TUESDAY
PAIGE
Aunt Kit insisted on staying with Momma that night, along with Daddy, of course, so Drake and Hannah and I went back to the house. Mrs. Swanson had turned on all the lights and set the mail in the kitchen—another three bags filled with letters—and placed on the counter four boxes of cakes and cookies from our favorite bakery, the French Broad Chocolate Lounge. She’d also left a note: Milton howling his head off so I’m taking him to sit with me. I’ll be up till nine. If you get in after that, just let him sleep over here.
I headed to Mrs. Swanson’s at six thirty, passing the other houses spread out along the ridge, each with a wraparound porch that gave a stunning view of the mountains. I stopped in front of Drake’s former home, three houses down the street from ours, on the same side. It was lit up and a dozen pumpkins adorned the stone steps out front. Drake’s parents had not liked Halloween, so seeing the eerily smiling pumpkins, carved and candlelit, made me do a double take. Drake’s mother kept the house until Drake finished high school and then put it up for sale back in 2011. They’d had to beg, borrow, and steal to get a buyer, after the housing crisis of ’08. But now somebody had made it their cozy Halloween home.
I came to Mrs. Swanson’s house and climbed the long stone stairway. The Swansons had been the first to move into the elite subdivision nestled on Bearmeadow Mountain when it was developed in the late eighties. They had moved their brood—four children and goodness knows how many cats and dogs—to this mountain paradise, which nonetheless was accessible to Asheville’s best schools. Her husband passed away a few years back, and all the kids were grown, married, and had kids of their own, so Mrs. Swanson managed her mountain home alone. She turned seventy last year, but according to her youngest daughter had more energy than all four of her children and their spouses and kids combined. I believed it. Though small in size, her strength of character matched the mountains around us. When I was a kid, if she ever glared at me, shaking her head, her permed white hair looking like a starched cloud, blue eyes blazing holy wrath, well, I paid attention.
I knocked on the door, and when Mrs. Swanson opened it our Milton greeted me with a woof and planted his paws on my sweat shirt. I grabbed his collar before he could take off down the street for home.
“Come on in, dearie.” Mrs. Swanson ushered me into the hallway as I practically lifted Milton up to keep him inside. “Now calm down! For heaven’s sake!” she addressed the dog crossly, and he gave a little groan and sank to the ground. “How is she doing, Paige dear? Any change?”
“Not much. Her score has only gone up a little.” At her blank stare, I clarified. “They rate her reactions, brain function, and other stuff. She’s twitched her fingers and flickered her eyes, which means she is no longer considered to be in a completely vegetative state.”
“Whatever that means. She’s only half a vegetable? Good grief! Well, I suppose that’s good to hear. I left the cakes on the counter and put a few more casseroles in the fridge, and made a list of everyone who came by or called.”
“You’re a saint.”
She scrunched up her brow so that her white eyebrows almost touched in the center and said, “We’re all saints, Paige, every single believer.” Mrs. Swanson attended my parents’ church and had a very literal way of interpreting the Bible.
“Yes, of course. But you’re getting extra jewels in your crown this week.” I thought she’d like my biblical reference. I winked at her, and she lifted her eyebrows and gave a fake-pious smile.
“I hope you’ve kept some food for yourself,” I added. “We’ll never be able to eat it all.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. You’ve got guests coming and going all the time.” She lowered her voice. “Saw Josy’s sister came. Finally.”
I did not want to go near that remark. Mrs. Swanson detested Aunt Kit—how was that for Christian charity? Mainly because she thought Aunt Kit was a renegade who “didn’t deserve to have poor Josy for a sister”—and our neighbor almost worshipped Momma. Of course she wouldn’t call it that.
She took a breath and continued, “That red-haired policewoman’s been poking through all the mail, yesterday and today. Always flashes her badge at me and never smiles. Just sticks her big chest out and makes her way into your house. Very irritating.”
“She’s just doing her job.”
“Well, I’ll bet you anything that woman considers it part of her job to go through the fridge and eat whatever she darn well pleases!”
I laughed. “Well, if that’s the case, she doesn’t leave any evidence.”
Mrs. Swanson wasn’t impressed with my joke.
“Thanks for everything, Mrs. Swanson. And the nurses said that soon Momma can have visitors besides family. So I hope you can come by in a day or two.”
Her face lit up. She reached down and rubbed her wrinkled hand into Milton’s sandy coat and said, “Well, I would appreciate that very much.”
“And I know she is hearing what we say. I just know it. So you be sure and tell her happy things when you come.”
