by Anna Schmidt
“You are simply associating him with his brother,” she muttered to herself as she gathered the work she needed to carry home with her and prepared to leave for the day. Other than the similarities in looks and intelligence, Zeke was nothing like Malcolm.
She was on her way to the skywalk that led to the parking garage when she looked down and saw Ben with his niece, Sally. He was grinning and waving at someone as he waited by the open door of his car. She was about to continue on her way, assuming he was waiting for his sister when she saw the unmistakable starched white prayer covering the Mennonite woman wore.
Rachel Kaufmann and her son hurried toward Ben’s car. The only good news as far as Darcy was concerned was that Rachel took a seat in back with Sally while her son climbed into the passenger seat up front.
So Ben was giving the woman and her son a lift. So what? He was a nice guy, always doing things for others. Still she could not seem to shake the envy that crawled over her like a bunch of pesky no-see-ums, the tiny bugs that attacked those silly enough to linger on the beach past sundown.
It was a perfect night for a boat ride on the bay. The water was calm, reflecting the surroundings like an enormous mirror. Ben set the motor on the small craft that he’d rented to the low speed required in these inland waters and steered along the shoreline of Sarasota. He first headed north, passing under the Ringling Bridge connecting the mainland to the string of barrier islands that gave the city protection from the worst of most hurricanes and tropical storms.
“What’s that purple building?” Justin asked.
“It’s called the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center,” Sally replied before Ben could answer the boy. “They have all kinds of shows there—concerts and plays and everything.”
“Why is it purple?” Justin asked and seemed pleased when Sally had no answer for that.
“I don’t know. It always has been.” Sally brightened. “Remember when we went to see The Lion King there, Uncle Ben?”
“Sure do.”
“Did you see the movie, Justin?” Sally asked.
Justin’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“In our faith we do not go to movies or plays, Sally,” Rachel said quietly.
“Oh.”
Ben had rarely seen his niece speechless, but he understood that she was wrestling with the idea that she’d always been taught that such cultural events as plays and even some films were part of becoming a well-rounded person.
“Sorry,” she murmured after a moment.
Rachel smiled and lightly touched her hand. “No need,” she said. “It is our way.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Sally squinted up at Rachel.
“Not at all.”
“Well, I know that some Catholic nuns wear a covering on their head—and Muslim women as well. Is there a special meaning to the little hat you wear all the time?”
Rachel smiled. “It is called a ‘prayer covering,’ Sally, and we wear it as a symbol of our faith.”
“But all the time?”
“Sally,” Ben warned.
“You never know when you might need to pray,” Rachel said, “and how inconvenient it would be to keep putting the cap on and off throughout the day.”
“There’s the Ringling Museum,” Ben said, taking the opportunity to change the subject by pointing to the lavish mansion that the circus owner had built in the early twentieth century. “There was a time, Justin, when John Ringling owned everything you can see here.”
“Even that island over there?” Justin asked, his eyes wide.
“Even that. That’s Longboat Key, and if you look back toward the bridge, Ringling owned everything from here to there.”
“He must have had a ton of money,” Justin said.
“He did, and then he lost most of it when the stock market crashed in the late 1920s.”
“But he kept the house and that big building next to it?”
Ben chuckled. “John Ringling was a very smart businessman. He and his wife, Mabel, built the original part of that complex to house the huge art collection they had gathered on their many travels throughout Europe. And when he realized that he might have to sell off his mansion and art collection to pay his creditors, he donated everything to the state of Florida.”
Sally turned to Rachel. “There’s really a neat tour of the house and the grounds. They’ve got this cool circus museum and a fabulous miniature circus that has its very own building. Can Mennonites go to museums?”
“We can and do.”
Sally grinned and turned to Justin. “Let’s go there one day. I’ll ask Mom to—”
“Do you ever go fishing out here, Dr. Booker?” Justin asked, interrupting Sally and pointedly turning away from her.
“Justin,” Rachel said gently, “Sally was speaking.”
“Sorry.” But he looked out toward the shore, not at Sally.
“Never mind,” Sally said. Ben glanced at Rachel.
“Is anyone hungry?” Rachel asked, her voice a shade too bright, her eyes and worried frown focused on her son.
“I’m not feeling so great,” Sally said. She walked unsteadily to the far end of the boat and sat alone on the burgundy plastic seat, her arms locked around her bent knees, her back to all of them.
“Maybe we should go back,” Rachel said to Ben.
Maybe you should tell your son that he’s being a total jerk, Ben thought, but he could see in the worried way Rachel looked at Justin that she knew her son had upset Sally. So Ben nodded and turned the boat around, heading back toward the marina.
“I don’t get it,” Sally said later, after they had dropped Rachel and Justin off at the cottage. Sally had suddenly decided she was feeling better and persuaded Ben to take her for a hot fudge sundae at their favorite ice cream shop on Main Street. “What is it with that guy? I try to be nice to him like Mom says I should be. I mean he’s living in my backyard—like literally twenty yards from our house. What is his problem?” she fumed as the two of them sat outside the ice cream shop eating their sundaes.
