Sweet Providence

By Linda K Fairbanks

Tragedy strikes a loving family, but they are not overcome. The Reddick family will build its dream of a special land development. Jesi will be brave and determined enough to fulfill her dream of competing her driving horses at the Advanced level. Her brother, JT is the wild one in the family with his self-centered ways. He plans to take over th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Fairbanks
• Release date: Mar 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781087992747

Book preview

Acknowledgements

My sincere gratitude belongs to those who were so encouraging to me during the long process of getting this book ready for print.

First, Patricia Alexander, the leader of The Writing Support Group this loner joined after trying to do it on my own for years. Her quiet wisdom and tactful manner drew me in and guided me across the finish line.

Also, the other members of the Writing Group, whose extravagant praise was so welcome, even though I knew it was exaggerated.

And my little circle of friends who kept asking about the manuscript and when they could read it: Liz, Pam and Stephanie, thanks for the push.

Also, thanks to my husband Ron, who avoided criticism and impatience during the process.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Jesi at Her Worst

Chapter 2 Jesi at Her Best

Chapter 3 Skill and Goodwill

Chapter 4 Paul at a Difficult Time

Chapter 5 The Joy of Work (Hillwood, 1994)

Chapter 6 Begin the Games!

Chapter 7 The Fun Begins!

Chapter 8 Thrills and Spills

Chapter 9 An Afterglow

Chapter 10 Friendships Forming

Chapter 11 February Storms

Chapter 12 Self Defense

Chapter 13 Show and Tell

Chapter 14 Run Away

Chapter 15 Anticipation

Chapter 16 Romantic Distraction

Chapter 17 Circle the Wagons

Chapter 18 Daring to Grow

Chapter 19 Blossoming Love

Chapter 20 Puzzle Pieces

Chapter 21 Reunion

Chapter 22 Hide and Seek

Chapter 23 Relief and Misery

Chapter 24 Mind Made Up

Chapter 25 Know Thyself

Chapter 26 Connecting the Dots

Chapter 27 Life Smooths Out

Chapter 28 Their Big Day

Chapter 29 Horseman’s Honeymoon

Chapter 30 Mountain Mischief

About the Author

Chapter 1

Jesi at Her Worst

Jessica Reddick learned some hard lessons while she was a teenager.

She began as the happy and well-loved daughter of Rose and Jack Reddick. She had friends, was a good student, and enjoyed horseback riding. Her expectations for her life were high.

She shared her plans with her parents: I will go to the community college and get a BA in Business Administration. That will make me a valuable addition to your Hillwood staff, so I’ll have just the job I want right out of college. And I can live at home and be close to my horses…oh, and you! Rose smiled and squeezed Jesi’s shoulders. And you think we’ll let you live at home through college?

Jack responded with mock outrage. Hey! I wouldn’t let her live anywhere else!

The Reddick’s were a close family unit. Jesi’s older brother by five years, JT, was already gone to college to be a civil engineer. He found it hard to be as demonstrative as Jesi with his love for his family. In fact, he tried to live an almost separate life from them.

His interests centered around airplanes, model size and full size. He was obsessed with them actually and had little time for anything else. His parents promised him that when he graduated with a degree and got his civil engineer license, they would buy him a real airplane.

This generosity spoke of how Rose and Jack missed the affection of their son and hoped to win his heart. Besides, it balanced the magnitude of the gift of a horse and stable to Jesi a year before.

The Reddicks lived in Clovis, California, a small town near Fresno in the Central Valley. The magnificent Sierra Nevada mountains guarded the valley from the north and tapered slowly down to foothills to the West. The Reddick family and a few close friends, one of them the Greyson family, shared the burgeoning dream of a housing development, catering to people with horses and with plentiful open space. They called it Hillwood. The design would foster a sense of peace and the mission statement would name the ultimate source of that peace, Jesus Christ, and his teachings, such as the Beatitudes.

Rose and Jack had known the Greysons for forty years, a relationship centered around their shared Catholic faith. When Hillwood Corporation was formed, the Greysons and the Erways became partners with the Reddicks. Dr. Amelia Hart and her husband, devoted Episcopalians, also joined the Corporation.

Suddenly, tragedy touched the family one Saturday night when Jesi and her mother went for a girl’s afternoon out. That fateful day, Jesi and her mother Rose were on their way home from an afternoon trip to Fresno. They had enjoyed shopping, an evening mass and dinner with the Greysons and their son Bill. Jesi’s best friend, Mara was also there, but Mara’s attention was on Bill, her sweetheart.

