Holly escaped abuse; Deb lost her husband. This Thanksgiving, they’ll heal together.

INDIANOLA, Ia. — As the heavy afternoon sun hung in the sky on a clear August day, Deb Robbins and Holly Newvine drove to Randy Robbins’ gravesite on the east side.

With just a few weeks until the State Fair, traffic was backed up with RVs and trailers ready to unload. But the cemetery, just south of the fairgrounds, was still.

Deb had been so distraught over her husband Randy’s death from a fast-moving cancer that she didn’t notice that Holly, the intellectually disabled woman who had moved in with the Robbinses a year earlier after years of abuse, was struggling, too. Holly's therapist suggested she draft a letter to Randy, making sure to write down all the things she didn’t get to tell him before he died.

Note in hand, Holly approached the plot and began to read aloud: "Dear Randy, You were like a dad to me. You made my life happy and full of joy. I miss you all the time. I love you."

In the months since Randy’s sudden passing, the two women have stitched together a new life as a duo instead of a trio. And, slowly, they've begun to heal each other’s wounds.

Deb, 59, finds purpose with Holly, whom she cares for through Mosaic at Home, a program that places intellectually disabled adults with families instead of in group homes. And Holly, 38, depends on Deb to comfort her when the terror, born from years of abuse, becomes too much to handle.

On Thanksgiving, as many around the country gorge on turkey and pie, Holly and Deb will do much the same. Family will come over to Deb’s home, also known as “the party house.”

They will break bread, celebrate Randy’s life and say prayers for their home, their animals, their health and, especially this year, for one another.

“It’s hard to look at this and not see God’s hand in all of it,” Deb said. “There’s no way, last August, I could have known that Randy was going to be gone, and that I would desperately need someone to be here all the time and to fill this house with laughter.”

Pausing to collect her emotions, she added: “Honestly, Holly has given me a reason to keep going.”

In the year and a half Holly has lived with the Robbinses, she’s become attached, too, those who know her said.

And she’s changed immensely: She’s lost 15 pounds, reversed a diagnosis of prediabetes and come out of her shell, allowing her “sweetheart” personality to shine through.

She’s thriving, and the reason is quite clear, said her court-appointed guardian, Del Buchman.

“She just needed somebody to care about her,” he said.

Before leaving Randy’s gravesite on that August afternoon, Holly and Deb held each other and cried. They said a prayer for Randy, hoping he was free from the suffering that had marked his last weeks, and they prayed for each other, trusting they’d find the strength to continue.

Holly placed the letter on Randy’s grave, tucking it under a big rock. The words she'd written were for Randy, Holly said as she got back into the car, and she wanted him to have them forever.

Deb and Randy before Holly

The first time Deb remembers seeing Randy, he was sopping wet.

And he was on a date with someone else.

Randy had fallen into the water when his date decided to stand up and change seats while their canoe was smack dab in the middle of the river, Deb said.

“I used to tell him that if he had me as a partner that day, he wouldn’t have ended up in the water because I would have had enough common sense to know not to stand up in a canoe,” she said.

Randy was born and raised on the east side of Des Moines. Deb was born on a farm in rural Missouri — a country girl through and through.

Deb’s family moved around a lot for her dad’s job, as an air-traffic controller. They touched down in Des Moines just before her senior year at Valley High School.

When her parents pulled up stakes after about 18 months, she chose to stay.

Despite their different upbringings, Deb and Randy were similar in two important ways, their friends and colleagues say: They would do absolutely anything to lend a hand or coax a smile, and they were deeply connected to their faith.

Members of the same church, Deb and Randy attended the young adult group as friends until, on a religious retreat, they discovered that there might be something more between them.

They became inseparable. Randy told his sister, Cindy O’Brien, that almost immediately after they started dating, he knew Deb was the one.

But his sister’s Des Moines wedding was six months away. Randy didn’t want to steal her spotlight, so he waited until after the reception, when he and Deb decamped to Christopher’s restaurant, to propose.

“He was so madly in love that he just couldn’t wait any longer than that,” O’Brien said. “All he wanted to do from the moment they got together was start his life with Deb.”

Holly before Randy and Deb

Holly doesn’t like to think about the past.

She lost her mother as a child and spent years with family members who abused her, physically and financially. Those family members hit her “really hard," Holly said.

In 2008, a Polk County judge issued Holly an emergency protection order, which is granted when someone is suffering abuse that presents “an immediate danger” or “which results in irreparable harm to his or her physical or financial resources.”

“She was in a very bad situation — a situation that you wouldn’t want anybody that you know to be in,” Buchman, Holly's court-appointed guardian, said, declining to discuss the situation further.

Buchman and his wife, Missy, had five guardianships by the time they got the call to take on Holly. As a high school teacher and a program coordinator at a human services agency, respectively, the Buchmans are the type of people the state calls when they have cases that require guardians with experience, Del said.

"We are just the type of people who always have an extra plate at our table," Buchman said.

