Chapter 19 #2
“Oh, bro. I can take one look at you and know you’re not happy.
I’ve been there, remember?” He started through the kitchen, where Ben was elbow-deep in pretzel dough.
The smell of yeast and salt mixed with the pine tree-scented candle burning atop the piano.
Darren wrinkled his nose at the odd combination.
“Here he is, Lay.” Logan announced Darren’s presence as if Layla had been looking all over for him for hours.
She sprang from the couch—surprisingly agile with the baby in her arms—and engulfed Darren in a hug. He held her for a moment, chuckling at her exuberance.
“How are you?” She held onto his biceps as she stepped back, examining his face. “Oh, he’s bad.”
“I’m fine,” Darren said, casting a glance at Bonnie. She too wore pity in her eyes, and Darren didn’t need that. “Honestly, you guys. I’m okay.”
“So what happened?” Layla asked, and that was the question that launched the next two hours of conversation. By the end of it, Darren was no closer to a solution, but he also didn’t feel like someone had clawed their way into his chest and ripped out his heart.
So, progress.
He went to bed before everyone else after volunteering to help Sam with the early morning chores the next day. In the new and unused bedroom, Darren fell to his knees and prayed. Prayed to express his gratitude for his family. For his safety. For his health.
At the very end, after thanking God for all he’d been given, Darren finally allowed himself to utter, “Please help Farrah.”
It was all he’d been asking for since they’d broken up. He didn’t know exactly what she needed, but the Lord did. He didn’t know how far she’d come, or how far she still had to go. But the Lord did.
And Darren could do this one thing for her.
He hadn’t missed a night of pleading for her in almost two months.
Satisfied with his offering, he climbed into bed and turned out the light.
Farrah lingered in his mind, swirling around as he moved from conscious to unconscious, and he fell asleep with a smile slipping across his lips.
Darren came in from the early morning chores on Thanksgiving Day, his face frozen from the cold. The strong scent of pumpkin pie spice hit him in the gut and he glanced to where Bonnie and Layla stood at the stove, at least five pots and pans covering the burners.
“Oh, there he is.” Bonnie turned and wiped her hands on her apron. “Sam said you would make the table decorations.” She picked up a package of striped shortbread cookies and looked at him expectantly.
Darren had once put together a pilgrim hat from the cookies, miniature peanut butter cups, and frosting. He’d been ten, and his mother had asked him to do it every year until the year she died. That year, Sam had done it, but Darren had picked up the habit again the next year.
His throat tightened at Sam’s thoughtfulness. “Yeah, sure. Of course.”
Bonnie beamed at him and bent to pick up Jackie’s pacifier. She stopped the swing where the baby rocked and stuck it back in the fussy infant’s mouth. “And Sam said you have to pick the Christmas tree for the farmhouse.”
Darren froze. “No, I don’t want to do that.”
Her face fell as she finished tending to Jackie and faced him again. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t live here.” He looked over her shoulder to where Layla stood, stirring but obviously listening. “I’m going to California for Christmas. I won’t even see it.”
“He said your mom put up a huge Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving every year.” Bonnie’s hands flitted around her hair.
“She did,” Darren said. “So?”
“So he wants to do that,” Bonnie said. “While all of you brothers are here. Sort of continue the tradition.”
Layla turned down the heat on one of the burners and said, “We’ll have a teeny, tiny tree to go with our teeny, tiny apartment.” She threw a smile over her shoulder. “So you better get your Christmas tree spirit here.”
Darren didn’t need to get his Christmas tree spirit in Wyoming.
He had a whole farm full of trees in Vermont.
Some pine, just like what they’d find in the forests nearby the farmhouse.
But he didn’t want to argue. Sam wanted to continue their parents’ traditions, and Darren wouldn’t stand in the way of that, even if he wasn’t feeling up to it.
He nodded and gestured downstairs. “I’m going to go shower.
” He escaped downstairs before the women could ask him to stay by making up a chore they needed his help with.
Sam hadn’t come in from the stable yet, and Darren hadn’t seen Logan at all that morning.
He liked to sleep late, and he’d take the afternoon shift with the animals.
By the time Darren went back upstairs to make the pilgrim hats, the living room and kitchen were full of people. Sam sat at the piano and played softly while the women cooked and Ben baked pretzels and Jackie rocked in her swing.
