by Kimberly Rae
Would he ever be able to make her understand that?
No, that was something only God could make her see, so as he waited for his eyes to dry up, he kept them closed, and prayed.
****
Ryan saw Kayla say goodbye to Jainey, and as she slowly walked around the house toward the front door, smiling as she walked along the completed part of the walkway, Ryan joined her.
“Hey,” he said softly. Even so, she startled.
“Oh, hi.” Her smile was open and took his breath away.
He had decided. Today was the day he was going to tell her how he felt. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the tree house Jose and I have been working on.”
Her smile widened. “I have, only I’m guessing you’re the one working on it and Jose is—,” she held her fingers up in quotes, “—helping.”
He grinned. “You know kids well.” He gestured back toward the creek. “It’s on a big tree that’s right on the edge of the creek, so the tree house will go out over the water a little. Can you come with me and I’ll show it to you? I’ve got the base finished, so there’s a place to sit. I’ve built a ladder going up to it, and I could help you up so it wouldn’t take too much energy.”
She briefly touched his hand with her own. Or maybe they brushed together involuntarily as they walked. “Sounds wonderful. But first I’m going to the kitchen to ask if Aunt Lavender has any blueberry muffins around. I actually feel hungry. The doctor says that’s a good sign.”
“You’re a good sign, period.” He flushed, but then added. “I mean, look at you. No pajamas today.” His gaze took in her loose jeans and baggy T-shirt, likely so to keep from irritating her surgery site. The memory of that red line and large bruises still made him wince. “You don’t even have your trusty blanket.”
She laughed. “You make me sound like a toddler.”
He looked her over. Even in her baggy, unflattering clothes, she was all woman. “I like toddlers.” I like you even better. “Want some help up the porch steps?” He had his hands out, ready to assist.
“No, thank you. I’m tired of being so helpless and needy. I’m sure everyone else is as well.”
He did not say how his arms ached to be around her, helping in any way possible.
They entered the front door, and as they walked down the hallway, they heard Laverne Bloom’s voice. It was agitated.
“No, no, no, Jackson. You’re not right, and you never will be about this. You weren’t about Martha. You aren’t about Kayla. And I’m not going to let you speak with her.”
Kayla stopped mid-stride, and Ryan had to grab both sides of the hallway wall to keep from bumping into her from behind. “What?”
Her voice was only a whisper. “My dad.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“The doctor is right here. He’s a specialist on this disease, Jackson. He can tell you there isn’t a cure. She’s not going to get over this.”
Ryan put both hands on Kayla’s shoulders from behind and felt her let out a breath. “He’s on the phone.”
Had she been frightened about the thought of him being there in person?
“Will you just talk with — No, of course you don’t want to talk to the doctor.” Laverne’s tone was icy. “I won’t have you upsetting Kayla. The doctor says stress makes her condition worse, and she is still recovering from major surgery, which, by the way, you should have been here for. What kind of father refuses to come down when his only daughter is in ICU and her life is threatened? You—”
Ryan’s hands emptied as Kayla moved forward into the kitchen. He followed to see Laverne Bloom talking on an antique phone that actually had a cord still attached to the dial panel on the wall. She must twirl while she talked, because the cord was wrapped twice around her waist. When she saw Kayla, she gasped. Her hand stretched out, and Doctor Bradley took it in both of his. “Kayla, honey—”
Her attention went back to the phone. “Yes, she’s here.” Her frown deepened, and her mouth pursed. She looked like a child being forced to eat brussel sprouts. “Oh, fine, then. But only for a minute. And don’t you go upsetting her!”
She tried to hand the phone over, and only then realized she was encased in the cord. “Oh, gracious sakes.” A muted voice could be heard from the phone while she did a little dance to untangle herself. “Hold your horses!” she yelled toward the phone, and Ryan saw Kayla cover her smile behind a feminine hand.
Once free, she handed the phone to Kayla, distaste all over her tone. “It’s your father.”
Kayla took the phone. Laverne Bloom turned and put her head against Doctor Bradley’s chest. He folded her in his arms, patting her back.
Though the action surprised Ryan, it did not even register with Kayla, who was holding the phone out in front of her, staring at it.
He reached an arm around her waist, careful to avoid pressing anywhere near her wounds. The touch brought her focus back, but to him. “Ryan?”
“It’s okay. Go ahead and talk to him.”
“Will you stay with me?”
“I’ll stay with you.” Forever, if I have the chance.
She lifted the phone to her ear. “Daddy?”
Ryan was close enough to hear the voice coming through the line. “Kayla. How’s my girl?”
Her eyes teared up. “I’m doing good today, Daddy. How are you?”
“Oh, good, good. Plenty to do. Mrs. Robertson has been having trouble with her back again, and Randolph Price got out of jail, so we’re dealing with him coming by the church asking for handouts.”
There was a pause, and the sound of papers shuffling. Was the man working while talking to his daughter for the first time in weeks? Ryan felt his own arm stiffen, even as he felt Kayla’s body stiffening beneath it.
“There’s a reason I called.”
Kayla nodded at the phone.
