Grier leaned forward now with her head between her knees, breathing in several long gulps of air and willing herself to calm.
“Grier!”
At the sound of her name, she raised her head to find Andy staring at her, eyes wide and terrified. Priscilla stood behind her, looking nearly as distraught. “Where’s Daddy?” Andy said. “Is he okay?”
Grier stood, her legs shaky with the effort. “The doctors are with him.”
“Is he all right?” Andy cried, the question shrill now. Grier started to pull the girl to her, but glanced at Priscilla, and kept her arms by her side.
“Can we see him?” Priscilla said.
“The nurse said to wait here,” Grier said.
“How can we just wait here?” Priscilla said then, pressing a hand to her mouth. And Grier could see in that moment the woman’s clear feelings for Bobby Jack. Whatever had passed between them over the years had not extinguished the basic root of love.
Grier eased her way back into the chair, a wave of dizziness forcing her to sit.
“What happened?” Andy said.
“Bobby Jack was getting people out from the back side of the building. When he started, there was just smoke. But by the time he came out with the last woman, the flames had gotten through to that area, and part of the roof fell in.”
“On him?” Andy cried again.
“I’m not sure,” Grier said carefully. “The firefighters were hosing that area, and got the blaze out quickly.”
“Is he burned?” Priscilla said.
“I don’t know,” Grier said. “They wouldn’t let me see him.”
“Oh, Daddy!” Andy said, sinking down into the chair beside Grier.
Andy started to sob then. Priscilla sat down next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her to her chest, rubbing her hair, and telling her that everything would be all right. But Andy continued to cry, her shoulders shaking, and Grier could feel the girl’s pain vibrating against her own.
Andy sat up abruptly, tears still streaming down her face. “Your mama,” she said, as if just remembering. “Was your mama in there?”
“Yes,” Grier said. “Your daddy saved her and her friend Hatcher, and several other people as well. So many of the firefighters were working on the front side of the building that they were shorthanded in the wing where Mama and the others were. Most likely, he saved their lives.”
This brought a fresh wave of tears to Andy’s eyes, and they rolled down her cheeks, dropping on her hands, which were clasped in her lap.
A nurse appeared in the doorway just then. “Is there family here for Bobby Jack Randall?”
“Yes,” Andy said, popping out of her chair. “I’m his daughter.”
Priscilla stood too, saying nothing. The nurse waved for them to follow her. Andy glanced back at Grier, and said quickly, “I hope your mama’s okay,” and then followed the nurse from the room.
“You ever heard the word restoration?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“It means figuring out how to make right our wrongs.”
“I guess that would be a fine place to be. If a person knew how to get there.”
Maxine and Hatcher – a summer night conversation on the front porch of the Sunset Retirement Home
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Maxine opened her eyes to a blinding white light. Its glare hurt intensely, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to figure out where exactly she was. Sounds echoed in her ears, voices urgent somewhere nearby. A sudden awareness of pain in her chest made her gasp. She tried to sit up, but weakness hit her so hard that she slumped back to the pillow.
A nurse stepped inside the curtained area and said, “Mrs. McAllister, nice to have you back with us.”
Maxine tried to speak, but the effort was too great, and she simply shook her head.
“No, no, don’t try to talk now. Everything is all right,” the nurse said in a soothing voice. “Does anything hurt?”
Maxine started to answer, but she didn’t have the breath to recite the list, so again she simply shook her head.
“I believe there’s someone outside to see you,” the young nurse said. “All right if I tell her to come in?”
The word no tried to form itself on Maxine’s lips. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, and least of all Grier, if it was Grier waiting to see her.
But the nurse took her silence as acquiescence and slipped behind the curtain, her shoes squeaking on the tile floor. Maxine closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Grier stood by the bedside, looking down at her with naked concern. Maxine tried to speak, but her throat was so dry that no sound came out.
Grier put her finger to her lips and said, “Shh.”
She reached for the chair next to the bed, and pulled it closer, sitting down. They watched each other for a few moments until Grier said, “You rest, I’ll be right here.”
It was on those comforting words that Maxine let the wave of exhaustion slide over her, and she slept.
“The brain may rationalize with why should I care? But the heart takes a different route with how can I not?”
Grier McAllister – Blog at Jane Austen Girl
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
For the next two hours, Grier sat in the chair, unmoving.
On some level, she was afraid to, glancing every few seconds at her mother’s chest to make sure she was still breathing. She looked so pale and fragile against the white hospital sheets that it was easy to see how frail she was. The emotions assaulting Grier at regular intervals were so tangled, that she had no idea how to separate them, much less identify them. She wanted so badly not to care, to stand up and walk out of the hospital without looking back, yet she knew, with utter certainty that was no longer a choice.
