by Leslie Gould
“Rebekah, we’re in over our heads.” Patrick turned the truck toward Forest Falls. “Sure, insurance and Medicare will pay the big stuff, but we’ll have other expenses. Antirejection meds for the rest of Pepper’s life. Loss of income. You won’t be able to keep the shop going.”
“I can make the shop work.”
Patrick tapped the steering wheel again. “We don’t have anyone to help.”
“Shh. I don’t want Pepper to hear this,” Rebekah whispered.
He lowered his voice. “We’re going to have to sell the farm.”
“Patrick, stop.”
“And where are we going to find a kidney?”
“I’ll call Polly. I still have her phone number.”
“No.” Patrick’s voice rose.
“Why not?”
“It’s too much. Her life has been too hard. It’s too much to ask.”
“The birth aunt, Adrianna, would be in her late twenties by now. Maybe she would be a match. Maybe she has a child.”
“Who wouldn’t be old enough. You have to be eighteen.”
“I think they make exceptions.”
“Rebekah, you think everyone makes exceptions.” Patrick hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Life doesn’t work that way.”
“You heard the doctor. He said a related donor is best.” Her pulse began to race.
“Not in this case. We can’t reopen that heartache.”
“But it could mean Pepper’s life.” Rebekah sank against the seat.
“Mom?” Pepper’s head popped up behind the seat. “Are we almost home?”
“We’re just coming into town, sweet pea.” How much had she heard? “We’re going to pick up Reid.”
“How are you feeling?” Patrick looked into the rearview mirror.
Rebekah was going to scream if he asked Pepper that one more time.
“Sorry.” Pepper leaned against the window.
“For what?” Rebekah turned her head.
“For getting sick.”
“Pepper, don’t talk that way.”
Patrick smiled into the mirror. “We’ll get through this.”
“Look!” Pepper sat up straight. “Ainsley got her new horse!” A red roan grazed in the middle of a field, all alone. Five other horses gathered under a willow tree. The late afternoon light shone golden on the grass.
“The other horses haven’t accepted her yet.” Pepper craned her neck as the pickup whizzed by.
“She’s beautiful.” Rebekah’s grandfather had a horse the same reddish color when she was a child.
“Ainsley plans to ride her in 4-H. I’m going to instant message her when I get home and tell her I saw the horse already. She’ll be so mad!”
“Speaking of 4-H, I think you should take the year off.” Patrick slowed for a tractor pulling onto the highway.
“Dad!”
“Don’t you think so, Rebekah?”
“The doctor said she should exercise. He said horseback riding was good.”
“Riding, not barrel racing.”
“Patrick,” Rebekah whispered, “the girls barely trot, let alone race.”
Patrick followed the tractor at a pace slower than molasses and then turned into the school parking lot. Reid climbed into the pickup. “You’re late.” Two boys shoved each other in the middle of the parking lot, and then the tall blond kid tripped the smaller, dark-haired boy.
“What are they doing?” Rebekah asked.
“Being boys.” Patrick put the pickup in reverse.
The taller boy grabbed the other boy’s arm and twisted it. Rebekah opened her window. “Stop that!”
“Mom.” Reid slumped in the backseat. “They’re brothers, your friend Elise’s kids. They act that way all the time.” Pepper waved at Michael and Mark, but they weren’t looking.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the older boy called out. The younger one nodded. A red 4Runner turned into the parking lot, and the two boys ran toward it. A man with a long thin face and short dark hair leaned across the seat to open the passenger door. Rebekah smiled at him. Thank goodness he was out of the army; those boys looked like a handful.
“What’s wrong with Pepper?” Reid asked.
“I need a new kidney,” she said. “Want to give me one of yours?”
“No.”
“Just kidding. You have the wrong blood.” Pepper unzipped her backpack and took out her gum. “Want some?”
Reid shook his head. “How do you know I have the wrong blood?”
“Mom and Dad had you tested when I was sick the last time.”
