More Than Words Volume 4

by Linda Lael Miller

  He’d never felt more helpless than he had in the months after Hannah’s death. Helpless to rescue Terri from the whirlpool of despair that sucked her deeper and deeper into its vortex with each passing day. In the beginning, he had focused on handling the practicalities of their life that she was too despondent to face, convincing himself that’s what she needed most. But his recent visit with the grief counselor the firehouse captain had ordered him to see made him realize Terri had needed a whole lot more from him. Still…“You saw how she got,” Kyle said to T.J., desperate to keep his voice steady, since he was trembling inside. “It was killing me, watching her like that.”

  While he had desperately searched for relief from the clutch of his grief, Terri had clung to hers, combing through albums filled with photos of Hannah, endlessly watching home videos, asking anyone who’d listen all those questions that had no answers. Why our daughter? What did we do wrong? Why couldn’t we save her?

  Why hadn’t he saved their little girl? That’s what Kyle felt Terri had meant.

  He and T.J. finished their beers, paid the tab, then walked out into the parking lot. The sleet had stopped falling, but the accumulation crunched beneath their boots as they made their way to their pickup trucks, which were parked side by side.

  “You got anything going on tomorrow?” T.J. asked, his shoulders hunched against the chilling wind, hands crammed into the pockets of his coat.

  “No. You?” Kyle opened the door to his truck, too numb to be bothered by the cold.

  “Just watching the Cowboys play. Why don’t you come over? Margie won’t be home from her conference for a couple of days, so we’ll have to settle for pizza.”

  Kyle nodded, grateful for T.J.’s friendship but feeling a keen sense of loneliness nonetheless. “Maybe I’ll stop by.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Terri shivered as she stepped onto her parents’ front porch. She turned to face her best friend since first grade. “Thanks for humoring me and walking to the diner, Donna. I needed the fresh air.”

  “Fresh? More like frigid.” The porch light illuminated Donna’s red cheeks and nose. With gloved hands, she tugged the edges of her stocking hat down farther on her head. “You used to hate winter as much as I do. What happened?” Before Terri could respond, Donna stomped her feet and grumbled, “You owe me. I can’t even feel my toes.”

  “It was only five blocks. When you think about it, it’s crazy people drive anywhere in a town this size.”

  Donna and her husband, Jack, had bought the house next door to Terri’s parents two years ago when Donna’s widowed mother died. It was Donna’s childhood home, just as the house they now stood outside of was Terri’s. The women had grown up only steps away from each other in the small town of Prairieview. During their childhood, they had walked to school together daily and often gossiped on the phone for hours at night while looking across at each other from their bedroom windows.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Donna asked.

  “Looking for a job. I can’t keep taking advantage of Mom and Dad by living here without even helping pay the bills.”

  “I’m sure they don’t think you’re taking advantage.”

  The neighbors across the street had strung red-and-green Christmas lights along their roofline. The peaceful glow seemed to mock Terri’s emotional turmoil. “I hear the elementary school’s looking for a teacher’s aide. I might have to give it a try. It’s either that or move back home.”

  She wasn’t ready for that. Everything in Amarillo reminded her of what she had lost: the public pool where she and Hannah swam every summer; the grocery store where they had shopped together; the mothers of Hannah’s classmates, whom she seemed to run into wherever she went. But each time Terri pictured the alternative—being surrounded by children day in, day out as a teacher’s aide here, her heart raced, and if she wasn’t sitting, she had to hold on to something to keep from succumbing to dizziness. Still, jobs weren’t easy to come by in a town with a population of just over twenty-five thousand. She couldn’t afford to be picky. Terri had worked as a teacher before Hannah was born. And she had known Prairieview’s elementary school principal all her life. No doubt, the job would be hers if she only asked for it.

  “Want to know how you can pay me back for freezing my butt off tonight?” Donna asked.

  “How?”

  “Come to work for me at the bakery.”

  “I don’t want you to offer me a job because you feel sorry for me.”

  Donna scowled. “I’m offering you a job because I feel sorry for me. Christmas is right around the corner. It’s my busiest time of year. Last December, I almost ran my feet off trying to fill all the party orders and everything else.”

