“But—” I started.
“No buts,” he said, pointing at me. “Sam still owns this place; he can do what he wants with his property. He and I agreed yesterday that, even though we might not even recognize this place as the Quiet Waters Orphanage, we’re still here and we’re still kicking. We have a facility, land, and now…now, we have this unbelievable donation. As long as we’re breathing, we can keep going. Understood?”
“Yeah, I guess. Holton gave us this gift in good faith that we’d use it for our kids, though. If someone gives you a wedding gift and you make a bride substitution at the last minute, you ought to give the gift back, right?”
“Just chill, man, no one’s trying to pull a fast one on Holton.” The intensity of John’s stare burned holes into me. We were interrupted as Sam and Janice stepped into the container.
“This is a sight for sore eyes,” Sam said.
“Do you think this’ll do?” I asked, smiling.
“Is Patrick here?” Janice said. “I’ll start another pot of coffee and we can talk in the dining room.”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “He sent a driver over.”
She patted my shoulder. “You look a little shell-shocked. Rosa and I are going to fix breakfast. You three come on up to the dining room and eat in a minute. We can sort this out over food.”
We watched Janice disappear into the dining hall. I scratched my head and thought about all the questions I needed answered.
“I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.” Sam leaned against a box and crossed his arms over his chest. He stared at me for a response.
“Hmmm,” I grunted. “It’s not like Patrick couldn’t use this stuff in their building. It wouldn’t be a loss for Holton if we sent it back to him.”
John stepped carefully out of the container and leaned back against it, watching the sky wake up.
I followed him out. “What if you and Kate are supposed to start an orphanage in Uganda or Haiti or somewhere? What if I’m supposed to go home?”
John didn’t look at me when he answered. “What do you want me to say, Henry? Do you want me to say you’re right? That we ought to give up and head on home? You think I don’t want to be with Kate and Whit right now? You think I’m not ready to get Aidia so far from the poverty of this place that she’ll never remember it?”
I kept quiet because, even this early in the morning, my brain understood these were rhetorical questions.
Sam started walking toward the dining hall with his hands in his pockets. “I’ll let you two have a minute,” he called over his shoulder.
John took a long sip of his coffee, watching me. “I don’t think we’d be standing here talking about a shipping container full of material worth thousands of dollars if we were finished in this country.”
“John,” I interrupted. “I’m trying not to doubt this.”
“Good.”
“You told me once you were afraid I just came here looking for an adventure,” I said. “That really ticked me off. But maybe it was true.”
“Maybe at first,” he said. “Not anymore.”
I shook my head. “I let a whole lot of time get away from me when I could’ve done more. I must’ve looked like a bull in a china shop to you and Kate.”
He smiled up at me, his eyes shiny. “You know they studied that whole bull in a china shop theory on Mythbusters and it’s not true. They let an eighteen-hundred-pounder loose in a fancy store and he didn’t break a single thing. Bull ballet, that’s what they called it.”
I dropped my arms. John stepped up and grabbed my shoulders. “Something bigger than Quiet Waters is happening here, Henry. Stay sharp, okay?”
I laughed. “I’m trying. I really am.”
“My dad used to say, ‘This is what your right arm’s for, son,’” John said. “This is the time and these are the people and I’d give my right arm to be a light, a comfort, to them. I know you would, too. In whatever form it takes. Use these materials and make something great. Do it on faith, knowing you probably won’t be around to see how the story ends.”
I swallowed several times, trying to dislodge the lump that had formed in my throat.
“You wanna know what I learned from losing Hannah?” John said.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “Of course I want to know.”
“The real moments in this life—the ones that let you know where you stand—are those that are hard and rough. You can find joy in those real moments, too. Not pleasure, but joy.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, John. I don’t know how you and Kate found joy in that. Or in this. You lost Hannah and then you lost all your children here.”
He nodded. “You wouldn’t believe the strange moments of joy we had. Sometimes the worst things in life are the biggest blessings and that’s the way I’m choosing to look at this situation right here.”
I could do nothing but kick at the dirt with my boot, so blown away by John’s faith. I’d seen it in action since he started coming home with Kate from college, but this….
“Let’s go eat breakfast,” John said, grabbing me around the neck.
As we neared the door, Janice called out to Sam, “Did you tell them yet?”
He shook his head. “Not yet, honey.”
John kissed Aidia’s cheek when she jumped into his arms. “Hola, bebé,” he whispered.
Rosa brought out bowls of tortillas, eggs, and peppers and we filled our plates.
“Sam, spill it,” John said between bites. “What’s going to happen with this place?”
Sam smiled and pushed his plate away from him. “First, I want you to remember that just because this particular home for children—the one Janice and I have devoted a large part of our lives to—is unsustainable doesn’t mean God’s not in control of this situation.”
While I waited for Sam’s point, I watched the dust floating through the bright morning light coming through a window.
“Patrick called me late last night after we were in bed,” Sam said. “He’d had an idea he wanted to run by me and we ended up talking for more than three hours.” He stood and began gathering up plates. “Be right back.”