This trip home was not late – it was only around 9:30 as Jesi drove the family car toward their home in Clovis.

Jesi never saw the vehicle that hit them. Her head was slammed into the steering wheel, then backward into the door post, and she was knocked unconscious. The impact from the truck was into the passenger side door and Jesi’s beloved mother Rose died instantly as their little car spun into a hefty oak tree beside the road. The car struck the tree with its left front, which tore metal and pushed the engine straight at Jesi. She was crushed and pinned, indistinguishable in the dark from the jagged, crumpled steel around her. The driver of the truck didn’t survive.

For months afterwards there was a maddening gap in her memory. She believed she had made a driving mistake and caused the accident. She assumed that she must have pulled out in front of the truck that hit them. She felt shame, guilt, and horror. She imagined many scenarios with a variety of errors she might have made that could have led to her mother’s death that night.

And nobody was able or willing to tell her otherwise.

There were no witnesses who had lived, other than herself. They were alone on that dark road. Soon, another driver came along and fortunately had a fire extinguisher. He could not see Jesi or Rose through the flames, but knew someone must be behind the steering wheel, so he attacked the fire as best he could. There was no doubt that this Good Samaritan saved Jesi from death.

Why was there no report on the cause of the accident?

Jesi was left seeing herself as the murderer of two people. The loss of her mother tore violently into her heart. She tried to feel proper grief for the other driver but could not picture someone about whom she knew nothing. Adding to all this was the horrible pain of her condition, the frequent surgeries and what she saw as her own isolation. Her father and her friends could not comfort her, as much as they tried.

The injuries to her left arm, left leg and torso were heavily bandaged and her limbs elevated. Over time, Jesi’s conscience tried to gather the flitting images from that night into reliable memories.

I’m so mixed up! Jesi would think to herself. I don’t know which is a memory or which is imagination or, or, what. Perhaps I’ll die, and then at least it will be over. Until then, I just want to sleep.

It took over a year for her to accept that she was doomed to live, permanently changed. The scars on her skin and her no longer flexible muscles felt painfully tight and restricting as she listlessly started the agonizing rehab work the hospital staff gently wheedled and forced on her.

The shock stayed with her for weeks, then self-pity moved in. I must be the only teenager who has gone through this, she thought. God had allowed this to happen, she reasoned, so self-pity morphed into anger. She wanted everyone to feel sorry for her and show it. She just wanted to be who she was before the horrific accident and continue with her plans for life. And she wanted her mother to be alive.

One day she lost control and shouted all this and more to Stephen Erway, an older dear friend of the family. He fell back onto a chair with his face in his hands. He had known Jesi since she was born and loved her like his own granddaughter. It was impossible to think of all Jesi was going through. She saw how much her outburst had hurt him and immediately wanted to take it all back, but they were her true feelings, so she couldn’t.

She realized then the impact her emotions had on the people around her, especially those who loved her and wanted to help her. Her anger at God slowly lessened then as she accepted the grace He offered; she realized she was lucky to be alive.

The nurses had told her she could have been facing life in a wheelchair. She was better than she had been two months ago. Maybe that trend would continue. But the guilt and sorrow clung like fog to her psyche. The pain drugs gave her vivid dreams. What was a dream and what was reality?

Maybe I’m going mad she pondered. What if it had been her fault? Why wouldn’t anyone tell her exactly what happened? The descriptions of the accident scene that she had been told by her dad did not answer her questions. She asked her father and Erway and the doctors and nurses. They all said they didn’t know the answers. She could only conclude that it must have been her fault. Was she burying the memory? She realized that she was a young driver and knew it was possible she had not been attentive to the road. She and her mother had been recounting dinner conversation and laughing. No doubt she’d been distracted. They said the police report was not done yet, but Jesi didn’t believe it.

My family is hurting me, but I believe they love me, or used to. If I’ve lost their love, then I can’t…I can’t…I can’t know how to go on. She dreamed more than once of having a red M (for murderer) burned into her forehead. When the reports did finally come five months later, they were sparce and formal.

Jesi’s father Jack was numb with the loss of his wife and the terrible injury to his daughter. Now he clung to his love for Jesi without feeling any return affection from her. She didn’t want to hurt him, so she didn’t express her fears; she barely spoke at all. Each thought the other must understand their silence as grief.

