by Corbit, Dana
He reached behind him again, his hand closing over the pocket where the tiny box rested. His lips formed a grim line. “I wonder what the return policy is on engagement rings.”
Hannah’s eyes burned, and her chest felt as if a horrible weight had been placed on it, cutting off her oxygen, her hope. “Please don’t give up on us, Todd,” she begged, hearing the desperation in her own voice.
“But don’t you see? I have to. For my own survival.” Todd reached across the table and squeezed her hand just once before pulling away. “You never really forgave me for deserting you, even though we both wanted to believe it when you said you had. You aren’t able to forgive me, and I can’t live with the truth that you can’t.”
“But, Todd, I have…” Hannah let her words trail away, surprised by how unconvincing she sounded.
“I know you tried. Just as I tried to earn your forgiveness. But I finally realized something.” His smile was a sad one. “Forgiveness from someone you’ve hurt is like God’s forgiveness. It isn’t earned. It’s a gift.”
Tears filled Hannah’s eyes and spilled over before she could control them. “I’m so sorry.”
Again, he touched her hand, just a brief squeeze of comfort that he might have offered any friend who mourned as she did now. “I’m sorry, too. But I can’t marry you. We’ll always have some kind of relationship as Rebecca’s parents, but I can’t build a life with you.”
“I…love…you…Todd.” Each word seemed to emerge on its own wave of agony. Impotent words, their message moot.
He covered his face with his hands, and when he pulled them away, his eyes were damp, his raw pain visible.
“And I love you. Until a few weeks ago I believed that knowing you loved me would be enough for me.” He shook his head as if to emphasize how wrong he’d been. “But now I realize that I have to have your forgiveness, too. I have to have your trust.”
Todd backed his chair from the table and stood. Clearly, he recognized as she did that there was nothing else for them to say. Hopelessness filled her at the thought of the impasse they’d reached. Loving Todd wouldn’t be enough to keep him with her. Another truth, though, produced a fresh ache inside her: Her heart had been broken by her own unwillingness to bend.
Reverend Bob stared at the computer screen the following evening, Sunday’s sermon still no more than a title on the screen. “The Tithe.” But how could he give the annual message to his congregation about sharing their financial gifts and talents with the church community when he was responsible for bringing in someone who’d stolen from them?
He had a headache and his shoulder was hurting again, but neither of those things should have surprised him after the day he’d had. Even though no one had mentioned the investigation since yesterday’s meeting, he could think of nothing else.
He’d been holed up in his office all day with the intention of writing his sermon, but he’d gotten no further than looking up the word “tithe” in his concordance and searching for fresh Scriptural references in what church members often considered a tired topic. Already, it was past five, but he wasn’t in any hurry to leave the security of his office and to face the uncertainty of his life.
The sound of a file drawer closing in the next office told him that Andrew was making a long day of it, as well. The youth minister wouldn’t press him, but Bob felt comfort in knowing his friend was there if he needed him.
“Lord, what am I to do?” he whispered. “How do I make this right?”
It wasn’t as if he expected an immediate answer. God always answered prayer in His own time, and His answers were perfect. Still, the tick of the flashing curser on the computer screen seemed to taunt him like a series of questions marks with no answers in sight.
His office suddenly felt so warm. He peeled off his gray wool sweater and unfastened the top button of the shirt he wore beneath it. With his handkerchief, he dabbed at the perspiration dotting his brow.
This crime, and he was beginning to be convinced that a crime had been committed, would hurt the Hickory Ridge community so deeply. Where would they come up with another twenty-five thousand dollars to replace the missing funds?
He would claim responsibility for the fallout. He was the one who’d introduced Olivia to the Deacons’ Board and convinced its members she would be a good candidate for the church office position. Her résumé had been solid, but he’d been too distracted by her physical beauty and her passion for God to check her references. That beauty had been on the surface only, and even her faith had probably been only a masquerade.
Had he helped her at least in part because he wanted to impress her so she would see him socially? He shook his head. No, Olivia had definitely been the one to pursue him from the day she’d first shown up at the church’s Christian Singles United program and then at morning Bible study.
At the time, he’d found her interest flattering. Now that he knew her real motivation for visiting Hickory Ridge, it only compounded the humiliation he felt for letting the whole church community down. Perhaps he deserved the shadow of suspicion this case would cast on him and on the ministry he’d built at Hickory Ridge over the last fifteen years.
He would probably be forced to resign now. Who could blame the deacons for making that decision? Would he ever be called as a head minister of a church again?
The last thought was too much for him to take. His eyes and nose burned as emotion clogged his throat. He removed his glasses and would have wiped them with his handkerchief, but his left hand felt strangely numb. No rubbing seemed to awaken his slumbering fingers. He was still staring down at it, still wondering at the sensation when he felt a strange pressure, like a weight, on his chest.
Realization settled just as heavily as that weight. He clutched his chest. Lord, help me.
“Andrew.” He couldn’t tell if he’d yelled or only whispered, but he tried once more. “Andrew…help.”
