Shiloh tried unsuccessfully to sit up to meet Melinda before resorting to pressing the button to raise the bed. She cringed when her dad helped her, believing it made her look like an invalid. Even though he made moving the IVs and blood pressure cuff connection look as if it were the most natural thing in the world, it wasn’t. She knew there were other kids her age who lived the way she did because she spent time in the hospital with them. But she didn’t know even one kid her age out in the real world whose life revolved around medical stuff.
She glanced at the woman crossing the room to see if she’d noticed how the simple movements made Shiloh stop and catch her breath. What kind of kid her age couldn’t even sit up in bed without sounding like she’d just finished a hundred-yard dash, especially to someone who looked like she’d gone through Navy SEAL training?
But not even the monitors softly pinging and flashing around the bed or the IV stuck in Shiloh’s arm seemed to bother this woman. She’d give up her new iPhone to know for sure whether Melinda was putting on a show, acting as if it didn’t matter that Shiloh wasn’t like other kids, or if it was how she really felt.
Melinda glanced at Jeremy before moving to stand next to the bed. It seemed like forever until she could put aside her obvious fear and offer a hesitant “Hi.”
Shiloh had rehearsed and rejected a dozen greetings, but faced with actually seeing Melinda in person, she couldn’t remember a single one of them. What came out was a return smile. “Hi.”
Melinda took a deep breath while her heart did a crazy tap dance. Was this the physical reaction when dreams came true? What she’d imagined wasn’t close to this reality. Happiness wasn’t a soaring feeling, it was rainbows turning into showers of confetti and falling like snowflakes. She reached for Shiloh’s hand, making the gesture seem as familiar as two longtime friends running into each other at Starbucks. For what seemed like forever, she stared at her beautiful daughter, dizzy with a sickening dread for all the things that could go wrong. It wasn’t that she saw her own mother in Shiloh’s high cheekbones, or her father in the crooked smile, or Daniel in her penetrating eyes. It was more that they were all there. “It’s been a long time.”
Instead of answering, Shiloh sent her father a look that openly begged him to give Melinda a chance.
Aware how easy it would be to say something that would put Jeremy in a defensive posture, Melinda focused on finding a place to tuck the nylon carrier she’d brought. She finally settled on a three-cushion sofa under the window, opening the newspaper she’d picked up in the lobby and carefully tenting the mesh openings.
She wiped her hands on her jeans before turning her attention to Shiloh again. “I’m such an idiot. I really should have called before I came, but all I could think about was getting here as soon as possible. Please tell me you’re not allergic to cats.”
“Not that I know of. We’ve never owned one, but one of my girlfriends has two and they always sit on my lap when I’m at her house.”
“She’s fine,” Jeremy said. “Although I’m surprised you’d do something that could get you in so much trouble if you got caught.”
“I saw a half dozen companion animals come through the lobby yesterday, cats and dogs.” She looked at Shiloh and smiled. “I figured if I did get caught I’d tell whoever caught me that Heidi was a kitten in training.”
“And you really believed you could get away with that?” Jeremy said.
“That, and the fact that I can slip in and out of a Kentucky drawl as easily as Ray Allen can make a three-point shot.” She looked at Shiloh as if they were sharing a secret. “I’ve learned from past experience that all I have to do is look confused and talk really fast and throw in a lot of tryin’ and buyin’ and cryin’ and a couple of y’alls and anyone born and raised above the Mason-Dixon Line or west of the Mississippi River automatically assumes my IQ is twenty points shy of average. People are nicer when they feel sorry for you.”
Shiloh laughed. “Would you teach me to do that?”
Before Jeremy could protest, Melinda said, “It doesn’t work when you’re young and pretty. You’ll have to wait until you’re my age or grow a wart or two on the end of your nose.”
“Tell her the real reason you brought Heidi,” Jeremy said impatiently.
Melinda barely heard him, caught up in the heady excitement of having a dream come true.
“Heidi?” Shiloh asked. “My dad told me you had a cat, but didn’t tell me her name. I loved that book. My grandmother used to read it to me whenever I stayed at her house.”
“My Heidi is a kitten, which right now is several months away from being a cat. I found her in the Dumpster behind my condo when I was working in Juneau.”
“Someone threw a kitten in a Dumpster?” Shiloh was horrified.
Jeremy looked from Shiloh to Melinda and back again. Melinda had instantly, easily created a connection with a daughter she hadn’t seen in over twelve years. He was relieved and unsettled at the same time. For Shiloh’s sake he wanted the meeting to go well, just not this well. He moved the chair so Melinda wouldn’t have to stand, then went to sit on the sofa next to Heidi.
“I’ve decided it was an accident,” Melinda said, settling into the chair. “I don’t like thinking there are people who would do something like that on purpose.”
