by James, Sandy
Accepting that she had already developed feelings for Joshua Miller, Sarah wondered what she could do to help the man. The type of healing he needed was out of her realm. There would be no miracle here. Healing him would take time, tenacity, and love. Three important things, two of which Sarah simply didn’t have.
But she began to realize the third had already taken hold.
No time. She had no time left to give him, as if he would come to her again anyway. No, he wouldn’t come. At least not for any reason other than to gloat over the article she knew would soon appear. He would hurt her, not even realizing how she was beginning to feel about him or how much she already cared.
Doug folded the paper, set it on the table, and stood up. “It’s late. Almost eleven o’clock. You’ve got a client in an hour, Sarah. A little girl.”
Sarah suddenly wanted to run, to get as far away from Doug and Hannah as she could. She wanted to leave healing behind. She wanted a real life. And she realized she didn’t want to die young any longer, no matter what she’d done to Charlie Baxter.
Doug became a lightning rod for her anger and pain. “I...I...won’t see anyone today. I won’t.” She knew it was a lie. Her little rebellion was impossible. She could never turn a sick child away.
He shook his head. “You’ll do it. I know you will. You can’t tell people, ‘no.’”
“Go to hell, Doug.”
He snorted an acerbic laugh that sounded an awful lot like a hog’s grunt. “You’re in a great mood today.”
Sarah walked out of the room, heading for a long, hot shower, and swearing this was the last healing.
The very last one.
* * * *
“Pop? You home?” Libby called, but she didn’t get a response. She kicked off her black boots, walked to the refrigerator, and pulled out an orange soda.
She fished her cell phone out of her pocket and turned it back on. Unlike several rude people she liked to scold, at least she had the decency to turn it off during a movie. The text message vibration caught her attention. She flipped it open and retrieved the note from her father.
Out of town on a story. Back late tonight. Supper in the fridge. Call Laurie if you need anything. Love you.
The land line rang. She picked up the cordless, but didn’t recognize the caller ID. She answered anyway, letting curiosity get the better of her. “Hello?”
“Where the hell is it, Miller?” Libby thought she heard fingers drumming on a surface. “I’m still waiting. God, you reporters drive me insane. I should have been a doctor like my mother begged me to be.”
She had no idea who she was talking to, but she wasn’t happy at the gruff tone he was taking. “My dad isn’t here. What did you want?”
“Where’s Josh?”
“He’s out. This is his daughter.”
“This is Mack Stewart. Feature editor of the Journal. Josh owes me a damn story. Now.” He sounded as if being at all polite or informative was a major strain. Fingers still beat a rhythm on something. Probably a desk surface. Of course, her father had always warned her all editors were narcissistic.
“You mean the one on the faith healer?” she asked, hoping she could fix this for her father. This was the first real story he’d written since her mother died, and, from Libby’s point of view, it was about damn time. She didn’t want him blowing this chance because he forgot to send the story before deadline. Fashionably late didn’t fly well in journalistic circles.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Is it done?”
“Hang on. I’ll check.”
Libby sat down in front of her father’s laptop and stirred it out of hibernation. She ran a couple of quick scans on the hard drive. Her first queries turned up nothing but old articles. She tried a few more terms in the search. A recent Word file finally popped up.
“Well?” Mack grumbled.
“Hold your horses. I’m looking.”
Libby opened the document and read through the words. A good story, Pop. Just the right amount of cynicism and a piece de resistance of sarcasm. That stupid scam artist would never know what hit her. Her father was definitely writing again, and even better, he was writing well. “I think I’ve got it. I can send it if you give me your email address.”
Mack provided the information.
“Hang on. I’m sending it now.” Libby waited a few moments. “Okay, look and see if you got it in your inbox,” she said, hoping the man knew how to open email attachments. From the crotchety sound of his voice, he had to be at least...forty. And old people didn’t always deal well with complicated things like technology.
