by Becky Wade
The sound of Madeline’s irritable crying reached her. She let it go on for a few minutes, mindful of the fact that poor Aubrey hadn’t had one square second alone in her house with her child in days. If Penelope were in Aubrey’s position, she wouldn’t want well-meaning people rushing to her side every time Madeline squawked.
“Anything I can do?” Penelope finally called.
“Thanks,” Aubrey called back, “but I think she’s settling down now.”
Sure enough, the fussing gradually gave way to the strains of the lullaby music Aubrey played on a portable speaker.
Penelope considered a German cottage cheese pie. It looked—she consulted her phone—lecker. Then an Irish banoffee pie, made with bananas, caramel, and cream. Apparently the Irish word sobhlasta meant delicious. “Sobhlasta,” Penelope whispered in her best (not good) Irish accent.
It might be fun to spend a few weeks this fall selling European pies at her shop. She could decorate the truck with European trappings. Market her European pies around town . . .
Penelope looked up from the cookbook, listening. The house was unusually still. She could hear the lullaby sounds and nothing else.
“Aubrey?” Penelope called. She wanted to be respectful of her privacy. But she also needed to be attentive.
No answer.
Unease slipped around her eerily . . . like an eel sliding against her skin in murky water.
She stood. She’d just go check to see if Aubrey was napping. As she rounded the turn in the hallway that led to the bedrooms, she saw Aubrey, lying on her back on the floor outside the nursery.
Fear drove the air from Penelope’s lungs. She fell to her knees beside her sister-in-law. “Aubrey? Are you okay?” She gently shook her shoulder.
Aubrey was not okay, nor awake. She could feel the warmth of Aubrey’s skin through her lightweight summer top. She was breathing as if asleep, but . . . Penelope gave her a slightly harder shake. Aubrey wasn’t sleeping. She wouldn’t have taken a nap in the middle of her hallway floor. She was unconscious.
Penelope punched 911 into her phone with trembling fingers.
You’re the Rock of Gibraltar! This is not the time to fall apart.
And so she wouldn’t.
A female voice answered.
“My sister-in-law was—was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism just over a week ago.” Her words emerged shaky but quick. “She’s currently unconscious. I need an ambulance here immediately.” She rattled off the address and the woman told her that an ambulance was on its way.
The dispatcher kept Penelope on the line, asking questions about Aubrey that Penelope answered as she went in search of Madeline.
Horror clawed its way upward, past her tightening throat. Where was the baby?
Penelope was on duty. The one in charge of making sure Aubrey and Madeline were safe and well. She’d screwed up.
She checked Madeline’s nursery first. Little piles of clean baby clothing sat on the rug, but Madeline was not asleep in the crib.
The woman on the other end of the line was attempting to ask more questions, but all Penelope could think was where’s Madeline?
She checked the bathroom next to the nursery. Not here.
She slid to a halt in Theo and Aubrey’s bedroom. Madeline was swaddled and clicked into her baby swing. The apparatus swished back and forth languidly in a pool of sunlight, its sound masked by the music.
Madeline was fine, thank God.
“Ma’am?” the dispatcher said.
“I’m here.” She dashed back to Aubrey’s side and followed the woman’s instructions. She raised Aubrey’s legs a foot off the ground to promote blood flow to her head. She looked to see if Aubrey was wearing any restrictive clothing that needed loosening (she wasn’t), then checked for an airway obstruction (also negative).
“Does she appear to have injured herself in the fall?” the woman asked.
“No.”
Aubrey began to stir.
“Aubrey?”
Her sister-in-law frowned and cracked open her eyes.
“She’s waking up,” Penelope told the dispatcher.
“Good, good,” the woman replied.
“Can you hear me?” Penelope asked. She must look bizarre, kneeling on the hallway floor, holding both of Aubrey’s legs in the air.
“Yes. Did I . . . pass out?”
“I think so, yes.”
Worry creased Aubrey’s face. “Madeline?”
“She’s absolutely fine. Still sleeping in her baby swing.”
“I’d just finished folding her clothes.” Aubrey motioned toward the nursery. “I stood up quickly and it made me dizzy. I stopped moving, but it just seemed to get worse and so I sat down . . . here. I was about to call you, but then sound and light just sort of . . . left me.”
“An ambulance is coming.”
“I’m not sure I need an ambulance. I’m feeling . . . fairly okay.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “I think you can put my legs down.”
“Can I put her legs down?” she asked the dispatcher.
“That should be fine, just do so slowly and carefully.”
Penelope did as the woman had directed.
Aubrey tried to push herself into a seated position—
“Would you do me a favor and remain lying down until the paramedics get here?” she asked Aubrey.
Her sister-in-law gave a slight nod.
The sound of an ambulance siren reached her, faint but rapidly increasing in volume. Penelope thanked the dispatcher and disconnected the call.
“I’m so sorry that I let this happen on my watch.” Guilt had turned Penelope’s stomach into a ball of nausea. “This is my fault.”
“This is not your fault,” Aubrey said. “How much time has passed since you heard Madeline crying?”
“Fifteen minutes at most.”
