“But look how blessed we are,” she said. “I still get to have supper with the family. It’s almost time for the kids to go to bed by the time I leave. They hardly even know I’m gone. And I’m able to be home with Joseph during the day…”
“But the kids miss homeschooling. They miss you.”
“It’s only for a little while.” But the truth was, she didn’t see an end to it. “This is really not a terrible thing,” she said. “We could be going through a hurricane. Our children could be threatened. We could have tornadoes and floods and mud slides. Those poor people.” She sighed. “I’m gonna go pray.” She kissed his cheek, then straightened. “I’ll be outside, honey.”
The night wind was brisk, cool, and smelled of chimney smoke. It was often windy at night here, but tonight it was especially so, as if the winds from Nicaragua swept all the way across the world to Tennessee, offering that small connection that would remind her how seriously Sylvia needed prayer. She sat on her porch for a moment, swinging back and forth in the wind, praying to the Lord who she knew heard her, that the hurricane would pass quickly, that Sylvia would know how to do the work she needed to do, that she’d have the resources she needed, that no more people would be killed or injured, that the mud slides would cease and the flood waters would recede. As she prayed, a sound on the wind distracted her, and she looked up for a moment and listened. It sounded like weeping from somewhere nearby, but whether it came from another mountain across the valley, swept here by the wind, or somewhere right within reach, she wasn’t sure.
She heard a door close and saw Cathy coming out of her home and crossing the street.
Had Cathy been crying? she wondered, getting to her feet. But when Cathy reached her she could see that her eyes were dry. “Brenda, I just called and David said you were out here,” Cathy said. “Did you get Sylvia’s e-mail?”
“Yeah, I was just praying for her.”
“Me, too,” Cathy said. “Man, I miss her. And talk about bad luck. Getting there and having a hurricane hit you before you’ve even had time to settle in.”
But Brenda wasn’t listening. She still heard that sound of weeping on the wind. It wasn’t loud, not wailing at all, just the muffled, occasional sound of someone in great pain. “Listen,” she whispered. “Do you hear that?”
Cathy got quiet. “Someone crying?”
Brenda shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“It sounds like it’s coming from Tory’s,” Cathy said. She frowned. “Have you heard anything from her?”
“No. She still won’t return my calls. I’m getting worried.”
“Do you think she’s embarrassed about throwing up or something?”
“Of course not. Besides, it’s been almost three weeks.”
“Well, you know how she is. Everything has to be perfect. Her image is pretty important to her. But it’s not like she did it in front of us. There’s really nothing to be embarrassed about, even for Tory.”
“Three weeks is a long time,” Brenda said. “Almost like she’s hiding out. Avoiding us.”
“It’s enough to give you a complex,” Cathy agreed.
Again, they heard the weeping, blown up by the wind.
“Come on,” Brenda said, stepping off her porch. “That’s got to be her.” They took off across the empty lot between Brenda’s and Tory’s homes, and the weeping grew clearer as they reached Tory’s yard. They followed the sound into the back. Tory was sitting on the swing at the back of her yard, under a cluster of trees. She had her face in her hands and was weeping her heart out. Brenda started running before Cathy had even seen hen
“Tory!” Brenda fell to her knees in front of her neighbor. “What’s the matter, honey?” Tory went into Brenda’s arms. “What is it?”
Cathy sat down next to Tory and stroked her back as Tory wept onto Brenda’s shoulder.
“Tory, tell us,” Cathy whispered. “What is it?”
Tory managed to pull herself together enough to pull back from Brenda. She took a deep breath and tried to speak. “I’m…pregnant,” she choked out.
“Pregnant!” Brenda whispered. “Well, Tory, that’s wonderful. No wonder you were sick. But…why the tears?”
“Is it the writing?” Cathy asked, trying to get to the bottom of her grief. “That you’ll have to slow down?”
“No!” Tory cried. “I’m not that shallow.”
“Then what?”