“Bingo. Got it,” Mack said. Then he hung up.
“And you’re very welcome. Glad to have been at your service.”
Libby started surfing the net, waiting for her father to come home so she could tell him how she saved the day.
Chapter 7
Josh grabbed the familiar tarnished knocker and banged it loudly against the door. The wait wasn’t long, but it still seemed longer than he could calmly stand. Damn, he was antsy. He needed to see Sarah. Now.
Hannah opened the door, and judging from the scowl on her face, she wasn’t as happy to see him this time as she’d been the last. He didn’t give a damn.
“What do you want now?”
“I need to talk to Sarah.” He hoped to hell Hannah wouldn’t ask why. It would be an impossible question to answer because he still hadn’t figured the whole thing out for himself. All he knew was he desperately needed to see for himself that Sarah was all right.
“She’s resting. She’s got someone coming.” Hannah glanced at the clock. “Actually, the lady and her kid will be here soon.” She started to shut the door in his face. He blocked it with his foot like some tenacious salesman.
“I need to see Sarah,” Josh insisted.
“Let him in Hannah,” Sarah called.
Josh stepped inside the door Hannah grudgingly opened. Sarah leaned against the hallway wall, standing there in a soft pink skirt and white sweater looking so fragile and tired he was amazed she could stay on her feet at all. She started to take a few steps toward the living room, and Josh could see the weakness in her hesitant shuffle. Without a word, he went to her, picked her up, and carried her to the sofa, ignoring her feeble protests. When he put her back on her feet, she obediently took a seat.
Hannah followed them and sat down next to Sarah, effectively blocking Josh from getting close. Sarah glared at her sister. “Could you give us a few minutes?”
Shifting her gaze from Sarah to Josh and back again, Hannah frowned. She finally nodded to Sarah, got to her feet, and left without a word.
“Why are you here?” Sarah glanced up at him, her voice hardly above a whisper.
“Hell if I know,” Josh replied with a chuckle and a shrug. Nervously pacing in front of the fireplace, he tried to find the right thing to say. But the words felt thick in his mouth, hardly wanting to spill out. “Look, Sarah, I had to come here and see if you were okay. And... I...I had to let you know.” He took a steadying breath before he took one of the most frightening leaps of his life. “I needed you to know I believe it. All of it.”
She arched a delicate eyebrow. “You do, do you?”
Her eyes didn’t soften as he’d hoped, she didn’t seem grateful that he had offered her his rare trust. Instead, Sarah looked almost...angry.
“Am I supposed to tell you how wonderful that is? Am I supposed to thank you because you finally decided I’m not a common thief? Am I supposed to drop to my knees in gratitude?”
“No. Um, yes. I mean, no.” God, he didn’t know what to say. She was right. Why should she give a damn what he thought about her? Why should Sarah give a damn about his opinion of her abilities? For a man who made his living manipulating words, Josh felt entirely inadequate at saying what was on his mind.
His pacing picked up again as he anxiously measured the width of the room with his strides. Didn’t she understand how hard this was for him or how far he’d come t
o meet her half way?
Half way? Hell, he’d jumped in his Piper and flown straight to Indiana to tell her he’d been wrong. Entirely wrong. Sarah was everything she claimed to be. So why wasn’t she happy to know he had finally come around, that he believed in her?
The answer was plain. Because she owed him nothing, and she probably cared nothing for him. Josh was the one with the infatuation. He was the one who felt the overwhelming need to find out if she might have any feelings for him. He was the one who was standing there with his already battered and beaten heart in his hands, waiting to get it bruised again.
I’m a coward. Thirty-seven years old and terrified to tell a woman he’d fallen for her. Fallen for her tremendous grace. Fallen for her pure heart. Fallen for her unselfishness. He had finally been honest with himself and admitted what Sarah had so quickly come to mean to him. Why couldn’t he exercise the same honesty with her? Josh stopped pacing and stood in front of her, wishing he could find an ounce of courage.
