Promise of Forever

by Patt Marr

  On the day he found out that his wife couldn’t bear children, who had he turned to? His pretty nurse, that’s who, and late that afternoon, in his office, she’d given herself to Keith as she had to no other.

  They’d only been together the one time—which he claimed to regret, but she hadn’t—not even when she found she was carrying his child, her baby, their little son.

  Keith had been wonderful. He’d given her the choice of raising the child with his financial support in a town far away to avoid scandal for the baby’s sake or of letting Keith and his wife, Karen, adopt the baby.

  She made her choice. She couldn’t leave Keith. Letting her baby go was terrible, but she wasn’t losing him for good. She would see him because she would see Keith. The weekends were lonely, but Keith was hers through the week.

  When Karen died, she’d understood why Keith couldn’t ask her to marry him. The Brennans had created such a hoity-toity climate at the clinic, the gossips would have accused them of carrying on for years. It would have ruined the purity of their love.

  If it weren’t for the Brennans, everything would have been different. She could have kept her baby. If the baby had been with her, he might have lived. If he’d lived, Keith would have married her. By now, they would have had grandchildren, and Keith wouldn’t be where he was now.

  Her only consolation was knowing the Brennans would suffer. Gossip was a powerful, vicious animal, and she’d unleashed it last night, calling as many parents as she could in one evening. She’d known she wouldn’t have another chance, and she’d already emptied her desk of personal items.

  The only reason to go to work today was to laugh in their faces. It was payback time. Bethie and the old coot were going down. They’d taken her man, but she’d taken their computer files—nothing recent, not with Noah, Vanessa or Beth always snooping—but she had medical information about the children of movie stars that the tabloids would pay for. The Brennans would be discredited and she would be set for life.

  Today was going to be great! Noah could hardly wait to see Beth. He’d thought about calling her last night, but he didn’t want there to be any confusion—in her mind or the Lord’s—about the reason he’d given his heart back to God.

  First and foremost, it was about his relationship with the Lord. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt such joy. When he sang good morning to Kendi, he’d sung a children’s church song with her, too. She’d smiled big and said, “Daddy, you’re different!”

  The differences were just beginning. It was still hard for him to believe that God wanted him to marry a Brennan, but if everything was going to be all right, it couldn’t mean life without Beth.

  He must have checked his watch a dozen times, impatient for her to arrive at the office, but she was really late and still might not be in for a while. A patient at the hospital had taken a turn for the worse. Her schedule was going to be too tight for them to talk during office hours. Could he hold his good news until late afternoon?

  As expected, by the time she arrive, the lobby was full of patients. If she noticed that he was in an unusually good mood, she didn’t comment on it. In fact, Beth seemed depressed, more so by the minute. Things must have gone badly for the patient.

  It was almost lunch time when he took a phone call that put an end to his newfound peace. Boiling mad, he wanted to take care of the situation his way and now! If Beth didn’t let Mona go after hearing this, if she wavered again, what should he do? Options ran through his mind…until he remembered to pray.

  Lord, maybe this is a test of my trust in You and Your power. Please give Beth the guts to do what has to be done and the wisdom to do it.

  Noah checked Beth’s schedule, looking for the best time to drop the bombshell. She had a couple of patients to see before lunch. Should he wait until then? Maybe not.

  “Can I see you for a minute?” he said, stepping inside the exam room as her last patient left to make an appointment with Vanessa.

  Beth shut the door behind him and leaned against the exam table. “What’s up?”

  She looked so weary, he wished that what he had to say could wait. “I had a call from Stacee Drezek. Mona is calling your patients and urging them to find a new, more competent pediatrician because…get this…Dr. Crabtree is not coming back.”

  That seemed to shock her as much as it had him.

  “Stacee and her friends thought it was weird when Mona called them the first time, insisting Keith would be back. This time, hearing her change her story, they think she’s a psycho. They’re not questioning your competence as a physician, but they wonder why Mona’s working here.”

  Beth’s shoulders slumped. “What did you tell Stacee?”

  “I thanked her for the call, assured her you were extremely competent and said I’d tell you.”

  She dipped her head and turned slightly as if she didn’t want him to see her reaction. “Thank you, Noah. I think we only have a couple of patients who are waiting. While I see them, I’ll be praying about what to do.”

  “Beth! You have to let her go.”

  “I know! Mona will be going today. It’s just that…” Her voice faltered. “This means you’re leaving, too.”

  He hadn’t thought of that. He’d said he would only stay until Mona was gone, he hadn’t put his future in the hands of the Lord.

  “If you want to remain working at the clinic, there’s a nurse in Uncle Charlie’s office who’s interested in a transfer. Like you, I knew Mona would try something again, so I have a nurse friend from New York who’ll be taking Mona’s place. I hope you’ll stay until Roxie settles in.”

  “No problem.” He looked away, barely able to breathe with this rock in his chest. This isn’t what he wanted, but it wasn’t the time to say everything had changed. When would he have a chance to tell her, and would it make a difference when he did?

  She left to see another patient, and they went through the motions, getting through the schedule efficiently. Beth didn’t dally with her patients as she often did.