The computer screen, the unfinished sermon and the portraits on his desk wavered in and out of focus. He had to get help…reach the door…call to Andrew. Bob struggled to his feet, holding himself steady by gripping the edge of his desk. He could do this. He was close to the door. So close.
Turning away from his desk, he took that first step toward the door. There wouldn’t be a second step as darkness swept up from the floor and swallowed him whole.
The phone rang the moment Hannah entered her kitchen with four plastic grocery bags slung over her arms. She planned to let it ring and deny yet another telemarketer the opportunity to invade her home during the dinner hour, but Rebecca got to the phone first.
“Hello.” The little girl shook her head. “No, this is Rebecca…. My mommy?…Yeah, she’s here.”
“Here, honey, let me talk, okay?” she said, making a mental note to warn her daughter about answering the phone, and especially about identifying herself to strangers. She accepted the handset, mentally preparing herself for the sales pitch about a great new long-distance plan or a low rate on a home-equity loan, but the voice on the other end of the line startled her.
“Hannah, it’s Andrew.”
She drew in a breath. Had Olivia been arrested? Had the embezzlement been more far-reaching than they’d first imagined?
“What’s wrong?” she immediately asked, though Andrew had phoned to check on her and Rebecca many times over the years. His tone didn’t suggest a social call.
“It’s your dad. We think he’s had a heart attack.”
“Heart attack?” A million thoughts—all dark and devastating—slammed through her mind at the same time. “Is he—”
“No, he’s alive, but I think it’s serious.”
“Is he conscious? Is he asking for me?”
“He’s been going in and out. Before the ambulance arrived, I had to use that portable defibrillator we had installed at the church last year.”
“Andrew, does that mean—”
“Now, Hannah, we don’t know anything yet. You just need to get to West Oakland Regio
nal Hospital as soon as possible. The ambulance just left to take him there.”
“I’ll be there.” Either she was experiencing an overwhelming sense of calm or she was in shock, but she suspected the second. She backed to the kitchen table and slumped into one of the chairs. She couldn’t just sit there. She needed to move, and yet she felt paralyzed. Details needed to be handled, but for the life of her she couldn’t list them in her mind.
“Hannah, do you want me to have Tricia take Rebecca? Or do you need me to call Todd for you?”
“No, I’ll phone him, but thanks.”
Only after she ended the call did she realize she’d answered only one of Andrew’s questions, and it should have surprised her which one, but it didn’t. Without bothering to wonder whether after last night she should ask, she dialed his number. She had to. She needed him.
He answered on the second ring.
“Todd.”
“Hannah, is that you?”
“Yeah, um, I have some bad news.”
“Tell me. What is it?”
“It’s Dad. They think it’s a heart attack.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey.”
“This can’t be happening. He’s only sixty.”
“He’ll probably be fine,” Todd tried to assure her.
“I have to leave for the hospital. Do you think you could—”
“Are you at home?”
She glanced at the bags of groceries still sitting on the counter, the ice cream already beginning to melt. “Yes, but—” She didn’t even know but what. Her whole world was cloudy, and the only thing that seemed clear was that she’d made the right decision to call him.
“Stay where you are. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Chapter Fifteen
He’d made it in four. Hannah smiled at the thought when little else had given her any cause for happiness since she’d arrived at West Oakland Regional four hours before. Todd had driven her to Commerce Township after showing up at her house so quickly that she’d only had time to toss water on her face and wrestle Rebecca back into her boots and coat.
He’d insisted that Hannah was in no shape to drive, and only now did she realize he was right. She couldn’t have navigated the village streets and twenty-miles-per-hour zones on the way to the hospital without him.
In fact, she couldn’t have handled any of the details without him—from registering her father in the emergency room to contacting relatives to planning for Rebecca’s care.
She hadn’t thought about any of those details again until now, not since she’d glimpsed her father in that hospital bed with so many tubes and wires and monitors attached to him. Not when the hours that followed were filled with tears, prayers and uncertainty.
But in this moment of clarity, she allowed herself to recall all of the help Todd had given her, even after all the awful things they’d said to each other the night before. When the ground had seemed to be shifting beneath her, he’d been a solid rock, calmly suggesting that she give him her keys so he could take Rebecca home where the child could sleep in her own bed.
Todd’s help and her silent admission that she couldn’t handle the situation alone would have terrified her a few months ago—or even a few days ago. Self-reliance had once mattered more to her than self-respect. But she felt a strange sense of relief in accepting Todd’s help. It felt good to leave the details in his capable hands.
She couldn’t allow herself to read too much into Todd’s kindness. Just because he’d reached out to her didn’t mean he would be able to accept her on her terms—conditions that even she could no longer justify. Todd was a good man. He would probably have done as much for anyone in need, but still her heart squeezed with gratitude. He’d caught her when she was falling, despite the fact that she’d hurt him in ways she couldn’t even imagine. If only she could be the kind of woman Todd deserved.
A creak from the door at the back of the chapel drew Hannah from the lonely place her thoughts had ventured. Mary Nelson stood in the spray of brightness seeping into the softly lit chapel through the open door.
