
of artwork on the walls was one they’d drawn, stitched, painted, or
photographed. The quilts on the beds, the sheets, everything was
stitched by one or the other of them if not both. Even the large
area rug in the oddly shaped living room was hand hooked. The
thought of all of their work was a little overwhelming.
    “You’re a little like the Amish aren’t
you?”
    Smiling, Willow led him to a room to the
right of the stairwell. An unbelievable number of books occupied
wall-to-wall shelves and shelves in the center of the room as well.
Just inside the door, she pointed to a shelf with at least a dozen
books on the Amish lifestyle.
    “Mother actually considered joining the
Amish. The first thing she did after she deposited ‘the bribe,’ as
she called it, was to go to the library and research Amish
theology.”
    “I take it she wasn’t impressed?”
    “Actually, she was for the most part. The
problem was, with each district being independent of the others,
and because people often use the same theological terms for
different things, Mother was afraid she’d make a poor choice and
not know she’d done it until it was too late. The last thing she
wanted to do was start over her starting over.”
    “What brought her here?” Chad asked the
question as he looked over the hundreds of books.
    “The day she gave up on the idea of the
Amish, she went for a drive. There was a for sale sign out at the
road so she drove in and looked around. She loved it.”
    While Chad commented about the excellent
condition of the house, Willow glowed. “She did most of the work
herself. The house had to be completely renovated, so it had new
plumbing and wiring and all that stuff. So Mother came in and made
everything pretty. Lately, she’s been talking about new windows,
but she didn’t want to have to undo all the trim work she did.”
    Every window and doorway in the house had
beautiful trim around it. He’d noticed ivy vines, fleur de lis, and
around the kitchen, grapes on the vine. “Where did she find them?
It must have cost her a fortune.”
    “Oak from Fairbury Hardware. It was more
expensive than the pine stuff, but it holds up better.”
    Shaking his head, Chad traced the ivy vines
along the doorway into what he assumed was meant to be a dining
room. “No, these. Where did she find these? Hand carved molding and
trim work isn’t