Bryce Andrews nodded as they approached. And Dean and Mya heaved identical sighs of relief.
“Is she better?” Mya asked.
Ever blunt, the doctor said, “No. Her port is in. A colleague and I conferred at great length this morning. There’s one more drug I haven’t tried. It’s a long shot. It’s been approved by the FDA, but I haven’t used it on another patient.”
“Administer it,” Dean said.
“I just did.”
The men looked at each other. Witnessing the silent exchange, Mya was glad she was a woman. It was a strange thing to be thinking about. Placing Kaylie on the floor near Elle’s door, she held out one finger to stabilize the baby, who was still wobbly at walking. Mya was a firm believer in equality between men and women, in equal pay and the fact that one sex’s strengths were the other’s weakness. As she made her way into her daughter’s room, her granddaughter toddling proudly at her side, Mya was glad she was a woman. She was glad she’d been able to carry Elle, to feel her unborn child’s first flutter kick, a kick that later nearly put her ribs out.
She was glad to be a woman, glad to have been created, and allowed to carry a child, and bear the pain of giving birth. It was a strength inherent only in women. It took two to create a baby, but as Mya neared the hospital bed, she wondered if it was the pain of pushing, of laboring to bring a child into the world that made Mya strong enough to say, “Look, Elle. Look who’s here.”
At first Elle seemed too weak to open her eyes. After a struggle, she did open them. Blinking a few times, she must have been trying to focus. It couldn’t have been easy, for her fever was dangerously high. These past few days, she’d started talking out of her head.
Today, she knew where she was and who Mya and Dean were. It was the first time she’d seen Kaylie walking.
“Atta girl,” she said, too weak to raise her voice above a whisper.
Kaylie teetered, suddenly uncertain. Grasping more tightly to Mya’s finger, she righted herself, but didn’t take another step.
Mya felt Dean’s presence behind her, but all her senses were consumed in this moment, in the silent exchange between Elle and Kaylie, and Kaylie and Elle.
Mya didn’t know what Elle was thinking, if the medicine made it possible for her to think at all. Beyond tears herself, Mya said, “Shall we get closer to Mama, Kaylie?”
Kaylie had planted her little sandals.
Swinging the baby into her arms, Mya strode the remaining distance to the bed. “There’s Mama,” she said, singsongy.
“Ma-ma,” Kaylie said, as plain as day.
Mya gasped, amazed and shaken by the baby’s first real word. Mama. She’d said it to Mya. Not Elle.
Dean stepped forward. For a moment, Elle appeared dizzy, disoriented. Slowly, she smiled. Her eyelashes fluttered, her eyes seemed to roll back in her head.
“Elle,” he said.
“Elle!” Mya begged.
Her eyes focused with apparent difficulty, as if she’d come a great distance. Moving her lips in a weak smile that might have been for any one of them, or all of them, Eleanor Renee Fletcher sighed quietly, and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 19
D ean unplugged his power saw. Wiping his brow, he stood back to survey his progress on the playhouse he was building in his backyard.
Mya was right. It looked more like a castle.
It was summer again, Dean’s favorite season, although Mya claimed he said that about every season on the island. A tanker lumbered toward the horizon, and the midday sun glinted in V patterns on the ocean’s surface. Much closer, two dogs chased an aging white cat up the apple tree. On the porch, Mya and her mother were arguing. He smiled to himself, for it was just another day in paradise.
“Look at me, Mommy. Look at me, Grandma!”
Dean’s smile grew as his gaze rested on the blond-haired little girl doing a clumsy forward roll before her audience of two. It was hard to believe this precious, precocious child who was so much like her mother would be starting school this fall.
“No doubt about it,” Millicent said loudly, lowering into a wicker chair. “That child’s going to be a ballerina.”
“An Olympic champion, you mean,” Mya countered.
“A ballerina.”
“The Olympics.”
“The ballet.”
And so it went.
“Daddy?” Eyes as blue as his own looked up at him. “Do they ever quit?”
Dean chuckled, for he never knew what was going to come out of this child’s mouth. But the truth was, he’d asked himself that same question a hundred times.
“It’s how they say I love you, short stuff.” It must have been genetic. Why else would the Donahue women be so obstinate and argumentative? He happened to know from experience that this child only looked cherubic. At three, she’d been able to outargue her Grandma Millie. And she was getting pretty good at holding her own with Mya. Dean was putty in her hand.
A car door slammed. Voices carried. Tails wagging, the dogs left their watch posts beneath the tree to investigate.