Rebekah groaned inwardly. Pepper had misunderstood their conversation with the doctor.
“I don’t remember that,” Reid commented.
“We didn’t have you tested. We already knew that your blood type was A.” Rebekah turned the air on again.
“You wanted me to give Pepper one of my kidneys?”
“No, Reid.”
“But you would have? If my blood type had been right?”
“No.” Patrick pulled out of the parking lot. “You have to be eighteen.” He accelerated. “And they don’t make exceptions.”
“So after I was eighteen, then you would have taken my kidney?” The pitch of Reid’s voice rose.
Pepper threw a stick of gum at Reid.
Rebekah ignored them and turned forward, adjusting her seat belt. If she could change one thing in her life, she would make herself Pepper’s biological mother. Of course she would keep Pepper exactly the same, except with type A blood. A mother should be able to save her child’s life, and she was, without question, Pepper’s mother. Rebekah bit her lip. That was exactly what she was going to have to do—save Pepper’s life. But how?
Elise absent-mindedly stirred the spaghetti sauce as she read the last page of To the Lighthouse. All these years she had wanted to visit the Isle of Skye, where Virginia Woolf had set the novel. She loved Mrs. Ramsay and her flowing thoughts, her domestic life, her interest in her guests and neighbors, and her devotion to art, to her husband, and to her children. She’d lost track of how many times she’d read the novel.
All Elise wanted in life was to have a family and to appreciate art—literature, to be exact. The trip to the lighthouse at the end of the story, without Mrs. Ramsay, was so different from what the family anticipated at the beginning of the novel. Unfortunately, life was like that. Elise sighed. She read the last line: “It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.”
Elise closed the book and slipped it back into the bookcase in the living room.
“Hi, Mom.” Michael bounced through the back door.
“How was school?” Elise eased the pasta into the boiling water.
“Great. The field trip was to a wetland on the other side of town.”
“Hi.” Ted closed the back door and kissed Elise on the cheek.
“Where’s Mark?” Elise turned the flame down under the sauce.
“Scraping mud off his shoes. He went into the marsh during the field trip.” Michael made a two-handed shoving motion. “Reid pushed him in.”
“Why?” Her shoulders tightened.
“Because Mark tripped him.” Michael swung his leg out, nearly kicking Elise.
“What did the teacher do?” Elise poked a wooden spoon at the pasta, trying to break up the clumps. It was never just that some boy had done something to Mark. There was always a previous scene in the story.
“It was Coach Davis.”
“What did Coach Davis do?”
“Nothing.”
Elise put the last plate into the dishwasher and wiped the counter.
“Want to go for a walk?” Ted wore his running pants and a sweatshirt. “Mark said he would start on his algebra, and I’ll check it when we get back.” He pushed up his sleeves.
“I’ll put my shoes on.” She dried her hands.
“I tried to call you back today, but you didn’t answer.” Ted led the way
out the door and across the street. “Did you read the e-mails?”
Elise nodded. “Can you get out of the inactive reserves?”
“No.”
“Ted, we came to Forest Falls so you could spend time with your dad. If we’d known you were going to be deployed again, I could have moved to Seattle.” She hurried to keep up with Ted’s long stride.
“We came so we all could spend time with Dad.” They headed down the hill toward downtown.
She didn’t answer. The streetlight above them flickered and then came on.
“That bad, huh?” He slowed.
“What?”
“Forest Falls.”
“I’m trying.” She planned to go back to the Scrap Shack tomorrow. If she had left the house today, she would have stopped by to find out the latest about the cougar.
“What’s your vote in this?” Ted turned onto Main Street. “Do you want me to take my chances with the Third being deployed, or would you rather I go to Germany for three months?”
“Where do you think the Third would be sent?”
“Maybe Afghanistan, probably Iraq.”
