by Anna Schmidt
“Paul Cox will be an excellent mentor for you during this time,” the state employee had said.
Rachel held on to those words as the airplane engines droned and she marveled at the sensation of flying above a field of clouds that looked like marshmallows. Silently, she thanked God for the many blessings He had sent her way over this last month. Then remembering James counseling her that “it never hurts to ask” when she had hesitated to pray for another chance to bring a child to term, she decided to ask for one more blessing.
“Please guide me in the ways that will allow Justin to find his way in this new life we’ve started,” she murmured, and then she closed her eyes as the airplane began its descent.
“Justin can’t wait to hear all about your trip,” Hester announced after she’d picked Rachel up at the airport. “I’ve got supper waiting. I’ll bet you barely ate all day.”
It was true. She’d been too nervous about the plane trip and the meetings in Tallahassee to take more than a couple of bites of toast for her breakfast. Lunch had been a sandwich from a vending machine in the state office building, and supper had been a tiny bag of miniature pretzels and a cup of hot tea on the plane.
“I am a little hungry,” she admitted. “But it’s not so late. Justin and I can go home after all and—”
“After you have a decent meal,” Hester said as she waited for the traffic light to change.
Rachel knew better than to argue and, besides, it would be nice to talk about everything that had happened that day. “It feels like I’ve been gone for a week,” she admitted.
Hester smiled and then focused all of her attention on the road. After they’d gone past the bridge that led to the islands that separated the bay from the Gulf of Mexico, they passed the gigantic statue of the sailor kissing the nurse based on the famous photograph from the victory celebration at the end of World War II.
“Still kissing,” Hester murmured.
Rachel smiled. “Do you think the real sailor and nurse ever got together?”
“Oh, you are such a romantic,” Hester teased, but then her smile faded. “Do you think you’ll ever—I mean it’s been what? Nearly two years?”
“Ja.” In some ways the time seemed such a brief period, Justin aging from ten years old to twelve. On the other hand the almost two years that had passed since James’s death seemed much longer. Rachel supposed that Hester’s question was perfectly normal, but she wasn’t ready to think about the idea that she might ever love another man the way she had loved James.
“How are your friends doing? The couple that lost their child?” she said instead.
Hester clutched the steering wheel a little tighter and shook her head. “It’s a mess. Emma and Jeannie were never just sisters. They’ve always been best friends as well. But now with one child dead and the other in jail—now when they need each other the most, they barely speak.”
“I’m so sorry for them and for you, having to struggle with how best to help them.”
“You know me—Little Miss Fix-It, as John sometimes calls me. But this I can’t fix. I can’t even ease their pain a little bit.” Her shoulders sagged with weariness. “I thought I understood grief. I mean, all those years watching my mother get sicker and sicker …”
Hester’s mother had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease a few years before she met John. Hester had been her mother’s caregiver for five long years. Rachel could only imagine how awful it had been for her, a trained nurse, standing helplessly by and watching a loved one struggle without being able to offer any help beyond compassion and comfort.
But the car accident that had ripped apart the lives of Hester’s friends was a very different kind of grieving. “I imagine that they are all struggling with the suddenness of their loss—and they are fighting their anger as well.”
“That’s it exactly. It was all so senseless, and yet it has happened and how are they supposed to get through it? Even if Emma’s daughter doesn’t go to jail, how is she going to live with what happened?” She glanced over at Rachel. “I mean, you must have felt some of that when James died—so sudden and senseless.”
“Ja. We all struggled to find forgiveness. I think Justin may be struggling still. It’s very hard for the children.”
“So how did you get through it?”
“Just after I lost my job with the school system I heard about a program called VORP. It stands for Victim Offender Reconciliation Program. It was all about victims of a crime or accident finding a way to forgive the offender.”
“I can’t even think how you would begin to do that,” Hester said.
“I’ll admit that it took me awhile to come to the point where I wanted any part of facing the young man who was driving his car with a blood alcohol content three times the legal limit.”
“You had to be so angry.”
“I was furious,” Rachel admitted. “In a blink of an eye that young man had changed our lives forever and all for what? Because he didn’t think? Because the last person to see him didn’t take his car keys and prevent him from driving? It was done, and we had to find our way. Our way has always been forgiveness.”
As they made the rest of the drive to Hester’s place, Rachel told her about the program—how she and Justin and others from their extended family had met with the young man. How they had learned that he was a husband and father who had recently lost his job. “Something he and I had in common,” Rachel said. And most of all she spoke of how with the help of a trained mediator they were able to create a sort of contract so the man could make amends. “Get help with his drinking problem. Go back to school. Speak out to other young people to help them see the consequences of his action.”
“VORP,” Hester said softly to herself as she turned onto the lane leading to the farmhouse. “Rachel, I hate to ask, but would you be willing to meet my friend Jeannie—she’s the one whose daughter was killed—and tell her about this?”
“Of course. Anything I can do that might help.” The lights from the farmhouse streaked the yard as Hester drove past the packinghouse and other outbuildings. She parked beside the main house and tooted the horn.