———
Hannah fixed the three of us a feast from all the food the friends from church and school and Daddy’s work had left, and Drake started a fire, and we sat in the den with Milton eyeing us pitifully. Occasionally I’d toss him a piece of meat, completely against the house rules, but it seemed to me like almost all the rules had already been broken. The den—we called it the family room—had a cathedral ceiling and a stone fireplace that took your breath away. On either side was a huge picture window with an amazing view of the mountains in the distance. We used to have the youth group from church over in the fall and winter when Hannah was in high school. We’d roast marshmallows and snuggle under fleece blankets, the girls giggling about their latest crush and the boys talking about some video game until the youth pastor made a joke and got us back to talking about boys and video games and God. Somehow Bull—that’s what we called him—always tied in real life with religion. I used to love those youth weekends at our house.
In the winter Momma and Daddy and Hannah and Drake and I would all cuddle on the oversized couch and watch it snow outside—which quite honestly was better than going to the movies. Momma would say we were “experiencing joy in the exquisite simplicity of beholding creation.” That’s how she put it. Momma believed that God was always preaching sermons to us through nature and that anybody with an ounce of sense could see it, all planned out and everything.
So Hannah and Drake and I sat on the leather couch—we’d pulled it smack-dab in front of the fireplace as we’d done on a hundred other occasions—and it felt just right and at the same time not right at all, because how in the world could we keep enjoying this room without Momma lighting all the candles on the mantle and then slipping around the corner into the kitchen, where she’d be humming an old Baptist hymn and baking us something sugary and chocolate?
Milton rested his head on Drake’s knees, then wiggled over to Hannah, who knew just how to rub his tummy until he almost moaned with pleasure. We laughed a little at that, but the conversation lagged.
“When are you going back to school, Bourdy?”
“The teachers are chill—they know I need to be with Momma. No big deal.”
“Really?” Drake looked unconvinced.
“I’m serious. You think I can concentrate on AP French and physics and precalc with Momma lying in a coma? And I’m not going to spend my day in school when I can be hanging out with you and Hannie.”
Drake shrugged, then said, “What about your soccer games?”
“I’ve only missed one so far. Coach has been great. She said she knows I’ll make it up in effort.”
Drake grinned. “No doubt about that. And Hannah, when do you go back?”
“My return ticket is for this weekend.” She looked over at me. “And Daddy insists that Paige go back to school when I go back to France.”
I honestly could not remember a time when the three of us were at a loss for words, but probably a whole minute passed in silence, the only sounds the crackling of the logs in the fireplace and Milton’s deep breathing as he slept at Hannah’s feet.
Finally Drake broke the silence. “Can we talk about it? I really need to talk about it all, but I won’t if it’s too upsetting.”
“No, I mean, yes.” Hannah pulled her hair back into a ponytail, then let it fall again to her shoulders. “Yes. Me too. Paige, tell us every single thing that has happened in the past weeks and months. Not just those fan letters. But anything else, anything. . . .” She sighed. “Anything else about Momma.”
Finally, I thought. I started out cautiously. “Well, nothing that made me suspicious. No one was prowling about. The new novel got pretty good reviews—not stellar, but pretty good. And from what I could tell, it was selling okay—”
“I’m not asking about the book, Paige!” Hannah sounded annoyed. “I want to know how Momma and Daddy were doing. Had there been any problems?”
When Hannah pronounced the word problems, the three of us knew what she meant.
I shrugged. “No, they were fine.” But my voice sounded off, even to me. Momma and Daddy were never just fine. Their relationship could never be defined by a one-syllable word of mediocrity. “Momma got upset about those letters, but otherwise she kept to the routine and wrote all day and took Milton for two walks same as always, morning and evening. And sometimes she and Daddy would sit out on the porch before dinner, and after dinner if the night was clear they’d go out and look at the stars.” Far from the city lights, we could see thousands of stars on clear, dark nights.
“She was doing some kind of research for the next novel, and occasionally she’d ask me to look up something. She knew I was busy, reading about different colleges and with soccer and debate club. And she had the youth group over once last month—you know how she likes that—and I even went. Things seemed normal.” Another word that did not in any way apply to Momma.
“But what about Daddy? How was he?”
“Worried,” I blurted out without thinking. “No, not worried. Preoccupied.” There, I’d admitted it.
“About what?” This from Drake.
“No idea. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but you know he’s never missed one of my soccer games before, and he forgot, he forgot, twice, in September.”
“Your dad forgot about a soccer game?” Drake sounded incredulous.
“That’s what he claimed, but when he said it, Momma looked like she might cry.”
“Did Momma attend your games?”
“Oh, sure, she and Milton were there. But Daddy not being there freaked me out a little. I mean, seems like he could have come up with a better excuse than that he forgot. He never forgets anything.”
Drake got up and put another log on the fire, and Hannah took our empty plates back to the kitchen—Milton had licked them clean—and when she came back, I could tell she was fighting back tears.
“Sorry, Hannie.”
“No, we asked. We needed to hear.” She sat back down on the couch with me in the middle.
“It’s just . . .” I cleared my throat. Why was I sweating to pronounce the next words in front of my two most favorite people in the world? “It’s just that somehow, the way he was acting reminded me of The Awful Year.”