“After she calmed down, I kept rocking her for five minutes. Then folded clothes for several more minutes. Which means I could only have been out for a couple of minutes. You must have found me immediately.”
Penelope let the paramedics inside, explaining the situation as she led them to Aubrey.
The man and woman immediately took over, calm and confident. Penelope leaned against the hallway wall, hovering out of their way and chewing on her thumbnail.
They concluded that Aubrey had simply suffered a fainting spell. According to the paramedics, the blood-thinning medication she was on for her blood clot could cause dizziness. Unfortunately, the medication could also cause internal bleeding if the person taking it fell, as Aubrey had. It sounded like she’d been sitting down when she’d fainted, so hopefully, she hadn’t fallen far. Internal bleeding was a serious thing, and so back to the hospital Aubrey was going in the ambulance.
“You’ll call Theo for me?” Aubrey asked Penelope. As always in times of crisis, Aubrey became almost preternaturally calm.
“Of course.”
“And take care of Madeline?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
The paramedics swept her from the house.
Penelope stood at the living room’s front window, watching as they secured Aubrey in the ambulance, then pulled away from the curb. Next, she made her way to Madeline’s side. Her niece, wrapped in swaddling and peaceful music, had slept straight through the commotion.
She pulled out her phone. Trying not to cry, she dialed her brother.
Chapter Eight
Penelope had stood him up.
When she hadn’t answered his knock a few minutes before three, he’d figured she must be on her way.
Then 3:00 had arrived. 3:05.
His optimism had drained as his watch had counted the minutes to 3:15. He’d texted her and received no response.
It was now 3:30 and he needed to face the fact that she wasn’t coming. Her message was clear. She didn’t want him.
Loneliness crept up from the floorboards and invaded his body. He felt it inside him, heavy and emp
ty. He heard it in the hallway air, because here, the only sounds came from distant people separated from him by walls. He saw it in the blank beige paint staring back at him. He tasted it and it was flavored like disappointment.
Had he been a fool to hope he could win her back? His plan was likely a waste of her time and his. Why would telling her the truth about his upcoming assignment and writing her poetry make a difference? He was an airman, exactly what she’d always made clear to him she didn’t want. He’d just come back from six months in Syria and in six more months would be restationed to Germany.
She could date any number of guys who lived here and who’d never leave her.
Running his hands through his hair, he told himself to return to his car. But his body refused to obey.
• • •
Have you called Eli? one of Aubrey’s friends texted Penelope. If not, I’ll reach out to him. I’m sure he’d be willing to ask Theo’s friends to pray.
Eli! Realization bolted through Penelope, the same type of realization she’d experienced in college once when she’d checked her bedside clock and comprehended that she’d slept through her history exam.
She looked at her watch. 3:46.
Her pacing halted. She’d been treading a route from where Madeline was still sleeping in the master bedroom, to the living area, and back again while she made calls and sent text messages. At first, she’d been focused on trying to reach Theo, who, as it turned out, had been on a business call on his phone. Once she’d finally gotten ahold of him, she’d contacted her parents, Aubrey’s mom, and Aubrey’s friends. She’d been relaying the story of what had happened and asking everyone to pray.
She’d been so consumed with all of that, she’d totally forgotten about her appointment with Eli.
I’ll reach out to Eli now, she replied to Aubrey’s friend. Then she dialed Eli’s number.
“Hi.” He didn’t sound annoyed.
“Hi. Listen, I’m terribly sorry.” She explained yet again what had happened with Aubrey.
“Don’t worry about it.” His composed voice lowered her blood pressure better than hypertension pills.
She pulled air to the bottom of her lungs. Let it out slowly.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Would you be willing to contact Theo’s other friends and ask them to pray?”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of right now. I’m believing that she’s going to be completely fine.”
“I’m believing that, too.”
A momentary pause. “Your voice is as warm and calm as a throw blanket fresh out of the dryer.” She came to a stop in the sun next to Madeline’s baby swing. “When you fly fighter planes for a living, I’m guessing that nothing rattles you.”
“Not true.”
“Really?”
“You rattle me.”
She let his words drift and spin within her. “You fly missions over Syria, but I rattle you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m harmless.”
“No. All the women I met before you were harmless. You’re the opposite of harmless.”
Funny, because ever since she’d become acquainted with Eli she’d been convinced that he was the dangerous one.
Even after they hung up, the line between her heart and his remained in place, like a golden strand of silk.
• • •
Penelope’s Vans felt three times as heavy as usual as she climbed the stairs to her apartment that night.
The doctors had determined that Aubrey had no internal bleeding. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. They’d adjusted her medications in hopes of mitigating the dizziness and the drop in blood pressure she’d experienced. Then they’d sent her home.
Penelope hadn’t been able to shake her regret about her lack of vigilance. As soon as Aubrey and Theo returned, she’d blurted out more apologies. Theo and Aubrey had taken her by the shoulders and assured her that they didn’t blame her. That she’d done a great job, even.
Still, remorse and fear took a lot out of a person. Penelope was good for absolutely nothing at this point except a quick shower and a freefall onto her mattress.