“Germany or a chance at Iraq.” Elise spoke the words slowly. They had lived in Frankfurt for a year and loved it mostly, except for Mark’s school experience. He’d been five, and they had started him in German kindergarten. After a month they decided to hold him back a year. “Germany,” she answered. It was a no-brainer. “We can visit over Christmas.”
“I’ll be coming home in January.”
“I can’t stand another Christmas apart.” She’d had three Christmases without him—the first when she was eight months pregnant with Mark, and Ted was in Saudi Arabia before the first Gulf War; the second when the boys were seven and eight, and he was in Kosovo, and she and the boys were in Kansas; and the third when he was in Afghanistan, and she and the boys were in Georgia. Each Christmas had been harder.
“I’ll request Landstuhl.” He took her hand. “And it’s a great idea for you and the boys to come for Christmas.”
Three more months of him away, and then what? Would he end up in another reserve unit that would be deployed before his two years were up?
Ted stopped in front of the Scrap Shack. “I used to buy wheels and bolts and drivelines for my go-carts here. It was a hardware store for as long as I can remember.”
“I won’t have the support that I had when we lived near bases.” She kept walking.
“You’ll have Dad and his church—and Rebekah and her husband.” Ted hurried to catch up with her. “What’s Rebekah like?”
“Likable, I guess. All of the women at her shop certainly seemed enamored with her.”
The acrid smell of wood smoke filled the evening air. “I want to stop by Dad’s place before we head home and tell him what’s going on.”
John’s Chevy pickup was parked in front of his small brick house. A black Jeep pulled away from the curb. Was someone leaving John’s house? Elise wondered if he saw many of the friends he and Maude had. Maybe it was a customer stopping by to pick up a cabinet or a table. Years ago he had converted the garage into a carpentry shop. He still took jobs, working nearly full-time. Smoke curled up from the chimney of the brick house as Ted knocked on the back door.
John’s Bernese mountain dog, Bear, began to bark. “I’m coming.” The back door swung open. “Ted.” John opened the door wider. “And Elise. What a surprise.”
“Hi, Dad.” Ted reached down to pet Bear’s thick fur. “We wanted to say hello and talk with you a minute.” The dog raised his head. The contrast of the dark around his eyes and the strip of white down the center of his face made him look as if he wore a mask.
“Come in.” John hugged his son and then patted Elise on the back. He wore a white, long-sleeved T-shirt, 501 jeans, and fleece-lined slippers.
They walked single file through his galley kitchen. The counters were bare and sparkling clean. He motioned Elise toward Maude’s rocking chair. Flames crackled in the fireplace, and Bear settled in front of it.
Ted plopped down on the couch, pulled a pillow out from behind his back, and tossed it to the other end of the couch. “The reserve unit I’ve been assigned to is on standby to be deployed.” Ted folded his hands over his knee.
“To Iraq?” John stood next to Bear.
“Probably.” Ted paused. “I’ve also been offered a position at the Landstuhl army hospital in Germany for three months, which would be much easier.”
“Easier isn’t always better.” John leaned over Bear to throw another log onto the fire. “You don’t want to let the unit down.” He crossed his arms. Elise sank further into Maude’s chair.
“Elise and I have decided on Germany. It’s what’s best for our family. We haven’t told the boys, because I’m waiting for specifics. But it will be hard on them—and on Elise. I moved them here thinking we’d all be together.”
“Son, it’s only for three months.”
Ted nodded. “We could use your help. It would be great if you could hang out with the boys and help Elise if things need to be repaired around the house.”
“Whatever I can do.”
Elise stopped rocking at the thought of John hanging around the house disciplining the boys and fixing leaky toilets.
“Thanks, Dad.” Ted stood.
John knelt next to Bear. “I’m proud of you, Son,” he said. “So proud.” He turned toward Elise. “Just let me know what you need.”
Elise and Ted walked silently past the Scrap Shack and over the bridge. What would they need to do to get Ted ready to go? Switch the insurance back to active duty. Sign another power of attorney. Go over the when-Dad’s-away rules with the boys. Buy another laptop so she would have a computer too; the boys had commandeered the old, slow one.