Tory looked up into the star-sprinkled sky, shaking her head. “My baby…has Down’s Syndrome.”
Brenda and Cathy were both stunned to silence as they stared at Tory’s wet face in the darkness. “Are you sure?” Brenda asked.
“Oh, yeah. We found out a couple of days ago.” She sucked in a breath. “I know I should have called. I should have told you, but when I first knew I was pregnant, I had this…sense…that I didn’t need to tell anyone until I’d been to the doctor. And then he wanted the tests, so I waited for the results. I was just so stunned, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to say the words until I could get it out without crying, because I feel so guilty. This is my baby girl—”
Brenda and Cathy looked at each other, stricken. “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” Brenda said.
“No,” Cathy told her. “Why would you feel guilty for being sad that something’s wrong with your baby?”
“I should be happy that a new person is coming into our family. I should be able to handle this.” She wiped her eyes. “If it were you, Brenda, you could handle it. You’d look at it so positively. You’d be dancing around, and it would be almost like you’d ordered a child with Down’s Syndrome.”
“Tory, you give me entirely too much credit.”
“Wouldn’t she, Cathy?” Tory asked.
Cathy sighed. “Well, it does sometimes look like you can handle anything, Brenda. Even this job of yours. I’d be whining to anybody who’d listen. She’s working nights, Tory. Seven to twelve. And does she complain? Nope.”
“And she wouldn’t complain if she were in my shoes, but I’ve just been so miserable…”
“You two have a lot to learn about me.” Brenda reached up and stroked Tory’s hair out of her eyes. “I’d be upset, too, Tory. But it’s gonna be all right.”
“That’s not all,” Tory said. “It’s not just the Down’s Syndrome. I mean, it’s been a couple of days, and I’m over the shock. I was planning to tell both of you tomorrow, and e-mail Sylvia. Barry’s been real quiet about it. We’ve hardly talked about it at all. And then tonight Annie baby-sat and we went out to dinner.”
“Yeah,” Cathy said. “I was hurt that you were talking to my daughter and not me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t yet.”
“Did you have a nice time?” Brenda asked, her voice still sympathetic.
Tory breathed a mirthless laugh. “It wasn’t exactly a romantic evening out.”
“Of course not,” Cathy said. “You’re still getting over the shock. You don’t need to expect that much of yourselves right now. It’s going to take some time to get used to this.”
“Barry doesn’t want to get used to the idea,” she said.
Brenda frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the doctor gave us options.” Her lips curled with the words.
Brenda’s face changed. She knew what those options were. Cathy seemed to understand, as well. Brenda just pulled Tory back into a hug.
After a moment, she whispered, “He’s upset, Tory. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s thinking. Just give him some time, be patient with him. It’s harder for him. He’s not carrying the baby. He doesn’t have all those maternal hormones pulsing through him.”
“He wants me to get an abortion.” Tory said the words on a rush of anguish, as if to make sure they understood.
“He may think he wants that,” Brenda said, “but he’ll change his mind. Like I said, just give him time.”
Tory shook her head. “I don
’t know what disappoints me more,” she said. “The knowledge that this baby isn’t anything like I thought she would be, or the knowledge that my husband isn’t who I thought he was.”
“Who did you think he was?” Cathy asked.
Tory looked over at her. “I thought he was someone who believed in life. Every life. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even believe in the life of our child. See, he has this brother—”
“Barry has a brother?” Brenda asked. “I didn’t know that. I thought he was an only child.”
“No,” she said. “He has a brother who’s autistic. He doesn’t communicate with anyone, and he’s in a wheelchair. The only thing he does is whistle. Whatever song he heard last, he whistles it. That whistling goes on day and night until he falls asleep. Then you know when he wakes up in the mornings, because he starts whistling again. But he’s never been able to look anyone in the eye, or take care of his bodily functions, or feed himself, or anything. His parents have kept him home all his life, but his father died, and his mother is still caring for him. Barry has this fear of repeating that in our family.”
