Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology Read online

  Praise for

  DEBORAH BEDFORD

  “Bedford cuts to the heart of serious issues and reveals God’s hope…The sweet outcome will touch the reader’s heart.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Just Between Us

  “Bedford’s latest is a sweet love story with some interesting turns of events…A pleasant novel.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Only You

  Praise for

  LINDA GOODNIGHT

  “From its sad, touching beginning to an equally moving conclusion, A Touch of Grace will keep you riveted.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  “Missionary Daddy focuses on several issues, and Linda Goodnight handles each one with aplomb. This terrific book is touching and definitely a keeper.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  DEBORAH BEDFORD

  LINDA GOODNIGHT

  Mothers & Daughters

  An Anthology

  CONTENTS

  THE HAIR RIBBONS

  Deborah Bedford

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Questions for Discussion

  UNFORGETTABLE

  Linda Goodnight

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Questions for Discussion

  THE HAIR RIBBONS

  Deborah Bedford

  Blessed are the pure in heart,

  for they will see God.

  —Matthew 5:8

  In memory of Katie Dunlap,

  beloved sister in Christ,

  who danced so well before the Lord.

  To my daughter, Avery Elizabeth.

  To my mother, Tommie Catherine Pigg,

  who reminds me as often as we talk

  what a gift it is to have a mother who, above all

  things, loves the Father.

  Prologue

  September 1964

  Theia Harkin hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep all night. She’d tossed and turned so much that the covers had wound themselves around and around her legs until she felt like she was a sea creature in a shell.

  She lay in bed and pretended she was a butterfly, wrapped in a cocoon, in desperate need of breaking out.

  She stared at the three-quarter moon, which beamed in through her window, and pretended she could see the man there smiling and frowning, smiling and frowning, moving his face.

  Tomorrow, when the sun came up, maybe she’d be too old for pretending anymore.

  When morning came, her mother shook her shoulder. “Theia.” She said her name soft and melodic, like a song. “Time to wake up.”

  Theia sat up so fast she got dizzy. She swung her feet to the floor. She could smell bacon frying. Her mother sat beside her, wearing her red polka-dot apron and wielding a spatula, which meant pancakes.

  Mother and daughter gave each other a little sideways hug.

  “Ready for your first day of first grade?”

  Theia nodded. “Yep.”

  “Breakfast is almost ready. Come downstairs in ten minutes. I’ve made something that’s just right for sending you off into the world.”

  Theia didn’t want to get dressed too early; she didn’t want to get syrup on her new clothes. Her new dress from Lester’s waited on a hanger at the front of her closet. Two new Mary Jane shoes sat buckle-to-buckle on the floor beside the bureau, one white bobby sock rolled up inside each toe.

  She padded barefoot down the hallway, brushed her hair in the mirror, washed her face, and donned her pink quilted robe. Downstairs, after she slid into her place at the kitchen table, her mother set before her a feast of bacon, a tower of pancakes, and a glass of orange juice as tall and beaming as the sun.

  Her mother switched on the AM radio beside the sink as she washed up the dishes. Petula Clark came on singing “Downtown!” Theia giggled as her mother sang right along beside Petula, spreading sudsy circles in rhythm with a sponge. Once the song had ended, the disc jockey announced, “Played that on purpose this morning for all you kids out there who are getting up and getting ready! Moms, rest assured that the buses are running on schedule. And remember, kids, you can always tell your parents that you are sick and climb right back in bed.”

  The bad feeling started right then in the pit of Theia’s belly. She couldn’t eat anymore. She swigged some of the orange juice, then carried the plate, with most of the bacon and pancakes still on it, to the counter.

  “You didn’t eat very much.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’d better go get ready. Bus will be here in twenty minutes.”

  Theia padded to the bathroom, stood on the toilet beside her father, and brushed her teeth. She loved looking at their faces together in the mirror.

  “Better hurry up,” her daddy said, giving Theia a love pat on the small of her back. “Bus will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  She pulled on her socks and carefully turned the tops down, buckled her shoes, and checked her reflection again. She decided to braid her hair; it made her look more grown up. Her mother handed her a brown paper sack, and she peeked inside. It contained a cheese sandwich, an apple, a package of chocolate Hostess cupcakes, and milk money.

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  “Can you see the road? Is the bus here yet?”

  “Nope. Not yet.”

  “You got everything in your satchel? You’ve got your new ruler and your scissors? The paste? The box of crayons?”

  “I’ve got everything.”

  “Well, that’s it then. Nothing to do but wait.”

  The awful feeling grew bigger and bigger in the pit of Theia’s stomach. She felt like something was growling down there, whispering frightening things. What if I have to sit by Larry Wells? What if I get on the wrong bus coming home? What if my new teacher doesn’t like me? Finally, she admitted the truth out loud.