  And still, Donna had been there for her. Hannah died in December, and throughout the remainder of the month, as well as January, Donna had either driven the forty miles to see her every day, or at the very least called.

  Terri loved Donna’s bakery: the warmth, the scents drifting on the air, the cheerful jingle of the bell over the door when customers came in. Whenever she stopped by, almost every face was familiar from another time in her life—a carefree time when she was too young and thrilled by the prospect of her future to consider that it might not turn out to be perfect. Working at Donna’s Oven would be a comfort, and being with her friend every day a bonus.

  “Are you sure?” Terri asked, still certain Donna’s offer was made more out of friendship than need—and loving her all the more because of it.

  “I’d be thrilled to have you there. It would be temporary, though. Just through the season.”

  “That’s fine. It would give me some time to decide what to do.”

  “I can’t pay a lot, either. Minimum wage.”

  “That’s okay, too. At least for now.” Her needs weren’t much. Not anymore.

  “So, it’s a deal?”

  Terri offered her hand and they shook. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d smiled, and when she did now for Donna’s sake, her face felt awkward and phony, as if her cheeks might crack. “When do I start?”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Donna turned to step off the shelter of the porch, then paused and looked back. “I know it’s none of my business, but are you sure? About divorcing Kyle, I mean? It’s only been a year.”

  Terri crossed her arms and hugged herself. She stared across at the neighbor’s Christmas lights and sighed. “I’ve tried to talk myself out of it, but I don’t see how it can work anymore. I don’t know what Kyle and I are without Hannah. What’s our purpose for being together?” Terri met Donna’s gaze again. “I don’t even know what my purpose is, why I’m even on this earth. I love Kyle, but maybe love isn’t enough.”

  Donna placed a hand on Terri’s arm, her face contorting with emotion. “But you and Kyle…I wish—”

  “I know,” Terri said softly, and hugged her. “After Hannah died, on the nights I couldn’t stop crying, Kyle always held me until I fell asleep.”

  Donna stepped back, frowning. “Then I don’t understand why you’re leaving him.”

  “I never saw him shed another tear after the funeral, Donna. Not one. He wanted to box up Hannah’s things, to make her bedroom a guest room. He wouldn’t cry with me or talk about what happened. He would barely even mention her name. I felt…I don’t know…betrayed, I guess. I still do. It’s like he could just bury Hannah and go on.” Her voice broke and she flattened a palm to her chest. “How can he even breathe?”

  Whenever Terri had pressed Kyle to talk about Hannah’s death, he’d said they would never feel like living again if they didn’t allow grief to loosen the intensity of its grip on them. But Terri didn’t want grief to let go, not even a little. Grief connected her to Hannah. In her mind, to let it ease would be to abandon her daughter. To forget her. How could she ever do that? How could Kyle?

  “Maybe he just needs some time,” Donna said.

 
; Terri huffed and shook her head. “Firefighters pride themselves on keeping their cool during a crisis. It’s a job requirement if you’re going to last. Call a fireman ‘calm’ and you’ve given him the ultimate compliment.” Hearing the bitterness that had crept into her voice, Terri looked down at her boots. “Hannah was his child. I’m sorry, I just can’t admire that depth of calmness.”

  They hugged again, then Donna left and Terri went inside. She didn’t feel like reading or watching television. She couldn’t face the concern that seemed a permanent wrinkle in her parents’ expressions these days. Though it was early, Terri told them good-night and closed herself in her girlhood room.

  Curled up in bed under a pile of blankets, she fell asleep thinking about the Brownie meeting in the school cafeteria before the wreck, the fun of dressing the bears, that beautiful frozen moment of pure happiness. Terri had laughed a lot that evening.

  She had not laughed since.

  AFTER ARRIVING HOME FROM the bar, Kyle entered the house and tossed his truck keys on the desk alongside the mail. The phone rang as he headed for the couch to watch television. Kyle returned to the desk to answer it.

  “Hi,” a woman’s voice said on the other end of the line. “This is Mary Padilla. I’m calling for Mr. or Mrs. Roxton?”