Rachel couldn’t stifle a yelp of pure pleasure when she saw Justin come bounding down the porch steps. She got out of the car and held open her arms, and her son came to her.
“How was it?” he asked. “Were you scared? Was it bumpy and stuff?”
“It was like riding on a cloud,” she told him as they walked back to the house arm in arm. “Did you miss me?”
Justin ducked his head. “I had school, and you were only gone for the day.”
“So you didn’t miss me?” she teased.
He looked up at her then and grinned. “Maybe a little,” he admitted.
She ruffled his hair. “I don’t know about you, but I am starving,” she said.
“Zeke’s here,” Justin said. “He’s been playing his guitar and showing me some chords.”
Inside, Zeke Shepherd was sitting on the rag rug that lined the hardwood floor in the living room strumming his guitar.
Such a small thing, Rachel thought. A little music always brings such pleasure.
“Showtime,” Zeke said and handed Justin the instrument.
“Supper time first,” Hester instructed, “and then if you guys finish every bite of your vegetables, it will be showtime.”
Justin grinned at Zeke, and Rachel couldn’t help but think that the prayer she’d said on the plane had been answered. Maybe they were going to be all right—both of them.
It was the music that had attracted Darcy to the room in the first place. She’d been making her weekly tour of the building, checking to be sure that the housekeeping staff was doing their job to the standards she had set for them and that those on the nursing staff were tending to patients and staying on top of their reports.
Oh, she knew how the word of her tour spread from department to department and wing to wing as she made her rounds. Well, if people lived in fear of her visits, then they
probably weren’t doing their job. She had made it plain from day one that she would accept no excuses and that she expected people to take responsibility if anything was amiss—and fix it.
She had almost completed her tour and had a list of infractions that was disturbingly long when she heard the music. A couple of nursing assistants were standing in the doorway of the activity room. They scurried back to work when they saw Darcy coming.
She sighed. She wasn’t a total ogre, after all. Needing a break, Darcy put her phone on vibrate and smiled as she heard the voices of the children raised in the ever-inspiring chorus of “This Land Is My Land.”
But when she reached the entrance to the activity room she could not believe what she was seeing. Malcolm Shepherd’s homeless brother was sitting in the middle of the floor with a dozen patients gathered around him. He was playing his guitar and appeared to be leading the children in a sing-along. Beside him Rachel Kaufmann was nodding and smiling as she encouraged the children to clap their hands on cue and join in on the chorus.
He might be the brother of the president of the hospital’s board—and technically Darcy’s boss—but this was unconscionable. The man lived on the streets. She glanced from Zeke to Rachel and waited for Paul’s assistant to meet her gaze.
When finally she did, Darcy motioned that she needed to speak with her right away.
“I’ll be right back,” Darcy heard Rachel tell Zeke and the children as soon as the song ended. There was a slight pause, and then Zeke started strumming a new tune.
“Who knows this one?” he asked.
Rachel was smiling when she reached the doorway.
Darcy was not.
“Was this your idea?” she demanded in a hushed tone meant for Rachel’s ears only.
“You mean Zeke and the music?”
“Of course I mean Zeke. What were you thinking? The man is homeless. Do you have any idea what kind of disease and germs he could be carrying?”
“Zeke?” Rachel blinked as she looked back at Zeke, who caught her glance and raised a questioning eyebrow.
Darcy moved farther away from the doorway. She deliberately positioned herself so that Rachel’s back was to Zeke. “Yes, that man in there with children, some of whom have compromised immune systems. This is exactly what I feared when we hired you, Rachel. You have never worked in a true hospital setting—oh, I know you were a school nurse in some little rural school system back in Ohio but that is not the same thing, not at all.”
Rachel took all of this in her usual pious and serene way. She offered no apology or excuse, just waited there with her hands folded in front of her, her eyes meeting Darcy’s without flinching. And that only irritated Darcy more.
“Did Paul Cox authorize this?”
“Pastor Paul and I discussed offering some outside entertainment for the children,” Rachel said.
“But did he authorize this?” She pointed directly at Zeke.
“No. I invited Mr. Shepherd after observing him playing at a friend’s house.”
Darcy hesitated. Wondering if the friend had been Sharon and Malcolm Shepherd. “Well, I will be speaking to Paul Cox about this. Clearly he has overestimated your ability to choose appropriate avenues for working with the children.” She glanced past Rachel to where Zeke was finishing another song. “Let him finish this song and then send him on his way.”
“All right.” Rachel turned and started back toward the activity room. Her refusal to debate the point with Darcy made it imperative that Darcy have the final word.
“And, Rachel?” The Mennonite woman turned to face her. “Understand that this incident will be part of your file and probationary review.”
“I know.” Once again she turned to go and then turned back. “You should know, then, that Zeke was quite adamant about being properly bathed and groomed before coming here. My friends, John and Hester Steiner, lent him their facilities as well as new clean clothes and shoes for him to wear. And at his request both he and the children—as you can see—are wearing masks.”