They turned onto their street. “Is that one of our sons? On a skateboard? In the dark?” Ted started to jog. A figure rolled toward them.
“Mom! Dad!” Michael flipped the board into his hands. “Ainsley just IM’d me. She said that Pepper’s really sick and needs a kidney transplant.”
“Who is Ainsley?” Ted put his hands on Michael’s shoulders.
“An eighth grader, but she’s a friend of Pepper’s.”
“Michael, are you sure?” Elise caught up to them.
Ted turned toward her. “Who is Pepper?”
“Rebekah’s daughter, the girl the cougar was after.” She started walking toward their house.
Michael followed. “They went to Portland today to the doctor.”
Rebekah hadn’t said anything on Saturday; no one had said a thing about Pepper being sick.
“Why would she need a transplant?” Michael asked.
“Her kidneys must be shutting down, perhaps from disease, or maybe it’s genetic,” Ted explained.
“But she doesn’t look sick, except that she’s small.” Michael opened the gate.
Elise headed up the porch steps. “Did Reid say anything at practice?”
Michael shook his head. “But both his mom and dad picked him up afterward.”
She opened the back door. Michael seemed to know a lot about the Grahams.
“Ainsley said she’d give Pepper one of her kidneys.”
“It’s not that simple.” Ted sat on the window seat and took off his shoes. “You have to go through a series of tests to see if you’re compatible. Besides, they don’t let minors do that sort of thing.”
Mark walked into the kitchen with the phone. “Dad, it’s some army guy.”
Ted headed down the hall to his study.
“Time for bed.” Elise ran her hand through Michael’s curls.
“It’s only eight thirty,” Mark complained as he opened the refrigerator.
“Go read. I’ll come tell you good night in a little while.” She headed to the utility room to throw in a load of laundry.
Forty-five minutes later Ted opened his study door. “It’s all set. I leave in two weeks.”
Come in the house, Reid.” Rebekah stood on
the porch and leaned over the railing.
“Hook shot from the free throw line.” Reid took a step, turned, and arched his arm. Swoosh.
“It’s time to go to bed. You’ve been out here for over an hour.”
Reid grabbed the rebound, headed back down the concrete court, and went up for a jump shot. Swoosh. He dribbled near the porch and palmed the ball. “Did you ask me, when you had me tested, if I wanted to give Pepper a kidney?”
“Reid, we never had any tests done on you.”
“Would I have had a choice? If I’d been a match?”
“Reid, there’s an age limit.” Rebekah stepped toward the front door. “No doctor would have taken your kidney.”
“That’s hard to believe.” He bounced the ball from one hand to the other.
“Pardon?”
“It’s hard to believe I would have had a choice.”
Rebekah walked back to the railing.
“You probably would have taken me to South America or something and had them do it.”
“Reid!”
“You love her more. You always have.”
What was with him? “Reid, that’s not true.” Were there tears in his eyes? Rebekah leaned over the railing. “Sweetie, no mother loves one child more than another.”
He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Then you like her more.”
Rebekah shook her head. She remembered feeling that way, certain her parents loved her older brother more. “Reid, I love you and I like you—so, so much. Every bit as much as Pepper.” She did spend more time with Pepper. Was that what he meant? “Now come on in, sweetie.”
He went up for another jump shot. It bounced off the rim.
“Reid, it’s nearly ten o’clock. I’m exhausted.”
“I’m not,” he said, narrowing his eyes, and dribbled the ball, hard, to the other end of the court and up the back steps. She hurried in the front door and met him in the kitchen, intending to hug him, but he rushed by her and up the stairs, taking the ball with him.
“What’s wrong with Reid?” Patrick asked, padding into the kitchen wearing black sweatpants and slippers, his hair disheveled.
“He thinks I love Pepper more than him.” She sat down and turned off the computer. Pepper had spent most of the evening e-mailing her friends on Rebekah’s PC.