“That’s understandable,” Cathy said. “Tory, I hope you understand that he’s not some kind of monster. A lot of parents might feel the way he does.”
“Not if he believes what he claims he believes,” Tory bit out. “This man, who has written letters to congressmen, gone to prayer rallies to pray for legislation to prevent abortion. If he doesn’t really believe it now, then what else did he claim to believe that isn’t true?”
“I don’t think it’s not true,” Brenda said. “He’s just confused.”
“And I’m not?” she asked. “The only thing I know for sure is that I’m carrying a baby with Down’s Syndrome. But she’s my baby, and God gave her to me.”
“He’ll come around, Tory,” Cathy said. “He’s a wonderful dad. I envy you all the time. And he’s a strong Christian man.”
“He just doesn’t know what he wants right now,” Brenda added. “He just needs to have your love and support while he thinks this through, and he’ll make the right decision. I know he will.”
Tears filled Tory’s eyes again, and she slumped forward. “I’m just so disappointed in him.”
“I know you are,” Brenda said, rising up and sitting next to Tory on the bench. “I don’t blame you. But things are not always as they seem, and they don’t always end up the way they start out.”
Cathy nudged Tory. “She’s starting to sound like Sylvia.”
“Speaking of Sylvia,” Brenda said, “she’s been worried about you, too. Did you get her latest e-mail?”
Tory leaned her head back on the swing. “No, I haven’t been near the computer in days.”
“They’re going through a hurricane as we speak.”
“Is it bad?”
“Terrible. A lot have already died in floods and mud slides. She’s huddled in a shelter trying to ride it out.”
“How did she e-mail?”
“Apparently the phone lines aren’t down yet, at least where she is. But that could change.”
“She’s worried about you,” Cathy said. “We kind of told her we couldn’t get in touch with you, that you’d been sick.”
Tory swallowed. “I should have told her. I should have told both of you. It was too much to carry.”
“You don’t have to bear these things alone.”
“I know,” she said. “I just didn’t think I’d ever have to bear anything like this at all. Normally my life is so simple, and I find so many things to complain about, anyway.”
Cathy and Brenda laughed softly.
“You’ll get through this,” Cathy said.
But as the wind whipped up harder from the valley and blew the hair back from Tory’s face, Brenda knew that she didn’t see the pain ending anytime soon.
Later, when Tory went inside, Barry was nowhere to be found. She checked on Spencer and Brittany, saw that they were sleeping soundly. Annie had long since gone home. The checkbook lay out on the counter where Barry had paid her.
She went back to their bedroom and found that Barry’s pillow was gone. Further exploration revealed that the basement door was open. He had apparently opted to sleep down there tonight. She fought the urge to kick the door shut, but she didn’t want to turn this crisis into a war.
The truth was, she didn’t want to sleep in the same bed with him tonight, anyway, knowing what he wanted for their child. Funny thing, she thought. Two weeks ago, when she’d first learned she was pregnant, it had drawn them so close together. They had counted seconds together, waiting for the results of the test. She had enjoyed being the pregnant wife. Now they couldn’t even stay in the same room together. Even being in the same house would be harder and harder as the months of her pregnancy passed by.
She touched her stomach as if silently telling her baby that one of her parents cared. Then she got ready for bed and dropped into it. Her eyes were tired from crying, and her body was weary from the tension that had worked on her today. She wondered how many more days like this she would have before the baby came. And then there would be a lifetime of crisis management.
She dropped into bed and tried to pray, but tears came instead. Quietly, she cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER Seventeen
The next afternoon, Cathy bent over the mangled poodle that had been hit by a car not an hour earlier. She had sedated it to keep it still and out of pain while she tried to X-ray it, but now it was obvious that the animal had several broken bones and a punctured lung, and was hemorrhaging from somewhere in its abdominal cavity.