  Mona and Vanessa were still up front when she asked him to follow her to her office. “I’m going to call Grandpa and have Human Resources walk me through the steps of Mona’s dismissal,” she said. “I’d like to do it right after lunch.”

  “Can I bring you something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry, but you go ahead.”

  “You might need me.” Food was the last thing on his mind. How did he take back words spoken in anger, prompted by pride? “I’d like to stick around.”

  She placed her call to the chief and went about the business of setting up Mona’s dismissal in her brisk, professional manner. Beth was getting the job done as she’d promised. If he were in her shoes, knowing that Mona was out to cause harm, could he have managed as well?

  “It’s set,” she said, ending the call. “Grandpa’s coming up. His office assistant will reschedule our afternoon patients while Vanessa and Mona are at lunch. A computer tech is on the way to see if files have been tampered with. A security guard will be here when Mona gets back from lunch. He’ll stay with her while she carries the personal contents from her desk to the exit.”

  “Can I be here? It sounds like you have everything covered, but I don’t trust Mona at all.”

  “Neither do I! I would be glad to have you here, but you shouldn’t be in the room when a coworker is fired.”

  He should have thought of that himself.

  “But you could stay close by, perhaps just outside the door? I’d like that.”

  “Then I’ll be there.”

  “Would you excuse me for a few minutes, Noah?” she asked quietly. “I need a little time alone.”

  Did she want him out of her presence, or did she want time to pray? Probably both. If he hadn’t taken so long to get right with God, he could have prayed with her.

  “Maybe you could find a box for Mona’s things,” she said as he turned to leave. “I said I would clean out Mona’s desk myself, and I will.”

 
; “I’ll do that.” It was the least he could do.

  When Vanessa came back from lunch, the computer tech was already at work, and a security guard stood just out of sight by the door to the lobby.

  Vanessa looked at Noah with big eyes. “Does this mean what I hope it means?” she whispered.

  He nodded, though he didn’t share her happy anticipation. Another day, he would have, but he dreaded what Beth had yet to go through.

  Beth’s grandfather walked in, nodded to them both and headed back to Beth’s office. Noah sat at his desk and silently prayed.

  Lord, I wish I could be there with Beth, but You’ll be there, and that’s even better. Help her, Lord. Keep her safe and strong.

  Mona breezed through the door and put her purse away.

  “Mona.” The chief called from the end of the hall. “Would you join us?”

  She looked at Vanessa and Noah with a gleam in her eyes before strutting down the hall. Over her shoulder, she said gaily, “Aren’t you two coming to my retirement party?”

  “She’s crazy!” Vanessa said, looking scared.

  “We aren’t expecting any patients this afternoon,” he said, “but let me know if someone shows up. I’ll be outside Beth’s office.”

  Beth leaned against her desk, ready to do what had to be done. Her grandfather patted her shoulder as he walked around the desk and sat in her chair. “We’re going to get through this, darling,” he said quietly, though he had the look of a warrior.

  “What? No balloons and no cake?” Mona said as she came through the door. “I was hoping for cranberry punch.”

  “The most I can offer is a chair,” Beth said, not really expecting Mona to sit. “Please, have a seat.”

  “Why? I won’t be here long.”

  Beth turned to her grandfather and let him take the lead. He’d offered it to her, but she’d yielded to his greater experience. Besides, he’d known Mona for decades. He would know the right things to say.

  “I’m thinking of the last time we talked, Mona,” Grandpa said, lacing his fingers as he leaned back in the chair. “We offered you a handsome retirement package only a couple of months ago, yet you’re here, obviously expecting this to be your last day. I’m curious. If you knew you were going to leave, why didn’t you take the package?”

  “The circumstances are different. Two months ago, I planned to be here when Keith returned.”

  Grandpa frowned. “He told you he would be back?”

  “No, but I know you forced him out to make room for Beth. I knew he’d be back if she wasn’t here, and I planned to make sure she wasn’t. It was nothing personal, Beth,” Mona said with a smirk.

  It felt very personal. Mona’s attitude was getting under Beth’s skin. “My grandfather didn’t force Keith to leave. That was his choice.”

  Mona shrugged. “So you say. What I know is that we’d seldom been apart, and Keith depended on me.”

  “You love him, don’t you, Mona?” Grandpa sounded genuinely sympathetic. “You’ve loved him for years.”

  “Of course I love him.”

  “It must be horrible to love someone so much…and not have his love in return.”

  “But I did! I can’t remember when Keith didn’t love me. You don’t know anything! Did you know I carried his baby? Or that I let Keith and his wife adopt my son?”

  Noah had mentioned a picture of a baby on Keith’s credenza. That was her baby? How awful for Mona.

  “As I remember, the child died of SIDS,” Grandpa said.

  Mona nodded, grief aging her face. “Keith and I got through it together.”

  “How long have you kept that secret, Mona?” Beth asked.

  For a few seconds, Beth thought Mona wasn’t going to answer, but she said with trembling lips, “In January, it will be thirty-three years.”

  Grandpa cleared his voice. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I am, too,” Beth said.