Watching Bobby Jack carry her mother out of that smoking building had snapped something inside Grier. The walls of the dam she had erected around her heart so long ago, collapsing and flooding her with the most painful kind of regret. Not regret for the bad things that had happened between her mother and her, but regret for the fact that she had never allowed herself to seek some kind of peace between them. Tonight had shown her how quickly an end can come, and how deeply the realization that all chances are gone can cut.
She took in the lines of her mother’s wrinkled face now, and knew somehow that at least part of their origin was self-incrimination. The woman lying here wasn’t the same woman Grier had grown up with. All the anger that her mother had nurtured during Grier’s childhood had evaporated somewhere along the way. It no longer possessed or controlled her.
Grier had never known the why of it; she had just known it was there. And for her mother’s own peace, she felt suddenly grateful that it was gone.
She bowed her head then, and said a prayer of gratitude for the mercies granted tonight. To her mother, to her friend Hatcher, to the others from the nursing home who were helped to safety. She prayed, too, that the mercy would be extended to Bobby Jack, for all that he had done tonight.
She opened her eyes, suddenly needing to know if he was all right. Assured that her mother was still sleeping, Grier slipped through the curtain.
Clarity comes with the light.
Today’s truism from Bobby Jack’s desk calendar
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
If Bobby Jack had ever wondered how it would feel to have a hammer taken to the back of his head, he now knew.
Awareness hit him with a blow, and his eyes flew open, panic clutching at his chest.
“It’s okay, Daddy.”
He heard the words, tried to focus, and then settled his gaze on Andy standing at the side of his bed. He realized then that he was in a hospital bed, the antiseptic smell confirming the realization.
Andy took his hand and twined her fingers with his. “How do you feel?”
Bobby Jack tried to raise his head, and then let out a soft moan. Priscilla stepped into his line of vision and said, “Don’t, Bobby Jack, just stay
where you are.”
Something in her voice nagged at him. Panic, concern, worry? He let his eyes settle on hers then, and saw conformation of all three. “You’re going to be alright,” she said.
He could hear that she believed it, but his body was telling him something entirely different. His lungs felt as if they had been scorched with a blowtorch, and the back of his skull throbbed like a freight train. Memory slammed back then, and he rose up on his elbows, forcing out the question, “Are they okay?”
“Who, Daddy?”
“The people. . .at the nursing home.”
“I think so,” Andy said. “You saved a lot of lives tonight, Daddy.”
He heard the near accusation in her voice, and then understood when the tears started to slide down her cheeks. She leaned her head on to his chest and cried as he hadn’t heard her cry since she was a young child. He put his hands on the back of her hair and rubbed gently. “It’s okay, baby. Everything is all right.”
“You could’ve died tonight, Daddy!”
“But I didn’t,” he said gently. Priscilla reached for his hand, and patted softly.
He met her gaze, and saw then what had once been between them.
“It’s amazing what you did tonight, Bobby Jack,” she said. He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. And when he opened his eyes again, he saw Grier standing next to Priscilla. Her eyes were red, her cheeks flushed, and he could see that she had been crying.
“Your mama,” he said. “Is she-”
“Yes,” Grier nodded, “Thanks to you.”
“And the others?”
“I think so.”
He focused on that thought, the fatigue deep in his bones pulling him towards sleep. He wanted to resist it, but couldn’t find the strength. He closed his eyes and let it in.
Compassion is the predecessor to understanding.
Grier McAllister – Blog at Jane Austen Girl
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
It seemed like days passed before a doctor finally came into the room where Grier sat with her mother. At some point, during the hours while Grier sat at the side of the bed, her mother’s breathing had grown more peaceful, steadier, with the assistance of the oxygen mask. Her face retained its pallor, and Grier pressed the back of her hand to her cheek a number of times, reassured by the warmth there.
She felt an overwhelming urge to take her mother’s hand between her own and squeeze it tight, but resisted the impulse for fear of waking her. She looked so tired, as if she had been on some incredibly long journey and only just now found a place to rest.
Emotion squeezed Grier’s heart like a vice in her chest, the pressure making tears sprout in her eyes and trickle down her cheeks.
How was it possible to feel such an overwhelming mix of pity and pain? A rope of regret suddenly lowered into her own well of pain. And she wondered if that rope could pull them both back to a place called forgiveness.
“My Daddy can do anything.”
Andy to her first grade teacher
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Andy sat at her father’s bedside for the entire night while he slept. She’d asked the nurses who came in the room every twenty minutes or so if he was actually sleeping. Somehow, she didn’t quite trust their reassurances. She’d never seen him sleep this deeply.
A couple of the nurses had offered her coffee to help her stay awake, but she refused. She didn’t need coffee. Her nerve endings felt as if someone had lit a match to them, the flame of fear leaping up every few minutes like the flames that had destroyed the old nursing home.
Her mother had offered to stay as well, but Andy told her to go. Somehow, it didn’t feel right, her being here.
