It was only ten in the morning and Greg felt it had to be seven or eight in the evening again. He hadn’t had a day filled with this kind of emotional upheaval in twenty years. Through everything, he marveled at Miranda and her quiet courage. For someone who only weeks before was chained to her home by panic attacks, she had made incredible progress. He continued to be moved by the examples of God’s grace in her life and in the lives of her family.
While he sat with her outside the ICU where her parents worked out issues he could only imagine, Winnie found them. Her face was puffy and tear streaked. “Pastor Greg, I hate to ask you for even more help, but you’re the only one I can imagine helping me.”
“Is it something regarding your father?” Greg wondered how possibly losing her father and brother within days of each other might affect this woman. For anyone of lesser faith he would have worried about their spiritual well-being. With Winnie he worried more about what kind of physical toll the loss would take on a woman of sixty, even one as healthy as Miranda’s aunt.
“Yes, it’s Father. He is still unresponsive and his doctors are afraid that he may never regain consciousness. And on top of everything else he’s showing signs of pneumonia.” Winnie’s shoulders slumped. “After all he’s been through lately, I had hoped he’d go quietly in his own bed. Now it doesn’t seem that’s going to happen.”
“Shall we find the hospital chapel, or do you want me to go with you to sit at his bedside?”
“I think perhaps the chapel,” Winnie said. “I need to feel some peace to discover God’s will in all of this.”
Nodding, Greg looked at Miranda. “Do you want to go with us or wait here? I can make sure on our way to the chapel that some of your sisters come join you.”
“I’ll go get them. You be with Winnie.” Miranda stood and gave her aunt a gentle hug. “This just isn’t what we expected, is it?”
“Not the best or the worst of it. I kept hoping we’d find Trudy alive and well. I never dreamed she’d turn up under our roof.”
The three of them walked as far as the waiting room, where the rest of the Blanchards gathered. Then Miranda joined her sisters and Greg guided Winnie to the small hospital chapel. He felt thankful that they had the place to themselves. With all the serious cases that came through Stoneley Memorial, there was often more than one family here seeking comfort or guidance.
They weren’t alone there for long. Before Greg could do much more than start praying aloud for guidance, a doctor rushed into the room. “Miss Blanchard, you need to come with me now. And if this is your pastor, you may want him to join us.”
A quick trip through the halls and on an elevator marked Staff Only brought them to Howard’s bedside. “His heart rhythm is irregular and I understand he doesn’t wish to be resuscitated.”
“That’s correct. Is he in any pain?” Winnie’s face looked drawn.
“No. He’s nearly comatose and beyond any pain he might have felt earlier.” In a few moments Miranda and her sisters slipped into the room by ones and twos. When Greg started reciting the Twenty-third Psalm he could hear Winnie and several of her nieces join him. With those sweet, low voices surrounding him, Howard Blanchard slipped out of this life.
“Should we tell Father?” Miranda asked when it was over.
“If I were making the decision, I might wait for him to ask. He’ll probably know without being told.” Greg couldn’t find the words to explain to her why this was so, but he’d seen it more than once in the past seven years.
“Even if you don’t tell him right away, you need to go to him,” Winnie told him. “And you girls need to go as well. Leave me here with your grandfather a while. And if someone would call Tate I’d appreciate it.”
Bianca gave a tremulous smile. “I already did that, Aunt Winnie. He should be here anytime.”
“Then let’s go back to the ICU,” Greg said. “I want to be there when your parents finish talking.”
“Me, too,” Miranda said, taking his hand.
“We’re going to break the rules,” Ronald’s nurse told them when they got to the ICU. “You’re going to help me and you’re going to keep quiet about it, right?”
“Right.” Greg knew this particular nurse and if she was asking him to break a hospital rule, it had to be important.
“There should only be two people in with Mr. Blanchard at the same time, but I think the four of you need to be in there together.”
He didn’t argue. When they got into the cubicle the sight that met them surprised him. Ronald and Trudy were holding hands and Trudy was insisting that Ronald put his oxygen mask back on. “I promise, Ron, I’ll tell them exactly what you said. You can listen and if I don’t, you can take that thing off, all right?
“You’re the pastor at Unity, aren’t you? Ron wants you to marry us, and do it within the next half hour, because he says he’s ready to die. I’d believe he didn’t have a chance, expect that I’ve heard from his nurses that if he’d agree to be transferred to another hospital they could save him.” She looked over at Ronald. “Is that right so far?”
