Love Comes Home

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “On the radio. Well, my goodness. What’s your name, dearie?”

  “Lorena Birdsong.” Lorena always had a lilt to her voice when she said her name.

  “Birdsong. That’s a name you don’t hear every day.” She gave Lorena a closer look.

  “I’ve never met anybody who has ever heard it.”

  “Is that a fact?” Miss Myrtle frowned. “You know, seems I may have some time or other, but my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

  “What’s your name?” Lorena asked her.

  “Now that I haven’t forgotten.” The old lady smiled again. “Myrtle Shumaker.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Myrtle, and this is my sister, Victoria.” Lorena pointed toward Tori. “She’s glad to meet you too. Aren’t you, Tori?”

  Tori smiled and waved.

  “Our aunt Gertie will be up here in a little bit. You two might have a lot to talk about, so I’ll tell her to visit with you a few minutes too.” Lorena leaned down to give the woman a hug.

  “Well, mercy sakes.” Miss Myrtle grabbed Lorena’s hand and held it in both hers. “I’m feeling blessed beyond measure. I’ve been praying about being lonely down there at the nursing home. Can’t get around visiting people like I used to. My knees are giving out, you know. But could be the Lord, he gave my heart a little jerk just so I could come down here and meet you nice people.” She looked straight at Tori then. “You know good things can come out of bad. All things worketh for good to those who love the Lord.”

  Tori stared at the woman. She didn’t look a thing like Aunt Hattie. Her voice didn’t sound a thing like Aunt Hattie’s. But it was almost like the woman was gone and Aunt Hattie was sitting there in the bed, pointing those words straight at Tori.

  “But what about the bad things? Does he make the bad things happen first?” She wished the questions back as soon as they spilled out of her mouth. What was the matter with her? Asking for answers from a woman she’d never met before. Myrtle Shumaker was not Aunt Hattie no matter how Tori’s mind was playing tricks on her.

  The room went absolutely quiet. Tori wasn’t sure if it was because they were embarrassed for her or if they too wanted the answers.

  The woman kept her eyes on Tori as if she’d forgotten everybody else in the room, even Lorena whose hand she still held. “I’m no preacher, dearie. Some things that happen I won’t ever understand, but I’m thinking I’m not meant to understand everything the Lord does. His ways are not man’s ways.”

  “You’re right.” Tori tried to gloss over her questions and bring ease back into the room, but the woman wasn’t through.

  “It’s good to be right, but better to be sure. I do know one thing. Whenever I’ve had to walk through a valley of hardship, the good Lord’s shadow was right beside me on my journey. With me every step. Blessing me in the midst of trouble.”

  “That’s good.” Again Tori tried to escape a conversation she should have never started with Kate on the other side of the curtain, grieving over the lost promise of her child. Tori was there to comfort her, not beg answers from a stranger.

  “Yes indeed.” The woman gave Lorena’s hand a shake and then let go at last. She smoothed down the cover over her stomach. “Better than good. And if the Lord will do it for old Myrtle Shumaker, he’ll do it for you and this sweet child here and dear Kate and Jay there.” The woman pointed toward the curtain.

  “You sound like Aunt Hattie.” Lorena stepped away from the woman’s bed.

  “I thought you said Aunt Gertie.”

  “Oh, that’s another aunt.” Lorena laughed at the puzzled look on Miss Myrtle’s face. “How about I call you Aunt Myrtle?” That made the woman smile and forget about questions that couldn’t be answered. “I’ve got to go find a place to plug Kate’s radio in. Remember to listen tonight.”

  “I will,” Miss Myrtle said. “Birdsong. I don’t know why that name keeps tickling my brain.”

  “Mine gets tickled at it sometimes too, Miss Myrtle.” Jay motioned toward them. “But come on, you two. Kate’s awake.”

  He put his arm around Lorena and lowered his voice. “That was sweet, Birdie. Miss Myrtle will be telling everybody about you after she goes back to the nursing home.”

  “Wait until she hears my song. Then she’ll really have something to talk about.” A smile sneaked out on Lorena’s face that she covered with her hand as though not sure she should be smiling in the face of Kate’s sorrow.