“That’s all well and good, but germs travel and germs thrive wherever they remain once the person carrying them leaves the premises,” Darcy replied. She was pleased to see that this time Rachel Kaufmann kept walking.
Darcy watched her end the sing-along by asking the children to give Zeke a round of applause, and then the few parents and a couple of nursing assistants that Darcy had not noticed sitting in the back of the room slowly wheeled or walked the patients back to their rooms.
On the one hand, she could see that the escape from their treatment had done wonders for the children. They were talking excitedly and smiling as they left the activity room. But on the other, this was a hospital—her hospital in the sense that if anything went wrong she would be the one called upon to answer for it.
“Can I leave or did you want to call security and have me escorted out?”
Darcy wheeled around and found herself face-to-face with Zeke Shepherd. The mask was gone, and he was actually grinning at her. And she couldn’t help but notice that it was not a smirk, but an honest-to-goodness and surprisingly good-looking grin at that. His smile made his deep-set dark eyes sparkle. Flustered that it was possible for her to feel any remote semblance of an attraction to this man, Darcy walked past him into the activity room where Rachel was putting away some supplies.
“I’ll take that as no security necessary, then,” Zeke called out to her after waiting a beat. Then she heard the man actually chuckling as he strolled down the hall, his guitar slung over his back.
Chapter 12
Ben had a problem, and it had nothing to do with his work. In the two weeks that had passed since their pizza date, he and Darcy Meekins had fallen into the habit of grabbing something to eat or reviewing their day with other singles from the hospital over a cold beer at the tiki bar by the bay. Afterward the two of them had twice gone back to his condo to watch a movie. When he’d mentioned that he planned to participate in a charity five-kilometer run, she had laughed and commented that he wasn’t exactly prepared for that distance, especially in September when the humidity and temperature could still be real factors.
“I work out regularly,” he’d protested.
“But you aren’t a runner,” she’d pointed out. “If you think you can keep up with me, I could get you ready in the next couple of weeks.”
Never one to back down from a challenge, Ben had started meeting her at the park closer to her condo early in the mornings. They would run together and then go back to her place for breakfast. After they ate, he would head for the hospital and the doctors’ lounge to shower and change, promising to see her later. On one of those mornings, after his sister had presented him with two tickets to a ball for one of the charities that she and Malcolm supported, Ben had told Darcy about the tickets.
“Are you going?” Darcy asked as they jogged alongside each other for their cooldown lap.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Well, yeah. You’re a big boy.”
“I know. It’s just that charity balls are not exactly my thing, but this event is very important to Sharon. Agreeing to co-chair was the first real sign that she was ready to start living her life instead of living only for Sally. So for no other reason than that it will please Sharon, I’ll do it. Wanna come?”
“Gee. I don’t know. You make it sound like the world’s most boring evening.”
“Come on. There’ll be great food, dancing, a silent art auction—the usual stuff. If things get too unbearable one of us can fake a headache.”
“That would be me, I presume?”
“Well, yeah. What kind of guy would I be if I let you go home alone?”
Darcy had laughed. “All right. I’ll come, but you are going to owe me big-time, buster.” She’d taken off then, running with those long graceful strides that Ben had come to admire.
“Pick anything you want from the auction,” he’d called out as he ran to catch up to her. “My treat.”
Dar
cy had grinned. “Okay, you’re on.”
She’s a good friend, he had thought.
When he told Sharon that he was bringing Darcy, she had beamed her matchmaker smile. “I knew it. This whole ‘we’re just friends’ thing has been a cover.”
“We are just friends,” Ben protested.
“Really? I’ve never known you to spend this much time with any other friend—drinks by the bay, movies at your place, breakfast at her place.” She actually pinched his cheek. “Come on, big brother, admit it. Finally someone has found her way around that science experiment that passes for a heart in you.”
Ben did not begin to know how to protest Sharon’s multiple assumptions. “First of all, I am all heart and you know it. Did I not turn to absolute mush when Sally was born? And as for Darcy …”
“It’s okay, Ben. If you’re not ready to go public with this, I get it. But once the two of you show up together at that ball tongues will wag.”
Later that night, after he and Darcy had shared a late supper at a restaurant near the hospital, he was walking her back to her car. He had been about to tell her of Sharon’s ridiculous assumption when she’d said, “I bought a gown for the ball today.”
Half a dozen responses shot through his mind, but what came out was a noncommittal, “Really?”
Apparently that was all the encouragement she needed to provide details. By the time they reached her car in the mostly deserted parking garage, she was twirling around as if modeling the gown for him and laughing like a schoolgirl.
“Oh Ben, this is going to be so much fun,” she gushed and pirouetted straight into his arms.
Their faces were inches apart, and her expression turned from girlish exuberance to grown-up serious. She ran her fingers across his lips. In all the time they had spent together these past weeks, they had kissed only twice—a quick peck both times when she left his place after they’d watched the movies.