Fragments of Light

by Michele Phoenix

  “There’s one more thing I found in Lucy’s room,” I finally told her.

  I went to the chair where I’d dropped my jacket and pulled the envelope addressed to Lucy out of its inside pocket. “This was in her nightstand,” I said, handing it to Darlene. She squinted up at me, still preoccupied. “I was holding on to it because I didn’t want to just skim it while we drove down the road. It feels like something special that deserves our full attention.”

  Darlene turned it over in her hands. “From my father?” I nodded. “To my grandmother?” She seemed to be having trouble connecting the dots in her mind.

  “Yes. Written in January, 1944—five months before D-Day.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Nope—I was saving that honor for Lucy’s granddaughter.” I smiled. She didn’t smile back.

  Darlene took the letter from the envelope and unfolded it. “Why am I so nervous?” she asked.

  “Do you want to wait?”

  She shook her head. Then she took a deep breath and looked at the paper. “Pretty bad penmanship,” she said just above a whisper.

  “Spoken like a former English teacher.”

  She read the letter out loud, stumbling a bit when it was hard to decipher the words Cal had written more than seventy years before.

  Dear Mother,

  I’m writing to you from a bunk in a hangar in South England, surrounded by the snoring and sleep-talking of roughly three hundred men. We’ve been in Ramsbury for six weeks, and there’s a buzz in the air. Something big is coming. We can feel it. Although it doesn’t seem to be keeping anybody else awake, it sure is on my mind.

  The days are long here, but the blisters, the bruises, and the endless drills are okay by us. If we can show those Nazis a thing or two, it will be worth the aches and pains . . . even the sleepless nights. We have no idea when our marching orders will come, but we’ll be ready when they do.

  The fellas are great. They’re eager to get to fighting. We listen to the news every evening in the mess. Liberty continues to march forward, as you told me she would. She is upright and proud, and I carry her with me. I’m not sure how a ragtag bunch of guys like us will live up to her call, but we’ll keep trying as long as we can, in whatever way we can. It’s a strange thing knowing that the fate of the world depends on our success.

  Now for the big news: you’re a grandmother! Claire was going to send you a telegram and I hope she did, but just in case it didn’t reach you . . . Her name is Darlene Marie and she was born on January 4th. The way Claire tells it, she’s big and beautiful and healthy. Most days it’s hard for me to really grasp that I’m a father. It feels so strange and out of reach, but I love her already, sight unseen. I can’t wait to be able to hold her when all of this is over. Keep praying, Mother. I don’t want this war to take being a dad from me.

  Thank you for writing. Reading about the farm and life there feels like another world. I miss you every day. Huck too. Give him an extra rub for me and keep your best prime rib on ice. No one knows how fast things will happen, but I will come home and bring my Claire and our baby girl with me. I promise you that. It’s time for you to meet them both. I know you’ll love them as much as I do.

  I must stop now and try to sleep, since there are only four hours left before a new day begins. I’ll write again soon.

  Lady Liberty marches on,

  Cal

  When she’d finished reading the two-page letter, Darlene flipped it over and read it again, silently this time. Then she delicately laid it in her lap along with the pictures we’d found in Cal’s home. “Humph.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d hoped the letter would humanize Cal in some way—put flesh and bone and personhood on the framework of what we already knew. In my mind, it had. The words he’d used to speak of Claire and his daughter had revealed some of his heart, but Darlene clearly didn’t share my point of view. “Care to elaborate?” I said.

  She frowned and quoted from the letter. “‘I know you’ll love them as much as I do.’”

  I tried for an encouraging expression as I met her gaze. “That’s kind of sweet . . . right? He sounds like he was truly thrilled to be a dad.”

  “And yet, just a few months after meeting me for the first time . . .”

  “Yes.” I acknowledged the contradiction but didn’t want to let her dwell on it. “Darlene, we may never know what happened. Why he left. But . . . can you at least take some comfort from knowing that he wanted you? That he loved you and couldn’t wait to meet you—”

  “But he did. He did meet me. And the man who couldn’t wait to hold his baby walked out of her life without so much as an explanation three months later. How do you square that little detail with the words in that letter?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. This indomitable woman whose positive outlook had buoyed me throughout my battle with cancer and Nate’s sudden departure appeared to have lost her trademark optimism. While I’d been elated to have found anything at all in Lucy’s home—a tangible connection with the father she’d lost—it seemed to have only exacerbated the frustration I’d glimpsed in Darlene, in lengthening bouts, over the past two days.

  “This place is starting to feel like a crypt,” she finally said, contemplating the photos and mementos spread out on her bed. “So much for answers.”

  “We did get some answers,” I said, trying to gently contradict her statement. “Think about it. We found your father’s house, met a neighbor who knew some of your family’s history, then went back and got ourselves some treasures from his place. Who would have thought any of that could happen when we set off on this trip?”

  She frowned and continued to stare at the objects on her lap.