“What do you want, Joshua?” Sarah asked, nervously tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear before dropping her shaking hands to her lap and smoothing the pink fabric of her skirt.
“I want... I need...the chance to make this up to you.” He offered her an anxious smile. “The chance to get to know you a little better.”
“Why?” slipped from her lips in a breathless whisper as Sarah stared at him with those tired hazel eyes.
The knock on the door drew her attention, and she glanced away. “I have to...help someone,” she said, not even rising to her feet.
Josh could see how exhausted she was, and he had the urge to answer the door and turn the person away. Sick or not, Sarah was clearly too weak to perform a healing. Hannah got to the door before Josh could follow through.
“Sarah, you can’t do this,” he protested as Hannah led a woman and her child into the living room.
The little girl was probably three or four, and she didn’t look very ill. In fact, she didn’t look ill at all, but Josh realized he might have more to do with his concern for Sarah than honest appraisal of the child. “What’s wrong with your daughter?” he asked as the girl huddled closer to her mother’s leg, obviously afraid of Josh’s gruff tone.
Sarah stared at the girl with those same intense eyes she’d used the time he had watched her appraise Shelly. He figured she must have some way, some instinct to help her determine how sick the person was. He knew Sarah would plow right on, no matter how weak she was, no matter how much it would take out of her. Didn’t she know how bad she looked? How drained? How fragile? If Sarah healed whatever ailed this child, and the process took the same toll as healing Shelly, Josh wasn’t entirely sure Sarah would survive.
“You can’t do this,” Josh insisted, setting his hands on his hips and trying to convince Sarah of her folly.
“You need to leave,” Hannah scolded, wagging her finger at him as if he was a naughty child. He scowled at her, but she just turned back to her sister. “Sarah, you told me you would—”
“It’s all right, Hannah,” Sarah interrupted. She smiled as she looked at the child. “Come here, Angel.” One of Sarah’s trembling hands reached out in invitation. The little girl went right to her, putting her chubby fingers in Sarah’s palm. Sarah patted her thighs with her other hand, and the child crawled right up and settled herself on Sarah’s lap.
There had been no fear on the girl’s part, which struck Josh as odd for a child of that age. Libby had gone through a long phase of stranger anxiety that plagued her from around age two to almost four. They hadn’t even been able to get her to sit for a studio photographer because she wouldn’t stay alone on the photographer’s background set. She’d screamed at Santa Claus like he was the devil incarnate. Yet this child had no fear of Sarah, and Sarah held her in her arms like they’d known each other forever.
“She has epilepsy,” the mother finally replied. “I want Sarah to heal her.”
“Epilepsy? She’s not dying?” Josh asked.
The woman took clear exception to Josh’s question, narrowing her eyes and glaring at him. “She has seizures a couple of times a year. I want it to stop.”
Having a good idea about how much a healing would cost Sarah, Josh decided he couldn’t let it happen. “Can’t that be controlled by medication?”
The mother shot him an angry scowl. “Well, yeah. But...I don’t want to have to keep giving her pills.”
Josh turned back to Sarah. “Honey, you can’t—”
“I can.”
The mother glared at Josh again, but he didn’t care. He tried another tack. “How much are you paying Hannah for this?” he asked the girl’s mother. She narrowed her eyes at him, breathing hard enough to make her nostrils flare, but she didn’t reply.
Josh knew what “guilty” looked like. He’d seen it in dozens of faces through his years as a journalist. This woman clearly knew her daughter wasn’t in danger, and she probably knew what this would do to Sarah. Hannah’s face bore the same culpable expression. Why couldn’t Sarah see it as well?
Sarah ran her hand over the little girl’s curly blond hair. “Doesn’t matter. Does it, Angel?” She turned the girl and pulled her into her arms.
“Sarah, don’t...” But Josh knew it was already too late. He had no choice but to watch.