“Hannah, sweetie. The nurse was looking for you. She said you could go back in and see Bob.”
“Is he conscious again?” Hannah asked as she straightened in her seat and brushed at the smeared mascara beneath her eyes.
“She didn’t say. They only give reports to family members.”
Those words drew Hannah’s gaze back to the woman standing just inside the door. Mary was watching an arrangement of lighted candles on the far wall. She looked so sad. Standing up from the short pew where she’d been sitting, Hannah crossed to her dear friend and placed her arm around her shoulder.
“That nurse obviously doesn’t know us then.” If anyone was family to her father, Rebecca and her, it was Mary. No lack of blood ties could change that.
“I’ll let you know as soon as they tell me anything, okay?” she said as she stepped back from her.
“Thanks. I’m sure the others will want to hear, too. Nearly twenty church members are in the waiting room.”
“Dad would be so embarrassed by the fuss.” She paused before adding, “And humbled by the concern.”
Mary’s smile couldn’t quite take the sadness from her eyes. “He’s too used to being the one in the hospital waiting room, drinking bad coffee and leading the prayers.” She pointed to the door. “You should go on now. He shouldn’t…be alone.”
Her voice broke then, anguish she’d been holding back all evening breaking through the cracks of her control in a near-silent sob. That hopeless sound tore straight to Hannah’s heart, and she gathered Mary into her arms.
“Why didn’t you tell my father?”
“Tell…him…what,” Mary asked in a muffled voice into her shoulder.
“Oh, come on, Mary. That you love him.”
Mary pulled back and gripped Hannah’s forearms. Behind her glasses, the older woman’s eyes were red rimmed, their usually shiny brown color had lost some of its luster. “How did you know?”
Hannah chewed her lip. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to mention that anyone paying attention—clearly her father couldn’t be counted in that number—would have noticed how Mary lit up the moment Reverend Bob walked into the room. Her interest hadn’t been as obvious as Olivia’s, but then Mary’s affection was more sincere.
“Maybe people carrying around secrets have a special connection with others who have secrets,” Hannah told her.
“Maybe.”
Hannah watched as Mary tightened her tan cardigan sweater around her body and retied its belt at her waist. She could relate. Hannah hadn’t been warm since the moment Andrew had called her with the news.
“My father is blind if he doesn’t see how wonderful you are and how wonderful your lives would be together.”
“Thanks, sweetie.”
“He’s going to be okay, you know,” Hannah said, surprised to find herself reassuring the other woman when she wished she could be that certain.
Yet Mary nodded as if she had enough confidence for the both of them. “God and I have been talking about that all night.”
Arm in arm, the two women moved down the hall to the waiting room. Several church members came to their feet as they entered the room. Andrew was the first to reach them, but others—Rick and Charity McKinley, Charity’s mother, Laura Sims and Deacon Littleton—gathered around them.
“You’ll want to check at the nurses’ station,” Andrew said. “They’re looking for you. I think they’re ready to give you an update.”
He indicated for Hannah to wait for a second while he helped Mary settle back into her seat, and then he went with her to the nurses’ station. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that the youth minister was there to support her in case she had devastating news.
“Miss Woods?” the nurse asked when they reached the desk. At Hannah’s nod, she continued, “I’ll page the doctor if you can wait here for a minute.”
“I’m sure he’s going to be f
ine, Hannah,” Andrew told her while they waited.
She smiled at having received the same assurance she’d just given Mary, but something from earlier struck her, and she studied Andrew. “You said before you had to use the portable defibrillator on my father. Did his heart stop?”
“No, but his heart rate went crazy. The defibrillator did what it was supposed to do, though. When I put those pads on his chest, the machine said he had an irregular heartbeat, and then it shocked his heart. After that, the EMTs arrived.” Andrew stared down the empty hallway, appearing lost in his thoughts.
“Thank you for saving my father’s life.”
He turned back to her. “God just made sure I was in the right place at the right time.”
“Then thanks for listening to Him.”
The doctor arrived with an update. After a string of four-syllable medical terms, Hannah managed to gather that her father had been given a “clot buster” drug and was heavily sedated. Though he would soon be moved to the Cardiac Care Unit, Hannah was allowed a few minutes with him in the Emergency cubicle.
Leaving Andrew to update the others on his condition, Hannah passed beyond the locking metal doors leading into the E.R. Inside the curtained cubicle, she found her father much as he’d been when she’d seen him briefly hours earlier.
It was so strange to see her big, strong daddy reduced to merely human under the hospitals unforgiving fluorescent lights.
“Oh, Dad…”
Again, heat rose behind her eyes. She’d already watched one parent die, had sat back as a helpless spectator while her mother wasted away, her sweet spirit losing its battle before her body succumbed. Hannah couldn’t imagine how she would survive if her father died, as well.
She shuffled to the chair across from the narrow hospital bed that looked like a heavily padded ambulance stretcher. Pulling the chair close to the bed, she sat and reached over to lay her hand atop her father’s.