  “And we found a letter—a sweet, sincere letter—in which he talked about you. That’s something to feel good about, right?” I tried to piece a story together that would hold some comfort for his suddenly belligerent daughter. “Maybe he did love you, Darlene. Maybe he and Claire truly were happy for a while. And then maybe something happened—”

  “Maybe he was a jerk,” Darlene interrupted. “It’s easy to sound sweet in a letter.”

  I was taken aback. “Or maybe the war—something he experienced over there—broke him, somehow, and that’s why he left. He may not have been thinking straight when he—”

  “Abandoned me?” she interrupted again. “When he disappeared in the middle of the night and stayed away for—what—months before he got mauled by a bear or shot himself or whatever happened to him in Kinley? Maybe the war hero didn’t have it in him to be a husband and father. Maybe he got bored. Maybe all he wanted was to get back to his blessed farm where his only responsibilities were cattle and crops. Maybe it was that easy for him to walk away.”

  The veins in Darlene’s neck stood out as she got angrier. Her voice was razor-edged and cold. “Maybe when the neighbor kids came over to play, it triggered nothing in Dear Old Dad about the child he’d left behind. The daughter he claimed to love.” She swiped at the pictures and sent them flying off the bed onto the floor. “Maybe dying somewhere out in the fields with no one to recover his body was exactly what he deserved. He may have helped free France, but he was a coward on the home front.”

  Darlene was visibly shaking—not just her hands but, it seemed, the center of her being.

  I swiveled to get a better look at her, stunned and worried by the vitriol pouring out of her. “Darlene?” I leaned in and tried to catch her eye. “Look at me, Darlene. I get it. I get that you were hoping for more.”

  “He was a—” The word she used was crude and shocking. Her voice loud. Brittle. She raised the crumpled letter in her fist and shook it at me. “My father was a heartless monster and he can rot in hell.”

  “Darlene!” My own voice was sharper now. Sharp with dismay and concern. I grabbed her arm and tried to pry the letter from her hand, but she fought me with surprising force. At my wits’ end, I finally yelled, “Darlene—stop it!”

  I t
hought she’d heard me. She suddenly became very still. Then her eyes rolled back and she fell sideways on the bed, her body racked with spasms.

  “Darlene!” I reached out and found her rigid, every muscle taut and quaking. “Darlene!” Fear exploded in my mind. The color had gone from her skin. Her jaw was set, her eyes half-open and unfocused. Her arms and legs and core jerked and quaked.

  I didn’t know what to do. Adrenaline surged, turning my blood to ice, then fire. I staggered to the front door and found my jacket. My hands were shaking so badly that I struggled to reach into the pocket for my phone. I rushed back to the bed with it, frightened that Darlene’s shaking would topple her onto the floor. Then I dialed nine-one-one.

  Chapter 21

  The ambulance raced ahead of me, lights flashing and siren wailing. I tried to keep up but found my reflexes and processing hampered by fear.

  The paramedics had arrived within five minutes of my call, as the fire station was just a block from our motel. They’d quickly assessed that Darlene was at the tail end of a seizure and administered something that made her stop shaking. Then they’d loaded her into the ambulance and were now speeding toward the Hannibal Regional Hospital.

  My arms felt leaden on the steering wheel, frozen by shock and a gut-level terror that I was going to lose my dearest friend. Just as powerful as my concern for her was the realization that I was utterly alone, far from home, and facing an overwhelming crisis.

  If Darlene died . . . I tried to reject the conjecture before it anchored, but the prospect of losing my friend overrode my defenses. Responsibility added its weight to debilitating fear. If Darlene passed away under my watch. If I had to make last-minute medical decisions on her behalf. If I was the one who, by default, had to call her son and tell him his mother had succumbed to whatever it was that had made her lose consciousness . . .

  Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked them away, focusing on the ambulance speeding toward the Hannibal hospital. I berated myself for the stupidity of inviting an ailing woman on a road trip that had taken us so far from her medical team. “Please,” I whispered into the silence, chilled by what I’d witnessed and what I couldn’t predict.

  I parked my car not far from the ambulance bay and watched them push my friend’s gurney through whooshing, automated doors, then I went to the registration desk on unsteady legs. A young nurse assured me that someone would come get me when Darlene was stabilized. I found a chair and sat there, barely breathing, surrounded by the crisis of a dozen other families, mind-numbingly isolated and afraid.

  On an impulse, I reached for my phone.

  No. I couldn’t.

  I put the phone away and waited.

  Five minutes passed without an update. They felt like hours. As my anxiety increased, so did my desperation for contact with anyone who knew me well enough to understand the depth of the dread crippling my thinking.

  I reached for the phone again and stared at the name in my contact list.

  Need dueled with resolve.

  Need won.

  The phone only rang twice on the other end. “Hello?”

  I’d thought reaching out would be the hardest part, but finding words proved more challenging yet. “I didn’t know who to call,” I finally said, emotion roughening my voice.

  “Ceelie?”

  “I . . . Yes.”

  I could picture Nate frowning. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Darlene is . . .” I swallowed past the sob I’d been restraining since the medics had loaded her into the ambulance.

  “Ceelie.”