“So if I only had twenty more dollars, I could get the shoes that I absolutely have to have,” Annie was saying, following Cathy around the office as if she was doing nothing more important than dusting the wood.
“Annie, I’m a little busy right now.”
“But Mom, how am I supposed to talk to you if I don’t come here? You’re never home.”
Her children always used this tactic to get her attention. Cathy was used to it.
“I get home every day when you do,” Cathy said. “This is an emergency, and you know it. There’s a lady out in that waiting room crying her eyes out because this dog, who is the only family member she apparently has, is on its deathbed.”
Annie absently reached out to stroke the animal’s groomed ear. “I’m sorry about that, Mom. You act like I’m cold-hearted or something. I’m not. I just need shoes.”
“Annie, you have shoes. You have shoes in every color under the rainbow in several different styles, and I’m just not real concerned that you have a new pair of hiking boots at the moment. You have hiking boots.”
“I have those old cheesy kind. But who wants to wear those? They look like something you’d wear in the army.”
“And these others don’t?”
“No. These others are classy. They’re in style. Everybody has them.”
“They’re hiking boots, Annie. That’s all they are. You never hike anywhere. Besides, you bought the other pair, and you can live with them.” She went to the door and opened it for Annie to leave. “You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve got to tell this dog’s owner what the prognosis is.”
Annie just stood there, petting the dog’s ear and giving her a dreadful look. “Are you gonna put her to sleep?” she asked.
Cathy sighed. “I don’t know. It’ll be up to the owner.”
“I’ll be in your office,” Annie said, lowering her voice. “Be gentle. You know how you can be.”
Cathy spun around. “No, Annie. How can I be?”
“Well, abrupt, as my English teacher likes to say. You know. ‘Sorry your dog got hit, but he’s a goner, so let’s just put him out of his misery.’”
Cathy’s mouth fell open. “I would never say that.”
“Well, okay, so sue me. I’m just saying you’re a little unsympathetic sometimes. Try talking to you about shoes.”
Cathy left her, shaking her head, and went into the waiting
room to sit down with the crying woman. “Miss Anderson, I’ve X-rayed your poodle.”
“Shish-kabob,” the woman said, dabbing at her nose with a red bandana.
“Excuse me?” Cathy asked.
“Shish-kabob. That’s what I call her.” The woman patted her chest as if to keep it beating.
“Oh.” Cathy cleared her throat. “I’ve just finished X-raying Shish-kabob, and—”
“You’ve got to save him!” A vein on the woman’s neck stood out, punctuating the seriousness of her words. “Look at me. I can’t live without him. You’ve got to save him!” She grabbed Cathy’s coat. “Please!”
Cathy tried to compose herself. The woman obviously needed compassion, even if she was bordering on violent. “I don’t know if I can, Mrs. Anderson. He’s got multiple fractures, he’s punctured a lung, and he’s bleeding internally. Even if I could patch him up, this is going to be a long, excruciating recovery for him. If left alone, he would probably die.”
“Then don’t leave him alone!” the woman shouted, and for a moment she reminded Cathy of a mob leader making an offer she couldn’t refuse. “I’ll pay you anything! You’ve got to save him!”
“Miss Anderson, it would take several surgeries. I’m not sure I could get everything the first time. We’d have to insert a feeding tube, put him on a ventilator…”
“I don’t care what it costs,” the woman said, clutching her heart again. “I don’t care what you have to do. Please, I’ll pay you anything.”
Cathy didn’t know what to do. She hated running up a patient’s bill beyond what was reasonable to sustain a pet, but the cost of keeping this dog alive was more than she could handle with the equipment she had. Still, she understood the attachment a lonely woman might have to her pet. “Well, I guess I’d better get in there, then, and see what I can do.”
As she hurried back from the waiting room, the phone began to ring. Since her receptionist had already gone home for the day, because they usually closed at three, Cathy snatched the phone up. “Flaherty Animal Clinic. May I help you?”
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