  Kyle wasn’t sure why the woman’s young voice caused his heartbeat to kick up its pace, why the familiar sound of it filled him with dread. “This is Kyle Roxton.”

  “You may not remember me….” She paused before adding softly, “I’m one of the nurses who took care of Hannah before she was airlifted to Dallas.”

  At once, he did remember. Hers was the voice that had broken the news about Hannah’s fever. Kyle had slept at the hospital with his wife and daughter that night. He woke in the recliner during the wee hours of the morning and saw the young nurse with the kind dark eyes standing beside Hannah’s bed, checking her vital signs. When he had stirred, Mary Padilla had shifted those eyes his direction, and in that instant, he’d seen something more in them than kindness—a level of concern that troubled him. That’s when she told him Hannah’s temperature had spiked.

  Kyle remembered, too, the nurse’s gentle way with people, how she had comforted Terri and brought frequent smiles to his little girl’s face, even when Hannah was too weak to lift her head. He swallowed hard. “Of course I remember you.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about you and your wife with Christmas ahead. How are you?”

  “Getting by.” He didn’t see any reason to sugarcoat the truth or to tell her about the divorce, for that matter.

  “Hannah was such a sweet little girl. I’ll never forget her.”

  “Thank you.” Kyle’s throat knotted tighter. Surely Mary Padilla had lost a few patients over the course of her career. The fact that she would remember Hannah and call him as the anniversary of her death drew near both stunned and touched him.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she continued, “but I received a call today from the foster mother of a little boy who was admitted toward the end of Hannah’s stay. Her name is Rachel DePaul. She asked me for Hannah’s parents’ names and wanted to know how to get in touch with you. Of course, I wouldn’t give her that information without your and Mrs. Roxton’s approval, but I told her I’d give you her information.”

  “Do you know what she wants?”

  “Yes.” The nurse paused before adding, “I think you should call her and let her tell you.”

  Baffled, Kyle lifted his gaze to a picture of Hannah above the desk. “Okay.” He opened the center desk drawer, took out a pen and a small pad of paper. “What’s her number?”

  She gave him the DePauls’ contact information. “I hope you’ll call them. Mrs. DePaul and her husband have something to tell you that I know you and your wife will want to hear.”

  “I’ll call,” Kyle said. “And thank you.”

  “Have a good Christmas. Please tell your wife hello for me.”

  “Sure,” Kyle said. “I will.”

  He hung up and stared at the number he’d scribbled on the pad. Then he punched it in, but ended the call before the connection went through. He would contact the woman tomorrow. Whatever the DePauls had to say, if it involved Hannah, he couldn’t bear hearing it tonight. The divorce papers had unsettled him more than he’d admitted to T.J. or even to himself. But as he put down the phone with a shaking hand, he couldn’t deny the level of his distress any longer. His emotions were walking a tightrope. Kyle feared the DePauls’ story might be the push that made him lose balance, sending him tumbling into a black hole with no end.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Kyle stood at the DePauls’ front door the following night. He drew a deep breath that, when exhaled, formed a tiny white cloud against the cold blue twilight. Another breath, and then he rang the bell.

  While he waited, he drummed his fingertips against his thigh, shifted from foot to foot. When he’d talked on the phone this afternoon to Rachel DePaul, she had asked him over for dinner. The prospect of sharing a meal with strangers whose agenda he wasn’t sure of made him wary.

  “If you don’t mind, could we just talk on the phone?” he’d asked.

  “I’d really like you to meet my foster son, Shawn,” she had explained. “He and your daughter struck up a friendship last year in the hospital. If you’re not comfortable having dinner, how about dessert?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “I don’t mean to be so mysterious, but I’d like to tell you in person what he told me. Don’t worry. It’s all good.”

  Kyle had agreed to dessert. Right now, shivering on the DePauls’ porch, he almost wished he hadn’t. His heart thumped too fast, and the fist that had lodged in his chest on the day of Hannah’s death clenched him even tighter than usual. What could the DePauls’ foster son have told them about Hannah that he needed to hear? He didn’t remember her having a friend in the hospital. His daughter was dead, and he was trying to move forward with his life. The DePauls must have no idea how painful it was to lose a child or they wouldn’t put him through this. Why couldn’t some people understand how much it cost him to talk about what happened to Hannah? Even Terri didn’t understand.

