Second Chance with Love (9 page)

When Nathan left, she spent the entire day feeling skittish. Watching out for him while working on arts and craft with the children. Seeing the children's eagerness to expressive their artistic creations, of pictures made from foil and paper, made her think about how proud Nathan was of her photographs, how it first inspired her, and his expectations about her love for art. The children were not exposed to vanity and pride. Even in Aaron, she often marveled at the sense of innocence and joy that seemed to shine from him. He enjoyed painting, drawing, and dancing. Didn't Jesus call upon us to become like children?

She had been prepared for him to put up a fight. It surprised her that he visibly wilted when she stared at him. She had not been prepared for a confrontation and she felt shock when he approached. But judging from the way Nathan reacted, she must have looked menacing. Nothing was further from the truth. If Nathan pushed too hard, she would never withstand his overwhelming character. Yet Nathan had backed down, retreated, and left. Was this the Nathan of five years ago?

Although she knew Nathan's team would be away for at least a week, she remained alert, constantly on edge, finding that she jittered and jumped when someone tapped her shoulder or the moment someone called her name. Her heightened nerves were not helped by Charles' presence.

Charles took every opportunity to be around Hilda. Even though his group was assigned to teach the gospel to villages, Charles found any excuse to get involved with Hilda's tasks. Normally when Charles encroached on her work, she voiced her feelings of dissatisfaction that he intentionally undermined her authority. But, as Charles somehow ended up teaching the Kid Club beside her, she welcomed it. She thought he would serve as a repellent if Nathan should come back around.

Hilda, told herself that she wouldn't lie to Nathan, but she was not in a hurry to divest him of the assumption he had made about her and Charles being a couple. If Nathan believed her and Charles were an item, then he would not bother her. The Nathan she remembered had a big ego but was also respectful of other people's boundaries.

"Are you going to join us for dinner?" It was Abigail. She was standing behind Hilda, who looked out at the landscape and saw it suffused with the veiling evening. A heavy stillness made Hilda wish she could capture the filtered light.

" Afraid not." Hilda stretched, "I'm not hungry."

"Seriously? You've had nothing since lunch."

"It's normally like that before I see my mother. I get so anxious that I lose my appetite."

"Wow, no offense but your mom sounds really scary."

Hilda shook her head. "She's not, really. Plus, it's been a week since I've hugged Aaron. That's part of it, I guess." Of course Nathan was a large part of her anxiety as well. If he returned and saw Aaron, there was a chance he'd make the connection. With her mother here, Nathan, and Charles, Hilda feared pandemonium.

Abigail hugged Hilda and walked back to the dinner hall. Hilda walked back to the hotel. Getting back to her room, she sat at the foot of the bunk and hugged her knees. Her mind flashed back to her father's letter. She wondered how much of a disappointment she would be if he were alive to see her life now.

As little girl she removed the letter from beneath her pillow to read it over and she would follow all of the guidelines to the letter. Her mother would scoff at her over the years for reading the letter. She told Hilda to be realistic and don't try to be the girl in the letter, as it was impossible and they were written by someone was not in his right mind at the time. Hilda kept in her heart that her father was in his right mind when he wrote the letter and that her mother was just hurt.

One day Hilda returned from middle school, looking for her letter after a group had teased her because of her red hair. Hilda felt like a freak and out of place. Her father's letter provided her with comfort whenever a bully had upset her. She lifted her pillow – gone. Sometimes she kept it in her bible, but it wasn't there either, and despite ransacking her room, Hilda didn't find it.

How she ever got the courage to check her mother's bedroom, she didn't know. But there it was, in plain sight, on her mother's dresser. Hilda was distraught to learn her mother had taken it, and she was even more upset that when she asked her mother, she had denied it. And Hilda, knowing her mother had it all along and hadn't told her, tainted Hilda's view of her. Hilda took the letter and never mentioned it to her mother. The action was a bold one. It meant she had defied her mother openly. That night Hilda slumped down at the foot of her bed. She used a flashlight to read her father's words.
Be a good girl for your mother
. It was her first experience of feeling a fraud.

