Chapter 11
Early Tuesday evening, Fred plopped a gift bag on the kitchen island as Eddie was putting chicken nuggets and fries in the oven. He had been up and down and all round in his mind regarding the contents of that bag – and Esther.
Seeing her on Friday night had been painful. Sean’s comments about her being a former best friend had been awkward. But it was true, and that led him back to the gift bag sitting in front of him as he dropped onto a stool next to the island.
Tonight was the Christmas Eve service. The night on which he and Esther had always exchanged gifts. But things were different now.
And he hated it.
“What’s up?” Henry asked as came into the kitchen. He was still wearing his Drummonds’ uniform. He had worked today.
Fred hadn’t, and he wished he would have. Then, he would have been too busy with car things to obsess over Esther – and this stupid present. The one he both wanted to give her and didn’t.
“I don’t know what to do with that.” He pointed at the gift bag.
“What is it?” Eddie asked.
“Remember when we went Christmas shopping, and you were buying a gift for Ava before you were even dating her?”
“Yeah.” His lips curled into a goofy half-grin.
Fred used to think that expression from his more serious twin was sweet.
Now? At this moment? It made him look away because it wasn’t an expression he ever expected to wear himself.
And it kind of crushed him inside. He shook his head.
Not kind of. Did. It did crush him inside.
“Remember how I bought some movie snacks and stickers and stuff at the dollar store for Esther?”
Eddie’s eyes closed and he grimaced. He understood.
“What do I do with them now?”
“Give them to her,” Henry said. “She’s still your friend even if she’s not your girlfriend – and don’t think I don’t know that you wish she was.”
“But what about Steve and –” He clamped his lips closed. Eddie knew about how he had felt God wanted him to step away from Esther, but Henry didn’t.
Henry’s left eyebrow rose in interest. “Steve’s going to have to get over it,” he said.
“Your tradition can change next year – IF it has to – which it may or may not. They aren’t married yet.
” He paused and smirked. “Unless the part of what you were going to say, that you don’t want to tell me, has some bearing here. ”
Fred blew out a breath. He didn’t have the heart or energy to go to battle over something Henry would eventually discover. He always did. He was relentless and wickedly good at figuring things out. “I heard God say to step away.”
Both of Henry’s eyebrows rose – high – as he whistled like a slow leak in an old tire.
“That’s why I’m quitting the worship team,” Fred added.
“Hold up. What?” Henry stood next to the dishwasher with an empty sandwich container suspended above where he was going to put it.
“I’m stepping back wherever Esther is concerned.”
Henry shook his head as if stunned. “Completely?”
Fred nodded.
Henry’s container finally made its way, slowly and deliberately, into the top rack of the dishwasher. That meant his older brother was thinking about what he’d just heard, because Henry wasn’t normally slow and deliberate about dishes. That was Eddie’s thing.
“I told him that he might be taking it a bit too far.” Eddie was now leaning against the other side of the island. “Stepping back does not mean cutting out.”
Fred dropped his head into his hands so that if his eyes weren’t covered by his palms, they’d be looking at the countertop. He didn’t want to see Eddie’s lecturing look or Henry’s concerned but thoughtful one. He just wanted to be miserable and have that misery justified by someone.
“Neither of you know what it’s like to give up the person you love.” He drew and released a breath. This was going to be the worst Christmas ever.
“We’ve both felt the panic of losing our ladies. So, give us some credit.” Henry said.
Fred huffed as he raised his head so he could glare at his older brother.
“I’m not sure that counts.” He should have called Brandon.
Brandon would have commiserated rather than trying to fix anything.
Why did Henry always need to fix things?
And Eddie wasn’t much better because he always had to have the correct answer.
He huffed again and shook his head. “All you felt was a momentary panic. Neither Ava nor Trish was dating Steve.”
Henry gave him a longsuffering look that included a roll of his eyes. “Do you remember when Lacey broke up with Will?”
Reluctantly, Fred nodded. He didn’t want to give Henry an opening to make a point.
“You should’ve seen him. He was a mess when Gran made me go find him because she was worried about Lacey.
His ‘momentary panic’ – ” He surrounded the word with air quotes.
“— As you call it, was devastating. His heart was shattered. For that matter, my own would have been in pieces if I hadn’t been so worried about Trish when she took off, and you know more than I do that Eddie felt Ava’s words deeply. ”
As expected, Henry was right, but at the moment, Fred didn’t want him to be.
“But it still stands that none of you had to listen to your girlfriends talk about hoping to date and maybe marry someone else.” He shook his head and looked at the ceiling.
Tears were unmanly, and he willed them to stay away.
“At least they WERE your girlfriends. I haven’t even gotten to have that! ”
“Do you really love her?” Henry’s question was soft but firm.
“Yes. I’ve tried not to. You know I’ve gone on dates with other ladies.
” Several. And none of those dates had ever amounted to anything more than meet up to get coffee because none of those women had been Esther.
His heart simply was not available. It had screamed it at him each and every time he had attempted to tell it that it was mistaken.
“Then, stop trying not to,” Henry retorted.
“But I’m not her choice.”
“And exactly how do you know that? Does she even realize you’re more than her best friend and a choice she could make?”
“He asked her out in grade eleven,” Eddie inserted. “She turned him down.”
Henry looked between them in surprise. “Oh, man, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But… and you’re going to hate me for this… I’m going to ask it again: Does she even know that you’re still a choice she could make? Does she seem truly happy with Steve?”
Did she?
Was she?
If only Fred knew the answer to either of those questions.
His shoulders drooped. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Maybe? Maybe not? But shouldn’t she be given a chance to find out if she could be happy with Steve without me getting in the way?
