20

Jess was reminded again that things between Andy and her had changed when she drove herself to church Sunday morning. Except for that first Sunday when she drove Elizabeth and last Sunday, Andy had always come by to pick her up. But he hadn’t offered, and of course she’d never ask. She found herself driving to a different spot in the parking lot from where Andy usually parked, although she could see that his truck was not in its usual place. Actually, her attempt to avoid running into him made her feel kind of silly. If he were there, she would see him. The church was just too small not to.

“Where’s Andy?” Sarah leaned over and whispered as Jess slid in next to her.

Jess shrugged, feeling somewhat annoyed. Sarah had asked the same question last week, and received the same shrug. How was Jess supposed to know where Andy was? Okay, since he had brought her every Sunday, perhaps it did seem likely that she would, but still . . . She picked up a hymnal and faced forward as the choir filed in.

By the time the service was over, that troubling, unsettled feeling that had bothered her since she got up had completely dissipated. Brother Parker had preached on a peace that passes understanding, and for once she completely got it. She felt completely at peace, and she didn’t know why. Certainly nothing about her circumstances had changed since she sat down.

“Come have lunch with us.” Elizabeth took her hand as they filed out of her pew into the aisle. “There’s always room for one more, and we’d love to have you.”

“Do come.” Lainie chimed in. “We’re having a little family celebration in honor of Kaitlyn and Steven’s engagement. It would be so nice if you’d join us.”

Jess hesitated. Lunch with the Cooleys did sound tempting, but she had made other plans. “Thank you so much, but not today. I need to get on home. I’ll send my congratulations home with you, though.” She blew a kiss toward Steven and Kaitlyn and headed for her own car. Andy’s pickup was still missing from the parking lot.

The rich aroma of the soup she had made yesterday enveloped her when she walked in her front door. It really was too bad that no one was here to join her for lunch. Chicken noodle soup may have been one of the only things she knew how to make, but when you could make a soup like this, you just didn’t need a backup plan.

Filling a bowl and putting it on the table next to her spot on the sofa, Jess got ready to watch the Colts play the Panthers. She had a strategy. She got a pen, a legal pad, and her copy of Football for the Clueless and set them next to her on the sofa. She would pay particular attention to the broadcasters and try to match their comments with the plays on the field, take notes, and look up things she didn’t understand in her book during halftime. Jess was all too aware of what a geeky thing this was to do, but then, she was an unredeemable geek, and always had been.

The second half had just started and Jess was looking up “touchback” when her phone rang. She frowned a little at the screen when she picked it up. Why would Andy be calling? She decided to play it light.

“Hey! Are you watching the game too? I find that I’m rooting for the Panthers. Any reason I should be for the Colts?”

“Jess, I hate to ask it of you, but I’m worried about Dad. Could you possibly come over and look at him to see if I should take him to the emergency room? He keeps saying he’s fine, but I don’t like the way he looks.”

“Sure, I’ll come. Is this something that just came up, or has this been going on awhile?”

“Since this morning, anyway. He went back to bed after breakfast saying he didn’t feel good, but he got up a little while ago and got dressed. It’s just . . . Dad? Dad! Jess, he collapsed.”

Jess jumped up and ran to find the shoes she had kicked off when she walked through the door. “Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can’t hear anything.”

“Do you know CPR?”

“Yeah. I’m certified.”

“Then lay him out straight on the floor, open his shirt, make sure nothing is obstructing his breathing, and start CPR now. I’ll call 9-1-1 and be right there.”

Jess called 9-1-1 as she ran for her car. By the time she reached Andy’s house, the dispatcher had assured her the EMTs were on the way, even if the best address she could give was “drive past 225 Mescalero to the dirt road at the end of the street and continue a quarter mile or so. It’s the only house on the road.”

She took her medical bag from where she kept it in the trunk of her car and was pulling a defibrillator from it as she came in the door. Andy was kneeling on the floor next to his dad applying CPR. He didn’t look up.

“They’re on their way.” She knelt on the other side of Tim and placed her fingers on his neck, searching for a pulse. “Any change at all?”

Andy shook his head and kept on.

“Then move back. We need to do this now.” She ripped open Tim’s shirt and positioned the electropads on his chest. Motioning Andy back even further, she sent the charge through the old man’s heart and resumed the CPR. After a few minutes, she sat back on her heels and, as the sound of a siren began in the distance, sent a second shock coursing through Tim’s body.

It did not take long for the EMTs to check the old man out, take over the CPR, and put Tim in the ambulance for his trip to San Ramon.

Andy had moved to the sofa, and Jess sat next to him.

“Would you like me to drive you to the hospital?” She lightly rubbed his back between his shoulders.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, Andy. Here are some things you should know. First, I’m so sorry to have to tell you, but I didn’t find any pulse or heartbeat. They’ll make the assessment in the ER, of course, but I think you need to prepare yourself for the probability that your dad is gone.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“And secondly, as his next of kin, there are some documents you need to sign and some decisions you have to make, so we really do have to go to the hospital.”

He didn’t move but just stared at the floor where his father had been.

Jess stood and took his hand. “Come on. I’ll drive. You be thinking about what kind of arrangements you want to make. I know it seems harsh to talk about this right now, but these are questions they’re going to ask you.”