  Jay looked sad too. Weary and beaten down. Tori didn’t know what to say to him. Then she realized no words could make the sorrow disappear. Didn’t she know that from when she lost Sammy? People talked and prayed for her and wanted to make things better, but that couldn’t happen. The words had hovered meaningless over her head and the prayers had seemed to comfort those praying more than Tori. But that was all right. They were grieving too, just as she was grieving for Kate’s lost baby now.

  She handed Jay the radio. “Uncle Wyatt loaned it to us in case Kate had to stay tonight. Mama said she didn’t know when she’d get to come home.”

  “Tomorrow.” Kate spoke up from her bed. “For Aunt Hattie’s funeral.”

  She looked pale the way Lorena had warned. Tori turned to her and words deserted her. But sometimes words weren’t necessary between sisters. Tori took one hand and Lorena clung to the other. Tori leaned her forehead down on top of Kate’s head and the only words that mattered whispered out into Kate’s ears. “I’m sorry.”

  A prayer silently wound through Tori’s mind then. She couldn’t remember the last time a prayer had felt so natural to her. Not stilted or resentful or begging for a change that couldn’t come. This prayer accepted and asked only for comfort for this sister she loved so much. Perhaps it wasn’t one worry at a time after all. Perhaps Aunt Hattie was right. One prayer at a time.

  29

  Kate scarcely dared breathe after Lorena’s voice started coming out of the radio. She didn’t want to miss a single note.

  At home, Lorena would be biting her bottom lip and leaning toward the radio, her eyes wide as she listened. Her voice on the air. Kate squeezed Jay’s hands. He was focused on the radio too, almost as though he could see Lorena singing inside it.

  Then the song was over and Randy Harris, the host of the Songs of Tomorrow Show, was speaking again. “That was the lovely Lorena Birdsong. Remember that name. Lorena Birdsong. That girl is loaded down with talent. I’d better hurry and get her back here on Songs of Tomorrow, because unless I miss my guess, disc jockeys will be spinning her records soon.”

  “That ought to make her happy,” Jay said when the program broke for an advertisement.

  “Happy, I guess. Mama and Daddy will have to grab hold of her to keep her from floating off the ground.” Kate smiled. Her first real smile since she talked to Aunt Hattie on Sunday. Could that be only two days ago?

  Her smile faded. How could so much change so quickly? Happiness sliding away without a backward look. The doctor told her the miscarriage was simply a correction of nature, a pregnancy not meant to be. She wasn’t to let it distress her. She was young and should be able to get with child again as soon as her body healed.

  Beside her bed that morning, the doctor had pushed his glasses up closer to his face and studied her chart. He said she would need to take things easy for a few weeks. Not lift anything heavy. Eat iron-rich foods to build up her blood. Before he left, he told her the vast majority of women who lost a pregnancy went on to have healthy babies with no difficulties.

  The nurses said the same as they fussed over her, reassuring her she’d be right back in a year or so to birth a new baby the way the doctor promised.

  She didn’t want to talk about babies in the future. She wanted to talk about the baby she’d lost. Surely it was only right to give him life in her mind especially since he’d never know life in her arms. But everybody acted like the baby had never been. Even Jay seemed hesitant to mention their lost baby out loud, as though worried it would plunge her deeper into t
he despair hovering around her.

  And now Aunt Hattie, the one person she could have depended on to look her in the eye and talk about this baby she lost instead of dancing around what had happened, she was gone too. It hadn’t really sunk in that she’d never see Aunt Hattie again. Never feel her hand touching her cheek or hear her say Katherine Reece, followed by words of correction or encouragement. Never have her prayers filling the air around her.

  Kate kept thinking she would at least hear her voice in her head the way she had so many times while Aunt Hattie was alive. She always seemed to know what the little woman would be ready to tell her about whatever was happening. But nothing was there. Kate felt so empty. So terribly empty.

  That smile on her face for Lorena’s song felt good, even if only for a moment. Then the commercial was over and the host introduced another young singer.