“Well, at least you’ve recovered your appetite,” Ben teased as Sally scooped ice cream into her mouth almost without pausing to breathe between bites.
She grinned sheepishly. “It was either pretend not to be hungry or slug the guy,” she admitted. “He’s gotten involved with the wrong group at school.” She shook her head. “Derek Piper and his crew are not the best influence on him. I think Mr. Mortimer is beginning to catch on, and Justin might be in trouble.”
“In what way?”
“Derek is such a total bully.”
“So is he bullying Justin?”
“Oh no, that’s the thing. He’s like best buddies with Justin—as long as Justin is willing to do his math homework for him, that is. Justin thinks he’s helping Derek, but that’s not what’s happening. I mean, how can Derek have all the answers right on his homework but still fail the tests?”
“Maybe you should talk to Justin …”
Sally rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’ll work. He already thinks I might tell Mortimer what’s going on. That’s why he wants to stay clear of me.”
“Maybe I should talk to his mom, then.”
“Not at all a good idea,” Sally protested around a mouth filled with ice cream and fudge sauce. “That would just prove to Justin that I’m the rat he already thinks I am. No, please don’t say anything, okay? Not to his mom—or mine. Okay?”
She held up both hands, palms out as if wanting to stop him from even thinking about saying something. And that was when he noticed the white spots on her palms.
Ben dropped his spoon and grabbed his niece’s hands, holding them closer to the light to examine them, all the while hoping he wasn’t seeing what he most feared was there.
“Hey,” Sally protested.
“Sally, when did you first notice these spots on your palms?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Couple of days ago, I guess.” She looked at him, tears filling her ey
es. “It’s not anything serious, is it? I mean, I’ve been feeling so good and, yeah, I had that virus last week and I’m still a little knocked out from that but Mom had the blood tests run and everything was normal and …”
Her naked fear made Ben repress his own terror. “Let’s be sure,” he said. “How about we make a quick stop at the hospital on the way home, draw some blood, and see what’s going on, okay?”
“You think it’s GVHD?”
His smile was forced. This kid had spent way too much time in hospitals. She knew all the lingo. GVHD or Graft-Versus-Host Disease was exactly what he was thinking, but at the moment all he wanted was to calm her fears—and his own. Even though it had been months since Sally’s transplant, the possibility that her body might yet reject the donor marrow was still there.
“You know me, kid. I don’t make guesses when it comes to medicine. Let’s run the tests and see what we find, okay?” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in his sister’s number and was relieved when Malcolm answered.
In as few words as possible he gave Malcolm the news.
“We’ll meet you at the hospital,” Malcolm said tersely and hung up before Ben could say anything more. Of course, what was there to say? The spots were a symptom. Other than the virus that seemed to have passed there were no other signs. Sally’s energy level was fairly normal. Oh, she had seemed tired until she’d suggested going for ice cream, and then she had rallied and admitted that she’d been faking on the boat—or had she?
He resisted the urge to quiz Sally as they drove in silence to the hospital. She seemed small and vulnerable sitting in the passenger seat next to him, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest as if to protect herself from whatever the blood tests might reveal. Ben glanced at her, saw her lips moving and realized that she was praying as tears leaked slowly down her cheeks.
He reached over and cupped her head with his palm. “We can fix this, honey,” he promised.
But Ben was far from certain that he would be able to deliver on that promise.
By the time the excursion ended Rachel had begun to wonder if Justin had indeed gotten caught up in wanting so much to connect with a group of boys in his class that he had been drawn into questionable activities. His attitude toward Sally while they were on the boat had alarmed Rachel, and his stubborn refusal to apologize only deepened her worry. She decided that before her meeting with Mr. Mortimer on Monday it was imperative that she learn more about this Derek Piper and his relationship with her son.
“I have an idea,” she said when they were back home. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Why don’t you invite your friend—Derek—is that his name? Why don’t you invite him over here? The two of you could study together for that math test you mentioned, and we could have …”
The look on Justin’s face stopped her in midsentence. “What is it? The boy must live in the neighborhood since he rides the same bus with you and Sally.”
“He’s probably busy with other stuff.”
“How will you know if you don’t ask?”
Justin turned away from her. She watched as his shoulders sagged. “Please, Mom.”
“I don’t understand.”
Justin turned to face her, his eyes traveling instantly to her prayer covering and then back to the floor. Suddenly it all made sense. He was embarrassed—by her—by who they were.
“I take it your new friends do not know that you are Mennonite. And what if they did? Would that make so much of a difference?”
His head jerked up, and he looked at her with something she could only describe as pity. “Mom, please let it go. Be glad for me that I’ve made some friends. That was really hard to do, and I don’t want to have to start over.”
“Are you saying that Derek and the others would not want to be friends with a Mennonite?”
“They wouldn’t understand. They don’t like different. Look at the way they treat Sally.”
“And how do they treat her? Do they roll their eyes as if her comments are stupid as you did on the boat? Do they ignore her as you did in the car tonight? Is this what you have learned from your new friends, Justin?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry for how I acted tonight with Sally. She’s okay, but …” He drew himself up to his full height even with her own. “You’re the one who put me in that school with all those outsiders. Now you want to ban the only friends I’ve been able to make?” His eyes challenged hers. Neither of them blinked.
