PRAISE FOR MELODY CARLSON
“…any story by Carlson is worth encountering.”
–Booklist
“Ms. Carlson’s characters are realistic and facing issues that relevant in today’s world.”
–Romance Readers Connection
“Melody Carlson’s style is mature and bitingly funny, and her gift for connecting our heart to the character’s plight also connects us to the complicated human condition and our need for one another.”
–Patricia Hickman, author of Painted Dresses
Lovingly dedicated to the memory of
my original “blood sister.”
I pray that we’ll meet again in our
Father’s house.
CHAPTER ONE
LIKE A HEAVY WOOLEN blanket on a scorching night, the sticky air pressed against her skin with a will more persistent than her own, and the mercury in the kitchen thermometer pushed the red line nearly to the top. “Unseasonably warm for June,” the weatherman had warned on the radio earlier this morning, and yet she’d left the window gaping wide open, allowing the city’s hot sulfurous fumes to creep into her apartment as if by invitation. She pushed a dirty strand of hair from her damp brow and reluctantly placed her bottle of precious, blue pills on the dusty window sill, then closed the window with a dull thud. Was this how hell might feel on an unseasonably cool day? Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Someone told her it took a lot of courage to live, but Judith thought it’d take a lot more to willingly die—to bravely open that door and then face whatever it was that waited beyond. She leaned her forehead against the gritty glass and exhaled. Surely death was better than this. How long could she continue anyway? Hanging by this slender thread and all the while just waiting for it to break—or more likely that she would simply let go, and float down, down, down...
Clutching her bottle of pills, she stood straight, focusing her eyes on the window before her, yet only seeing its grimy surface and the gray blur of what lay beyond. She knew the scene well, too well. Busy street, four lanes of almost constant traffic, another identical cement apartment complex on the other side with rows of windows staring back at her with unseeing eyes. Varying shades of bleakness. Not unlike her life.
She turned away from the window and gazed across her small apartment, suddenly seeing it with unexpected clarity. Was this the way one perceives things in the final moments of their life? Everything suddenly grows clear and sharp, almost like an adjusted lens. Boxes still packed, their contents labeled in neat black felt-penned letters, and stacked evenly against the naked walls, almost like a fortress. Various pieces of new furnishings stored, not arranged, in the limited space, making the room appear more like a miniwarehouse than a place of habitation. But most of the time she didn’t notice these things or even care.
They had never meant to stay this long. It was only to have been a temporary stopping place—one of the small sacrifices that enabled Peter to finish law school. But it had become her prison and she had long since forgotten the way out. She sank into a chair and leaned her elbows on the scarred top of the oak table wedged tightly info a corner under the small counter by the kitchen. This antique table was one of the few larger possessions she had demanded they hold on to during their frugal, minimalist era. “Just wait, Judith.” Peter had reassured her. “This apartment will soon be nothing but a memory. I promise you, honey, we’ll buy a beautiful house—even better than our old Victorian back in Vancouver. Then we’ll fill our new place with really fine things—no more of your mom’s old castoffs or shoddy garage sale finds.” He tossed her his lopsided grin. “Just you wait, Jude. Before you know it we’ll be living the good life.”
But Peter had been gone for a year and a half now, taking all her dreams with him. Since that time she had remained, trapped in this cruel time warp where the surroundings never changed. And now she couldn’t imagine leaving. Still, she didn’t blame Peter for her dismal circumstances.
Not really. He’d never meant to abandon her like this. It was just the way life had happened. She sighed and tried to remember the last time she’d been truly happy. She knew she had been, once upon a time...
Was it only two years ago she had turned forty and their life had finally turned promising? After graduating with honors, Peter had joined the prestigious firm of Thompson and Baynes, Attorneys at Law. “I told you it’d happen.” Peter had said with pride. “No more teaching summer school for you. I’m bringing in the big bucks now. I want you to go out and have some fun. Buy some new clothes. And start looking for that dream house, Jude!”