Her key made its familiar sound as it turned in the lock. On the floor just inside her apartment, the foyer light revealed a folded piece of white paper.
Strange. Had someone pushed this under her door? She scooped it up and opened it.
You are everything.
I think a lot about how
wonderful you are.
—Eli
She lifted a hand to cover her mouth and read it again. Then three more times.
In a bid to win her attention, Roy leapt onto a high shelf of a bookcase, sliding wildly and shoving a few paperbacks off the edge.
“Yes, I see you there,” Penelope informed him. “Hang on a second and then I’ll bathe you in attention.”
Eli had said he wanted to give her something today. This must be what he’d meant. When she’d stood him up, he’d slipped it under her door.
Was this a . . . poem?
The way he’d arranged the words in lines made her think of poetry. Haiku? She remembered from Ms. Mitchell’s elementary school class that haiku was five, seven, and five syllables. Right?
She read it again, counting the syllables.
Eli Price had written a haiku poem for her.
Oh . . . wait. Understanding lifted like the tip of a rising sun in her mind. The night they’d shared the fried chicken dinner, she’d listed three concerns about dating him. What had she said to him exactly?
She’d said . . . She chewed her lip, remembering. She’d said she worried he couldn’t be truthful. He’d told her on the Fourth of July that his squadron was being reassigned in January.
She’d told him she worried he couldn’t share his feelings, and he’d written a poem.
He was a goal-oriented person and he was addressing each of her concerns in turn.
What was left? She’d said something about him being so strait-laced that she didn’t think he’d be willing to make a fool of himself for love.
Was he going to make a fool of himself next?
She lowered onto her sofa. “Come here, Roy.” Her cat sprang from surface to surface, eventually landing on her lap. He gave her a chiding look that clearly said, Where’ve you been?
“Sorry. Family emergency.” Distractedly, she rubbed his head while continuing to stare at the poem.
This gesture from Eli was so very, very sweet. She’d been wrapped up in her brother’s family’s needs for hours. But this paper told her that Eli saw her.
That Eli cared.
His thoughtfulness brought tears to her eyes. It seemed like time to revisit her dating rule. It had served her well for a long time. But was it still serving her if it was keeping her from Eli?
Despite the hardships that dating Eli would bring, it could be that he’d be truly, delightfully good for her. It could be that a relationship with him would be worth much more than the costs.
• • •
“This team needs to develop the eye of the tiger,” Eli informed the Sharpshooters when they gathered just outside the sports complex twenty minutes before Monday night’s game. “Does anyone know what that means?”
“Orange?” one kid suggested.
“Is it like the eye of a tornado?” another asked.
“The eye of the tiger,” Eli told them, “is about competitiveness. Think about tigers and what their eyes look like when they hunt. They’re focused. Intense. They work hard. They’re deadly. We’re going to have the eye of the tiger tonight. We’re going on the hunt, focused and intense. And we’re going to try to win one for Coach Theo, because he and his family have been going through a hard time lately. I’m sure he could really use some good news.”
“So . . . what’s our surprise?” the freckle-faced kid wondered.
Eli pulled a small, round tub out of his gym bag. “Hair gel.”
“Hair gel!
” They all made faces of disgust. An offended rumble went through the group.
“We’re going to take this gel and we’re going to make mohawks out of your hair so that you’ll look as big, intimidating, and ferocious on the outside as I know you are on the inside.”
“The hair of the tiger!” one of them shouted.
“That’s right,” Eli acknowledged. “Part of winning is having the right attitude and you guys could use a little more swagger. We’re going to have the hair of the tiger and the eye of the tiger. And, remember, if you steal the ball or rebound, you also get the claw of the tiger tattooed on your bicep.”
“I want mine tattooed on my butt,” the class clown stated.
“No, your bicep.”
“I want mine on my forehead.”
“No, your bicep,” Eli insisted. “But before you can get a tattoo at all, you have to . . .” He gave them an expectant look.
“Steal or rebound,” several of them said in unison.
“Now form a line to get your mohawk.”
“Are you going to have a mohawk too, Coach?”
“Will it fire you guys up if I do?” Eli asked.
“Yes!”
“Then bring on the mohawk.”
Eli, his hair heavy and sticky, led his battle unit into the gym. Some of the kids looked great with mohawks. Some looked like porcupines.
When they broke their pre-game huddle they did so with a loud cry of, “For Coach Theo!”
During the game, Eli moved up and down the sideline in front of his bench, shouting instructions, gesturing, sending in subs.
Creighton didn’t have time for his phone. He spent the entire game keeping track of steals and rebounds and applying the tiger claw tattoos.
Luckily, the Bricklayers really did throw up bricks. They were just as bad as Eli’s team.
When the clock started to count down the game’s final minute, both teams had just twelve points each. A Bricklayer released a shot that looked surprisingly decent.
“Don’t go in,” Eli whispered under his breath. It hit the backboard, bounced off the hoop, seemed to think about its direction for a moment, then dropped harmlessly off the side.
Redhead gave a tiger roar as he thrust himself into the air and managed to come down with the rebound. He passed it to his teammate.