“For the donor who gave me my new heart.”
Jenna cocked her head. “How are you doing that?”
“Looking for all the auto accidents within a four-hour radius of Omaha for December twenty-second or twenty-third.”
“What made you think of that?”
“My chat room.”
“You mean the one for those on donor-waiting lists?” Randy sat down beside her. “You know you’ll be able to send the donor family a letter through the proper channels.”
“I know, but this way I might find the real person.”
“How do you know so much about this?”
“Research.” Heather fingered the gold heart-shaped locket she’d worn around her neck ever since Randy gave it to her. “I really want to know.”
“Just don’t let the disappointment get to you.” Jenna took the recliner and kicked it back so she could have her feet up. “Just think, Monday I have to go back to work.”
“So soon?” Heather stopped typing.
“You knew that.”
“I—I guess, I just hoped you’d stay home longer.”
“Do you need me to?”
“The biopsy is Tuesday.”
“I’ll take you to that.”
Heather covered a yawn. “Think I’ll take a nap.” As soon as she moved, Goldie raised up; then after a prolonged doggy stretch, she followed Heather down the hall.
“Why don’t we take the dog for a walk? She probably needs to go out by now.” Randy smiled, making her heart skip a beat.
“Better be quick, the temperature is dropping.”
They bundled up, clicked the lead on Goldie’s collar and went down the stairs and out the door. The wind had indeed kicked up, and dusk already blued the drifted snow. Randy held the leash in one gloved hand and took Jenna’s with the other.
“The things I have to do to get you alone.” He sighed dramatically.
“About last night…” What about last night? That it was wonderful? Too fast? No, she told herself, not too fast. Simply wonderful. She didn’t continue.
“Yes?” They waited while Goldie did her business.
“Ah…” Why had she started this line of conversation? What could she say? Did that kiss mean as much to him as it did to her? Is this love I feel or just attraction? After all, I’ve not spent this much time with any man, other than you, since Arlen left. And came back in a box.
“You want to try again to see if it was a fluke or…?”
She shook her head, the smile Randy seemed to encourage peeping out.
“Jenna, what is it?” He bent to lock gazes with her. Randy Montgomery melted her very bones, in the very nicest of ways. After years of being alone, alone with Heather’s health, it was heady stuff.
Goldie tugged on the leash, then threw herself into a soft spot and rolled, rolled over, dug her nose into the snow, showering powder, and, shoulder down, rolled again.
When the dog turned to look at them, Randy picked up his end of the leash again. “Remember when I told you I was in love—back at the hospital right after Heather’s transplant?”
“Yes.” She did. She remembered thinking that woman had a blessing beyond compare. She shivered.
He turned to face her, taking both of her hands in his. “It’s you. I’ve loved you for years.”
“We’re family.”
“Started out that way, but these last years, I’ve just been waiting for you to be ready.”
“You think I’m ready now?” How had she gotten ready? She’d already known Randy’s kindness, his character, his sense of fun that helped her remember life could be more than a doctor’s visit. When had she slid into love? She didn’t know, might never know. But she was there.
He nodded. “For the first time, you’ve been aware of me as a man, not a brother, ever since Omaha. I could feel it then.”
Jenna stood as though the temperature had plunged and she’d become a statue. Aware of him as a man. Everything that was squishy went off in her. That she wasn’t a teenager made not one jot of difference. As stiff as she’d been standing, her knees now threatened to buckle with the intense gaze of the man Randy. “This takes some getting used to.” It came out too clinical, unfeeling. She turned and started back. “It’s cold out here.” At least no one could ever accuse her of being a flirt—but oh, if she could begin to convey what was tumbling around inside. He might just run. She had to smile. No, not Randy.
“I’m not cold at all. And, Jenna, I’ll wait as long as it takes.” His wide smile embraced her as he tucked her arm through his.
Back at the apartment building, they kicked the snow off their boots, brushed the snow off Goldie and entered the lobby.
When he was ready to leave the next afternoon, he asked if she wanted him there for the heart biopsy.
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary. We know the process.”
“You might, but I don’t. How long will the weekly ones last?”
“All depends on the results.” She turned at the flash of the camera. “You’ve created a monster here. Heather and the evil eye.”
Randy grinned at them both. “Call me when it’s over.”
Heather raised an eyebrow. “You want her or me to call?”
“Either, both. I leave for New York on Wednesday, but the cell always works.” He kissed them both on the cheek and waved as he went down the stairs.
“I think he loves us.” Heather knelt down by her dog. “All of us.”
Thursday afternoon, when they returned from a meeting with Dr. Avery, Mr. Dean, the building manager, called them into his office. “I have something here for you.” He beamed at Heather’s glowing face, as though he were personally responsible for it.
Jenna and Heather exchanged puzzled looks.
Mr. Dean returned with a dog carrier. “This came for you.” He handed the carrier to Jenna.
She peeked inside. “A Yorkie.” Not only was it a Yorkie, but the Yorkie mop she’d seen at the shelter, now beautifully washed, combed and clipped. A blue bow pulled up its front fringe.
“There’s a card.”