He couldn’t find words to open his heart to her, so he hoped his daily presence in that avocado green metal chair at her bedside would communicate something of his devotion and love.

As he sat there, he wondered again, How could God allow such a terrible thing to happen to my happy family? How can we be a family again without Rose? She is my rock and the middle of my universe.

The conflict in his mind was impossible to cope with. Thus, his visits were brief. He could only sit there, slumped, and uncomfortable. He mumbled some things, as did Jesi, but their glances seldom met. He didn’t try to hug her because he was afraid of hurting her. She seemed so small and frail. Each fed the anguish the other felt and neither one was able to break their own pain to comfort the other.

Jesi’s older brother, JT, came from college in Denver to see her once. He had not been able to hide his horror that his silly sister had lived but his precious mother had not. What a waste, he thought.

It was all such a waste. The whole visit home was just depressing, so he left early.

Jesi crept deeper into the dark cave of depression as each day went by. That cave was her best place, even though she knew it was dangerous to be there. To her it seemed desirable to die to atone for the death of her mother. The nurses suspected her mindset, keeping possible means away from her. They kept telling her that she would feel better soon.

Even her parish priest, who came often to bring her communion, could not penetrate the surface of her emotional shell. The best comfort she found was in a half-conscious blank state she could enter. It was a form of meditation but with no subject and its object was escape.

Her friends could see that she was depressed, but they thought it was because of the disfigurement of her leg and the awful impact on her promising young life.

They just didn’t know how to relate to her situation. They shared grief over her mother. They tried to help by bringing her up to date on the goings on at the community college they attended. They thought being cheerful would help, so they bubbled over about the handsome boys they had met.

This added to Jesi’s sorrow as she thought, for the first time, that they were shallow, frivolous, and selfish. She was sure that she would be alone all her adult life. Who would be able to look at her with love? These girls had never faced a serious challenge, she thought. She was sure she had personified these ugly traits too. God why am I alive!– she often agonized through sobs when she was alone. She had no desire or ability to pray for herself or her loved ones.

Jesi never did go to college but got her GED diploma from high school. She was incapable of caring because she remained turned inward to her own troubles, alone and silent. Steven Erway was the most effective friend she knew during those awful months. He began to rekindle in Jesi and Jack the dream the Reddick family had talked about for decades – the dream Rose had fueled with her elegant words about the good they could do. They would be able to touch a few lives by giving them a unique way to live. Not a metaphor, nor an attitude, but real every day, every night living the peace of God as much as they could among like-thinking people.

For Jesi, a chasm loomed that seemed insurmountable. Her personal misery made it impossible for her to visualize a life on the other side. When friends came to visit her, she accepted their prayers and conversation, but was glad to see them leave. She had given up on every hope or plan she ever had. Everything was gone. Her father seemed as missing from her as was her mother. Her brother had always been distant, seeming to want a separate life from the family. She didn’t even remember his visit to the hospital. She was alone and without a future. She could not even imagine wanting to do anything again.

Steven Erway had the only words that began to bring a small light to her darkened spirit. He sat by her side and spoke softly of how she was loved by so many people and so necessary to the building of Hillwood. He didn’t expect responses, but let his love and optimism lay its warm blanket over her.

She had been in critical care for two weeks, then a regular room for an additional two weeks, then moved to a rehabilitation hospital for over five months. She improved slowly, physically, but emotionally she couldn’t be reached.

Then one morning, Steven and Jack arrived at the hospital with a large box. Jesi was curious about it until the box was placed on her bed, immediately emitting loud puppy howls and barks. Her heart gave a leap as the light golden head of an eager puppy popped up and pushed toward her face. Her uninjured arm reached out to restrain the twelve pounds of Golden Retriever youth. With his paws over her shoulders and tongue furiously licking her face, she didn’t realize how big her smile was, but it lifted everyone else in the room. Steven and Jack stood back with the nurses to enjoy the moment.

Hey, soldier boy, settle down! I want to look at you! Jesi laughed. Who do you belong to? Mr. Erway, Dad? Where did this guy come from? Jack was choked with tears, so Steven answered. He came from a breeder, and he belongs to you. And I think you just named him Soldier!"

Jesi let the sweet tears roll down her face as she hugged the wiggling little animal. She could hardly speak, but she looked at everyone there with joy in her heart and sobbed out, Thank you, thank you.