Hannah and Drake glanced at each other with something like dread in their eyes. I shouldn’t have pronounced those words. Not yet. Then they each put an arm around me, so that we were sandwiched close together, just like all those other times, and I got up my nerve and asked, “Hannah, what do you remember most about The Awful Year?”
“I remember that you cried every night for a month when Drake’s parents split up, and I remember Daddy taking us out on the porch and telling us about Grandmom dying, and I remember how devastated Momma was at the funeral. And then Granddad died a few months later. And Aunt Kit was drunk at Granddad’s funeral, and I think that just was the final straw to break Momma’s heart. And Daddy sent her away to La Grande Motte for a few months, just to rest.”
I nodded. Occasionally Momma went to our grandparents’ place alone. To write. But after her parents’ deaths, she went simply to recover.
Then I reached for Hannah’s hand and held on tight and whispered, “And what do you remember about Daddy during that time?”
But Hannah pulled her hand away, stood up, and started pacing in front of the fireplace. Drake took my hand in both of his. I begged Hannah with my eyes, but she shook her head and kept pacing. “I can’t remember anything about Daddy. I can’t let myself remember anything.”
JOSEPHINE
1980 . . . Mount St. Helens had just erupted the week before, and if her classmates weren’t talking about that, or stressing about end-of-the-year exams, they were raving over the new Star Wars film. But Josephine could not engage in any small talk. She’d never been good at it, but now her mind was completely preoccupied with him.
The first thing she had noticed were his eyes. His kind eyes. Josephine read eyes easily, quickly, almost immediately. Then she always asked herself: Do the eyes show hope and goodness? Do they show faith and love? How she longed for the eyes of those she cared about to shine with these qualities. But in Father’s eyes she read aloof disapproval and underneath that, a level of pure fear that someday soon his persona would crumble. Mother’s eyes held disappointment and a fierce pride. And Kit’s—oh, dear, defiant Kit. Not even rehab had changed her eyes.
But Patrick’s eyes were a warm brown shade of kindness. The only other eyes she’d known that held such kindness were Terence’s. It still broke her heart to think of her old friend. He had passed away the year before, and how she missed him.
She’d met Patrick for the first time at the end of a long Saturday with a bunch of rowdy kids. Every week she tutored a few junior high girls with the Christian parachurch group she belonged to on campus. And once a month all the tutors from several different colleges got together to play sports and feed about a hundred of these children.
She had her hands thrust in red, sudsy water, washing a big metal pan, scrubbing the stubborn bits of burnt lasagna that were still clinging to the sides. Dozens of other pots and pans were stacked all around her.
“Need some help?” he’d asked.
“No, I’m fine,” she’d said without even looking up.
“You sure are,” he had replied in a teasing way, and that’s when she spun around expecting to see another flirtatious jock, but instead, all she saw were his eyes. Then his face—which was not bad to look at either. She’d softened.
“You haven’t slowed down all day.”
She shrugged. “This is one of my favorite days of the month.”
“Really?”
“I enjoy getting off campus, forcing myself to stop studying for a while.”
“That’s why you come, to stop studying?”
She laughed. “I come because I love the kids—they’re so real. Sometimes my life at school seems so small.” She blushed. Why was she admitting deep thoughts—well, deeper than Star Wars and exams—to a stranger? “Do you go to Belleview? I haven’t seen you before.”
“I play on the soccer team—for your rival.”
“Ah. And why do you come here?”
“Well, it’s definitely not because I have to force myself to stop studying.” He’d given a warmhearted, full-bodied laugh. He had the trace of an accent . . . French, she thought. “I come to teach the kids a little about soccer, watch them have fun, and talk about faith.”
She’d fallen for him hard and attended almost every one of his soccer games, cheering unabashedly for the rival team when they played her school. He was tall and sturdy, broad shouldered, athletic. But so unimpressed with himself or anyone else. At ease with himself. Patrick Bourdillon, despite being French and having an aristocratic and romantic sounding name, was utterly true to what he believed in—simplicity and fun. To Patrick, life was a game and he loved playing it. There was always a chance for a comeback or a last-second save.
He lived his Christian faith in much the same way—exuberantly, naturally, contagiously. Josephine never really understood what attracted Patrick to her—the brooding, melancholic, perfectionistic girl—but she was thankful for it, whatever it was.
———
Every star was out behind her parents’ house. Patrick had agreed to be her date for their summer party. Josephine wished she could have introduced him to Terence.
“You look very handsome in that suit,” she said. “Almost as good as in your soccer uniform.”
“Wouldn’t want to disappoint your parents the first time they meet me.” He took her hand, and she felt light and carefree. “So tell me a story, Feeny.” She liked that he’d found a nickname for her that no one else used. And she liked that he wanted to hear her stories.