Logan was setting the table, and he gestured Darren over. “So who has Rambo this weekend?”
“He’s with Tucker and Missy.” Darren opened the package of cookies. “He’s doin’ great, Logan. I think he might like me more than you by the time you get back.”
Logan chuckled and folded another napkin.
Darren stared at the embroidered B on the light blue cloth.
A vivid memory spilled forward, rendering him silent for a few moments.
He and Logan had been playing outside one spring day after school.
They were probably in fourth or fifth grade, and they weren’t supposed to play in the equipment barn with the tractors.
But they were, and Logan had sliced open his forearm on a spoke. Darren had run to the house for help and he’d burst in on his mom while she sat in the armchair, her needle flying in and out of that blue cloth, putting in that white, flowery B.
B for Buttars.
She’d brought the napkin with her as she followed him out to the barn. She’d pressed that blue cloth right on Logan’s wound, and then she’d taken him into the house before loading him and Darren into the car and going to the hospital.
She’d left Sam in charge of Ben, and Darren had never seen the napkin again.
“Is that a full set?” he asked Logan, his mouth barely moving.
“What?” Logan reached into a basket and pulled out another napkin.
“Those napkins. How many are there?”
“Twelve.”
Darren nodded. So she’d finished the set and never used them. He wondered why. He wondered what they could’ve been for.
“There are green ones too,” Logan said. “And a set of yellow. And tan. I think mine were the yellow ones.” He folded the corner in, and Darren wondered how he’d learned to do that. “These are Sam’s.”
“We all have a set?”
Logan nodded, obviously not nearly as emotionally invested in this conversation as Darren was. “Yeah. Mom wanted us to be Buttars.” He glanced up. “Don’t you remember her saying that all the time? ‘Be Buttars, you guys. It means something to be a Buttars.’” He chuckled and shook his head.
Darren vaguely remembered that. He couldn’t fathom why he could remember her stitching the napkins and not that she’d made each of her sons a set. Couldn’t immediately recall that she’d always told them it meant something to be a Buttars.
“I think she was right,” Darren said as he smeared the first bit of frosting on the cookie. “It does mean something to be a Buttars.”
Logan nodded, folded the last napkin and set it in place. “Yeah, I think it does too.” He left Darren to finish the table decorations, and then they all sat down to eat.
“All right, all right.” Sam stood at the head of the table the way their father had for each meal. He always shared something that had happened on the farm that day, and Sam looked like he might cry.
“It’s so good to have everyone here.” He glanced at Ben.
“I mean, not everyone.” His eyes landed on Darren too.
“But hopefully, one day, everyone can be here.” He cleared his throat.
“But all the brothers are here, and I think we should go around the table and share one thing we’re grateful for this year. ”
He sat and tucked himself under the table. “I’ll go first. I’m grateful for family.”
“That’s too easy.” Logan scoffed. “I’m grateful for a brother who takes good care of my dog.” He reached for Layla’s hand. “And a wife that lets me follow my dreams.”
Bonnie said she was grateful for new beginnings, her eyes fastened to her baby, and Layla said she was grateful for the opportunity to experience different things. Ben copied Sam, and said he was grateful for family and the chance to be a dad, and then only Darren hadn’t gone.
Everyone looked at him expectantly, and he picked up the pilgrim hat that still looked like a child had made it. “I’m grateful for traditions.”
And he was. He felt steeped in them here at the farmhouse where he’d grown up, and it was one of the things he loved most about the Bybee’s farm.
Jim and Corey had traditions, even if it was simply eating dinner at six o’clock every evening.
And Jim clearing the table. And the two of them singing while they did the dishes.
Darren loved that farm and everything on it because of the rich tradition it held. He wanted to add to it, grow it, cultivate it into his own legacy.
It means something to be a Buttars.
He hadn’t felt whole in a while, like Farrah’s departure from his life had left holes in his soul.
But sitting around the table with his family, some of that ache disappeared.
Still, whenever he thought about who would be by his side as he expanded and enriched the existing traditions at the Bybee farm, it was always Farrah.
Farrah, who had fallen in love with the farm and the boutique almost as fast as Darren had.
So as turkey and mashed potatoes got passed around the table, Darren sent a quick prayer heavenward that Farrah was somewhere safe and inviting this Thanksgiving, and that she’d feel a measure of happiness the same way Darren did.