The men hugged each other, the nurses clapped and cried, and Jack knelt at the side of Jesi’s bed to kiss her and hug his little girl and her new dog. It was the breakthrough she needed.

As her spirits lifted over the next few weeks, she began to recall blinding lights coming at them from her right side a split second before impact. If these images were true, there would have been no time to react. And then six months after the crash, police investigators released the complete information.

The Highway patrol and Municipal Police had been ordered to slow walk the report. They were not to give it to the family or press, making time for the whole thing to be forgotten by the public. The wording of the final report was ambiguous and cold, without much detail, but did say the crash was caused by the now deceased other driver.

Steven Erway was not satisfied and used his law firm to dig for a clear picture of the findings. The bright lights Jesi had dreamed were real. They had belonged to a truck driven by a young man who tested positive for cocaine and alcohol – he also happened to be the son of one of California’s brightest rising politicians.

His irresponsible behavior was not new. This young man had been placed in rehabilitation by his wealthy parents who were promised his full recovery. The parents’ influence overcame the legal penalties, so he escaped the jail time that came with repeated DUI and drug-use arrests.

Money changed hands and the young man was released - The parents were often absent, seeing to their careers, ignoring their only child. And in return, he had brought them only trouble since he’d turned twelve. Public knowledge of this newest crime would have been embarrassing and harmful to both parents’ careers. Now the boy was dead, and he could not offend again.

Mr. Erway, with the help of his firm, kindly showed the parents of the boy a way to keep a civil suit out of the state and national press. He pointed out how they had given in to the boy’s constant whining that he was cured and should be given more freedom. He had promptly returned to drug and alcohol abuse.

The night of Jesi and Rose’s trip to town had been his third night into a binge. The parents were not much overcome by grief and a large cash settlement was made without court involvement.

All these disclosures would begin to free Jesi’s soul from some of its torture. Jack and his daughter looked at each other with easy eye contact for the first time since the accident, held each other and cried together. And the irrepressible Soldier was right there in the middle with them. Father and daughter began to repair a love that healed each other and would last the rest of their lives.

In the happy times before the tragedy, Jack and Rose Reddick worked hard to advance Hillwood. Now, Erway, the Greysons and the Harts formed Hillwood Corporation. With this milestone, it was easier to find ways to talk to Jack to draw him out again into the light. His emotions and memories were clogged in his mind with thoughts of Rose and her shocking end. A stranger had killed her. No matter who or how, Rose, his beloved Rose, was still gone.

The little group of kind folks that made up Hillwood Corporation had been present at many lively dinners where the subject of the long-dreamed-of Hillwood Center was the topic. It lit the faces and exposed the generous spirits of Jack and Rose Reddick.

Once home and recovered, Jesi loved to visit her dad in his villa. He had become the pioneer of the Sycamore Creek Care Facility. It was comfortable there and he could receive the help he needed without feeling like a burden to anyone. Still extremely active in the running of Hillwood, Jack had designed his own villa, which had become the prototype for all the villas at Sycamore Creek.

Jack and Jesi were partners and worked well together, each with their own job description. JT, her brother, was a member of the board of directors and the owner of a twenty percent stake in the corporation. He very seldom visited and never emailed or wrote.

In fact, JT had not offered his training as a civil engineer to the project. A difficult man, prone to anger, and with no interest in his relatives. JT did not share the Reddick enthusiasm for Hillwood. Worse yet, he had too much love for money.

JT even wrote an illegal company check to cover his airplane expenses last time he came to California. Jack paid back the money his son had embezzled, so the matter was dropped… but not forgotten.

Jesi sometimes gave way to worrying about what would happen when her father was no longer the anchor of this place. What will happen when it is just JT and me, she wondered. My brother thinks of me as a kid with no education or skills. He’ll see himself as the logical president of the board no matter what others think. She sometimes felt he was a silent but ever-present threat in the background of her life. What a terrible way to feel about my only brother! She chided herself. I must be greedy about money and power myself! Holy Spirit, heal my faults and purify my heart.

Jesi recognized JT’s lack of moral character. He could be dishonest and did not seem to regard other people as his equal. Any other people. He had given up the practice of his faith right after confirmation, the rite at which a baptized person confirms their Christian belief and is admitted as a full member of the Church. It seemed to Jesi that he had just not grown spiritually as he got older. She didn’t know how to talk to him; they had no common ground.