  The door finally opened, and Kyle glanced down at a thin little boy with brown burred hair, wire-framed glasses and a gap-toothed smile. Kyle felt a pinprick of pain, as he always did when he came face-to-face with a child. “Hi,” the boy said shyly, shifting the stuffed animal he held under one arm until it was in front of him.

  A trickle of familiarity ran through Kyle. The toy bear looked exactly like one of Hannah’s, right down to the red coat buttoned tightly around it.

  “Mr. Roxton?”

  Startled, Kyle glanced up. A woman now stood behind the boy. He guessed her to be in her forties. She wore her brown hair short in a sleek, smooth style. Though her dark slacks and pale blouse were casual, something about them said “money”; they were as crisp as her voice, as neat and manicured as the house, the entire tree-lined neighborhood, in fact.

  The woman smiled at him, and Kyle managed a small smile in return. “I’m Rachel DePaul,” she said, and shook his hand. “We’re glad you could make it, aren’t we, Shawn?” She touched the little boy’s shoulder.

  Kyle followed them across polished wood floors into a den with a fire crackling in the hearth. A silver-haired man lowered his newspaper and stood when they entered the room.

  “Louis,” Rachel DePaul said to the man, “this is Kyle Roxton. Kyle, my husband, Louis.”

  Louis DePaul. The name rang a bell. The two men shook hands, then Kyle sat on the couch in front of a coffee table and made small talk with Louis DePaul and Shawn while Rachel disappeared into the next room. Minutes later, she returned with a tray of cherry pie and coffee. By then, Kyle had learned that DePaul owned one of the biggest insurance companies in town. That’s why his name had been familiar.

  “Shawn wasn’t living with us yet when his cancer was diagnosed and he entered the hospital,” Lou
is told him as Rachel passed around dessert, then sat in a second chair facing the couch.

  Squeezed in close to his foster dad, the boy added matter-of-factly, “I lived in a group home with some other kids.” Shawn wrinkled his nose. “I like it here better.”

  The DePauls glanced at each other. “Shawn’s cancer is in re-mission now.” The boy’s foster mother delivered this news in an upbeat tone. “He’s been home with us for three months.”

  “Congratulations, Shawn.” Kyle set his plate on the coffee table. The pie was delicious, but after only one bite, his nervous stomach wouldn’t allow him to eat more of it. He motioned toward the bear the boy still clutched. “Hannah…my little girl…she had a bear exactly like that.”

  Shawn nodded. “I know. She gave it to me.”

  Kyle stared at the bear and the fist in his chest opened, became wide wings that flapped wildly. All at once, he couldn’t breathe. Hannah. Oh, God. What were these people going to tell him about her? For a year, he’d kept his composure in check, but he felt it slipping now. He shifted and reached for his coffee cup, lifted it and was horrified to realize his hand was shaking.

  “Well…” Louis DePaul stood abruptly and said, “It’s your bedtime, Shawn.” Kyle recognized compassion in his tone. “Tell Mr. Roxton good-night.”

  The boy scowled. “Do I have to?”

  “It’s eight o’clock,” his foster mother said. “You have school in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Shawn grumbled. “’Night, Mr. Roxton.”

  “Good night, Shawn,” Kyle said tightly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  As the man led Shawn from the room, Kyle avoided Rachel DePaul’s eyes and attempted to bring the cup to his mouth again despite his jittery hand. He took a sip and somehow didn’t spill any coffee before returning the cup to the table. All the while, Kyle felt the woman’s gaze on him and sensed her pity.

  “The bear is the reason I wanted you and your wife to come,” she said quietly.

  “Terri’s out of town. At her parents.” He looked at Mrs. DePaul and added, “We’re separated,” then wondered why he’d let that information slip out, why he even thought for a moment it would matter to this woman. She was a stranger. He could kick himself for allowing her to coax him here to talk about something so personal.