It was a joyous and carefree summer, with many weekends spent sailing with Philip and Amy Baynes. And by summer’s end she and Peter had jubilantly discovered the perfect home on the high banks of the Willamette River. Not an overly large house, for by that stage in life they had decided they didn’t need lots of room. But it certainly wasn’t small either, and the view of Mount Hood was glorious. Peter had teased about how the deck would be ideal for a pair of rocking chairs as they gracefully grew old together, and Judith imagined quiet, intimate dinner parties watching purple sunsets reflected off the snowy mountain peak. In the fall, they placed a hefty deposit down, expecting to close the sale and be in their new home by November. Judith had already invited both sets of parents to join them for a festive Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate the new house and their reinvented life.
In late October, Philip Baynes had asked Peter to go to Central Oregon with him to work on a corporate case, and Peter readily agreed. They left in the middle of the day, Philip flying them in his twin engine plane, one of the many perks of joining a small but successful firm. But an unexpected ice storm came in from the north and the small plane went down in the rugged Cascades. When Amy
Baynes called and hysterically told her that Phil’s plane was lost in the mountains, Judith remained amazingly calm, reassuring Amy that she was absolutely certain that both husbands were perfectly fine. Having no doubts of Peter’s safety, she imagined the two fit men hiking away from the plane to find help. Because, most certainly, a loving God would not allow this to happen again to her—surely not twice in one lifetime. Nine years earlier, and also in the fall, she and Peter had lost their only son, Jonathan, to an unrelenting case of leukemia. “Tragedies like this don’t happen twice,” she assured Amy with stiff confidence, suppressing all other feelings deep within her.
After a long week of aerial searches, the plane—or rather parts of it—was finally discovered in the mountains. No survivors. Judith grieved in absolute numbness and partial disbelief. It was as if she were wrapped in layer upon layer of thick cotton batting. No feelings, no thoughts, no hopes, no dreams—just nothingness. Then, like a zombie, Judith continued the mechanical motions of teaching for the remainder of the school year, and she even taught summer school after the regular school year ended. And when fall came she began the endless cycle again, never pausing to face her loss. Never allowing herself the luxury of grief— for she felt certain that if she gave in, like a flood it would sweep her away and drown her. Besides, it seemed the demands of teaching in an inner-city school provided her with a floodgate of sorts. Of course, it was an escape, but it managed to distract her from the unrelenting ache that tightly entwined itself around her heart.
And now it was summer again, and she no longer had the strength to continue. She had declined to teach summer school and had no idea how to spend the next several weeks or even if she could survive them. It seemed her floodgate was down now. School had only been out two weeks and already she was a mess. She hadn’t left her apartment for nearly a week, was existing on coffee and toast, and hadn’t bathed in—well, she didn’t even remember how long. On the table before her was a full bottle of Xanax. Presc
ribed by her doctor after Peter’s death to calm her, she had never taken a single pill. Instead, she had saved them, like an insurance policy, for the day when she might really need them. And it seemed that day was today.
She took her eyes off the bottle and glanced around her dismal and cramped apartment again, as if searching for a clue—something to bring a sense of reason to all of this. But all she saw was the stacked boxes—her prison walls. Or perhaps her mausoleum. She picked up the bottle and carefully poured the pills across the table, such a soothing shade of blue, the color of a smogless sky. Was anything really that blue anymore? She pushed the pills into a small pile with her finger, wondering if there was anything left to live for. And even if she had the strength, why should she continue? Really, could hell be any worse than this? And what if there were no hell? Some of her friends believed that death was merely a pleasant and peaceful slumber. Wouldn’t that be a welcome relief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept soundly throughout an entire night.