  “She’s in the hospital.” I took a deep, stabilizing breath and tried to put coherent thoughts together. “We were in our room at the motel in Hannibal and she—she started to seize and passed out and . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Nobody’s come out to tell me anything.”

  There was a brief pause. “What do you need?”

  I realized this was why I’d pushed through my misgivings and called my soon-to-be ex-husband. He was a problem solver. A doer. And I felt paralyzed with worry and uncertainty.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “I just—I needed someone to know what’s going on in case . . .”

  “Does she have family?” Nate asked.

  “I’ll call her son when I know something more. He doesn’t even know we’re here.” It was hard to believe that we’d been walking around Cal’s old house just a few hours earlier.

  “They’ll want her insurance card.”

  “I already gave it to the front desk.” The tears I’d been trying to stem ran down my cheeks. “I just—I just needed somebody to know what’s happening,” I repeated.

  “Just take it one piece of information and one decision at a time. You’re strong, Ceelie. You’ve got this.”

  “I don’t feel strong.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Nate said, “Would it help if I drove out there? It’s probably just four or five hours from here. I can come right now if . . .” His voice trailed off.

  A slideshow of our encounters since the day he’d walked out played across my mind, each frame a reminder of the evisceration of my world. “No,” I answered his question. “I shouldn’t have called. I’m . . .” I stared at the ceiling for a second and tried to recapture my resolve. “Force of habit,” I finally said. “I’ll be fine. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “Ceelie, you didn’t—”

  I disconnected the call and put the phone back in my pocket, shaking my head at my stupidity. What had I been thinking?

  Then I braced my elbows on my knees, covered my face with my hands, and let my worry flow.

  “We’re taking her back for a CT now. She hasn’t fully regained her faculties, but is awake and talking.” The man looked too young to have a job, let alone be a neurologist. He’d come out to update me about forty-five minutes after they’d taken Darlene back.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked, relieved to finally be speaking with someone who might have answers.

  “We’re not sure, but it looks like a mini-stroke or TIA—that’s short for transitory ischemic attack. She’s taking a while coming out of it, though, and that’s a bit unusual. So we’ll get the scan done, just to make sure there isn’t something else going on, and I’ll be able to tell you more once that’s over.”

  “A lot of people have TIAs, right? They’re not too serious . . .”

  “They’re not uncommon. We typically send the patient home pretty quickly and follow up with blood thinners to prevent a repeat performance,” he explained, his voice low. “But sometimes TIAs can be precursors to a bigger stroke, so we’re erring on the side of caution and making sure we don’t miss anything.”

  “When can I see her?”

  “As soon as she’s back from imaging. I’ll send someone out for you.”

  Nearly an hour passed before a sweet, red-headed nurse invited me to follow her through automatic doors and down a busy hallway. Darlene looked frail and pale against the white sheets, dwarfed by the medical equipment around her.

  “I’ll be back in a little to check on her,” the nurse said with a compassionate smile. Then she left the room.

  Darlene’s eyes were open. I went to the bed and took her cold hand into mine. Her eyes shifted in my direction but didn’t quite reach me. “Darlene, I’m right here,” I said, leaning over and raising up just enough for our gazes to meet.

  “Messed up big-time,” she said. The words were misshapen, uttered through barely moving lips.

  “You didn’t mess up, Darlene.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I—sorry.”

  I leaned in close and saw her eyes slowly focus on my face. I tried for a comforting and hopeful expression. “You’re in good hands. They’ve run some tests and will let us know as soon as they have results.”

  “Jus—tin.”

  “Justin?” She squeezed my hand. “Do you want me to call him?” Another squeeze. “I was going to wait until we hav
e more answers.”

  “Call . . .”

  I took out my phone and found the number he’d given me after Darlene injured her hip.

  “This is Ceelie, your mom’s friend,” I said after he picked up. “I don’t want you to worry, but we’re in Missouri and she’s had an . . . episode.”

  He was instantly concerned. I answered his questions as best I could and assured him that her doctors were optimistic and that I’d call again once I knew more.

  “Do you think I should head out there?”

  I hesitated. What I’d witnessed back in the motel room certainly seemed like something serious enough to warrant Justin’s presence. I just didn’t want him to make the trip until we were sure of what we were dealing with. I said as much to him and he asked to talk to Darlene.

  “She may not be able to speak very well,” I cautioned him. Then I turned on the speaker and held the phone up to her ear.

  “What have you gone and done now, Mom?” Justin said with a smile and concern in his voice.

  “Messed up big-time,” she said again. The words sounded somewhat clearer to me.

  “Listen, I’m going to be tracking with Ceelie, but if you want me to come now, say the word.”

  “No—need.”

  The odd-shaped words must have frightened him. “I’ll be there in a few hours. If I leave now, maybe by morning.”

  “No.” This time the word was clear.

  “I want to, Mom. If anything happened—”

  “Don’t bor—row,” she mumbled.

  I smiled despite the dire circumstances and said to Justin, “I’m guessing you’re familiar with the phrase.”

  He sighed. “I am.”

  Darlene tried to form a word a couple times before it finally came out. “Re—peat.”

  “Really, Mom?”

  “Re—peat.”