Andy folded himself into the front seat of Jess’s little car. He shifted to find some room. “How does anyone fit in this thing? And how do you keep from getting crushed on the highway? I’d feel safer in a kiddie car.”

“It works.” Jess turned the key in the ignition and just let him talk, or not, as he chose. Not everyone who knew her would believe it, but sometimes she knew when to just listen without words.

Hours later, well after dark, she drove Andy back to his front door. Tim Ryan had indeed passed away that afternoon due to a massive heart attack, and from all appearances, he was probably gone before Andy and Jess ended their phone call.

Andy sat a moment without making a move to get out. “Can you come in?”

“Sure. I need to get my things anyway. I’ll stay as long as you like.”

Andy managed to get himself unfolded from the front seat of Jess’s car and headed up the front steps with Jess behind him. He stood in the middle of the living room with his hands in his pockets, watching Jess pack her medical bag.

“So doctors still carry black bags? I thought that was just something you saw in old movies.”

“This doctor does.” She smiled up at him. “When you live someplace where you might be miles from the nearest medical facility, it seems like a good idea.”

“Makes sense.” He rocked on his heels and checked his watch. “What time is it in Oklahoma?”

“It’s an hour later, isn’t it?” Jess stood up and put her bag by the door.

“Yeah, of course. Man, I just can’t seem to concentrate. Think it’s too late to call? I really should tell my mom, even though she hasn’t seen him in over ten years.”

“That would be a considerate thing to do. I’m sure she’d want to know, if only for your sake.”

Andy took his phone out and looked at it like he was trying to remember how it worked.

Jess put her hand on his. “Look, don’t call her tonight. There will be time enough tomorrow. Come sit here on the sofa. I’m going to go put on a pot of coffee, and then I’d like you to tell me about your dad. I know he let you down in some major ways, and if you want to talk about it, I’ll listen. But I’ll bet you have some good memories, if only a few, maybe from way back when you were little? I’d like to hear about them too—that is, if you’d like to talk about them.”

When Jess came back with a couple mugs of coffee, Andy was going through a scrapbook. “My mom put these together. When she left, she said she couldn’t look at them anymore, so they’ve spent all this time in a bottom drawer in the back bedroom. Look at this. They look so young.”

Jess leaned over. “And that’s you?”

“Yep. Cute little dude, wasn’t I?”

“You sure were. And that picture of your dad could be a picture of you today, if you wore a mullet.”

“Yeah, Dad was quite the looker. I’m trying to remember if he still had that mullet when he left. It may have been gone by then.”

“Your mom was sure pretty. I love the big hair.”

“Yeah, she was. Back before she married Dad, if there was a Miss Something, or a Something Queen, you can bet Mom was right in the middle of it.”

“You look like such a happy family in this picture. You’re even holding a football. How old were you?”

Andy took a closer look. “That may have been my fourth birthday. I don’t remember hearing it, but somehow I’ve always known that Dad bought me my first football for my fourth birthday.”

“When did it start to go wrong, Andy? That young couple and their little boy look like they don’t have a worry in the world. I’d bet on their success.”

Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. When I was a kid, he was just a happy redneck, working hard all week, going out with his buddies on Friday night, and sleeping till noon on Saturday. But gradually, the drinking started taking over, and he started losing jobs over it. And when that started happening, he turned into a mean drunk. Then one night in my junior year, he backhanded my mother to the floor, and I literally threw him out that front door. I was bigger than him by then. Then I locked the door and called the sheriff. The last sight I had of my dad from that night to the night I came home to find him here in the house was watching from the window as Ben Apodaca put the cuffs on him and put him in the back of his patrol car.”

“Wow. That’s a huge thing for a high school kid to have to do.”

“Well, now you know why we weren’t exactly close.” Andy flipped through the rest of the pages of the scrapbook. “See, Dad isn’t in most of the later pictures, and since Mom was the one taking the pictures, most of what you have here is me. Me in my football uniform, me in my baseball uniform, me ready for church on Easter morning. It got so I’d cut and run every time she reached for the camera.” He closed the scrapbook and reached for the other one he had brought with him from the bedroom. Flipping it open, he frowned at the first page. “I don’t think I’ve seen these. Someone must have taken these and given them to Mom. They look like they were taken from the next county.”

“What are they?”

“Football pictures. See that tiny little speck there? That’s me.”

Jess looked closer. “How do you know?”

“I just do. I recognize the play formation, and if you look real close, you can see my number, 14.” He turned another page and shook his head. “I don’t know why Mom even kept these. They’re terrible.” He flipped a few more pages and stopped. The uniforms had changed and the pictures looked like they had been taken inside a much larger stadium. “This is the University of Arizona. See, that’s me there.”

Andy scowled a little and turned page after page without saying a word. The snapshots of college football games gave way to clippings and articles. “Andy Ryan drafted by the Denver Broncos,” “Andy Ryan throws winning touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter,” and on the last page, looking as if it had been torn from a magazine, “Glory Days 2.0? Former Denver Bronco Andy Ryan returns to Last Chance, New Mexico, to coach his own once-renowned high school football team.”

Andy bent his head over the battered scrapbook, and as the first tears he’d shed in thirteen years dropped on the pages, he felt Jess’s hand steal across his back and gently hold his shoulder.