And yet, something inside her resisted the temptation to escape so easily. Buried deep within her, and nearly forgotten, was the tiniest fragment of faith. Like a lantern almost out of oil, it flickered just barely, so fragile a soft sigh could exterminate it for good. It was an old remnant of another era, another life, a time when unkeepable promises were made in love and desperation. She remembered now how God had quietly sneaked into her life when Jonathan had first become ill. It was, in fact, Jonathan who introduced her, and later Peter, to God. Their child’s faith was unfathomable and indomitable, and his understanding of spiritual things far exceeded his tender years—it far exceeded hers, and even now it still mystified her. Despite
Jonathan’s pain and discomfort during his illness and frightful medical treatments, he had remained firm in his belief that his heavenly Father was taking care of him. Where did he get it? Even as the thin, pale boy stared right into the face of death, he had turned, looked his mother square in the eye, and said, “I’ll be waiting for you, Mom. When you and Dad come to heaven, I’ll be the first one to meet you there.” And so, through many difficult years, Judith had learned to trust God too. It hadn’t come easily. At first, she diligently prayed and read her Bible each day only for Jonathan’s sake. But slowly and miraculously her formal and impersonal prayers transformed themselves into honest and often gut-wrenching conversations full of reality. And before she knew it, she was talking to God on a regular basis, and he really did became her lifeline. But then Peter died, and as if to retaliate, she ceased speaking to God almost entirely. Occasionally her memory had lapsed, and she caught herself actually praying. But rarely anymore. And now her lifeline, if it existed at all, was more fragile than a single strand of a spider’s web. For more than a year and a half, she’d felt dead inside. She never allowed herself to think of Jonathan waiting to meet her in heaven anymore, nor of Peter, wherever he might be. And if there were a heaven, she certainly wouldn’t be welcome. Not after today anyway.
She lined up the little blue pills in a straight row, then counted them, sorting them into five neat groups of ten. That should be enough. She knew the best way to do this was to take them one or two at a time, about a minute apart, allowing them to slowly absorb into her system without risking vomiting them all up. For if she was a failure at living, at least she would not fail in this. She went to the sink and filled a large glass with tap water and returned to the table. Then absently, perhaps only as a stall tactic, she began to finger through a week’s worth of neglected and unopened mail splayed across the table right where she had dumped it each day. Mostly junk mail along with the regular monthly bills, still unpaid, even though there was plenty of money to cover them. Someone at the law firm would surely take care of those minor details. She rarely received personal mail anymore. But what should she expect if she never wrote? Even after Peter’s death, she didn’t bother to answer the slew of kind letters and sympathy cards that poured in. But shouldn’t people understand these things?
She began to sort the bills into a neat little stack, largest at the bottom, smallest at the top. The junk mail she shoved off to one side. Then she noticed a plain white envelope partially adhered to a flyer selling vinyl siding. She picked up the thin envelope with only mild curiosity. It was so slender and light it almost seemed to be empty. Who would send an empty envelope? Her name and address were handwritten in lacy, scrawled penmanship, like that of a very old woman, but not the hand of anyone she could recall—certainly not her mother, who still wrote with the clear bold stroke of an elementary school teacher. Judith squinted to read the tiny printed words on the old-fashioned circular postmark. Cedar Crest, Oregon. She sighed with a faint stirring of longing. Cedar Crest, nestled quietly on the forested west side of the mountains. The bulk of her childhood memories were there—probably the most carefree, blissful portion of her life. Too bad the latter half hadn’t gone so smoothly. She pressed her fingers into the postmark ink as if to absorb some of that old happiness, longing for it to send some warmth, some life back into the cold deadness of her withered soul.
CHAPTER TWO
JUDITH HAD FIRST SEEN Cedar Crest in 1962, back when her mother accepted a teaching position in the sleepy Oregon mill town. They moved into a little yellow house on Pine Street in August, and Judith started first grade at Cedar Crest Elementary the following month. They had lived in the same little house right up until her freshman year in high school.