She handed the carrier to Heather and opened the card. “ ‘This little fellow needed you. He’s been fixed, chipped, groomed and just wants you to love him. Randy,’ ” she read out loud. Opening the door, she took the shivering little fellow in her arms. “Sorry, Mr. Dean, we now have two dogs. What can I say?”
“Call it therapy for Heather. Just don’t tell the other tenants or we’ll have dogs all over the place.”
“What are we going to name you, little fellow?”
The exquisite little creature gave her a lick on the nose.
“I think we better begin to look for a house,” Heather whispered. “We may find a horse on our doorstep next. You can never tell with Uncle Randy.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Nora
You have to let me know where you are and be home for curfew.”
“But M-o-m!”
“Those have always been the rules. Why are you having such a fit about it?”
“Mother, I am eighteen now and not a child.”
If the pout on her face and the whine in her voice hadn’t been so pronounced, Nora might have conceded her daughter had a point. But the presentation overshadowed the facts. You act like a child, Christi, you get treated like a child.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” Christi slammed her fist down on the counter. “If Dad were here…”
That was the problem. Gordon wasn’t there. Several days earlier, the first of February, he’d left on the first business trip since Charlie’s death and wasn’t due back until Thursday. No Gordon, no buffer between her and her daughter. “He would say the exact same thing I’m saying.” At least I hope he would. At times Nora wasn’t so sure—sometimes she thought Gordon was being more lenient with his daughter because he so missed his son. If that made any sense at all. And Nora realized that she was being even more protective. The fear of losing thi
s child, too, ate at her like a rapacious monster, tearing flesh from bones, then filling the empty spaces with vile poison. If she had her way, she’d take away the car keys so that she knew where she’d left her daughter and when to pick her up.
Had she trusted Charlie more? Christi had thrown that in her face on more than one occasion. She only knew she had worried less about Charlie because she’d trusted God and society to watch out for her son. Trust was a terrible thing to lose.
But how to explain this to her daughter, who absolutely hated anything her mother said or did?
“When is Dad coming back?”
Nora heard the question only vaguely as the mere thought of Charlie had loosened the demons of grief again. “What?” She mopped her eyes and dug in her pocket for a tissue, something she’d learned to keep near at hand.
Christi’s sigh, fueled by impatience, lashed across the space. “Dad, your husband, when is he coming home?” The tone snarled around her.
Nora sucked in what was hopefully a draught of patience and turned to look at her daughter. The sarcasm was becoming entrenched. “I don’t appreciate the tone of your voice. Would you like to try again?” She hoped her own tone was civil—that had been her goal.
Christi stomped out of the room and up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door hard enough that Betsy slunk out of the room.
“I don’t blame you, girl, I don’t want to be around her either.” Nora went to the cupboard and reached for the bottle of port she’d purchased a week or so ago. Anything to help her calm down and be able to sleep at night. After a fight like this, she’d be replaying it in her mind for hours. “What could she have done differently” would segue into “if only” and disintegrate into tears. “If only” never got her anywhere.
She poured the tawny liquid into a glass and took it over to the chair in front of the fireplace, where Betsy now lay on the rug. Warmth settled in with the first sip. Was she using port as a crutch? Probably, but at this point she needed something. Even the Bible suggested a glass of wine to settle the stomach. What would it take to settle the heart?
“Go talk to her.” The voice in her head was insistent. “Go talk to her.”
What good will it do? She’ll get more upset, and neither one of us needs that. She heard the voice again. What are you, voice—on autopilot? Susan said Christi’s behavior was a cry for help. How can I help her when I can’t help myself? When she sipped again, the warmth of the port brought tears to run down her cheeks. Christi, how can I convince you that I love you? Gordon, how can you be gone at a time like this? God, what am I to do?
“Go talk with her.”
Nora set the glass on the table between the two chairs, pushed herself to her feet and started toward the door. Betsy rose to accompany her. “No, girl, we’re not going to bed, at least not yet. No matter how much I want to.” Each riser on the stairs fought to imprison her foot, like slogging through a swamp. When she reached the top of the stairs, she clung to the banister. This was insanity.
Pausing at Christi’s door, Nora sucked in a deep breath, hopefully inhaling courage, along with the necessary oxygen. She tapped gently.
“Go away.” The tear-thickened voice reminded Nora of her own.
“Please, Christi, can we talk?”
“No.”
“Please, may I come in?”
“No.”
Nora leaned her forehead against the door, one beseeching palm flat against the wood, reaching high above her head. Short of bashing the door down if it was locked, what were her options? “Wait.” That voice with no sound, but ringing with such compassion that she could do nothing else.
Time stretched, quivering like an overused muscle.
Sitting at Nora’s feet, Betsy scratched behind her ear with her back foot. The thumping sounded against the door like a bass drum at full volume. Nora stroked the dog’s head and stretched her own from side to side.
Say something? Be still? Wait? What to do? Was she doing not only the right thing but the best thing? She knew she’d been so locked in her own grief that she’d not helped her family, but where was the strength to do anything else? Just getting through moment by moment drained her dry.
“Wait.”
She heard shuffling and the turn of the knob. The door swung open, and without looking at her mother, Christi motioned her inside.
