“I play on the soccer team—for your rival.”
“Ah. And why do you come here?”
“Well, it’s definitely not because I have to force myself to stop studying.” He’d given a warmhearted, full-bodied laugh. He had the trace of an accent . . . French, she thought. “I come to teach the kids a little about soccer, watch them have fun, and talk about faith.”
She’d fallen for him hard and attended almost every one of his soccer games, cheering unabashedly for the rival team when they played her school. He was tall and sturdy, broad shouldered, athletic. But so unimpressed with himself or anyone else. At ease with himself. Patrick Bourdillon, despite being French and having an aristocratic and romantic sounding name, was utterly true to what he believed in—simplicity and fun. To Patrick, life was a game and he loved playing it. There was always a chance for a comeback or a last-second save.
He lived his Christian faith in much the same way—exuberantly, naturally, contagiously. Josephine never really understood what attracted Patrick to her—the brooding, melancholic, perfectionistic girl—but she was thankful for it, whatever it was.
———
Every star was out behind her parents’ house. Patrick had agreed to be her date for their summer party. Josephine wished she could have introduced him to Terence.
“You look very handsome in that suit,” she said. “Almost as good as in your soccer uniform.”
“Wouldn’t want to disappoint your parents the first time they meet me.” He took her hand, and she felt light and carefree. “So tell me a story, Feeny.” She liked that he’d found a nickname for her that no one else used. And she liked that he wanted to hear her stories.
“How about a poem?”
“Poem will do.”
She stared up at the dotted sky, then closed her eyes and listened to the blending of peoples’ voices.
“A million stars chattered on about earth
Like who was poor, and what the rich were worth.
Enough to feed the Milky Way one night?
Enough to follow Saturn’s nocturnal flight?
God said, ‘Not paradise or sky or cloud
Holds wealth of which humanity is proud
’Tis paper and coins of which the heav’ns know not
That bring man wealth until his mind’s forgot
The beauty of night, the strength of sun and moon;
Nor doth he know his wealth will vanish soon.”
Patrick clapped his hands, lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Did you just make that up?”
“Of course. It’s a silly habit. Making up poems, the first thing that comes to my mind. They never mean anything.”
“That one kind of means something, doesn’t it? And in iambic pentameter to boot.”
“Well, well. My soccer player knows about iambic pentameter!” She laughed. Oh, how he made her laugh, even when that wasn’t his intention. “Don’t be impressed, Patrick. It’s the only thing I know how to do—make up poems and stories. I can’t cook or dance or . . .”
But he grabbed her around the waist and said, “I’ll teach you to dance. And as for cooking, my French grandmother has taught me a thing or two over the years.”
And she laughed again, a trill, a delight.
That first time Josephine introduced Patrick to her family, Mother and Father raised their eyebrows. He’d grown up in France, his family was part of the bourgeoisie. He even had a lovely accent. But soccer? Soccer wasn’t a career. Soccer was just a game.
Kit, home on a rare visit, raised her eyebrows too, but Josephine recognized, with a sick little twitter in her stomach, what those raised eyebrows meant. “I think soccer players have the sexiest legs,” Kit purred.
Patrick chuckled. “If you say so, Kit,” and he’d winked at Josephine.
———
“Well, go on. Say what everyone else says.” They were walking to his car after the visit.
“Which is? You have an interesting family?”
“No. That I have the most beautiful sister anyone has ever seen.”
He actually looked pained at her statement. “I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.” He pulled Josephine close, holding her around the waist. “But I do know something. She has an absolutely beautiful sister. And she’s the one I want.”
Josephine couldn’t find her voice for a few moments. “Thank you for saying it, Patrick.”
“I said it because I meant it. I don’t give fake compliments, Feeny. What you see is what you get.”
He drove her back to school, parked his car in a spot reserved for staff, and laughed when Josephine chided him.
“It’s two in the morning. I can leave it here for thirty minutes.”