Tonight for the first time in Andy’s memory, she’d seen the love her mom must have once felt for her dad. It had been there in the naked worry in her eyes when she looked at him. Andy wondered why people didn’t protect that kind of love, why they did things to abuse it, to pound away at it until it finally dissolved into nothingness.
She didn’t know the answer to that question, only that the love they had once felt for each other was gone. Divorce sucked that way, when you were the kid in the middle of it.
She loved them both for different reasons, because they were such different people. But pieces of them were what made her what she was. In seeing each of them a little more clearly tonight, she saw herself a little more clearly as well.
For a long time, she’d been banging on all the things she considered wrong with her. She wasn’t as pretty as her mom. Not as responsible as her dad. But then again, she was only sixteen. Where had she read that it was so mandatory that she already have everything figured out at her age?
“Andy?”
Andy jerked her gaze to her dad’s face, her heart beating at a sudden gallop in her chest. “Daddy?”
“What time is it?”
“Five-thirty?”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah. You’ve been sleeping.”
He tried to sit up on his elbows, frowning. “Why am I still here? And what about everybody else? Are they—”
“Daddy, everything is fine. You’re here because the doctors wanted you to stay overnight and make sure everything is okay.”
“Grier? Grier’s mom? Is she—”
“She’s resting, too. Here, sit back, okay?”
He fell against the pillow, as if his muscles had suddenly remembered their fatigue.
“Hard work being a hero, isn’t it?”
He looked at her, clearly a little surprised by the comment.
“I forgot, you know,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“When I was a little girl, that’s what I used to think about you. That you were this big superhero kind of guy. And if I ever needed saving, you’re the one I hoped would be around.”
“That all went away, didn’t it?” he said, a sudden note of sadness in his voice.
Tears welled in her eyes. “It’s not you, Daddy. It’s me. I’ve been a jerk to you for a good long while. I don’t know why except that I’ve been kind of mad and disgusted with myself and I guess I took that out on you.”
“Why would you be mad at yourself?”
She took her time answering this one. When she spoke, her words came out as a question. “If it weren’t for me, would you and Mama still be together?”
“Ah, Andy. Your mama and me. We were so young and stupid when we got together. We didn’t know anything about the real work it takes to make a relationship last. We tried for a long time to be what the other one wanted. But when it comes down to it, that doesn’t get it. People are who they are. And I don’t know why we end up sometimes with someone who’s looking for something different. They think they see some of it in us, and maybe we’ll change enough to be the whole picture of what they want. But that’s not how it usually goes. We’re just born with certain things that make us who we are. Maybe our challenge in life is to grow from that. And be the best of that we can be. When we ask someone to be something they’re not, maybe that’s the worst kind of rejection. When we refuse to see the good that’s already there in a person because it’s not our good. Their good ought to be enough, don’t you think?”
Andy glanced out the window at the sun creeping up behind the park that lay to the side of the hospital. She knew her daddy was right. And she knew, too, that was exactly what she’d been trying to do as well. Be something other than what she was.
She wasn’t a girl who liked to get up in front of other people and walk down a runway in an evening gown. She liked jeans and T-shirts that let people know what she thought about something. She didn’t like to wear makeup all the time. It was okay when she went out at night or did something a little special. And if she had to actually roll her hair on those hot curlers every single morning of her life, she would never get anywhere on time. A ponytail with a rubber band was her stand-by, and it worked just fine.
So why was she turning herself inside out trying to be s
omething she wasn’t, attract the attention of a duke with a life on the other side of the world, a guy who would be nothing more for her than a memory at some point in the not so distant future.
She looked at her dad, stood and leaned forward to loop her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“Hey,” he said, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek and tucking her hair behind one ear. “I’m proud of you, you know.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but I’m not a superhero.”
“You are to me,” he said.
And that was all it took. Those four words, filtering through to her heart, seeping outwards to the farthest parts of her until she felt as if she glowed with their warmth.
Give two boys who think they’re enemies a football. And then see what happens.
Kyle’s Sandlot league football coach
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
It was just about six-thirty a.m. when Kyle rolled through the green light at Main and Yardley. He recognized the guy immediately. It was the posture. Straight shoulders, the blue blood walk royals must start teaching their kids right after they take their first steps.
If it hadn’t been for that, he could have been mistaken for any other guy. He wore blue jeans and a hoody sweatshirt, BEAT IT, emblazoned across the back.
He should have kept on driving. Common sense told him as much. Which in no way explained why he hit the brakes and lowered the passenger side window. “Hey, Duke” he said, “you need a ride?”
George, Duke of Iberlorn swung him a glance of dismissal.
“They teach you that in royalty school?” Kyle asked.
George kept walking without looking at him. “Fuck you,” he said in his high-brow accent.
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