Dean and Mya shared a look from across the yard, turning as their daughter yelled to a child equally as precocious as she was. “Quit telling your Mom you love her and come play with me!”
“Just because you’re my aunt doesn’t mean you can boss me.” But Kaylie strutted over to help Cora coax the cat down from the tree.
Mya sidled up to Dean’s right side, their eldest daughter to his left. Unable to stand the suspense a moment longer, he said, “Well?”
Elle struck a pose. The earrings and nose rings were gone, but her spunk was stronger than ever as she said, “They about drained me of my blood, but I’m good to go for another year.”
“Thank God,” Millicent said.
“Amen to that,” Mya whispered.
Elle wore her hair chin-length now. It had grown back wavy and had darkened to a honey blond. She was smart and quick and still a spitfire. Coming back from the brink of death had left her with a depth that far surpassed most women at the tender age of twenty-five.
The smile she gave to Dean changed subtly as her gaze rested on the man finishing a business call via his cell phone. Mya witnessed that change, and understood what it meant. There was a bond between Elle and Oliver Cooper. He claimed he’d known it the first time he’d delivered her pizza. They’d both done everything they could to fight it, but in the end, love prevailed.
No one understood that better than Mya.
“Come down, Casper. Here, kitty, kitty,” Cora crooned.
“That’s obviously not working,” Kaylie declared. At nearly seven, she was older and wiser, and made certain Cora knew it.
Sometimes the younger child accepted it. But not today.
“Quit bossing me,” she said. “If it wasn’t for me, your mommy would be dead.”
Dear precious Kaylie accepted that. Watching Kaylie grow had given Mya something she’d lost during Elle’s formative years. In essence, Cora and Kaylie were equally matched, and as close as sisters.
For months Dean, Mya and the doctors had scrambled to find Elle’s perfect match. And then, just as all hope had seemed lost, the new drugs had started to work. Elle’s condition improved. Remission occurred. All the while, another miracle was taking place. Elle’s perfect match was discovered, not in her own daughter, or in her mother, father, uncles, cousins, strangers. Her perfect match had come along with the child Mya had been carrying without realizing it at the time. It seemed exhaustion and worry hadn’t been the only reason for her queasiness and fatigue. She’d been pregnant. Baby Cora had been born screaming a month and a half early. Her umbilical cord had contained the stem cells that ultimately saved Elle’s life.
Dr. Andrews had called it a miracle. Of course, Suzette had insisted it had all been predestined and written in the stars. It turned out Suzette finally met her match, too. The love of her life had been making a house call, but he’d been a plumber, not a doctor.
Mya saw more of Clair
e these days when she commuted to Brynn’s twice a week. On those days she helped Claire, who’d left her teaching job to take over the clothing boutique. Mya balanced the books, helped with the ordering, and whatever else needed to be done, but these days Brynn’s was more Claire’s baby. Mya’s passions lay here on her beloved island, where it all began.
“Well?” Elle said as her young husband neared. “Who was on the phone?”
There was no evidence of the nerd in Oliver these days. “You aren’t going to believe it. Goldie just agreed to take the part.”
“Did I not tell you it would all work out?” Elle exclaimed.
She and Oliver decided to help Kaylie and Cora get the cat out of the tree. Dean went to get a ladder. And Mya joined the others in the shade. They all peered up at the cat, heads tipped back, squinting at the sunlight filtering through the leaves.
When Mya wondered about the authenticity of miracles, she only had to look as far as her husband and their oftentimes noisy family: Millie, Elle, Oliver, Kaylie and Cora. She and Dean had argued about little Cora’s name. In the end, Mya had her way. He’d had his way plenty of other times, evidenced by the size of her belly these days. They hadn’t planned to have another child. Of course, none of their children had been planned. Surprises seemed to be their specialty. Millicent told everybody that life had a way of happening around Dean and Mya.
Mya didn’t argue. At least not about that.
She couldn’t help smiling a little at the sight of Dean trying to coax the cat down and everyone else yelling up their two-cents’ worth. Bossiness ran in this family. She was hoping this baby was a boy for Dean, but if it was another girl, she knew he would simply add on to the playhouse castle he was building for his princesses. He would take it in stride the way they’d learned to take everything in stride.
There was a rhythm to their life, like the ebb and flow of the tide and the changing seasons. Sometimes subtle, sometimes harsh, the changes made life rich.
Life happened. She liked the sound of that.
ISBN: 978 1 472 08906 9
LIFE HAPPENS
© 2005 Sandra Steffen
Published in Great Britain 2005
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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