Outside My Window

Spring is only a glimpse away

With holiday seasons in the past

In simple thanks to God we pray

Our labors in usefulness to cast

Give us strength to lift the soil

Plant seeds with loving care

Achieve happiness through our toil

And feel your guidance always there

This quiet, between-the-seasons stage

Is like a hand upon my shoulder

Releasing power to turn the page

And face our new spring bolder.

First thing Monday morning Vivian dropped off the envelope with “Outside My Window” in person to the Spindrift committee office out on RD 4, just past the chocolate factory where Don McAfee had his office. Rather than sending her a mailed response, the committee telephoned her on Wednesday to tell her it had been accepted, and as it had such a timely, springtime theme, they would be printing it in the following Saturday Spindrift column.

Vivian spent all day Thursday and all day Friday smiling and sailing about everywhere she went. Work, Buehler’s, out to the shed to tell her mute husband his dinner was getting cold. You could not wipe the smile from her face. This was more than her usual happiness at having her poetry published in The Daily Record. She’d seen the acceptance from the newspaper as a sign.

The freedom she felt, and the new knowledge that Apple Creek’s Sylvia Emerich had turned her life around, gave her a little hope that maybe she wasn’t as stuck in her life as she’d thought.

Chapter 47

“What on earth would I do with this?” Vivian exclaimed, holding her Mother’s Day gift (what she would later be able to describe as) aloft.

Charlotte had given her mother a brand-new copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary.

“Oh, Mother.” Charlotte rolled her eyes with a little smile, then went up to her room, leaving her parents sitting together on the sofa in the living room.

Vivian placed the dictionary on the coffee table and scooted back against the lipstick-free sofa cushions.

“Edward,” she said. “I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

He frowned and looked at his fingernails, which were still stained and beaten up from the flower window boxes he’d made her.

“Will you just tell me one thing?”

When he didn’t get up from the sofa she continued.

“Did you take that prison guard job so you could keep an eye on him?”

Edward pursed his lips and looked at the floor.

Vivian watched him stare at the carpet for about a minute before giving a slow nod of his head.

“You remember . . .” he began, and Vivian stayed as still as she could so he wouldn’t stop. It was time he said something.

“You remember how you used to talk about those girls who got themselves into trouble before they got married?” He raked his palm back and forth over his forehead a few times, then rubbed the rough, weathered skin on his cheeks and chin. Vivian sat and waited.