  When the boy’s song started, Miss Myrtle spoke up from her bed. “Well, I do declare. That doesn’t sound near so good as your little sister did. They should have let that sweet girl sing more than one song.”

  “They do plan to have her back. Mr. Harris said so when we were there on Saturday.” The day Kate had been on her feet all day. The day she’d walked into the woods to get Tori. Would things have been different if she’d talked to Aunt Hattie earlier and not done all that? How could she have lost this baby she wanted so badly? How could she?

  Everybody had come to see her. Her mother and father. Tori and Lorena. Aunt Gertie and Uncle Wyatt. The only one who hadn’t come was Evie. Evie with her rounded stomach and her swollen feet. Evie who hadn’t been ready for a baby but was having one anyway and Kate who had been desperately ready and now had nothing.

  So very empty. She wanted to ask Jay if he felt the same, but she stopped herself. He hadn’t been carrying the baby. He hadn’t been the one to lose him.

  That first night after they’d put her in this bed, she’d drifted in and out of awareness, but every time she opened her eyes Jay was there. She wanted him there, and at the same time she couldn’t bear to see him. She wanted to shut out everyone, even him, and curl up in solitary sorrow, but he refused to let that happen. She could still feel the loving comfort of him cradling her body next to his after he climbed into bed with her. When a nurse had come into the room during the night, Kate braced for the nurse’s outrage at Jay in bed with Kate.

  But Jay raised his head and simply said, “I need to hold her.”

  Kate opened one eye enough to make out the nurse’s features in the light from the hallway. The same woman had been in earlier, a plain woman in her middle years who looked worn down with taking care of people.

  “I have to check her vital signs,” the woman insisted.

  Kate couldn’t remember her name, but Jay did. He kept his voice soft, friendly. “Glenda, I can vouch for her pulse being steady and her breathing easy. If you know that, there’s no reason to jerk awake someone who has suffered what my Kate has suffered.”

  Kate eased her eye shut and pretended sleep. She could feel the nurse hesitating. Jay had always been a charmer. She wanted him to charm the nurse. She wanted him to keep holding her.

  The nurse summoned up her sternest voice. “It’s against the rules for you to be in bed with her, sir.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure it is. But I spent more than three years marching across Africa and Europe to make sure we hung on to the freedom to break those rules when they need breaking. Most of the time they’re good rules and you’re right to insist on folks following them. But tonight that rule needs breaking. We just lost our baby and I need to hold her.” His arms tightened around Kate. “She needs me to hold her.”

  Silence then. The nurse was obviously studying what to say or do next.

  “Please, Glenda.”

  “Oh, very well.” She pulled the curtain all the way around the end of the bed to hide them from view. “But you’d better be out of there before the morning nurse comes on duty. Nurse Cox is nobody to mess with. She’s liable to chase you clear out of the hospital and you can be sure I’ll swear I stated the rules to you quite plainly.”

  “As you did,” Jay said.

  “As I did,” the nurse said. “Ring the bell if there’s any change in her pulse or your wife feels too warm. Anything that doesn’t seem right, anything at all, you call me.”

  That’s when Kate had wanted to raise up and point out how the wrong thing had already happened. Instead she stayed cuddled against Jay, letting him be strong for both of them. And the first night passed.

  Morning hadn’t brought any change to the truth that her baby was lost. Jay’s baby too. With the daylight, she knew Aunt Hattie had passed over as well. She didn’t know how she knew. She just knew. Maybe it was the emptiness. If Jay hadn’t been beside her, perhaps she would have thought him gone too.

  Kate had thought she was strong. She didn’t cry over bumps and bruises. She grabbed hold of whatever was wrong and did everything in her power to make it right. With effort. With force of will. She was the middle sister, the one who took care of everyone. And now look at her. Broken. Barely able to stand. Empty.

  The sound of the radio program’s theme song signaling the end of the show pulled Kate away from her thoughts. She had paid scant attention to the singers who came on after Lorena.

  Jay switched off the radio. “Birdie was best.”

  “Birdie?” Miss Myrtle sounded puzzled. “I thought the child’s name was Lorena.”