They strolled across the campus, and he left her at the entrance to her dorm. “I know that probably was no fun, growing up in your sister’s shadow. But that’s over. Let it be over.”
When he kissed her, every thought left her head and she melted into him, right there on the dorm steps where anyone could see.
———
1981 . . . He made everything seem possible. All the stuff that overwhelmed her, to Patrick was a game. But she had to tell him. “Sometimes I get very down. I go to really dark places in my mind, Patrick, and it scares me. I start wondering if maybe all the stuff I say I believe doesn’t really work for me. I’m afraid to tell you the truth, afraid you’ll freak out and go away. . . .”
“Shhh. I’m not going anywhere, Feeny.” His big rough hand covered hers. “I’ll be right here, no matter how dark it gets.”
“Do you think it’s true, Patrick, what the psalmist says? ‘If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to You. And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.”’ Is it true?”
“Feeny, what makes you ask me that question?”
“I believe Jesus is with me, all the time. But if He is and yet I still feel such darkness, such shame, well, maybe I’m just making the whole thing up. Maybe the idea of redemption, of forgiveness, is too big.” She watched to see if he backed away as her mother had the one time she’d tried to explain the darkness to her.
“Oh, sugar,” Mother had said, “you are sweetness incarnate. Don’t you let anything worry your little head.”
The only person who had ever really understood was Kit. But Kit had descended into a much darker pit than Josephine could even imagine, and she couldn’t reach her anymore.
“I have my faith in Christ, I have material comfort, I have work that blesses me and others and mostly, mostly, I have you. So how can there still be darkness?”
“You’re an artist, Feeny. You have a mind that thinks deeply about things. And I’ve never met another person who is as sensitive as you are—you feel everything, and it becomes a lot to carry.”
Yes, for so long it had been a crushing load that weighed her down, that bent her to the ground.
He cupped her chin in his hand. “Hey, Feeny. Feeny, look at me. I’ll help you carry it. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”
———
1984 . . . It was just like Kit to make a grand entrance on Josephine’s wedding day. Her bridesmaids were fiddling with her hair and her mother was fastening the last of the beautifully covered silk buttons on the wedding dress when Kit stumbled into the church parlor. She mumbled a feeble excuse for her tardiness. Then, “Will someone pull-eese help me fix this dress?” she demanded, mixing in plenty of four-letter epithets.
Embarrassed, Josephine said, “Mother, you go on and help her. I’m fine.”
But as her mother whisked Kit to the ladies’ room, Josephine missed those last whispered moments between mother and daughter, and she felt a pinching in her soul.
Thank goodness Kit didn’t make a fool of herself during the ceremony. Josephine looped her arm through her father’s and pecked his cheek. “My little girl. My little angel.” At least Father was sober for the occasion.
All through the reception Josephine smiled and nodded and watched Kit out of the corner of her eye. Kit insisting on a dance with Patrick, Kit talking way too loudly, her words slurred, Kit sobbing when Josephine tossed the bouquet, Kit wearing the bridesmaid’s gown so low off the shoulder that it showed way too much cleavage.
Josephine pretended not to notice, pretended that her dear friends who surrounded her and hugged her and whispered silliness in her ear could truly shield her from Kit’s antics. In reality, she was counting the minutes until Patrick would spirit her off with no way for Kit to follow.
They spent two weeks on their honeymoon in France, tucked away at the chic apartment in La Grande Motte. Alone! There in La Grande Motte, lying next to her lover, her husband, with the fiery sun setting over the Mediterranean just outside the window, the demons were far, far away, and she felt at peace.
The second week they ventured three hours north to Lyon to visit Patrick’s parents who, in turn, drove them around France so she could meet all the relatives who hadn’t been able to attend the wedding. Then they came back south to see Patrick’s beloved grandmother who lived in Montpellier, and all the while Josephine blushed and babbled in baby French. A fairy tale—she was living a fairy tale. No screaming parents, no inebriated Kit, no taunting whispers in her mind. Just Patrick and France.