Jesi was proud of her parents’ desire to build such a unique facility that would help so many families. She remembered the happy brainstorming about the features Hillwood could have. She had wanted nature trails and a great barn. Rose wanted lots of gardens and landscaping and an elementary school. Jack wanted unique forms of housing and a little restaurant. Mr. and Mrs. Greyson wanted an assisted living facility and offered a grant to get it off the ground. While this planning went on, JT had been in the garage building prototype airplanes and dreaming of adventure.

Now, Jessica was fulfilling her heart’s desires. She was a little lame but managed an important job at Hillwood. She also trained and competed with a pair of horses in the sport of Combined Driving. Her schooling sessions with the horses, and her driving partner and best friend Mara, were the highlights of her life.

She wondered what could be ahead for her. She had worked out driving and competing, but could that be enough for her whole life?

Chapter 2

Jesi at Her Best

The sound of hooves moving sprightly through the fallen leaves just matched the tune flitting about in Jesi’s head as she drove. It was an older song, from the sixties - one of several that accompanied her in her free, happy moments. This was the best part: she and her friend, Mara, as navigator, with this handsome pair of horses pulling a dependable modern four-wheeled carriage, (often called a war wagon), trotting briskly, holding the speed uniformly while going up and down and around the little hills and twists of this varied path.

The two horses, moving together side by side, provided ample power to pull the well-designed vehicle with its two people on board. In fact, the horses hardly seemed to be working at all. At 1,100 pounds each, the horses had ample bulk to offset the 900-pound load. Having used the same path so often did not lessen the delighted concentration required to drive it well. Jesi wanted to place the wheels exactly on the spot she had chosen on every corner; it was good practice for the precision required in the modern sport of Combined Driving.

It was called that because the three distinct phases of each competition were scored separately and differently, then combined for a final score. Prince Phillip of England had brought together Europe’s most avid horsemen and drivers in the 1970’s to write rules for a new sport the prince could take up when polo was no longer an option for him. The prince became an enthusiastic competitor, driving four-in-hands of the queen’s ceremonial horses, then later a four-horse hitch of Dartmoor ponies. He competed till the end of his life.

For Jesi, it was time to prepare to cross the country road. With the all clear from her on-board friend Mara, Jesi shortened her left rein an inch requiring both horses to look slightly left while easing her right hand forward an inch to accomplish a smooth left turn. Now the soft crunching of leaves changed abruptly to a loud clop, clop, clop, clop as the steel-shod pair moved smoothly onto the pavement. The durable rubber tires of the vehicle made no sound at all. This carriage was designed for hard use in all kinds of terrain, with torsion bar suspension and hydraulic brakes.

Jesi grinned broadly as she heard sounds of the two horses moving as one. She could never get enough of watching those four ears, listening for her commands, or sharply tilting forward to catch the bogeyman in the act. Horse’s ears also signal the driver or rider when to exert influence if the horse is nervous about something; they will take courage from their human if the driver or rider is being calm and firm.

These horses were seasoned and brave in almost any circumstance, though Jesi could remember the sudden bolt of speed they gave when a hot air balloon had turned on the gas as the balloon so surprisingly slowed its’ landing close behind them. She barely heard the sincere SORRY! coming from the balloon as her navigator of the day fell off the carriage because he was not hanging on right then.

The horses obeyed her command to walk, which she did not give until she could sense they were ready. Jesi was not willing to turn around to face the huge, brightly colored monster, so the navigator had to run to catch up. She smiled at that old memory and felt grateful that Mara had wanted to be her navigator.

Jesi sighed and came back to the present where details within her responsibility at Hillwood, her family’s creation, snuck unbidden to the front of her brain.

Finish board meeting preparation report. Get a topo map for Mr. & Mrs. Stalder. Start some tomato seeds. Order a new blanket for Tag. Oh wait, then the two won’t match, maybe I’ll order two blankets. Can’t wait to see JT, assuming he actually comes to the meeting this year. He has been so clueless, why does he have to do those things? Dad is so generous with him.

Finally, the focus on her competitive horses came smoothly full circle back to the forefront and she could again enjoy the lovely sight in front of her.

The horses’ backs rose and fell together as powerful muscles along their loins worked left and right in fluid ease. Seeing the horses work this way was satisfaction for Jesi and the