“Me either. Is she okay now?”
“We’re working on it. I was late for her last feeding and when I got home she let me know late feedings were not acceptable.”
“Can I see her?”
Melinda brought her chair closer to the bed. She glanced down at her hands and saw they were shaking so hard she could easily scare Shiloh into believing there was something wrong with her. She tucked them under her legs. “Did you ever hear the expression ‘let sleeping dogs lie’?”
Shiloh shook her head.
“It’s an old-fashioned way of saying if everything is going well, don’t do anything that might change it. With Heidi, if I wake her up now, she’s going to want to eat and explore and find ways to get into trouble. And she’s going to do some of it so loudly she’s sure to draw attention and get both of us tossed out of the hospital no matter how thick I lay on the accent.”
“So why did you bring her when she could cause so many problems?”
Melinda smiled. “Because I wanted to be here to see you as long as I could and kittens as young as Heidi need to be fed every couple of hours. Your dad offered to ask Cheryl to take care of Heidi for me, but she was tied up today.”
“I have a dog,” Shiloh said.
“What kind of dog is it?”
She looked at Jeremy for help. He shrugged. “Brown?”
Melinda laughed. “That’s a good color. Is it the one I saw sitting on the porch of the cottage next door? She stares at the beach house like she’s expecting someone. Could that be you?”
“She misses me when I’m gone. Dad was working at the beach house last year, and she probably thought I was there.”
Flashes of the people Melinda had loved and lost showed themselves when Shiloh grew animated. She saw her mother in the way Shiloh tilted her head when she asked a question, and her father in the expressive way she moved her hands. Most of all, she saw an innocence and tenderness in Shiloh’s eyes that was so much like Daniel’s it filled her chest with longing.
“That’s the hard side of loving someone,” Melinda said.
“Did you miss me?” Shiloh asked, leading with her heart.
And there it was, the reason Shiloh had worked so hard to find her mother. She needed to know it had been as hard for Melinda to give her away as it was for Shiloh to see the mothers who had kept their children. “I missed you every minute of every hour of every day.”
“Then why did you give me away? I don’t understand.” Unmistakable anger threaded its way through the question. Anger laced with pain.
Jeremy got up and moved to the other side of the bed. “We talked about this, Shiloh. You told me you understood you might not like Melinda’s answers, but that you would try to deal with them.”
“It’s all right.” Melinda was both surprised and grateful for Jeremy’s understanding. “If it were me, I would want to know, too. I’ll answer your questions and I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but I think we should save those discussions for when you come home from the hospital.”
“That’s fair, Shiloh,” Jeremy said. “You don’t want strangers coming and going while you’re talking about this.”
As if on cue, a cute boy in his late teens wearing blue scrubs brought a tray with Shiloh’s dinner. He propped her up with a third pillow he took from the cupboard and rearranged the furniture to accommodate the overbed table.
Shiloh stared at Melinda. “I’m sorry,” she said, sounding as sorry as a hacker who’d cracked what was advertised as an impenetrable code. “I promised my dad I wouldn’t blast you with a hundred questions on the first day.” She lifted the lid covering her dinner plate. “Want to see my punishment?”
Melinda smiled. “My dad . . .” She swallowed at the pain that came with the memory. “Your grandfather was put on a low-sodium diet that almost made him give up eating.”
“I’m on a low-sodium diet, too. I won’t know how much salt I can have until the final tests are done.” She poked at a piece of meat that loosely resembled chicken. “There’s no way I can go to a movie and skip the popcorn. My life will never be the same.”
“Did your father have kidney disease?” Jeremy asked.
“What makes you think that?” He was right, but how could he know something so specific?
“Low sodium usually means heart or kidney problems. I had a fifty percent chance of being right no matter which one I picked.”
“Initially, it was black lung disease. It wasn’t until the last stage that other parts of his body began to fail.”
“Isn’t that something coal miners get?” Shiloh asked.
“Yes.”
“My grandfather was a coal miner?” Shiloh opened a container of bright red gelatin.
“Not by choice. My father was fifteen years old when his father left. He went to work in the mines because it was the only job available and the only way to keep the family together. He was the smartest man I’ve ever known and could have been anything he wanted to be.”
“I didn’t know they mined coal in Mississippi,” Jeremy said.
“I’m not from Mississippi.” Melinda had not only set her own trap, she’d sprung it. And now she was caught.
Shiloh frowned. “Then why was I born there?”
Jeremy stared at Melinda. “At the time, you worked pretty hard to give the impression your family came from Mississippi. Why would you do that?”
“It’s complicated.”
Jeremy came around the bed and reached for Melinda’s arm. “I think we better take this out in the hallway.”