Nora’s arms ached with the desire to gather her suffering daughter into her and just hold her. But when she moved toward Christi, the girl stepped back, her hair a hanging veil in front of her face.
Christi turned and made her way through discarded clothing, stacks of finished and half-finished canvases, shoes, schoolbooks, finally shoving things off the bed to have room to sit.
Those paintings. They could not be called art. Her stomach coiling into a knot, Nora stared at them, the lamp from the bedside table casting shadows on what could only be art from shadowed places. Misshapen monsters in black and red leaped from the two-by-three-foot canvas on the easel, sending ripples of horror and fear up Nora’s spine. She wanted to turn and run, out the door and back down the stairs, pretending she’d never seen these products of her daughter’s mind. Half pivoting, she saw one of her favorites that Christi had painted last year, an Easter painting with an empty cross, ripped down the center, one half hanging. She closed her eyes, screaming at her heart to keep beating, in spite of the hole where Charlie had been cut out.
“I’m sorry, Christi.” The words came from someplace inside of her, not of her own volition.
The veil swung as Christi nodded. “Me too.”
“I don’t want us to fight. I love you and I’m afraid I’m losing you.”
Christi raised her tearstained face. “Mom…” She covered her face with her hands. A slash of black paint stained the back of one of her hands.
Nora waited, resisting the urge to pick up the dirty clothes, sort through the paintings. Christi, who had always been so particular about her clothes and possessions, now lived in this mess. Or, like her mother, did she only exist?
“Why did Charlie have to die?” The words burst forth like a lanced boil.
“I don’t know.” Nora wrapped her arms around her middle. “I don’t have any answers.”
“It’s not fair.” The final word turned into a wail.
“No, it’s not.” She omitted the “who said life was fair?” which her ever practical mother had often told her.
“But you don’t understand, Charlie was my twin.”
“I know. He was my son.” Nora could no longer hold back. She sank down on the side of the bed and gathered her daughter into her arms, where their sobs rocked the bed. When the storm had passed, like it always did, even though Nora feared it would stay forever, Nora looked around for a box of tissues. When she didn’t see any, she dug a crumpled one out of her pocket. Used. So, instead, she picked a corner of the sheet to mop Christi’s face and then her own, keeping one arm tight around her.
When she felt Christi sag against her side and the girl’s catchy breaths deepen into sleep, Nora eased herself out and laid her daughter back on the pillow, picking up her legs and swinging them up on the bed. With an incoherent murmur, Christi turned on her side. Nora smoothed the long hair back from Christi’s face and bent over, kissing her cheek. “I love you, Christi, I will always love you.” After tucking the comforter around the girl’s shoulder, she turned out the lamp and carefully made her way around the stacks on the floor to the door. She turned at the sound of the cat leaping up on the bed. Wondering where he’d been hiding through all the storm, she shut the door behind her.
The need to crawl into her own bed ached throughout Nora’s body and mind. But she had to let the dog out for a last run, check the doors, turn out the lights—all the things that Gordon usually did. The red light flashed on the phone. Hoping it might be Gordon, she punched in the numbers for the answering service and listened to Gordon tell her good night and he hoped she and Christi were doing better. He’d left some messages on e-ma
il for them both. He would be home Thursday evening. Knowing the time difference, she didn’t call him back.
With all the evening chores finished, including a load of clothes in the washing machine, she and Betsy padded back upstairs and got ready for bed. She began to pull on sweats, hesitated, then retrieved pajamas from a drawer and put them on. She brushed her teeth. Betsy would warm up her feet.
A nightmare with “Guilt” riding hard, spurs slashing, woke her up at five. Shaking and shivering, she wrapped a fluffy robe around her and went downstairs to turn up the thermostat. Setting the coffee to start, she crumpled paper for the fireplace, added kindling and split wood, then lit the paper with a match. When the paper flared, she turned on the gas lighter. Standing, watching the flames sneak around the wood and lick the small bits, she tried to figure out the dream. The coffee machine dinged and she fetched her mug, curling up in the leather chair, with her hands cupping the heat of the mug.
Christi. How to help her daughter? Gordon. How come he was handling this so well? Or was he just stuffing things? She got up and added more wood to the fire, then propped her elbows on her knees, stroking the dog with one hand and holding her coffee cup in the other.
Why am I such a failure, hiding out, unable to function? I’ve always handled crisis well. I thought I was capable, a strong woman of faith, and now I can’t make myself walk through the church doors. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’ve let my family down. What a mess!
She heard her alarm going off upstairs. She thought of just letting it ring, but she forced herself out of the chair and up the stairs. At least she could make a good breakfast for her and Christi. But what? Leftovers from the freezer? She didn’t even make sure there was food in the house. Back downstairs she studied the innards of the refrigerator. They did have eggs and cheese. A package of bacon in the freezer. Omelets. Country music drifted down, Christi’s alarm. Did she have to fight to wake up like her mother did, or…? The sound of the shower running answered that one.
“Your omelet is ready,” she called up the stairs a few minutes later, after the shower had been turned off and she’d allowed time for Christi to get dressed.
One Perfect Day Page 21