Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Seth
I was on the phone with the feed shop and looking for my last bill, so instead of going into my home office, I opened the door right next to it. I wasn’t paying attention.
My heart nearly ripped out of my chest at the sight of the nursery. The thick layer of dust that covered everything made guilt bloom inside my chest. Why hadn’t I cleaned up in here? And why did I still keep this stuff set up?
“Seth?” Clint called into the phone, and it felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart.
“Just send me ten percent more feed than last month. I want to start saving for winter if there are shortages,” I mumbled into the phone.
“You got it. See you next week.” He hung up, and I slipped the phone into my back pocket, entering the room as a blanket of sorrow weighed on me.
I walked over to the white crib and used my hand to sweep off the dust. My gaze fell to the tan rocking chair where Scarlett had sat, weak with cancer and pregnant with our daughter, as she watched me put the crib together.
The pregnancy and the stage-four ovarian cancer diagnosis had all come within the same week.
We chose not to terminate the baby or do chemo because that would have harmed the baby.
So, as the cancer grew, so did our little girl.
It was the cruelest position I’d ever been put in. Kill my child to try to save my wife?
I couldn’t do it. Neither could Scarlett.
And in the end, the Lord took both of them.
A sob built in my chest and then burst from my lips. My grief was bone dry at times and then a well overflowing at others.
This room, our dream of starting a family, was something I couldn’t let go of yet. I’d taken all of Scarlett’s clothes out of the closet within the year of her passing, but the pink onesie that said ‘papa…’ I just couldn’t bear to put in a box.
‘Lord, give me strength,’ I prayed as my grief subsided, and I walked over to the hallway laundry room to grab a bottle of cleaning spray and paper towels.
I had a cleaning lady, Monica, who came once a month, but she knew not to go in here.
Which meant it was my responsibility to tidy up.
Over the next half hour, I wiped down all the dust on the crib, the dresser, the windowsill, and the little bookshelf.
I vacuumed and placed my hand on the rocking chair.
“Promise me that, when I go home to be with God, you’ll love again.”
They were Scarlett’s last words to me, ones that haunted me now because I was so lonely.
With a sigh, I closed the nursery room door and went out to the barn to check in with my farmhands.