Disappearing into the kitchen, he called out, “Buenas dias,” to Rosa and deposited the dishes loudly in the sink. When he returned, he brought a full coffee pot and a jug of milk.
“I’d been lying in bed feeling like we were on a boat that was taking on water,” he said. “His call felt like an answer.” He paused and met John’s gaze. “I’m selling him the place.”
“Wait,” I said, sitting up straight. “What?” I’d suspected it, but hearing it out loud sounded like the gun had been jumped. “You’re going to do it? You’re shutting down Quiet Waters. It’s gone. Just like that?”
“Listen for a minute before you throw me to the wolves. The Holton Company made an offer I can’t refuse and not because it’s a bunch of money. It’s not. They want to turn it into a place for the community.”
“And?” That was it? A place for the community? What did that even mean?
“They’re moving families here for the long-term and they need a school they trust for their own children. But, because charitable giving is a priority for Holton, they want to open it up to kids from town that need a place to learn and to be fed.”
“What about our kids?” John said.
“Patrick said he’d help us try to find them. And he wants to add a facility where he can teach trade skills to the locals. He’s got ideas for this place.”
“What kind of ideas?” I said.
Sam crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable. “His wife Hadley ran a faith-based charity in Oklahoma City. She’s already on his back to buy her a bus so she can drive around and pick up the kids that need this place. And she’ll work with the women of San Isidro who ask for help.”
John nodded once. “Quiet Waters could have a bigger reach now with Holton’s funding.”
“They’ll have influence we never had
because they’re providing jobs, too,” Sam said.
The decision had been made and plans were already in motion. I had to be okay with it. My brain screamed that this was my chance to get home to Meg. I could probably leave tomorrow. Today, even. But my heart said I hadn’t finished what I’d been brought here to do.
“Sam,” I said. “I’d like to…I’d like to use what Holton gave us to finish the flex building. I want to do that before I leave.”
Sam nodded and seemed to consider the options.
“I’ll talk to Patrick about that today,” Sam said. “But I know he admires you, so I think he’ll appreciate your willingness.”
“Henry,” Janice said. “A box came for you this morning. I put it on the desk in the office.”
Janice took Aidia from John’s arms and started dancing with her, humming a tune Rosa’s radio station played every day. Aidia giggled and kicked her feet.
I hurried to the office, hoping to see something from Meg. The box was about the size of a boot box and covered with international mailing labels and glittery pink hearts. Meg had probably shipped it weeks ago and all I could think about was whether or not she’d known Quinn when she’d drawn those hearts for me.
Exhaustion dragged me down. My neck muscles ached with the effort of forcing scissors through all the tape. It was an American Girl box and it smelled like every mall I’d ever visited.
This had to be Karalyn’s gift—the baby doll I’d asked Meg to find. I opened the stripy pink container and stared at the doll trapped in place by plastic constraints, a perfect likeness of Karalyn herself, with long dark hair and dark brown eyes. Even the doll’s skin was the soft color of caramel. I carried the doll, still in its packaging, to my room and found a special spot for it on my desk, throwing out a quick prayer that it would end up in Karalyn’s arms soon.
There’s that moment just after a good, hard cry when people feel clearheaded again, like they can think. The highs and lows I’d just had—the fear of the unknown with Meg, the shipping container full of hope, the news about the future, and the perfect gift from the girl I love more than life to a little girl who’d stolen my heart in Nicaragua—had brought a sharp, painful focus again.
Perspective knocked on my door, reminded me why I was here, and set me back on the road. As raw and disoriented as I felt, Meg’s little handwritten note in the box—I love you, Henry Whitmire—made me take another step.
THIRTY-ONE
meg
The day nurse was cranky. She had a way of working with Jo that showed exactly how she felt about her patients. They were just bodies. No, even worse, they were containers of gases and liquids that needed little more than an adjustment now and then to keep everything level.
“How many times do you have to stick her?” I watched her try to find a vein for a new IV line in Jo’s hand, but Jo’s disappearing tissue caused her veins to roll.
“As many times as it takes,” she said. “It’s not like she feels it.”
Sighing, I checked Jo’s eyes again by gently raising her eyelids. She stared straight ahead, focused on things I couldn’t see. I glanced at the ceiling just to be sure there wasn’t a place there where God had opened a door for her.
It had been days since she’d been conscious of anything in the room. Just before she slipped into what the doctors were calling an “irreversible coma,” she’d lifted her hand from the bed a few inches and pointed. I looked in that direction and only saw the white board where the nurse had scribbled her shift replacement’s name.
Leaning forward, I’d said, “Do you need to see the nurse?”
Jo shook her head and pointed again. This time toward the window and then again at the ceiling. Her lips moved around the tube in her throat and she swallowed convulsively. She wanted to speak. It was agony for her.
“Do you see something?” I’d asked.
She shook her head again.
“Someone?”
Nodding, she fixed her eyes on a spot just over my shoulder.
“It’s your son, isn’t it?”
