Chapter 20
Phoebe tugged her sleeves on her blouse down around her wrists and brushed down the front, straightening out a wrinkle and brushing off a piece of string.
She hadn’t worn this blouse in forever, but it was a deep green color that complemented her eyes, and it also flattered her figure, at least she thought it did, when she wore her pencil skirt with it.
Maybe she was a little dressed up to go to the chamber music concert in Sweet Water this evening, but a few days ago, she had mentioned it to Tillman and just casually asked if he’d like to go along.
She hadn’t thought of it as a date and hadn’t really considered telling him about it before.
He said that he had heard about it and wouldn’t mind going at all, and in fact, he’d pick her up and take her.
It...felt a little bit like a date.
Her hands trembled as she took one last look at herself in the mirror. She looked fine, like a woman in her mid-thirties going to something a little bit fancy.
There were streaks of gray in her hair. She could see them even without the light on overhead.
When had she started to get gray? She typically didn’t pay too much attention to her hair at all. She definitely hadn’t while she was homeschooling her siblings. Life had just flown by, and she hadn’t even noticed. Sometimes they didn’t even celebrate her birthday because she didn’t even remember. There were just...other things that were more important.
But now, now that she was maybe hoping to catch the eye of the best man she’d ever met, she saw all the imperfections, the crow’s-feet at her eyes, the blotchy, old skin of her face that makeup didn’t really even out. She could have layered it on a little more, but she had never been good friends with makeup, and it typically didn’t look the way she thought it did when she went out with it on.
She probably shouldn’t have tried at all, but she did put some eyeliner and mascara on. It made her eyes stand out a little more and gave a bit of color to her face so she didn’t feel quite so washed up.
Forty wasn’t that far away. And forty was...old. Really, really old.
Of course, thirty-six was old as well. She could definitely be termed an old maid.
Except, she felt young and almost like she might giggle at any moment. Surely that put her in the category of a schoolgirl?
Except were they even called schoolgirls anymore? She was definitely old.
Everyone else had left, and she was the last person down the stairs. Her siblings and she would all support Claudia with her chamber music, and some of her siblings had actually picked up their instruments and gone to practice, playing in it just to support their sister if nothing else. Although they all enjoyed playing.
It was something their mom had insisted on. She had a background in music, and every child of hers had an instrument thrust into their hands almost before they could walk and had been expected to be diligent about learning to play throughout their childhood.
Some of them had been more diligent than others, but Claudia had been the most diligent of all.
She played several instruments and also had the background in music. Which didn’t exactly come in handy on the ranch, except now that they had a dude ranch, and they sat around the campfire singing songs with their guests, it actually was useful.
Who would have thought?
Wouldn’t her mom be smiling now if she could look down through the windows of heaven and see her children going to a chamber music concert, with most of them playing in it?
The thought had Phoebe smiling as she stepped out on the porch. Tillman had pulled up and parked his pickup, getting out and walking up the steps.
“That’s a pretty smile,” he said.
His compliment made her smile grow bigger.
“I was just thinking about how happy my mom would be to see all of her kids going to a music ensemble led by one of her daughters. With some of them playing in it too. I think she’d be pretty happy.”
“So it’s because of your mom that Claudia has her gift of music?” Tillman asked, holding up the bouquet of wildflowers that she hadn’t noticed in his hand.
“Oh my goodness. They’re beautiful!” she said, taking them from him as she turned toward the door. “You can come in while I put these in water,” she called over her shoulder.
He followed her in, saying, “They’re just wildflowers. I saw them earlier today and thought of you, and I had a little bit of extra time so I grabbed them after I was ready.”
“Well, it’s special. I’m embarrassed to say how long it’s been since anyone’s given me flowers,” she said, finding that she felt a little teared up. Pushing those thoughts out of her head, she focused on the question that he asked. “You said about Claudia having her gift of music from my mom, and it’s true she does. But Mom taught all of us to play instruments, so you could say all of the Clyborne music is because of Mom.”
“That’s a good gift to give to your children. A gift that keeps on giving.”
“Yeah. One that we can use all our lives. When I was younger, I wanted to do gymnastics so bad. I watched the Olympics on TV and was enraptured, but we just couldn’t afford lessons. It was too expensive. And I’m not really built as a gymnast anyway. You kinda have to be short. I might have been okay as a figure skater, but I’m too tall for gymnastics.”
