Wishing On Dandelions A novel By Mary E. DeMuth Mary E. DeMuth, Inc. P.O. Box 1503 Rockwall, TX 75087 Copyright 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from Mary E. DeMuth, Inc, P.O. Box 1503, Rockwall, TX 75087, www.marydemuth.com. Cover design Mary DeMuth Cover photo by Mary E. DeMuth This novel is a work of fiction. Any people, places or events that may resemble reality are simply coincidental. The book is entirely from the imagination of the author. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from the King James Version (KJV). Other version used: the New American Standard Bible (NASB), copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data DeMuth, Mary E., 1967- Watching the Tree Limbs / Mary E. DeMuth p. cm. Includes biographical references. ISBN-10: 0983436754 ISBN-13: 978-0-9834367-5-1 1. Girls—fiction, 2. Rape victims—fiction 1. Title To those who wish for healing . Acknowledgements atrick, it blesses me that you read my novels, even when you don’t read novels, Pand tell me how they move your heart. I love you. I couldn’t have written this book without the insight of my critique group, Life Sentence. Leslie and D’Ann, thank you for plowing through the first draft with me and offering valuable words of encouragement and clarity. I love our Wednesday phone calls. I only wish I could import you to France! Thank you, prayer team, for faithfully praying me through this book: Kevin and Renee Bailey, Gahlen and Lee Ann Crawford, Suzanne Deshchidn, Colleen Eslinger, Sandi Glahn, Jack and Helen Graves, Kim Griffith, Ed and Sue Harrell, Debbie Hutchison, Katy Raymond, Hud and Nancy McWilliams, Michael and Renee Mills, Kim Moore, Marilyn Neel, Caroline O’Neill, Kathy O’Neill, Don Pape, Catalin and Shannon Popa, Brandy Prince, Tom and Holly Schmidt, Carla Smith, Erin Teske, Jim and Stacey Tomisser, Janet Turner, JR and Ginger Vassar, Rod and Mary Vestal, Rita Warren, Jodie Westfall, Denise Wilhite, Betsy Wil- liams, Jan Winebrenner and Liz Wolf. If this book touches souls, the glory rests on the shoulders of Jesus, on the wings of your prayers. Beth Jusino, you’ve helped make my dream come true. I’m a novelist! Thank you doesn’t seem a big enough sentiment. Sophie, Aidan and Julia, thanks for understanding when I cranked out words upon words. Thanks for “woo-hoo-ing” when I finished. Thanks for being such amazing children. Jesus, thank you for giving me words to write. You’ve re-written my story in so many ways and answered so many wishes. It’s all for You. v Chapter One still can’t tell my story up close, like it was me in it, breathing the tangled Wis- Iteria on the fence posts of Burl, Texas. There are times I still can’t bear to say it was me. The movie of my life continues to flash before me, painful episode by painful episode, like a malevolent comic strip. I get real close to retelling my story, where the screen and I coincide somehow—and that, only when Camilla and I are across from each other, a jug of sweet tea between us in that comfortable place called friendship. It’s Camilla who keeps me honest, who reaches for my wrist when a tear slips through. “It hurts,” she says. “The memories hurt.” She reminds me that I survived that story, and her presence reminds me of its horrid validity. Reminds me in a kind, wild way that this is my story. And that I cannot run from being Maranatha. No matter what I wish. *** Uncle Zane’s stroke changed the landscape of Maranatha’s life four years ago to- day. She was thirteen, then. Gangly with a sinew will of her own—a will she badgered herself about as she pumped her bike toward the scene of her selfishness. He’d looked a bit off when she pestered him. His silvery hair, normally combed and parted in the exact same place, sat unkempt, his part like a winding Burl road. “Camilla and me, well, we want to go to the fair. Can you drive us? Please?” “No,” he’d shouted, an odd outburst for such a quiet man. “C’mon Uncle Zane. Everyone will be there. Besides, Camilla promised we’d shoot the fair—ride every single ride from the merry-go-round to the Zipper. This year I promised her I’d do it without getting sick.” Maranatha remembered every word she spoke to him that day. Every single stupid word. “I said no.” Three words. The last three she’d hear him say for a very long time. She’d almost turned to go in a teenaged huff, but she lingered long enough to see him sit down in the parlor, bend forward, pressing palms to temple. 