A tear had rolled down her cheek. Later that afternoon she closed her eyes and hadn’t opened them since. The doctors told the Whitmires there was no hope of recovery. As her guardian, Henry’s dad had to make the impossible decision about when to remove life support.
I worried I would miss it and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls linger…they do. They linger a bit before they turn toward eternity. It could be that no matter how perfect their future will be, the past still tugs for a moment.
So I came every day and sat in the uncomfortable, blue vinyl chair next to her bed. The smells of the room were familiar now. They followed me home in the fabric of my clothes and in my hair. I hardly noticed anymore when her catheter bag was full. For too long, I had obsessed over it, watching as it filled with liquid that turned darker every day. Now, almost molasses-colored, I knew it signaled many, many organ failures. Jo’s body had given up and now we had to do the same.
This was hard on Clayton Whitmire. He might be the only person in town who remembered a different, carefree Jo Russell. The worry had etched permanent lines across his forehead. He often sat with me in Jo’s room. I tried to ask questions about the ranch, and he answered in short bursts. “Ranch work can wait,” he always said. And then he would pat my hand.
From my afternoons with him, I’d learned that they hadn’t talked to Henry in a couple of weeks either. I had tried to respect Henry’s need for space and time, but I was nearing the end of my rope. I needed his strength and advice. I needed him. I’d begun to question everything. Everything. How could he say he loved me and then leave me all alone?
I still hadn’t heard from the University of Wyoming. Classmates had already received their letters so I knew something wasn’t right. Maybe they’d discovered my past and were afraid I would pose a threat of some kind. Maybe they thought I had unresolved post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe I wasn’t as smart as my parents and teachers had always told me—I’d fallen for the “everyone gets a trophy for participating” trick.
After another quick glance at Jo, I turned to a new page in my journal and continued writing where I’d left off yesterday. I was writing the essay that, before we made the texting video, would have been for my UW application. It was about my time as a volunteer with Jo. Knowing that no one but me would ever see this made it easier. I wrote it all—every strange conversation, all the odd bits of wisdom she gave me without meaning to, and my impressions of the real Jo Russell, stubborn and fierce. The alive Jo. The one who was so afraid of obscurity that she made lists of all her paintings and hid the lists in safe places around her house.
The essay surprised me because Jo had surprised me. It had become less about the daily life of a working artist, and more about what it meant to meet another human being’s soul. It was the writer understanding the artist and the artist seeing the writer.
My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.
“Meg.”
Miriam stood in the doorway. She looked so much like Henry that my heart twisted in my chest.
“We need to talk to you, sweetheart. Clayton is waiting in the chapel for us.”
I nodded and gathered my things. Leaning over Jo, I whispered in her ear. “It’s going to be okay. It’s almost over.”
Clayton stood when we entered the tiny chapel. He held his cap in his hands and hugged me hard. The one window in the room was stained glass, all turquoise and ruby red, a picture of an angel holding a child.
“We’re all she’s got,” he said. “Doesn’t seem fair. But I feel sure no one could admire her as much as you do, Meg. You’ve been a kind friend to her. I’ll wager you never expected her to warm up to you like she did.” He smiled crookedly, fighting emotion.
“Sit,
honey. Let’s talk.” Miriam ushered me ahead of her to the cushioned pew at the front of the chapel. As soon as we sat, she handed me a small package of tissues and I thanked her, pulling the first one out to get the tissue chain started.
Clayton sat on my other side and put his arm around my back. “We’ve talked it over with her doctor, and we feel like the most merciful thing to do at this point is to let her go. She’s got no brain activity and her kidneys are failing. She’s not in any pain, but there’s no chance she’ll ever wake up and improve.”
I nodded, but couldn’t force any words out. I didn’t feel qualified to hold an opinion on Jo’s medical care. I knew, though, that if I were the one lying in that bed, I would want to go. I would want to find Wyatt. She wanted to find Andrew.
“Do you want to know what will happen, Meg?” Miriam bit her lip and studied my face. “I mean, after the ventilator is turned off?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Clayton nodded. “With kidney failure and no brain activity, Jo should pass quickly and without discomfort. Miriam and I will be in the room, but you shouldn’t feel like you need to be there. It’s a difficult situation and we’d understand if you just wanted to say goodbye now and go on home.”
“I think you should go home,” Miriam said. “I don’t want you to put yourself through this. If Henry were here, he’d take you home.”
“But he’s not.” I felt myself stiffen a little at his name. This was about my relationship with Jo. Henry, for better or worse, had no part in it. “And I know she’s with us as long as the machines are on. She’ll know who’s in the room with her. I want to be there.”
“I want to tell you about the last thing she said to me…before I came to get you from the waiting room that first night.” Clayton’s face relaxed a little as he remembered the conversation.
“Okay,” I said.
“She said she’d blasphemed all over her bathroom in front of you and she felt awful about it.” He chuckled a little and I smiled. Jo had a way of making everything sound ridiculous. “Do you know what she was talking about?”
Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) Page 22