“I don’t know about that. You’re very graceful anyway.”
“I know you’re just trying to make me feel better. But it’s okay. After I got older, I realized that it wouldn’t have worked out, and I would have wasted a lot of time. I would have spent time on something that I couldn’t use past my teens or maybe my twenties if I was very diligent. But music... I can use that for the rest of my life. So can my siblings. And I’ll always think of my mom and be grateful that she insisted. I didn’t always want to practice.”
“I’ve heard that’s the hardest part.”
“Some people love it. Claudia always was very diligent in practicing, and she seemed to enjoy it. Something about the repetition? I’m not sure, but I didn’t have that love, and I hated sitting still, but I wanted to listen to my parents, so I pretty much forced myself. Which, again, I’m glad I did.”
“I’m sure you are. Kind of makes me wish I could make my kids practice an instrument, but...” His voice trailed off, and she felt bad for him but knew there was nothing he could do.
“Have you heard anything?” she asked softly as she arranged the flowers in a vase on the table.
“Not really. I’ve been talking to them every evening, and about three days out of five Nicole has not been up to get them off to school. I don’t think she’s figured out yet that they’re calling me. I told them not to tell her. I hated to do it because I don’t think children should keep secrets from their mom, especially at that age, but I was afraid that she would be angry. And I didn’t want the children to be the object of her wrath when I’m the one who deserves it.”
“You don’t deserve it,” Phoebe said, turning with her brows drawn.
“Yeah. You’re right. Just I’m the one who’s doing the thing that she’d be mad about, but instead of being mad at me, she’d be mad at them.”
“You haven’t heard anything about the boyfriend?”
“No.”
He didn’t seem to be overly upset about it. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask how he felt about Nicole and her boyfriend and the whole situation and if he had the opportunity, would he go back to her?
She supposed it didn’t matter. The evidence that he felt something for Phoebe, something more than...more than he felt for other people anyway, was right in front of her as she arranged the cheerful flowers.
“Thank you so much for these. They’re beautiful.”
“I didn’t realize it was going to make you smile so much. I...feel like I’m getting a little more credit than I deserve for them, but you’re welcome. It was my pleasure.”
Yeah. He did it as a nice gesture. She should not read anything into it.
She tried to remind herself of that as they walked toward the door, and she went out again.
He walked with her to the truck, opening her door, and she murmured a thank you.
“You know, no matter how many nice things I do for you, you never stop saying thank you. I guess it doesn’t matter, but it makes me feel like you appreciate it every time.”
“I do. I hope I don’t get to the point where I don’t appreciate the kind things that people do for me. That... That’s just paying attention to the little things, right? It’s the little moments that make a life, not the big ones. Although we have a tendency to think it’s the other way around.”
“That’s a good point. It’s the little moments that make life.” He spoke like he was thinking. “So that’s why you pay attention to the little things?”
“I guess. Or maybe partly because of my parents too. I spent some time in regret, wishing that I had been kinder or more appreciative of the things that they did. It’s an eye-opener whenever you don’t have them anymore and all the things that you didn’t realize that they did are now in your lap. Not that I did it by myself, Ezra was there, and of course Priscilla too.”
“I see. So it’s just the events of your life that taught you to appreciate the little things.”
He closed her door and walked around. When he got in, she asked, “Why are you asking about that? About where I learned to appreciate the little things?”
“Just some people don’t, you know?” He shrugged, backing up and turning around and starting out of the driveway. “Some people don’t seem to notice what anyone does for them. They never pay attention, and other people seem to notice every little thing. You are a detail person, but even people who notice physical details sometimes don’t notice what other people do.”
“Maybe it’s something we train ourselves for.”
“That’s what I was trying to figure out. I like it. I wish I was more like that, and if I get an opportunity, I’d like to teach my children to pay attention to people. To be grateful. To appreciate the little things.”
“I think sometimes parents really aren’t deliberate about the things that they want to teach their children.” She gave him a rueful glance. “Speaking as a sister who ended up raising my younger siblings. We go day by day, and we get sucked into the catastrophe of the moment, the chaos and fighting and the bickering and nothing ever seems to be what anyone wants and we’re tired and we forget that we actually had things that we wanted to pass on to our kids. And it’s not usually in the big moments that we pass them on. We think we’ll sit everyone down and we’ll be like ‘okay, guys, this is your lesson for today.’ But that’s not when they learn. It’s in the times the kids look at us. How they observe us. They watch us, what we do, and it’s day in, day out, those little moments that teach our children whatever it is that our lives show. And usually that’s not what we want to teach them. It’s just what comes out.”