  “Mama, I’m scared.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mother winked at her as if she knew the answer to some secret. “I’ll tell you what.” Mama went to pull her sewing box from behind the old tattered easy chair. She flipped open the cover, rummaged through pin cushions and an assortment of thimbles and a jumble of threads. “Ah, here it is!” She pulled out a curl of blue, satin ribbon. Next came a pair of pinking shears, and Mama snipped off two perfectly matching lengths.

  Theia wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”

  “You just wait and see. Come here.”

  Theia stepped dutifully across the room and stood still while Mama tied a ribbon on first one braid, and then the other.

  Mama straightened each bow with a flourish. “From now on, these are your magic hair ribbons. Whenever you feel afraid of something, we’ll tie them into your hair. Every time you’ve got these on, let them remind you that I am praying for you. That my heart is right beside you. That God is right beside you. And when God’s right beside you, you never have to worry about a thing.”

  “Look, Mama! Here comes the bus. I gotta go.”

  “Okay. You go. Have a good day. Be careful crossing the street
!”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Love you!”

  Theia climbed on the bus, and she didn’t have to sit by Larry Wells. She got a seat beside Barbie Middlebrook and Cindy Peterson instead. The whole time, they compared tissue boxes and names of crayon colors and how the handles on left-handed scissors were different from the handles on right-handed scissors.

  When the bus driver let them off at Colter Elementary, Theia heard a car honk. She turned around. There was Mama’s beige Chevrolet Impala. She’d followed the bus all the way to school.

  Theia waved.

  Mama waved back.

  Theia walked through the glass front doors of Colter School thinking she’d never have to be afraid of anything again.

  Chapter One

  Thirty-five Years Later

  In the basement of the Pink Garter Plaza, the day finally arrived—as it arrived every year—for the Nutcracker rehearsals to begin.

  Party-scene dancers and clowns crowded into dressing rooms, giggling and jamming on ballet slippers that had grown two sizes tight over the summer. Angels and mice played boisterous tag, weaving in and out among everyone’s legs, around the furniture, under the restroom doors. Little girls, with their hair finger-combed into haphazard buns, all wearing tights with knees that hadn’t come quite as clean as they ought, running amok the way little girls run in every hallway in every dance studio in every town.

  Behind them came their mothers, lugging younger siblings, toting coats and backpacks, handing off crumpled lunch bags that smelled of bologna and greasy potato chips and sharp cheese.

  “Angels in studio one.”

  “Pick up a schedule on your way out.”

  “Mice over here.”

  Nobody could hear over the music, shouts, laughter, and voices in every key. Mothers chattered and waved hello to friends. They dodged one another and hugged in the hallway. Several stopped to watch their daughters warm up through the one-way mirror.

  “We need volunteers!” Mary Levy, a dance teacher, dangled a tape measure in the air. “This may be the only time we have them together in one place. Can somebody take measurements? We’ve got to see if the ears are going to fit.”

  A small group of mothers got the tape and went about measuring heads. They jotted numbers, recounting as they did so the joys and hassles of other dance performances in other years. But after the hoopla had died down, after the confusion had ended and the dancing had begun, only one mother was left waiting outside the one-way mirror. Only one mother stood alone, savoring her daughter’s every glissade, every pirouette and plié, watching as if she couldn’t stand to take her eyes away.

  It wasn’t a difficult dance, this dance of the angels. Theia Harkin McKinnis knew each of the delicate, careful movements by heart. Heidi, her daughter, had danced the role of angel last year. And the year before. And the year before that.

  A door opened across the way, and out came Julie Stevens, the Nutcracker director of performance. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ve been on the telephone. You know what it’s like when you get stuck talking.”

  Muted from behind the glass, Tchaikovsky’s music swelled to its elegant climax before it ebbed away and began again. “Oh no. I’m not worried about the time.” Theia checked the clock above the studio door.

  “Come in my office. We’ll talk.”

  Theia took a seat inside. She folded her arms across her chest as if she needed to protect herself from something. She realized at that moment exactly why she’d come. In this one place, she needed to regain control.

  “I’m here to talk about Heidi’s dancing.”

  “Her dancing in the Nutcracker? She’s been cast in the role of an angel.”

  “She’s danced as an angel for three years.”

  “Do you see that as a problem?”

  In this small town, in another week it would be impossible for anybody not to have heard about Theia’s cancer.

  “Of course there is time,” Dr. Sugden had told her in his office when he’d given them the results of the biopsy. “You have plenty of time to seek out a second opinion, if you’d like. I could even recommend somebody. You have plenty of time to educate yourself. You have plenty of time to develop a survival plan.”

  Even in the dance studio, Theia had to fight to keep the panic out of her voice, just thinking about it. A survival plan. “Heidi wants to dance something different this year. She wants to do something more difficult, something that shows she’s growing up.”