Ronald nodded, still looking as if he wanted to take off the mask. “I’ve told Ron that we both need to work some things out, to confess things to each other and to God before we consider remarrying. I’ve also told him that I’ll promise to marry him again if he goes to Portland to the…the…what do they call it?” She looked over at Ronald again and he wrote on his notepad.
“Right. The hyperbaric chamber. Will you witness that promise, Reverend Brown? And would you agree to marry us if he fulfills his part of it?”
Normally a decision like this was something Greg would approach with a couple of days of reading Scripture, prayer and talking at length to everybody involved. This time these two people needed him to make a decision in twenty minutes or less.
“I think I’ve already witnessed the promise by listening to you, Trudy. And I’ll agree to perform a marriage ceremony if you’re both sure you want it.”
“All right. Now will you get on the helicopter, Ron?”
Ronald grimaced and pulled aside the mask for a moment. “If I want to marry you, do I have a choice?”
“Put that back on. And no, you don’t.”
Greg looked over at Miranda, who had watched all this silently. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Now how are we going to get the rest of us to Portland if you go by helicopter, Father?”
Ronald ripped off the top page of paper on his notepad. “Private plane. Take everybody that will fit with your mother,” he wrote.
While the rest of what he’d seen from Ronald Blanchard today had been different, this looked like the old take-charge Ronald. Normally he’d be dismayed by that but right now it felt like another gift from God.
He turned to share that feeling with Miranda but she was gone, beside her mother and talking about getting to the hospital. “You’re here with us, Mama, and that’s all that matters. We’ll work it all out no matter what it takes.” They didn’t notice when Greg left the cubicle.
Was this the last time she would see Gregory? Miranda looked up to where the handsome pastor stood in the pulpit delivering the eulogy at her grandfather’s funeral.
Unity was filled with people. After six years of his illness, Miranda was amazed that this many people would mourn the passing of Howard Blanchard. At least the hordes of tabloid reporters had come and gone now, perhaps for the last time. When the family had presented a solid front after the fire that nearly destroyed their home, the media had focused on Peg Henderson instead. In her life and history they’d found plenty of fodder for numerous scandalous stories.
How had Peg ever hidden her past so thoroughly when she’d targeted Howard as her next victim? Miranda couldn’t imagine living an entire life with as much lying, deceit and scheming as Peg had in forty-five years. Her burial had been attended only by a few reporters who noted that the Blanchard family made sure she wasn’t buried in an unmarked grave. Now, several days later, those same reporters sat in some of the back rows of Howard’s memorial.
The front row of the church filled Miranda with a sense of awe. Only a week after the fire her parents sat together clasping hands. Trudy had a complex plan of therapy to follow that took her back to the hospital on a daily basis. And Ronald in his dark suit didn’t show the trauma of late. He was only here for the service, with six women prepared to escort him back to his room at Stoneley Memorial if he showed the least sign of flagging. In fact there were probably more like eight women, if his assistant Barbara Sanchez and his sister were added to the mix. Both had clucked over him almost as much as Trudy and his daughters.
Life might have been perfect except for one thing: the last time she’d had a moment alone with Gregory was when they walked to the intensive care unit after her grandfather’s death. And the lack of communication seemed to suit him just fine. It was as if he’d come to a decision that the two of them were, after all, just friends. The sadness Miranda felt over that was deeper than the loss of her grandfather. At least she had the comfort that Howard was done with his pain and confusion, and she could picture him reunited with Grandmother Ethel.
Gregory motioned Ronald up to the pulpit to speak. Miranda and her sisters had argued against it, but their father insisted. His voice was still raspy and low from the smoke damage, and he had to lean closer to the microphone than he normally would. She had never noticed how much silver streaked his temples these days, or perhaps the past two weeks had painted more there.
“My father, Howard Blanchard, was a proud and self-reliant man. Before illness dimmed his senses, he was known as one of the sharpest businessmen in New England. He groomed me to follow in his footsteps and, God help me, for many years I did just that. To quote Charles Dickens, we both should have realized that ‘mankind should have been our business,’ not striving to make a bigger company out of Blanchard Fabrics.
“To his credit, I will say that my father loved his granddaughters fiercely. They were his joy even after Alzheimer’s disease made it difficult for him to recognize them on occasion. When I was a child he showed me and my sister the same kind of love. It was only after we lost my mother that he became quite as intense about his work. When my mother died it was as if the light of his life went with her. I can only hope now that he has found God’s peace.”