1 Mary E. DeMuth “We’ll ride our bikes,” she said. “I’ll be back later.” Her words stung even as she said them, particularly because Uncle Zane, the usually reactionless man, looked up at her with a pleading sort of look in his blue eyes. A look that said please stay. She left him there in the parlor. When she found him that night, in the same parlor, he laid prostrate, face kissing the oriental rug, arms and legs outstretched like he was making a prone snow angel. “Wake up,” she heard her voice wail. But he didn’t. Maranatha Winningham. You’d think the name would roll off her tongue, that it would undulate like lazy East Texas hills. Not today. As she pumped the pedals of her overused ten-speed in the summer of 1987, she staccatoed her name. Mara Natha Winning Ham. Mara Natha Winning Ham. Over and over until there lay more road behind her than loomed before her. Penance. She’d learned the word from Bishop Renny, something about trying to make things right by abusing yourself. Said Jesus took all that away. But she knew Jesus would say something different to her, considering how she nearly killed Uncle Zane because of her selfishness. Every year, and several times in between, she pedaled the route she and Ca- milla had pedaled that day. The more her shirt clung to her body in a sticky em- brace, the better she liked it. The hot Burl breeze tangled Maranatha’s hair so that it whipped and wran- gled about her face. She didn’t seem to mind, didn’t even brush a casual hand to her face to clear the hair from her eyes. At seventeen, she welcomed the wildness, wearing her tangles like a needed mask. A gust of sideways wind whipped the mask from her face. In front of her bike tire beckoned a serpentine of gray pave- ment radiating heat. Maranatha passed the out-of-place costume shop on her left, a dilapidated home with faded Santa suits and sequined 20’s dresses in the cracked front win- dow. She pedaled past the farm implement shop whose yard was dotted with ancient rusty plows, leaving the suffocation of Burl behind her. The highway was seldom traveled this time of day, particularly in the 105-degree heat that assailed her forehead with sweat. This strip of road held most of Burl’s broken dreams—a turn of the century white farm house, now converted into a bed and breakfast that no one visited, a hand-painted For Sale sign declaring the dream dead. A mobile home set way 2 Wishing on Dandelions back on a fine piece of property tilted oddly to the left where the cement blocks had deteriorated. A goat stood on its roof, claiming it for himself. Four years ago, children played out front. She and Camilla had even waved to them. She looked down at the bike beneath her—a sorry excuse for transportation. The old Uncle Zane had swung on a wild pendulum from disinterest to overpro- tection the day her name changed from Mara to Maranatha. “No gal of mine’s gonna be driving a car. Might as well throw yourself off the Burl Theater. Cars are danger, Maranatha. Pure danger.” The bike wore a crudely shaped bow on her thirteenth birthday; a hockey helmet hooked around the bike’s frame. Propped near the kickstand were shin guards, “in case you fall,” Uncle Zane said. He’d given her the gift of protection—the very thing she refused to give him four years ago. She glanced down at the too-small bike, despising it, as if it had carried her away from Uncle Zane, held her hostage as she and Camilla pedaled toward the lure of cotton candy and candied apples. She veered to her right onto a gravel driveway flanked by crepe myrtles and stopped, straddling her bike. She listened for cars, but heard only the labored noise of a tractor far away until the engine stopped. The silence roared at her. It should have blessed her with peace; instead she remembered Uncle Zane’s hair askew and wondered why God let her take up space on this world. She looked behind her. A deeper worry, farther back in her head than a Nar- nian wardrobe, played at her, taunting her. Though she never voiced it, she lived with a constant knowing that something would burst from the silence and grab her. She hated that she always looked behind, like some phantom crouched there in the immediate past ready to overtake her.