  The dance director picked up a roll of breath mints and ran her fingernail around one mint, popping it loose before she peeled the foil. “Surely you realize that we can’t jostle everyone around once the girls have been cast.”

  “I know it might be difficult, but—”

  “We can’t give every child the part that she dreams of, Mrs. McKinnis. If we did that, we’d have thirty girls dancing the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy and thirty more dancing the role of Marie. Heidi is perfect as our lead angel. Heidi looks like an angel.”

  “She’s the oldest one, in the easiest dance.”

  “She knows the part so well that the younger girls can follow her. That’s why we always put her in the front the way we do.”

  “It is small consolation, standing on the front row in a place where you don’t want to be.”

  “Mrs. McKinnis.” Julie Stevens crunched up her breath mint and reached for another. “I promise that I will make note of this. I promise that I will cast your daughter in a different role next year.”

  There isn’t any guarantee that I will be here next year.

  Heidi didn’t even fit into the angel costume anymore. Every year, some volunteer mom let out and lengthened the burgundy dress with its hoop skirt, its tinsel halo, and its gossamer wings.

  Theia laced her fingers together, her hands a perfect plait in her lap that belied the anger rising in her midsection. The only problem was, she didn’t know exactly who to be angry with. With herself, for letting time slip past without stopping to notice? With Julie Stevens, for holding Heidi back and not letting her blossom?

  With God, for letting cancer slip into her life when she least expected it?

  Theia stood from the chair and didn’t smile. A crazy motto from some deodorant commercial played in her mind: ‘Never let them see you sweat.’ She clutched her purse in front of her and gave a sad little shake of her head. “Miss Stevens, someday you will realize that a child’s heart is more important than the quality of some annual performance.”

  The teenagers in Jackson Hole, the ones still too young to drive, had gotten their freedom this past summer: a paved bike path that ribboned past meadows and neighborhoods, past the middle school and the new post office, clear up to the northern outskirts of town. Kate McKinnis and her best friend, Jaycee, leaned their Rocket Jazz mountain bikes against the side of the house, hurried inside to get sodas, and tromped upstairs to Kate’s room. Jaycee sorted through CDs while Kate put one of her favorites in the disc player.

  ’N Sync belted out their newest number one hit.

  “Turn it up.” Jaycee flopped on the bed and buttressed her chin against a plush rabbit that happened to be in her way. “I love that song.”

  “I can’t. Today’s Saturday. Dad works on his sermons on Saturdays. I have to keep it quiet.”

  “That reeks.”

  “On Saturdays, he waits to hear from the Lord. He doesn’t want to hear ’N Sync instead.” Kate picked a bottle of chartreuse nail polish and handed it to Jaycee. “I’ll do your right hand if you’ll do my left.”

  “Only if I can put it on my toes, too.”

  “I’m kind of worried about my mom. She hasn’t been smiling much lately. And neither has Dad.”

  “My parents do the same thing. Maybe they had a fight. Can I use purple? Do you think it would look stupid if I used both colors?”

  “If it does, you can always take it off.”

  They bent over each other’s splayed fingers and toes, accompanie
d by the constant murmur of the music. Jaycee finished with the purple and screwed on the lid. “Did you hear about Megan Spence? Her parents are letting her drive the car already. She gets her learner’s permit now that she’s fourteen.”

  “I want to drive, too. Just imagine what it’ll be like, Jaycee. We can go anywhere we want.”

  “Megan’s getting her hardship license or something.”

  “Not fair.” Kate waved her nails in the air to dry them and then pulled her hair back with one hand.

  “Let me do that. You’ll get smudges.” Jaycee grabbed the brush, made a quick ponytail in her friend’s hair, and clipped it with a hair claw so it sprang from Kate’s head like a rhododendron. “There.”

  “How do I look?” Kate surveyed both her hair and her upheld green fingernails in the mirror.

  “Like a hottie. Same as me.” Jaycee surveyed her reflection, too. “I bet your parents will be okay. Just wait a few days.”

  “Do you think Sam Hastings is cute?”

  “He rocks. But he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Well, you know, I just like him as a friend.”

  “When I get my license, I’m going to get in the car and just start driving. Just take any road I think looks good.” Jaycee started brushing her own hair, too. “Maybe I’ll drive all the way to Canada. Or Alaska. Or Mars.”

  “You can’t drive to Mars, silly. There aren’t any roads.”

  “I’ll make my own roads. Really, I’ll just start out somewhere and take any road I want, without a map or anything. Just to drive forever and see where I’d end up.”

  “You’d end up lost.”

  “You can’t end up lost, can you, if you don’t need to know where you’re going?”

  It occurred to Joe McKinnis, as he watched the blanket flutter to the grass, that perhaps he hadn’t chosen the best spot for a picnic.