She was a mother now and she still felt like a fraud, she didn't have the letter but she knew her failure to create a good family for Aaron felt even worse than when she took the letter from her mother. Both circumstance, going against her mother by taking the letter from her room and not telling her and not having a father for Aaron both had her sitting up at night, feeling like a fraud and anticipating the arrival of her mother.

God has given her strength to cope without Nathan in her life. But with Nathan's return should he start asking questions, she would have to tell him the truth.

Hilda flipped through her cell phone, seeing pictures of Aaron smiling. Seeing Nathan in his face. Aaron, Nathan's son, was a constant reminder of his father. Not a day went by that she was confronted by Nathan through Aaron.

Taking a deep breath, Hilda got up and grabbed a towel. The bathroom was across the hall. She went into the bathroom and stopped in front of the mirror. As she sat in the bath she tried to relax and forget Nathan and her mother , but it was futile, the tussle of conflicting thoughts ran rampant in her mind.
Aww, I really want to sleep tonight
, Hilda thought. But she knew sleep wasn't going to come easily with her surging fears.
Please mother, if you must stay, just stay away from me
. Hilda chastised herself. How could she think such a thing about her mother? Was this any way to speak of Aaron's grandmother? What if he would develop such bad habits towards his grandmother? God said to honor thy parents, but she dishonored her mother. Before she spiraled down to negative thoughts that would've been impossible to escape, Hilda took a deep breath. She peered into a mirror to see how the dark circles around her eyes made her look like a zombie.

She stared up underneath the top bunk. She knew from this hour onwards she would be waking in fitful spurts, recalling flashes of dreams and regrets that would seem so real in the night. Some of what haunted her sleep would be actual memories that would shame her and some would be her imagination going into overdrive. Either way, both were going to suck. And she didn't look forward to the morning feeling of grogginess and lethargy.

Hilda was crying. She picked Aaron up, holding him, hugging him. She closed her eyes and exhaled, certain no one saw the thin tears. She had practiced this over the years, crying in public. Abigail, Charles, church members Rosa and Carlos had driven Aaron from the airport. Hilda would have been there when the plane came in, but she had to go into the village and.

"I see you are looking thin as ever, Hilda." The words were followed by a tut and a long sigh that cut like a knife edge. Hilda turned towards a face which, but for the peppery gray hairs and wrinkles, resembled her own.

"Hello, mother." Hilda hugged her mother.

That morning before Hilda had dragged herself out of bed, then collapsed onto her knees and pressed her shaking hands together. Her hands shook from fear, worry and, tiredness. She prayed, "Oh, Lord, please give me strength, patience, and understanding to not react if my mother tries to provoke me into an argument. Nothing I have done has ever pleased her, I am never good enough for her. And I'm afraid her opinions could influence Aaron's perception of me.”

The usual accusations Hilda's mother hurled was that Hilda was an unappreciative, rebellious, and stupid girl. The berating always proved too much for Hilda, causing a migraine to strike and making Hilda feel caged in her pain.

Justine Borja watched Hilda as she read Mark 4:35-40 to to the classroom, where Jesus calmed the storm. Justine pursed her lips at Hilda. Hilda was aware that her mother was watching, her voiced would not stop quavering.

"I respect your decisions Hilda," said her mother in an unusual soft tone. "I just fail to understand what it is you think you'll accomplish on a short term mission trip?"

Hilda gazed in disbelief at the woman who sat kitty-corner to her, arms folded.

"Sorry mother?" Hilda avert her eyes from Rosa's smiling face, just at the point where Rosa twisted to look over at Hilda's mother, at which point the attention of the rest of the children were also pulled toward the corner where her mother sat.

The triumph that pasted Hilda's mother's face never took the form of smile. Had Hilda witnessed her mother smile that moment, she would have been left awestruck, a smile before a verbal assault did not fit her mother. Also, Hilda was unable to remember the last time she saw her mother smile. The triumph that wrapped Hilda's mother's face was conveyed through a permanent scowl.

"A waste of time and money." Hilda's mother leaned back in a chair and folded her arms. "These kids need people who are willing to stay with them beyond a few weeks."