” At least, at present, she didn’t hate him.
If she still didn’t want him, AND he messed up her chances with Steve, she just might despise him.
Henry looked at the clock on the wall. “I have to run and change my clothes before we eat, but before I go, I just have one more thing to say. If that’s how you feel, then, I don’t know if you love her enough.” He gave Fred’s shoulder a thump with his fist before he hurried towards his room.
Fred just stared after him. How was he not loving Esther enough?
Wasn’t he sacrificing for her happiness?
Wasn’t he letting her make her own choice without pressuring her into anything?
Esther could be easily swayed sometimes.
She liked making people happy. She liked feeling like she fit in, rather than being the odd one out.
Fred wasn’t about to make her feel pressured to choose to either date him or hate him.
Henry didn’t know what he was talking about.
“He’s right,” Eddie said softly. “I put myself out there for Ava. And we both know that Henry would have chased Trish to wherever she was going and begged her to come back to Hatfield Falls. And Will? Well, imagine how much it took for him to put himself in a place where he could have failed spectacularly.”
Fred shook his head. Maybe he was wrong. Henry’s opinion he could toss aside more easily than Eddie’s. “But you’d all been accepted once.”
Eddie huffed. “You’re supposed to be the more confident twin.”
Fred chuckled and shrugged. “I’ve never not known what to do before.” Because nothing had been this scary to get wrong before.
“Do you really think that Steve is going to make her happy?” Eddie asked. “Does she seem that way? Didn’t you say that it looked like she wanted to cry when Sean called her your former best friend?”
“No. Maybe. And yeah.” It had taken a great deal of strength to not ask her if she was okay Friday night. To not find a way to make her smile. To not tell Sean to take it back. To not say she was still the other half of his whole. He scrubbed his face. “So, I’ll give this gift to her?”
“Yeah, I think you should.” Eddie turned to take the food out of the oven just as Henry came rushing back into the kitchen with his pants up but not zipped, his belt hanging loose, and his shirt tails hanging out. He tossed his sweater on the counter.
“The lost sheep,” he said as he tucked his shirt into his pants. “The shepherd left the ninety-nine to go find it. Or the lady with the lost coin who swept her house looking for it.”
Fred cast a concerned look at Eddie. “Do you know why he’s spouting Bible stories?”
Eddie shook his head.
Henry grunted. “If you’d let me explain, you’d know.” He was now buckling his belt.
“Those things were of great value to them just like Esther is to you.” His last words were slightly muffled by the sweater he had over his head. “They didn’t just throw up their hands and say, ‘oh, well, guess I should do without.’ They went after those precious items.”
“But God didn’t tell them to step back from those things.”
Henry stilled in his process of straightening his sweater so he could glare at Fred. “Do. You. Love. Her?”
Fred nodded. “I have since grade four. But to love her, I have to give her a choice. I can’t just go toss her over my shoulder like a lost lamb and cart her off to marry me.”
Henry laughed. “I suppose you’re right there. So maybe my analogy isn’t as good as it sounded a minute ago in my room.”
“No,” Eddie inserted. “It’s not bad. The idea that something precious is something you search for and attempt to reclaim isn’t totally off. And I think you can let Esther know that you still care for her and step away.”
He had pulled out his phone and was swiping at something.
“The story after the lost coin is the one about the lost son.” He showed his screen to Fred.
“I’m pretty sure that the father seeing his son a long way off wasn’t just an accident.
I bet he had been watching for him, so he could run to him when he did come home. ”
He rubbed his neck. “I’m not sure Dad would use these passages in the way we are, but I don’t know. There was love there and determination. This is like what you did with Sean.”
“What did he do with Sean?” Henry asked as peeked at the food in the oven. The food that Eddie hadn’t yet taken out to flip because Henry had distracted him. “Want me to flip these?”
“Sure.” Eddie stuffed his phone back in his pocket. “You want to tell him about Sean, or should I?”
It was Fred’s turn to take out his phone.
“I’ll do it.” He tapped Sean’s name in his messages app.
“The other day, Sean said something to me at work about God and said, ‘If God wants me to know Him, why doesn’t He call me up and tell me?’ So, I sent him this.
” He slid his phone across the island so Henry could read the text he had sent to Sean.
“So, we’re going to read a Bible plan together after Christmas using the Bible app. I haven’t picked it yet though.”
Henry smiled as he read the text message on Fred’s phone. “Way to go, little bro.” He slid Fred’s phone back to him. “And, as always, Eddie is the smartest. This is exactly what you have to do with Esther. Put the option out there – just like you did here – and then, let her make her choice.”
“I don’t know.”
“What? You doubt Eddie?” Henry teased. “He’s never wrong.”
Fred gave him an exasperated look. “There was that whole romance is garbage thing that wasn’t true.”
“I never said romance was garbage,” Eddie retorted.
“Maybe not in those words, but you were still wrong about it.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to be wrong about this. Not even a little. I don’t want to completely lose her.”
“From where I’m standing,” Henry said, “you already have. If you don’t do something, she’s going to choose someone who isn’t you.
It might be Steve. It might be someone else.
Man up, dude, and get in the game – or you know what the Great One says, at least according to the poster in Mr. Lively’s room in grade six.
‘You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take.’ I spent so much time staring at the posters on his wall. Wonder if he still puts that one up? I should ask Esther.”
Fred drew in a silent breath as his head bobbed up and down. He’d take a shot. “So, I’ll give her this gift.”
“That’s a start,” Eddie said.
“And maybe…” Fred’s heart was beginning to rev up its rhythm. “Maybe, I’ll include a choice.”