“I’ve been trying to convince your Aunt Laverne — who never listens to me — to find another doctor to treat you. A young one, with all the latest treatments and information.”
Kayla seemed numb. “She likes to be called Lavender.”
“This is hardly the time to argue about her name, Kayla. Her name is Laverne. Now I want you to get on the Internet and find a new doctor to go see. I want him to be young, fresh out of medical school if possible, so he knows all the latest about this condition you have.”
“It’s called Addison’s disease. And I have asthma, too.”
“Yes, yes, so find one who will treat both aggressively. We need to get you well and back on the field as soon as possible. No need to waste time, sitting around waiting for the sickness to go away, right?”
Ryan watched Kayla swallow. “Daddy… I can’t go back overseas. The medicine I have to take isn’t available there, and if I caught the smallest sickness, it could be life-threatening, and there isn’t good medical care there, and—”
“Well, what am I supposed to tell the church then? That you’ve quit? That we’re sending money to a missionary who isn’t a missionary anymore?”
Ryan was clenching his teeth. Without consciously choosing to, he stuck his hand out for the phone. Kayla looked at his hand, then up at him. The little-girl pain in her eyes made his own dark with anger. How could the man talk to his own daughter this way?
She handed the phone over like a trusting child, and he kept his arm around her as he spoke. “Mr. Madison? My name is Ryan. I am a friend of Kayla’s.” The man started talking, but Ryan interrupted. “Sir, your daughter is one of the bravest people I know. She has gone through a terrible time, a time when she could have used your support. She is not recovered yet, and it would help her if you understood that her condition is going to be for life.”
He listened, Kayla looking up at him with questions in her eyes. “Yes, sir, I realize your church cannot support a missionary who has no intention of returning. But you as a father, or even as her pastor, should be supporting her personally. I have a feeling she cares a lot more about getting support from you as a fa
ther than money from your church as a missionary.”
The man responded with angry words, but Ryan cut him off again. “It seems we disagree on this subject, sir. As it is, you obviously have no desire for my opinion. Your daughter, however, needs someone to remind her how amazing she is, and to encourage her to stay strong, so I’m going to say goodbye and focus my attention on her.”
More words came through the line.
“Have a good day, sir.”
Ryan hung up the phone. He was clenching it, trying to keep his feelings wrapped around the phone so they did not transfer to the arm he still had around Kayla.
He looked down. Her face was a picture of amazement. “I think I made a bad first impression on your dad,” he said with a grin, giving her a little squeeze.
Her face crumpled, and he was taken back, literally, when she threw herself into his arms. She started crying. He looked up to see that Laverne Bloom was crying as well. Both men exchanged a look of shared male bewilderment.
“Let’s go sit down for a bit, Lavender.” Stephen Bradley led Laverne into the living room while Ryan remained in the kitchen, his arms loving the feel of Kayla in them, but his heart hurting for her pain.
He ran his hand through the soft strands of her hair. She lifted her face to his, and he wiped at the runaway tears.
“I can’t believe you did that. No one but Aunt Lavender has ever stood up to my dad for me. Even my mom never did.”
“I bet she never stood up for herself with him either, did she?”
Kayla stared straight forward, at his shirt, for a full minute. “No.” She raised her eyes, a growing awareness in them. “She never did.”
He put a hand under her chin. “Kayla, your mother was worth standing up for.” His thumb caressed her bottom lip. “And so are you.” His gaze traveled over her tear-stained face, her mussed bangs, her trembling lips. “You are beautiful and strong, and I am proud to know you.”
Her eyes were calling to him, clinging to him. His own kept drifting down to where his thumb rubbed the impossibly soft skin of her bottom lip. His lips wanted to share the sensation.
He bent his head down, slowly and softly touching his lips to hers, just once. Tenderly, afraid to harm her bruised side or bruised spirit, he enfolded her in both arms, pulling her against the firmness of his chest as he rested his chin over the top of her hair.
She sighed into him. This was right. Maybe, in time, he could help Kayla see her own worth. She should have known it all her life, her worth to God, shown by example from her father. But maybe now God would let him take that responsibility. Let his love be the example of the greater, unconditional love God had always had for her.
The phone, ringing behind his ear, jolted them both. Kayla gave a little squeal, startled, and backed away from him. Laverne Bloom approached, rubbing her eyes, to pull the phone from its holder on the wall.
“Hello? Oh, it’s you again.” Laverne took a look at Kayla, and her lips tightened into a firm line. “You made her cry.”
Ryan and Kayla began leaving the room when a name stopped them both. “Ryan Cummings? Yes, of course I know Ryan Cummings. He’s right here in my kitchen.”
Both turned as Laverne listened for a long time. Her eyebrows lifted and wrinkles made long lines across her forehead. “No. I’m certain that not’s why — No, the pastor never mentioned — Jackson, don’t do this, please.”
Kayla had wrapped her arms around her rib cage. Ryan wanted to put his own back around her, but was finding himself drawn toward the conversation on the phone.
What could Kayla’s dad possibly have to say about him?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Laverne Bloom handed the phone over with a hesitancy that was palatable. “Be careful,” she whispered.