Rachel was on unfamiliar ground. She wished James were here. She wished she could seek counsel from a man—perhaps Ben would know how best to talk to Justin. But it was just the two of them—and she was the parent.
“Do not speak to me in that tone, Justin,” she said quietly. “No one has said anything about banning your friends. I have simply asked to meet them. But I can see that you are ashamed of your heritage—your father’s heritage.” She knew it was a low blow, but it was the truth. She bit her lower lip to stem her own tide of anger. She sucked in a deep breath and continued, “I had a call from Mr. Mortimer today.”
Instantly she knew that Justin understood why his teacher had called her. Instantly she realized that what Mr. Mortimer suspected was not only true but that Justin knew that what he was doing was wrong. It was all right there in his eyes that suddenly could not meet hers, in the way his whole body slouched into a defiant posture, and in the way his lips thinned into a hard unyielding line.
Never had there been a more inconvenient time for her pager to go off than that moment, yet it buzzed insistently on the table where she had laid it when they returned from the boat ride. She picked it up and read the message.
“I have to go,” she said. Justin turned toward his room, but she stopped him by placing her hand on his shoulder. “Justin?”
He did not look at her, but stood rooted to the spot as if waiting for something. “We will speak of this in the morning. Now it’s too late for a bus so please call a taxi for me while I gather my things.” Hester had suggested that she invest in a used car, but Rachel was unwilling to spend any more of their meager savings until she could be certain that they were finally settled. She in her job, Justin in a proper Mennonite school, both of them in a small rental house in Pinecraft where the ways of the outside world could not tempt her only child.
Chapter 16
After rushing Sally to the hospital, trying hard all the way not to alarm her, Ben realized he’d failed. As they waited for Sharon and Malcolm to show up, he saw that Sally was shivering and he knew it was from fear—not the temperature.
“I don’t want to be sick again,” she whispered as he waited with her in one of the small ER examining rooms. A nurse had drawn blood and hand carried the samples to the lab with Ben’s instructions to deliver the results directly to him. He felt sick that he seemed incapable of offering Sally any reassurance.
At her insistence, he had promised not to hold back anything. “I want to know what we’re fighting,” she’d told him, showing far more maturity than most of the adults surrounding her, who were helplessly wringing their hands.
And through it all, Ben had stuck to his promise. First, after her diagnosis and the failure of the first round of chemotherapy, and then again and again as the search for a donor match failed repeatedly he’d told her the truth. Even over the long months that followed the transplant where Sally endured regular testing to be sure that the transplant was a success he had remained totally honest about what she could be facing. Through all those endless weeks and months it had been as if all of them—except Sally— were holding their collective breath. Only she seemed certain that the fight had been won. Only she dismissed the caution that her parents insisted upon with a disbelieving shake of her head.
She rubbed her eyes, as if trying to change the picture she feared she might see once she opened them again. “Oh great,” she muttered. “Skin lesions and dry eyes.”
Sally knew the signs for chronic Graft-Versus-Host Disease—or GVHD—as well as any of them. It was a risk
of transplant, when the patient’s body perceived the transplanted cells as foreign. In which case the body would do what the body always did when a foreign invader threatened—her body would begin to reject the healthy cells from the transplant.
When she had reached the one hundredth day after her transplant with no symptoms of the acute form of the disease, she had framed the results of her blood tests—all showing normal levels—and hung it on the wall of her room.
“Party time,” she had crowed. Even Sharon had laughed at that.
“Where is she?” Ben heard his sister’s voice as she hurried down the corridor.
“In here,” Ben called out.
Sharon went immediately to Sally and cradled her against her shoulder.
“Where’s Malcolm?” Ben asked.
“Making arrangements to transport her back to Tampa. Don’t you think that’s the best plan?”
It was, but Ben did not like it since it would mean that he would not be able to oversee Sally’s treatment. Still, the transplant team was in Tampa, and they were the ones best qualified to address any complications. Ben worked up a smile for his sister and niece. “Road trip,” he said and was rewarded by Sally’s half smile.
“Chopper trip more likely, knowing Dad.”
The nurse entered the room and handed Ben the lab results without comment. But he only had to look at her face to know he wasn’t going to like what they told him.
“The count is high?” Sharon asked, still holding Sally and rocking her as if she were a toddler.
“It’s high,” Sally confirmed.
“It’s also early in the game,” Ben said. “Let’s don’t jump to conclusions.” The nurse was back with a wheelchair.
With a resigned sigh, Sally pulled free of her mother and trudged over to the chair. “To the roof, driver,” she instructed wearily as Ben took hold of the chair’s handles.
“Your wish is my command, your ladyship,” he replied, but his voice cracked in spite of his determination to match Sally’s bravery with courage of his own. He glanced at his sister as the elevator carried them to the rooftop landing pad. Tears slid down her cheeks. When they reached the roof, he gestured that she should take charge of Sally’s wheelchair. That way Sally would not see her mother crying.