  “A nickname,” Jay explained.

  “But her name is Lorena Birdsong,” Kate said softly, thinking of all the times she’d heard Lorena say that name before she went to sleep. A promise to the mother who’d left her in Rosey Corner. She looked at Jay. “Do you think her mother heard her?”

  “I don’t know.” Jay took Kate’s hand and held it against his cheek. He looked so tired. “Does it matter?”

  “To her, it does.”

  “But does it matter to you?”

  “I don’t want to lose her too.” Kate could almost feel Miss Myrtle’s ears perking up at that, but when she looked over at her, the woman’s eyes were closed. She nodded toward her and Jay pulled the curtain between the beds.

  “You could never lose Birdie.” He sat back down and stroked Kate’s cheek. “She loves you. You know what she had us do in the waiting room last night?”

  Kate shook her head, but she did know even before Jay told her.

  “She had us say your name. Katherine Reece Merritt Tanner. But before we did, your father called me son.” A few tears edged out of Jay’s eye and traced a path down his cheek. “I wanted to be a father like your father.”

  She reached up to brush away his tears, but when she started to speak, he held up a hand to stop her.

  “Wait, hear me out. While I was overseas, I would sometimes say your name and mine out loud before I went to sleep. If that night turned out to be my last, I wanted my final waking thought to be of you. But somehow saying our names helped me believe I would have another day and that one of those days I’d finally make it home to you.”

  “I’m glad you did, Jay Tanner.” Kate laid her hand on his cheek.

  “So am I.” He took her hand and brought it around to his lips. “Very glad. But as glad as I was to come home, I didn’t think about having children. I just wanted to be back with you. Then when you said you were going to have a baby, I got scared. What if I was like my father? A man who would throw away his son when things got hard.” Jay’s face tightened.

  “Didn’t you ever go back home after he sent you to live with your aunt and uncle?”

  “A few times, but I never belonged after that. I was extra. Unwanted extra.”

  “But you had brothers and sisters, didn’t you?” Kate felt ashamed she didn’t already know that.

  “One sister. Three or four half brothers. Maybe more after I quit going to see them.” Jay seemed to look inward then. “I didn’t want to like them, so I didn’t give them much reason to like me.”

  “Why
?” Kate couldn’t imagine life without her sisters. “Why didn’t you want to like them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was mad because I had to go back to live with my aunt and uncle.”

  “Were they that bad? Your aunt and uncle.”

  “Yes,” Jay said flatly. Then he sighed. “I guess I was that bad too.”

  “No, you were just a kid.” Kate caressed his cheek. He needed a shave, but her mother hadn’t thought to bring a razor when she brought his clean clothes that morning.

  “A kid who was always in trouble. Then a man who chased after trouble before I met you.” His eyes looked watery again. “Anyway, when I was afraid I might lose you along with our baby, I thought maybe the Lord was punishing me.”

  “No, no.” Kate put her hand behind his neck and pulled his head down closer to her. “Why would you think that?”

  “That maybe the Lord was punishing me for not trusting him enough. Or that he might have taken our baby because he knew I couldn’t be the good father you would want for our child.”

  “You would have been a wonderful father.” Kate swallowed and changed her words. “You will be a wonderful father.” Hope. She needed hope. They both did. Then the sweet welcome sound of Aunt Hattie’s words whispered through her mind. “Aunt Hattie would tell us storms of life come on us all. It’s what we do in the storms that matter.”

  “What would she tell us to do then in this storm?” His eyes looked so sad and yet brimming with love for her.

  Kate searched her mind for the words Aunt Hattie would give her. Words they both needed. At last she said, “That nothing’s wrong with shedding tears when bad things happen, but that there’s no use wallowing in whatever misery comes our way. The Lord is always with us to help us through the hard times.”

  He grasped both of her hands. “I can hear her saying that.”

  “I don’t want her to be gone.” Kate felt a yawning hole inside her. “I don’t want our baby to be gone.”

  They were silent a minute, sharing more than could be shared with words. Finally Jay said, “I’m going to miss Aunt Hattie.”