Ryan, baffled, took the phone and lifted it to his ear. “Hello?”
He felt Kayla draw nearer to hear her father’s words, her own curiosity overriding any natural distance she might have kept. She crept closer, her arm brushing his chest, leaning an ear upward, closer toward the phone.
“Is this Ryan Cummings, the new associate pastor at the Lenoir Baptist Church?”
“Yes, sir, it is. Do we know each other somehow?”
“We certainly do.” The voice was hard. “I am the one who assigned you to go to Pakistan to check on my daughter.”
Kayla gasped. Or had that been Ryan himself? “Sir?”
“From Kayla’s update letters to our church, I had noticed her work had been suffering and her ministry diminishing. Naturally, I was concerned, so when Laverne called to give her usual monthly drivel about her latest novel, and told me your church was sending a youth group to Pakistan, of course I got involved.”
“Got involved, how?”
The voice on the line hardened more still. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I—”
“I called your pastor and told him I wanted a responsible adult, someone in a ministry position, going on that trip, and I wanted that person to keep watch over my daughter during those two weeks and report back to me if her work really was failing and why.”
“You wanted someone to spy on your daughter?”
The voice on the other line went low. “She’s nearby, isn’t she? That’s why you’re pretending you don’t know all about it. What I want to know is why I never got that update. I had to find out from Kayla herself that the mission team was sending her away from the field. I never heard a word from you.”
“Mr. Madison, I don’t—”
“Pastor Madison.”
Ryan wondered if the phone might break from his grip. “Pastor Madison,” he ground out, “I have no idea—”
“Stop this act, young man. You were specifically chosen to go on that trip to gain information about my daughter, and that information has been withheld from me. I don’t like having my orders ignored.”
“I can tell that.” Ryan heard one of his teenagers’ tones come out of his own voice.
“This is ridiculous.” A sharp sound on the line, like a slamming drawer, jarred Ryan’s ears. “If I can’t get any information from you, I will go to your superior. I am calling your pastor this instant. Believe me, young man, your position is on the line.”
The phone clicked and Ryan stood listening to the dial tone, staring at the mouthpiece as numbly as Kayla had earlier.
Finally, he placed it back into its holder and looked around the room. Laverne had her hands gripping Doctor Stephen’s again.
He glanced down at Kayla’s upturned face. The light that had brightened her eyes just minutes earlier was extinguished completely, like a candle blown out.
“I am definitely going to have to have a talk with Pastor O’Connor about this.” His smile fell flat as Kayla gave no response whatsoever. Something inside his stomach curled.
“Wait a minute.” He pointed toward the phone. “You don’t think there was any truth to what he said, do you? That I would spy on you like that? I already told you I came mostly because of Jainey.”
“Mostly, you said.” Kayla’s eyes looked at him with the same pain she’d showed when talking with her father. Suddenly she looked weak again, as if she might fall over.
He reached hands out to help, but she pushed them away. “Is that really what all of this has been about? You made such a point of getting upset when I thought you were spending time with me for Aunt Lavender’s money, but was it really about ‘ministry’ instead? You were spying on me to help your pastor get in good with my dad for some reason?”
“Kayla, come on.” Ryan was too exasperated to tame his words. “That doesn’t even make sense. You know me better than that.”
Kayla put her head down and shook it slowly back and forth. “I’m not sure what to think about anything anymore. My own father sending someone to spy on me, as if I was a criminal. And you…” Her eyes caught Ryan’s and held. He tried to infuse truth into his gaze, let her see that he had nothing to hide, but her focus drifted
when moisture filled her eyes. “I thought that you…”
“That I what?” That he cared? That he stayed around because being away from her was like missing half of himself?
“I need to go lie down.” Kayla had a hand to her head and another wrapped around to her side. Without another word or look toward anyone, she slunk through the kitchen, shoulders hunched as if trying to make herself as small as possible.
Ryan watched until she was out of sight. How could things have gone so disastrously wrong in such a short time? “I’m going to the church right now to find out what this is all about.”
Laverne Bloom nodded slightly. “We’ll wait here. We believe you, by the way, in case that helps. Don’t we?”
Ryan almost smiled at how she was speaking for them both already. “Of course we do,” Doctor Bradley assured, his face as neutral as Switzerland. “I admit I have no idea what any of you are talking about, but I am certain of your integrity, son, and that all this will get worked out in due time.”
“Thanks.” Ryan turned and headed for his truck. In due time. How long was that? And how big of a wall would Kayla build between them in the meantime? He was getting awfully weary of having to tear them down.
****
Laverne Bloom sat on the porch, swishing an antique, lace-edged fan in front of her face. “This is like one of those chapters in a book that is so complex, I have to read it through twice. Can you say that all again, one more time for me, dear?”
Ryan lowered himself to sit on the top porch step and obliged. “Pastor O’Conner said he remembers getting that call from Kayla’s dad. He told Kayla’s dad that if he wanted information like that about his daughter, he needed to call the mission agency. After that Pastor O’Conner told Kayla’s dad that I was going on the trip as the teen leader, and he would try to remember to have me say hello to his daughter for him.”