PAIGE
We ended the evening by praying for Momma—well, Drake and Hannah prayed really sincere, heartfelt prayers, and I just listened. Then Drake pulled out the sofa bed in the den, which he’d slept on for months after his parents’ divorce, and Hannah went up to her old room on the second floor. I had planned to go to sleep too, and climbed to the third floor. But instead of turning to go into my room, I went into Momma’s office. The moon, a dazzling white, made the tree outside her window cast dancing shadows across the spines of those old, old books. I watched them for a moment, then flipped on the lights.
Every book in The Chalet held a memory. I reached to a shelf and fingered the brittle cover jacket of Gone with the Wind. 1936, first edition. Signed by Mrs. Mitchell herself. Beside it, early editions of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I could smell my past in those books, could feel the delight of sneaking into The Chalet and finding a stool and standing up high to get to this shelf. I’d pick one—maybe The Black Stallion Returns or Misty of Chincoteague or A Little Princess—and I’d cuddle up with my book, snuggled in my bed across the hall under a hundred-year-old quilt, with my ceiling falling away on either side of my bed, just as it did in this room. During The Awful Year, when I was nine, I read a children’s illustrated version of A Tale of Two Cities three times, finding in that tale of woe the only way I knew of escaping our own tale of woe with the whispers, the clawing grief, the hollow sound of an empty house.
“Momma! What’s the matter, Momma?”
I escaped The Awful Year. That was the title we gave it, Hannah and I. We titled everything in our lives, as if Momma were writing our stories—which in a sense she was. Most of the titles held a little hint of playfulness: The Year of the Crazy Crushes, The Month of Mono and Murder Mysteries, The Tequila Time, The Magnificent Month at the Motte, The Days of Drake, and on and on and on. . . .
But we found nothing the least bit humorous about The Awful Year, so the name stayed simply awful: the year both of Momma’s parents died, the year of the financial decline, the year when Drake’s parents divorced. The year that Daddy . . .
But I couldn’t go there. Could not revisit that pain.
I ran my fingers over the novels’ spines, then put the stool back by the wall, as if I were afraid Detective Blaylock would notice that I’d moved it and question me.
I sat down at Momma’s desk and opened her laptop, which Officer Hanley had returned. The computer lit up with Hannah’s lovely face bent over that sunflower. I went to Momma’s fan mail account and read through the latest emails.
Please get well, Mrs. Bourdillon. You are my favorite author, and your books have changed my life.
You’ve given me healing and offered me hope.
I’m sorry I never wrote you before. I hope and pray that you can read this, or someone will read it to you.
I’m praying for you, Mrs. Bourdillon.
Email after email, from the thirteen-year-old girl who dreamed of being a writer to the eighty-three-year-old great-grandmother who read all of Momma’s books and then passed them on to her daughters and granddaughters, they all had a similar thread. Thank you for writing your books. They’ve been important in my life.
Momma always said that the painful things in life got redeemed in her stories. “It’s like what C. S. Lewis talks about, Paige. He says that even though pain hurts, that doesn’t discredit what the Bible says about people being made perfect through suffering.”
I didn’t want to think about C. S. Lewis and pain. I clicked back on the last email and read it again. The next time I sat with Momma, I’d read her more of these messages, as well as the snail mail. Maybe in her semivegetative state the words would travel into her brain. And lying there, as her brain rested, she’d actually believe what these people had written, and then the other things that swirled and tumbled around in her beautiful, sometimes-tormented mind would be quieted for just a little while.
HENRY
I couldn’t quite believe I was here again, same as last night but with everything completely different. Dr. Martin met us at the Mission Hospital at ten that evening, and by that time Jase was in a room and pretty stable—at least he was sleeping.
“Surgery tomorrow morning—I’m bumping my other patient—he’s got to have it now.”
