Mara showed up on my doorstep looking like a wounded bird. On a summer night when I was already grieving my own clipped wings.
I’d bought the Everwood only a few months earlier and though I knew it was where I needed to be—even wanted to be—I missed George so terribly that day. Missed our adventures. Wondered if it would take longer than planned to learn how to settle.
But then Mara knocked and it was as if God said, “Here, Lenora, receive this reminder as the gift it is. Your grounding has more of a purpose than you think.”
And so I did.
I opened my door to a woman with beautiful red hair and I saw her bruises, both inside and out. My heart did that thing George used to tease me about . . . reach for the closest hurting soul and hold on tight. In fact, it’s what I’d prayed for after George died—that God would give me someone to focus on rather than myself and my newfound solitude. A new family.
I like to think that if I’d ever had children of my own, once in a while even as adults they’d need me the way Mara Bristol needed me that night.
The way I wish I’d let myself need my parents. Instead, George became my world the day we married. Why didn’t I think there was room for both? Or maybe it’s not fair to blame our romance and the carefree lives we lived—all that travel—for the distance between me and my parents.
Maybe it was always there.
There’s so much I’ve never understood about them, you see. Why we left Maple Valley so suddenly when I was six. Why I had no grandparents or cousins or aunts and uncles. Why Dad never talked of his past and why we only ever heard the same few stories about Mom’s childhood.
George teased me about that too—my wonderings. He used to say I could find a mystery in anything. And I would laugh and allow my questions to retreat, huddle up and wait, tucked away for another day.
But George is gone now. And “another day” finally became “today.”
My questions led me to the Everwood, once my childhood home.
And the answers ripped me away all over again.
But first . . . there was Mara. My wounded bird.
I learned some things about her right away that first night. For starters, no one had ever made that girl a proper cup of tea before. I saw the way she accepted the saucer when I handed it to her—that pinched expression that said she’d never liked the stuff but would drink it out of politeness. And then, surprise of all surprises, she discovered she liked it. That’s what a suitable steeping and just the right amount of milk and honey will do.
I learned she hailed from Arizona. Then Texas, Ohio, Illinois. I’m not sure she ever meant Iowa to be a stopping point. But she was out of money by the time she arrived at the Everwood.
Oh, and she didn’t like cats.
It took longer to learn the rest. I’d known she was running but it was weeks before I’d discover why. Months before she’d share all of it . . .
Many days I knew it was best to keep things light. So I’d tell her about George’s and my travels. Or chuckle at the strange delight she took in mixing her own cleaning products and dusting one room after another. Or I’d ply her with questions about the children she nannied.
“What made you decide to become a nanny?” I asked her one afternoon as we sat in the two dining room chairs we’d dragged into the kitchen. Yellowed linoleum still covered the kitchen floor, though it’d started curling up in one corner. The cabinets were an outdated shade of walnut, three of their doors and one drawer missing their handles. Rust stained the sink.
I’d always planned to update the kitchen first. But before Mara’s arrival, it’d seemed too hefty a task for a lone, old woman. Realization had begun to settle in, as well—the financial kind. I had enough money to redo this kitchen but only just. Until Mara joined me, many was the morning I’d awoken with the same first thought: What have I gotten myself into?
But that afternoon, myself reinvigorated and Mara more at peace than I’d seen her since that first July night, we had decided to make a list of all that needed to happen to modernize and beautify the kitchen.
She considered my question for a few quiet moments then shrugged. “I don’t know if I ever really decided to become a nanny at all. I’d been working as a housekeeper at a hotel in Phoenix for almost a year after graduating high school. I heard some guests talking about needing a nanny for the summer. Just drifted into it, I guess.”
She smoothed her hand over the notebook in her lap as she spoke, its open page displaying her crinkled handwriting—notes about keeping and painting the existing cupboards, replacing doors, flooring, curtains, appliances.
“It’s kind of funny, really. I don’t know that I ever really thought of myself as someone who loves kids. I don’t not love them, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a strong maternal instinct like other girls.”
I pulled a dripping teabag from my mug. “I think probably what you have is a caretaking instinct. A gift, really.”
“I’m not a gifted person, Lenora. Never have been.” She said it with all the nonchalance in the world.
I felt the same old compassionate twitch of my heartstrings and was sure—just sure—that somewhere George was smiling. “Mara, my dear, I have watched you run a rag over woodwork with more care than I used to take cleaning my camera lenses.”
“Because I’m weird and I like cleaning.”
“No, because you take care of things that matter to you. You’re a born caretaker. You’ve even taken care of me.”
“You’ve got that completely backward, Lenora. If anything, you’ve taken care of me.”
“Yes, well, you don’t know how many times before you showed up here, I was ready to give up on this old place. It’s been hard to keep seeing its hidden beauty amid all the work of it. In helping me care for it, you are caring for me.”
She gave a little laugh and said something about how helping around the Everwood was the least she could do. And then, we went back to our list-making.
So many conversations followed in the weeks after that while we sanded and painted the old kitchen cupboards. Pulled out that ugly linoleum floor. Perused appliances and countertops in magazines and online. Although it didn’t escape me, not in the slightest, the way Mara hid herself away when the deliverymen happened by.
A person can’t hide forever. This, I know. But we all need a safe haven now and then.
The Everwood had been that once to my family, though I hadn’t known it at the time. I was only beginning to untangle the unknown strands of my childhood when Mara landed in my life.
But the Everwood was meant to be her refuge too. I felt it deep in my bones . . . deeper than the brittle cold of an Iowa winter.
So I let her stay. And I loved her. I loved her in every way I knew how. Like a mother and a friend. Both in silence and in words. In home-cooked meals and a room of her own and occasional efforts to open up her eyes to her own inner qualities, her strengths.
Such a gift it was. To watch a hungry spirit begin to heal right in front of me. She might very well discover her wings again one of these days. Just thinking about it brings me joy.
There might be little hope left for me, but I have all the hope in the world for her.
And maybe that, I tell myself now in this strained haze where the light can’t seem to get in, is enough.