“That’s pretty deep.” She almost thought it could have been a sarcastic comment, but he said it in a way that made her think that he was actually thinking about it and that he really did think that it was something worth pondering.
“I obviously don’t have children, but I did raise my younger siblings. And all the mistakes I saw my mom making, I thought, ‘oh, I’ll never do that,’ but I ended up doing the same things. And while I was at it, I tried to figure out the things that Mom and Dad would want to teach them. And I realized that they’d already picked up a lot of those things. Not because anyone had ever taught them, but because they’d seen us older kids modeling those behaviors.”
“This makes me really uncomfortable. Because I know that my children’s most vivid memories of me are probably me yelling at their mom. I’d like to justify that and say any sane man would have gone ballistic with things that she had done, but I don’t want my kids thinking that’s okay behavior. And you’re right, I can sit there until I’m blue in the face with them sitting down in front of me and me teaching them the right way to behave, but when they see me responding in the right way, that says so much more than hearing me tell them how it should be.”
“Yes, exactly, and seeing us respond in the wrong way teaches the exact opposite thing of what we want to teach them, but we don’t realize it.”
“It seems so obvious, we should surely know it, but again, life happens in the little things in the small moments, and we have a tendency to miss it.”
“Hmm. I was just thinking today about how life flies away. I can’t believe I’m as old as I am, and I don’t know how I got here. I feel like I should be about fourteen. But I’m more than twice that old.”
“Life does go by fast,” he said thoughtfully as they pulled into the church where the chamber music concert was going to start in just a few minutes. “It seems like it’s really packed,” he murmured as he drove to the back end of the parking lot to find an open space.
“I’m so happy. When Claudia first started, she could hardly get anyone to participate, and it was a real struggle. She was kind of discouraged and a little depressed, and maybe that’s how she and Beau finally got together. He started helping her with this.”
“It must be really good.”
“I think she just chooses fun music, and yeah, they practice a lot and there’s some really great stuff.”
“You wouldn’t expect that from a small town.”
“No, and I think that’s what Claudia was thinking when she did it. Sweet Water could use this. After all, it’s a great place.”
“I saw that this past week when your barn burned down. That wasn’t a good thing, and don’t think that I think it was, but it really impressed upon me the way this community comes together and supports each other. It wasn’t just people giving money, although that would have been really nice, I’m sure, but it was people giving of themselves, their time, their talent, the things that they own and sharing them. Helping out however they could. Whether it was food or a dump truck, it was all here.”
“It was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?”
“It made me think about what kind of man I am.”
“That’s probably a good thing. When we stop and think about how we want to be better, how we want to change, how we want to approach the world and our spot in it. Do we want to just observe? Talk about the things that are happening? Or do we want to put our boots on and go help?”
“Exactly. And obviously, I was helping, but I was being paid for it. There were a lot of people who were there who weren’t being paid, and I wondered if that would ever be me.”
“It doesn’t have to be a community-wide thing. It can be just something that you do for someone else. A little bit of grace. Giving mercy, a smile even.”
“Food is easy. Am I allowed to say that women have it easier than men?”
She laughed. “I don’t think so. After all, there are a lot of people who need help moving or with odd jobs around the house, like cleaning their gutters out, and maybe they can’t afford to hire someone, that are definitely things men can do better than women, although I certainly know how to clean out gutters.”
“I didn’t doubt it for a minute.”
They grinned at each other, and then they got out, meeting at the front of the truck and walking toward the church.
“I’ve really enjoyed the time I’ve gotten to spend with you.” He lifted his shoulder and looked around ruefully. “I just wanted you to know. You’re a great person, and I admire you a lot.”
His comment warmed her to her bones. She tried to be casual. “Thanks. I’ve admired you as well.”
She did not tell him that she specifically admired his shoulders, and his walk, and the way the muscles of his forearms rippled when he worked.
Of course she admired other things in him, like his character and his integrity and his desire to be better, but she grinned a little because those weren’t the first things that came to her mind.
Of course, maybe they weren’t the first things that came to his mind either, her character and her integrity and all those other things. She might not find it so funny if he admitted that to her.