Libby was trembling. “But you said he needed to be strong enough for surgery. Is he strong enough now?”
And there was that big, important doctor towering over my little Libby, putting his big, skilled hand on her thin shoulder and saying, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hughes, but we don’t have a choice.”
Libby grabbed me tight around the waist and buried her head in my chest and cried.
The surgeon’s voice didn’t sound soothing, but his words were okay. “Remember, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes, there’s a good chance we can repair his heart so that he won’t need any more surgeries.”
But I didn’t hear the words repair his heart after Dr. Martin had left. All I heard again and again and again was that maybe my boy wouldn’t need any more surgeries. Maybe not, because he’d be dead.
Libs and I decided she’d go on and drive back home and get to her work on Wednesday morning while I stayed during the operation. She couldn’t risk losing her job—that’d mean we’d lose our health insurance too. It didn’t pay for a lot, but it was something. I knew Mr. Dan wasn’t gonna like my call, but at least we’d finished the project that had been stressing him out for the past month. And Libby’s boss, well, he counted on her to keep his schedule—said she was the most organized assistant he’d ever had—but he didn’t have a real tender side.
“He’s got several important meetings tomorrow, and if I’m not there, he’ll throw a fit.” Poor Libby; she had a boss with a temper almost as bad as mine.
The doctor had already told us we couldn’t stay in Jase’s room that night, but a nurse explained to Libby about the place where families of patients from out of town could stay.
“It’s free, babe,” she reported to me, “and there’s a room open tonight. I’ll drop you off there, and they’ll get you back in the morning so you can see Jase before surgery.”
The hope that sang out of Libby warmed me a bit, helped calm all the crazy thoughts that kept rumbling around in my mind.
About midnight Libs and I went into Jase’s room. All the machines were lighted up and helping him breathe, and Libs went over and bent down and brushed away all that hair and kissed him on the forehead.
“I love you, Jase,” she whispered. “I love you so much it hurts. A good hurt, you know. A corn-puddin’ kind of good.” He didn’t wake up, and I didn’t say anything to him at all, be
cause my voice wasn’t always as calming on him.
Libby followed the directions to the hospitality house, a big ole sprawling place, far as I could tell in the dark, and soon as we drove in that circle driveway, an older couple came out to greet us, real friendly like, even though it was after midnight.
I left my overnight bag in the lobby, and I walked Libby out to the pickup. The moon was full and so bright. I held her and said, “It’s gonna work out—it’s all gonna work out. Now you drive real safe back home and try to sleep a little. I’ll call you at work soon as he gets out of surgery.”
“If I see my boss and explain it, I know he’ll let me come back. I just have to see him in person. Then he’ll understand.”
I watched her drive away, my pretty little wife. I knew she’d put on the radio to some religious station that played hopeful music or maybe some kind of sermon all night long. She’d drive and cry and pray.
The old couple showed me to my room, and I thanked them. For the past few hours I hadn’t thought one second about Miz Bourdillon, but now, in that real nice big room with her book as my only companion, I started reading again. And I couldn’t help thinking about the kindness of the staff at the hospital and that couple here at the hospitality house waiting up for us, and being so kind and thoughtful, and how they wouldn’t be welcoming us like this if they knew who I was.
But they didn’t. Thank God, they didn’t.
CHAPTER
8
WEDNESDAY
PAIGE
Aunt Kit met Drake and Hannah and me at the door of Momma’s room, looking a little crumpled, but her eyes were bright. “She squeezed my hand! Twice! In response to a question. I think she is hearing us.”
I felt two things at once: a leap of joy and a stab of jealousy. Momma had squeezed Aunt Kit’s hand? Aunt Kit? We’d had no sign of movement from her for over forty-eight hours, and she’d chosen to respond to Aunt Kit?
Immediately I berated myself. Momma had shown signs of understanding something, and it certainly didn’t matter who had asked the question.
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