  “Thank you,” Mona said, shaking off her sadness. “But I don’t think you’ve called me in here to offer condolences. Maybe I should be offering mine.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Beth said. Mona may have made a dent in her credibility, but that’s all it would be.

  “As you apparently suspect,” Grandpa said, “we’ve learned that you were quite active last night, calling parents and telling them Keith wouldn’t be back. What made you do that, Mona?”

  “I had to set the record straight. I’d personally assured them Keith would be back.”

  “What’s convinced you now that he won’t be?”

  “I used my life’s savings to hire an investigator,” Mona said, her lip curled. “He found Keith living on property purchased years ago. It’s in the South Pacific—one of the Fiji islands, to be exact. Did you know that?”

  Beth nodded.

  “You knew?” Mona exclaimed, her eyes blazing. “All those fishing trips—you knew that’s where he was going?”

  “I did,” Grandpa said.

  Her face contorted in malevolent rage. “Did you know his island housekeeper is now Mrs. Crabtree?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Grandpa said. The lines between his brow deepened.

  “Isn’t that a joke?” Her laugh was almost a sob.

  “A joke?” Grandpa asked. “I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

  “But it’s so funny. I was good enough to be Keith’s nurse and good enough to be the mother of his child, but, when his wife died and he could have married me, I wasn’t good enough to be his wife. Yet, this island woman with no education, no social standing, nothing worthy of being Mrs. Keith Crabtree—she’s good enough. If that’s not funny, what is?”

  Beth was so appalled at Mona’s thinking, she could only stare.

  “‘Good enough’?” Grandpa repeated, shaking his head in amazement. “It’s been a while since I heard that. Mona, money and social position aren’t the measure of a person—not the way they used to be. It still exists in the minds of small-minded people, but it’s what you do with your life that counts. It’s not what you have or where you came from.”

  “That’s what I should expect you to say,” she said, just as angry as ever. “Defend Keith. But you and this clinic have robbed me of my life.”

  Grandpa threw up his hands.

  Beth understood. There was no reasoning with a woman this delusional.

  “So, what happens now?” he asked. “You’ve wasted your life and your savings on a man who didn’t deserve you, and he’s cost you your job.”

  “I’m not without resources,” she said with a smirk. “The things I know are worth money.”

  Grandpa leaned forward. “If you’ve taken information from this office,” he said in a low, ominous tone, “or if you reveal anything you came to know while working here, it’s not going to earn you one dime. I’ll make sure you are prosecuted to the full extent of the law for violating privacy issues and stealing company information. You’ll end up in jail or in poverty. Either way, it’s not a pretty picture.”

  Beth felt a jolt of adrenaline at the threat in his voice. There was no mistaking he meant what he said.

  For the first time, Mona seemed uncertain.

  “But,” Grandpa said, leaning back in his chair with a sigh, “my granddaughter wants to offer you a better future. She has this thing about wanting to show God’s love. So, here’s what we’re going to do….”

  Noah stood by the door as Beth had asked him to do, listening to her grandfather offer Mona retirement benefits on the condition that she provide the information to right the wrongs she’d done to Beth and the clinic.

  If Mona had spat in the chief’s face, it wouldn’t have surprised Noah, but he was almost sure he heard her softly crying. He didn’t know what surprised him more: that Mona had finally caved, that Beth still wanted to show love to Mona or that the chief had been so clear that the measure of a person wasn’t what he had, but how he lived his life.

  Noah was back at his desk when Mona, Beth and the chi
ef emerged minutes later. He looked directly at Beth, silently asking if she was okay.

  She nodded, but he could see that the meeting had taken its toll.

  When she went back to her office and Mona left with the chief and the guard, Noah told Vanessa he was going to lunch. He still wasn’t hungry, but he needed a few minutes to think about what had just happened.

  Outside the clinic cafeteria, he sat on the patio, sipped iced tea, listened to the splashing of the garden fountain and prayed. God, help me think this through.

  If he was any kind of man at all, he had to consider what he’d heard the chief say about “good enough.”

  Noah had grown up in circumstances where others thought he wasn’t good enough, but he didn’t think that of himself. People who had more money, were better educated or came from a different background weren’t better, and he wasn’t less because they had more.

  But if he really believed that, why had he run from the best thing that ever happened to him? Was he that afraid of what people would say about him marrying a Brennan? What man in his right mind would forfeit the woman he loved to prove—and that’s what it was, a prideful need to prove—that he was good enough? That made him as pitiful as Mona.

  If his faith was real, if he’d meant what he told the Lord, then all doubts—all worries and fears—belonged to the One with ultimate control. Beth said she loved him…that she would love him forever. He didn’t understand how she could, but if she wanted his love, it was hers. No one would ever love her more.

  But how could she love him after the hurtful things he’d said and done? If he could undo them, he would. She deserved to know that, and there was no better time than now. He would start with an apology, but what then?

  Lord, do I tell Beth I love her or start with the news that I’ve come back to You?

  “Beth?” Noah said with a tap on her door.

  She called for him to come in, praying that she wouldn’t be like Mona, holding on to her one-sided love.