Page 1 of Sean
Chapter 1
Friday, November 1st, Marion, Ohio
“Insert the orange-tipped wires into the orange holes.”Sean shook his head as he read the faded instructions aloud, squinting at the project before him.What orange?There wasn’t any orange or any of the other four colors that the ragged booklet mentioned.Stupid tree had been a twenty-dollar garage sale find four years ago, but there was no telling how old it really was.Any color that might have existed when it was new was long gone.
Its age hadn’t mattered to his wife though.Brittany had fallen in love with the look of the flocked branches, convinced that a new one would cost five times what the used one did.Sean remembered the pleading look in her emerald green eyes on that warm June day.He’d been frustrated at the time, and he was frustrated now.Even so, the memory was one he treasured.
They’d set out that morning, as they often did, for a drive through the Ohio countryside.There was no set plan other than to see where the road took them.Maybe they’d stop at an Amish community for lunch.Maybe they’d grab sandwiches at a fast-food joint and find a pretty roadside park.Fifty miles from home, they’d spotted the garage sale sign and the tree standing tall in the driveway.Brittany’s insistence that they haul the thing home had irritated Sean.They’d been driving his compact car.How were they supposed to fit a huge box of Christmas greenery into such a small space?
But for Brittany, he’d made a way.
For Brittany, he’d always made a way.
Love was like that.
His attention came back to the scattered piles of artificial green and white foliage.How had she always managed to make it look perfect?
Dumb question.
Christmas had been her favorite time of the year with bits and pieces of North Pole décor on display right next to her meager collection of fall and Thanksgiving decorations.For some, the first Saturday in November might be the time to sort through jack-o-lanterns and scarecrows, but for Brittany it meant the beginning of Christmas, complete with the tree.Sean’s arguments about each holiday having its own season amounted to nothing.For Brittany, having the Christmas tree standing in the corner was just one more thing to be grateful for while they enjoyed their Thanksgiving dinner.
Sean looked around the duplex.The living room bled neatly into the kitchen.Brick walls painted white added a sense of spaciousness to the rooms and blended neatly with the white appliances in the kitchen.The living room furniture, upholstered in dark brown microfiber, a wedding gift from Sean’s mom and dad, was just beginning to show the wear of daily use and was saved from being drab by the colorful pillows Brittany had found at the local department store.
He closed his eyes.Once the tree was up, he’d have to locate the red-and-white Christmas pillows his wife had loved so much.That would be all he could handle tonight.
For about the forty millionth time in the last three hundred fifteen days, Sean’s sigh turned into a pointless prayer.
Why God?Why would You take her away from us?
Theushad him jerking back to the present.
His ten-and-a-half-month-old son, Jace, slept down the hall.Before he woke in the morning, the living room would be transformed into the winter wonderland the mother he’d never know would want for him.
He owed it to his wife to keep her traditions alive.
Sean studied the branches that he’d scattered across the floor.Some were plain, some had plastic red berries attached to the end, and some had a pinecone.He could do this.
The shorter ones went on top, then they increased in size toward the bottom rows.He just needed to count the holes in the tree trunk and make some piles.He was a college graduate.His degree might be in Theology, but how hard could this be?
Thirty minutes later, he stood in the middle of the same mess, tempted to admit defeat.Whatever system Brittany’d had for assembling this tree escaped him.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Sean stuffed the bits and pieces back into the box.
He’d buy a new tree tomorrow.Jace was too young to know the difference anyway.Maybe he and his son needed a few new traditions.Maybe, if he tried really hard, mid-December could come to be more about Jace’s birthday than the anniversary of Brittany’s death.
Sean’s phone rang, and he glanced at the screen.
What was it about mothers?If he didn’t know better, he’d think God was watching out for him, nudging Mom to call right when he needed her loving, steady presence.
I hold you in My hands, son.
The limb Sean held slipped from his fingers as a tear ran from the corner of his eye.He wasn’t going there.If God cared anything about him, he wouldn’t be raising a baby by himself.
He waited through four more rings.As much as he might need the sound of his mother’s voice tonight, he didn’t need his parents feeling sorrier for him than they already did.
“Da.”
And now Jace was awake.