Hilda didn't want her mother embarrassing her. She looked at Aaron who sat at the front. Like everyone else he stared at his grandmother.

"Mother, please I'm trying to teach the class."

"Go ahead then, I'm just giving my opinion.”

Hilda's mother rose slowly and walked out.

Chapter 8

Nathan slumped into a chair by the bed and dropped the bag filled with his dirty overalls by the door. He dressed in shorts and a vest. There was something so great about a hot bath and a soft duvet after his body, caked with mud on the verge of collapse, made a mechanical walk to the bed. However, Nathan's battered feet, stubbornly refused another step, therefore he ended up crumpled at the side of his bed. In the neighboring bed snored Jośe.

The entire week was a system of work where many of the men and women of the different churches worked to tackle water drainage by building ditches for almost every house destroyed by the mudslide. When Nathan saw how much work needed to be done, he threw himself into it with an obsession. The first to the site; the last one to leave. He found himself working alongside a man named Junot, who had an infectious smile, humbling. Jośe translated Junot's tragedy. During the mudslide Junot was helpless as his wife and daughter were carried away in the rapid surge. And now only God knew his daughter and wife's whereabouts. Junot worked hard.

His first task on was described by the splinter-toothed builder as "involved", which he found meant climbing along a rope set over the mass of sweeping earth and materials to look for survivors. Nathan was part of the team who had to search through the wreckage. Piles of rocks and mud had destroyed most houses and caused irreparable damage to others.

"Clearing detritus" was what they called their efforts, which took a lot of work and it got to the point where Nathan's skin felt like scorched earth, his thoughts dry, so each gulp of water become rusted nails, his mouth was a baked.

Meeting Junot and seeing the man's faith in adversity, Nathan didn't know if he would be strong enough if anything happened to Hilda or his…

As Nathan sat in the dark, there persisted a nagging feeling that he was missing something. It was at the back of his mind as if he were unintentionally dismissing the possibility of... of what? Nathan thought to himself,
there's more to Hilda's story than she's telling me
?

Something stirred in the room sending Nathan's senses into overdrive, causing him to flinch.

"Nathan, back so late again?" Jośe's voice floated to Nathan.

"Sorry, if I startled you." Nathan throat was sore from dehydration. "About to crash out and call it a day."

"You'll be back to the hotel tomorrow. I'll return in a few weeks. It's going to take a long time before we can restore the lives of our brothers and sisters."

"I wish I could join you." For Nathan, working with the villagers brought him a sense of purpose, something not experienced since leaving the military.

"You don't want to return to the States? I think your family would miss you, no?"

"I would miss them. But there's a lot of work to be done here."

"Don't you have work back at home?" Jośe sat up, and sat on the side on the bed facing Nathan.

"I’m in venture capital financing at the moment," Nathan had to hold himself back from saying in no longer enjoyed it.

"Oh, that sounds wonderful."

"But I've always been a hands-on kinda guy. In my job, I don't really need to meet my clients anymore."

"Maybe you'll extend your stay? You are such a hard worker. The program needs as many hands as possible." Jośe silhouette seemed to stretch.

"There is something I must tell you." Nathan rubbed his hand over his hair and he pulled on it. The silence was drawn out like a delicate wine “I'm not actually part of a mission program." Saying the words aloud dispelled the illusion of his own making. No longer under the protection of the deception, Nathan could finally understand the fallacy of the arguments he believed rationalized his presence in Guatemala, for her, to resolve the past, re-establish a connection if not a relationship, especially as Charles was her boyfriend. Most of all Nathan wanted to show her that he'd changed, that he was not the dominating, career-driven Nathan she knew five years ago, who in fact didn't know himself. But, sitting in the dark with Jośe passing silent judgment, Nathan realized the he might have not changed at all, expecting Hilda to just accept him in her life was as big a folly as him being here. "I'm sorry for not being honest. It wasn't my intention to dupe you, or anyone for that matter. It's just..." Nathan couldn't say any more. What more was there to say, that he was foolish and impulsive? Testosterone afflicted? That turn up here, he'd hoped maybe...?