The family members who were housing Holly contested her new guardianship. Within a month, their objections had been dismissed, and they were further ordered not to have any contact with Holly.

All communication now goes through the Buchmans. Del said he's only ever been contacted by one of Holly's family members — and it's been about four years since he's heard anything from her.

Deb doesn’t know much about Holly's life before she moved in, but she feels the ripple effects of those years every day.

At night, Holly gets scared that someone is going to take her away or that her toys and clothes will be stolen. She’ll have nightmares about what happened before she came to live with the Robbinses.

Even though the thoughts and memories are scattered when she shares them with Deb, they’re still devastating.

A sign in Holly’s room reminds her that her “mind is making up worries.”

“I can take deep breaths,” the sign encourages. “I can say a prayer.”

And at the top, in big, bright letters, it reads: “I AM SAFE.”

A perfect match

The first time she met Deb and Randy, Holly requested Chinese food — her favorite.

The Robbinses are more the meat-and-potatoes type, so they had no clue where to go, Deb said with a laugh. After a lot of driving around and a little frustration on Randy’s part, they found themselves at a small storefront in West Des Moines.

“I was scared of them at first,” Holly said. “But after a minute, I realized they were nice and they didn’t hit me.”

Most people in Deb’s life were hesitant, to say the least, when she brought up the idea of having an intellectually disabled adult move in, Deb said. Even Randy was “tentative” about it.

“I just thought, ‘Do you really want to do that? Because it will take up your life,’” Randy's sister, O’Brien, said. “But once Deb sets her mind to something, she’s going to do it.”

And Deb had set her mind to this. After following Randy to Arizona and Chicago for jobs with U.S. Customs, he decided they would retire on an acreage in Indianola.

But Deb was six years younger than Randy, and she still wanted to work. The opportunity to be a caregiver with Mosaic became attractive when Deb realized she could essentially live a work-from-home lifestyle and spend time with her husband while still earning a paycheck.

Host home caretakers are paid a daily rate, said Brittney Ledford, a spokesperson for Mosaic at Home.

"They are independent contractors, not employees of Mosaic, so they are free to run their household like a little small business," Ledford said.

Mosaic has seen interest in the At Home program grow from two host home placements when the program started in 2009 to 86 this year. And new caretakers are expressing interest on an almost weekly basis, Ledford said.

Holly was the first person the Robbinses looked at bringing into their family, and by the time they dropped her back off at her group home, all three knew they'd found a perfect match.

“She brought joy to our lives right then and there,” Deb said. “If we had to make a decision that night, we would have taken her.”

'God has a need'

Holly moved in on Aug. 1, 2016, and acclimated quickly to the Robbinses' lifestyle. The trio would cook together and go swimming at the YMCA.

The Robbinses helped ensure Holly was on the right track with her job at the East Village Spa, where she cleans and does laundry.

But right after Easter, Randy started complaining about aches and pains. He was tired all the time, Deb said.

A month later, doctors diagnosed him with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. By then, the cancer had already spread to his liver and lymph nodes.

Randy began to lose weight rapidly and wasn’t often leaving the living room couch by the early part of June.

The weekend after his June 7 birthday, O’Brien said she and Deb were able to coax him to the kitchen table, where everybody sang, and "he gave us a little smile" and nibbled on some cake.

Three days later, after he had checked into the hospice floor at Methodist Hospital, he died, surrounded by family.

Holly wasn’t there. She’d elected to spend most of the days leading up to and following Randy’s death with Lynne Schaefer, the Robbinses’ family friend and a fellow Mosaic at-home caretaker.

When Deb called to say that Randy had died, Schaefer was driving Holly to dinner.

“I pulled over, and I wanted her to understand, so I said, 'Holly, God has a need now, and he’s chosen Randy to help fill his need. Randy has gone to God’s house,’” Schaefer remembered telling her.

Finding purpose

Last Thanksgiving, Deb and Randy eagerly set Holly a place at their table. Holly cleaned her plate and asked for seconds as she enjoyed the excitement of a holiday with a house full of friends and family.

This year, they’ll remove a plate, marking their first big family gathering without Randy.

But he won’t be forgotten, Deb said. They will laugh and tell stories and listen to Randy’s favorite tunes to remember a life well-lived.

It’s still hard to face some days without Randy, Deb said, but Holly’s tendency to always see good in the world has kept her from “wallowing in her sorrows.”

And the pair stays busy with appointments and activities. Right now, they’re working toward Holly’s goals of losing weight and earning her GED.

Most people who questioned Holly’s moving in are now thankful that she did. O’Brien calls Holly a “Godsend.”

"Deb and Holly have given each other purpose," Schaefer said. "They picked each other up and leaned on each other throughout this whole process. They will still share memories of the past with Randy, but at the same time, they are making new memories that involve just the two of them."

They’re sort of like Thelma and Louise, Deb said. Hands clutched, they’re diving into the next stage of their lives.

They’re not exactly sure what that future may hold. But as long as they’re together, Deb said, they know they’ll be able to take anything that comes their way.