Ronald stood silently and collected himself for a moment, and took a swallow of the water that Greg had placed there for him. He seemed to sway slightly, and Miranda almost got out of her seat. She noticed that her mother, Bianca and Winnie all seemed to mirror her action. They all visibly relaxed when he straightened and went on.
“I was not able to be at my father’s bedside for his passing, but Pastor Greg has told me that the family members who were there recited the Twenty-third Psalm as he died. I know that hearing that passage was a comfort to him in his last years of life and I regret that I didn’t think to read it to him far more often than I did. As a tribute to him and as a testimony to the Lord I know he believed in, I’d like to ask you to recite it with me now.”
The crowd had joined him by the time Ronald got to “I shall not want,” and Miranda felt lifted up by hearing the words of comfort on so many lips.
When her father went back to his seat, Gregory spoke about Howard’s last days and the unfortunate nature of his death. He didn’t go into detail but merely noted that the family had done everything in their power to make sure he was comfortable and in familiar surroundings as long as possible. “It’s a shame that intent was taken away from them by someone they trusted. The doctors have tried to assure the family that Howard was unaware of the trauma to the home he cared for so deeply. They tell us he slipped away peacefully to another mansion, one that was prepared for him long ago.”
At the end of the service Gregory announced to those present that after a short graveside service everyone was welcome to join the family back at Unity’s fellowship hall. In any other circumstance Miranda knew that everyone would have gone back to the house, but there was no house to go back to. For now they were taking up half-a-dozen rooms at the inn while Tate Connolly, Brandon and Leo all scrambled to set up temporary living quarters in properties they owned near town.
The next few hours blurred together. Miranda never lost sight of Gregory but at the same time never made eye contact, either. She went back and forth to the cemetery in the same limousine as Delia, Bianca and Leo, none of them saying much. Back at the church she made tepid conversation with people she barely knew who expressed their sympathy for her loss when she really felt like asking them how they could possibly understand what she had lost.
There was a knot in her throat and she had to get out of this building. Picking up her cup of tea, Miranda went outside to the gardens surrounding the church. They’d anticipated so many people coming to her grandfather’s services that someone had erected several green-and-white striped pavilions. It was only after she sat down at a table under one that it reminded her of the wedding reception where she’d first met Greg. It was less than a month ago, but felt like a lifetime.
A month ago she would have collapsed in a panic attack in a situation like this, but that was all in the past. Instead Miranda just buried her face in her hands and gave in to the tears that threatened to swamp her.
“I can’t do this anymore.” The deep voice sounded in her ear just before Gregory pulled her up out of her chair, wrapping his arms around her. “I know half of Stoneley is watching and I know you don’t love me but I can’t watch you cry.”
She pulled the crisp linen handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his suit, unwilling to move otherwise for fear he’d let go of her. “Of course I love you, Gregory. What could make you think otherwise?”
“You didn’t need me anymore after you found your mother, and I didn’t want to force myself on you. You’ve lost so much, Miranda, and through it all I watched you grow in faith and confidence. When you told your mother that day at the hospital that her well-being was all that mattered I knew it was time to let you go.”
“Gregory, the only loss I’ve had in the last ten days that really mattered was thinking I’d lost your love. After you told me about your family down in the cave, you seemed to shut down. Then Peg shot you and she could have killed you all on my account.” Her voice shook. “How could I possibly ask you to be with me after that? I’m the imperfect product of an extremely imperfect family and I may never get any better than I am right now.”
He tilted her head up to face him and just the feel of his fingertips under her chin made a thrill go through her.
“Would it help to know I don’t care? That I think you’re the most courageous person I’ve ever met, and I’d like to see how that courage ages for at least the next fifty or sixty years?” Greg said.
“Sixty years?” Miranda wanted to giggle. “That would make us both over ninety, Gregory.”
“Hey, you’re the one who keeps reminding me that for God, nothing is impossible. I told you that once, Miranda, and you’ve brought it back into my life so that I believe it in a whole new way.”
Miranda could see the promise of his love through her tears. “So do I. It won’t ever get old, will it, this knowing that for God anything is possible? Even working something out for people like the two of us?”
“Especially for working life out for people like us, love. And not just people like us, but for us particularly. It’s His promise to us.”
Smiling up at Greg, Miranda felt no surprise at all when he sealed his words with a kiss.
“Good,” she told him when he let her breathe again. “I want to see what impossibility He gets us through first.”