It had been a happy era—typical small-town life in the sixties. Rather uneventful, other than the usual growing pains and being the product of a single-parent home when everyone else seemed to be living like Ozzie and Harriet, at least on the surface. But the sweetest memories of Cedar Crest all seemed to evolve around her best friend and childhood soul mate, Jasmine Morrison. People often teased the two girls, saying they must have been twin sisters who’d been separated at birth. And they often pretended it was true, sometimes almost convincing themselves, except they could never quite explain how Judith had been born in Oregon and Jasmine in far-off Mississippi.
But then, after only a handful of delicious years of irreplaceable friendship, Jasmine’s family had abruptly moved back to Mississippi...back to Mississippi. “It’s so unfair.” Jasmine had said with tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to go back there.”
But Judith had tried to be strong. “We’ll write,” she said as the two girls hugged goodbye. “And don’t forget our promise, Jasmine, our secret pact.”
Jasmine nodded. “Blood sisters.” she whispered. “Blood sisters forever.”
But after several years and several more moves, the friends eventually lost track of one another altogether. It wasn’t until Judith lost Jonathan, that she had once again attempted to locate her old friend. But her letters always came back stamped “no such person at this address,” and at last Judith gave up all hope of ever reconnecting with Jasmine again. In fact, she hadn’t even thought of Cedar Crest or Jasmine in ages.
Now she fingered the still unopened envelope with a slight flicker of interest. No return address, only the postmark to identify its origins. She slowly opened it, almost expecting to find it empty, but a small newspaper clipping slipped out. She began to read, then dropped the paper like a hot coal. It was an obituary, and the name across the top in neat boldfaced type read: Jasmine Marie Morrison Emery. Judith’s chest grew tight as she closed her eyes and took in a sharp breath. No, it could not be her Jasmine! She opened her eyes again, focusing them on the clipping on the table, almost afraid to touch it. She quickly scanned the words, hoping that it was another person, but when she got to the date of birth: May 15,1956, she knew it was no coincidence for it was Judith’s own birth date as well, a date the two girls had shared happily each spring. And when she read the part about survivors, listing Jasmine’s parents’ names, Judith had no doubt. Jasmine was dead.
Her hands shook as she poured herself another stale cup of coffee. Leaning against the counter, she took a sip of the metallic tasting liquid, and sudde
nly, in spite of the sweltering heat, she felt as cold as ice. Reading Jasmine’s obituary felt strangely as if she’d just read her own. And perhaps it was only a matter of time. She sadly shook her head. Too bad it wasn’t her obituary instead of Jasmine’s. Surely Jasmine had had all sorts of wonderful things to live for—after all, Jasmine Marie had always been so much fun, so vibrant, so full of life. And now she was dead and gone and buried.
Judith sank into Peter’s old leather club chair, the one piece of furniture he had insisted upon keeping. She leaned her head back; suddenly longing for Peter like never before—oh, to see his smiling face, feel the warmth of his touch, hear his voice! For the first time since his death, she allowed herself to remember him, to feel the sharp pain of her loss, to experience the crushing emptiness within her. And then she began to long for Jonathan—to wrap her arms around her son, to run her fingers through his wispy hair, touch the softness of his cheek. A sharp painful sensation burned deep within her—a longing that would never be satisfied. And now, on top of all this, she longed for her dear friend Jasmine too. All this longing could surely kill— for how much pain could one heart endure? How much loss could a person bear? Three of her most precious loved ones, all taken away, never to be seen again. Finally she was allowing herself to feel the full measure of pain that was hers. If she were lucky, it would kill her, once and for all, and she would finally escape. But her heart continued to beat steadily, and her mind remained clearer than usual as her thoughts raced forward.
She tried to imagine her childhood friend now dead and lifeless. But she could barely even imagine her fully grown into a woman. To her Jasmine would always be the sparkling-eyed, barefooted girl who ate banana and mayonnaise sandwiches and loved Elvis. Judith sighed and closed her eyes, allowing herself to travel back into time, back to 1963, to Cedar Crest, exactly one year after she and her mother had moved there.
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