The beautiful child seemed to melt into Sarah’s embrace. After only a few moments, Sarah’s hands became fists against the small pink dress. Then they fell away.
Josh reached out, lifted the girl from Sarah’s lap, and handed her to her mother. Turning back to Sarah, he saw her eyes had already closed. She was as still as death. As still as Miranda when...
The guilt suddenly came flooding back, washing over him in waves he couldn’t stop. He hadn’t been able to do anything to aid his wife as he watched her struggle to survive. Just a helpless witness, he’d been powerless to keep the cancer from claiming Miranda. Piece by tiny piece. There had been nothing he could do, no one he could appeal to. No way to yell, “Stop this!”
Well, damn it, he wasn’t about to watch Sarah waste away. Because this time he could do something to stop it.
Scooping her into his arms, Josh walked to the front door. Hannah followed close on his heels. “You can’t just... Put her down. You can’t...”
Josh stopped and turned back to glare at Hannah. “Yes. I can.” He strode out of the house, taking Sarah with him.
Buckling her into the passenger side of his rental, he kept turning over in his mind what he could do now that he’d become her rescuer. Hannah probably wasn’t going to wait too long before she blew her stack and did something stupid like call the police. He didn’t think he’d be able to help Sarah awfully much if he was sitting in a jail cell. Where could he take Sarah to keep her safe? Where would she have the time she needed to heal, to get well again?
Think, damn it.
The solution suddenly seemed simple. Fishing his phone from his pocket, he flipped it open and hit speed dial. Libby answered in two rings. “Pop? What’s up?”
“We’re going on a trip. Pack some stuff. Enough for a couple of weeks.”
“Trip? But I just sent your—”
“Not now, Miss Elizabeth. This is important. Get your things together and throw a few things in a bag for me. Some jeans. A couple of shirts. Then call Laurie and have her get you to Midway.”
“But, Pop, I just emailed—”
“Please, Libby.”
“What about your—”
“Not now, Munchkin. We’re going on an adventure.”
Chapter 8
Sarah was reluctant to open her eyes. She felt so warm, so rested for the first time in a long time. A very long time. If she opened her eyes, those soothing feelings might all disappear.
Rubbing her cheek against the pillow, she loved how soft the flannel felt against her skin. There was nothing more comforting than well-worn flannel sheets like the ones she’d had growing up. The ones that had little blue flowers. She tried to sink
back into sleep.
Flannel sheets? When had Hannah bought flannel sheets?
Sarah’s eyes suddenly flew wide. I’m not in Kansas anymore, Toto. The room was unfamiliar, and a moment of panic swept through her. Where the hell was she?
The bedroom was beautiful. Papered in a delicate pattern of rosebuds and ivy, the walls radiated warmth. The sun streamed through an incredibly tall window, the type of window only found in very old houses. An old-fashioned washstand with a ceramic pitcher and bowl sat near the bed. A white wicker rocking chair bathed in the abundant sunlight.
Pushing herself to sit up, Sarah tried to calm her frightened thoughts and clear her head. Where was she? How had she come to be here? The last healing had drained every ounce of her strength. She was a bit amazed she could still draw breath, knowing each new healing could easily be the end of her.
But she’d had no choice. Her path had been set long ago.
Sarah sighed. She’d obviously been in a deep sleep, one of her “dead sleeps,” as Doug always irreverently called them. Someone could have spirited her away and she would have never known the difference. In fact, that appeared to be a workable theory. “Hannah?” she called in a weak voice. “Hannah? Where are we?”
The door squeaked, and a hesitant face peeked around the polished wood. It sure wasn’t the face Sarah expected. The rest of the body moved past the door.
The freckled girl couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Dressed all in black right down to the impossibly small combat boots, the girl would have appeared to be in mourning if Sarah hadn’t known other kids dressed the same way. She felt ancient.
“You’re awake?” the teen finally asked.