“How about a poem?”
“Poem will do.”
She stared up at the dotted sky, then closed her eyes and listened to the blending of peoples’ voices.
“A million stars chattered on about earth
Like who was poor, and what the rich were worth.
Enough to feed the Milky Way one night?
Enough to follow Saturn’s nocturnal flight?
God said, ‘Not paradise or sky or cloud
Holds wealth of which humanity is proud
’Tis paper and coins of which the heav’ns know not
That bring man wealth until his mind’s forgot
The beauty of night, the strength of sun and moon;
Nor doth he know his wealth will vanish soon.”
Patrick clapped his hands, lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Did you just make that up?”
“Of course. It’s a silly habit. Making up poems, the first thing that comes to my mind. They never mean anything.”
“That one kind of means something, doesn’t it? And in iambic pentameter to boot.”
“Well, well. My soccer player knows about iambic pentameter!” She laughed. Oh, how he made her laugh, even when that wasn’t his intention. “Don’t be impressed, Patrick. It’s the only thing I know how to do—make up poems and stories. I can’t cook or dance or . . .”
But he grabbed her around the waist and said, “I’ll teach you to dance. And as for cooking, my French grandmother has taught me a thing or two over the years.”
And she laughed again, a trill, a delight.
That first time Josephine introduced Patrick to her family, Mother and Father raised their eyebrows. He’d grown up in France, his family was part of the bourgeoisie. He even had a lovely accent. But soccer? Soccer wasn’t a career. Soccer was just a game.
Kit, home on a rare visit, raised her eyebrows too, but Josephine recognized, with a sick little twitter in her stomach, what those raised eyebrows meant. “I think soccer players have the sexiest legs,” Kit purred.
Patrick chuckled. “If you say so, Kit,” and he’d winked at Josephine.
———
“Well, go on. Say what everyone else says.” They were walking to his car after the visit.
“Which is? You have an interesting family?”
“No. That I have the most beautiful sister anyone has ever seen.”
He actually looked pained at her statement. “I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.” He pulled Josephine close, holding her around the waist. “But I do know something. She has an absolutely beautiful sister. And she’s the one I want.”
Josephine couldn’t find her voice for a few moments. “Thank you for saying it, Patrick.”
“I said it because I meant it. I don’t give fake compliments, Feeny. What you see is what you get.”
He drove her back to school, parked his car in a spot reserved for staff, and laughed when Josephine chided him.
“It’s two in the morning. I can leave it here for thirty minutes.”
They strolled across the campus, and he left her at the entrance to her dorm. “I know that probably was no fun, growing up in your sister’s shadow. But that’s over. Let it be over.”
When he kissed her, every thought left her head and she melted into him, right there on the dorm steps where anyone could see.
———
1981 . . . He made everything seem possible. All the stuff that overwhelmed her, to Patrick was a game. But she had to tell him. “Sometimes I get very down. I go to really dark places in my mind, Patrick, and it scares me. I start wondering if maybe all the stuff I say I believe doesn’t really work for me. I’m afraid to tell you the truth, afraid you’ll freak out and go away. . . .”
“Shhh. I’m not going anywhere, Feeny.” His big rough hand covered hers. “I’ll be right here, no matter how dark it gets.”
“Do you think it’s true, Patrick, what the psalmist says? ‘If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to You. And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.”’ Is it true?”
“Feeny, what makes you ask me that question?”
“I believe Jesus is with me, all the time. But if He is and yet I still feel such darkness, such shame, well, maybe I’m just making the whole thing up. Maybe the idea of redemption, of forgiveness, is too big.” She watched to see if he backed away as her mother had the one time she’d tried to explain the darkness to her.
“Oh, sugar,” Mother had said, “you are sweetness incarnate. Don’t you let anything worry your little head.”
The only person who had ever really understood was Kit. But Kit had descended into a much darker pit than Josephine could even imagine, and she couldn’t reach her anymore.
“I have my faith in Christ, I have material comfort, I have work that blesses me and others and mostly, mostly, I have you. So how can there still be darkness?”
“You’re an artist, Feeny. You have a mind that thinks deeply about things. And I’ve never met another person who is as sensitive as you are—you feel everything, and it becomes a lot to carry.”
Yes, for so long it had been a crushing load that weighed her down, that bent her to the ground.
He cupped her chin in his hand. “Hey, Feeny. Feeny, look at me. I’ll help you carry it. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”
———
1984 . . . It was just like Kit to make a grand entrance on Josephine’s wedding day. Her bridesmaids were fiddling with her hair and her mother was fastening the last of the beautifully covered silk buttons on the wedding dress when Kit stumbled into the church parlor. She mumbled a feeble excuse for her tardiness. Then, “Will someone pull-eese help me fix this dress?” she demanded, mixing in plenty of four-letter epithets.
Embarrassed, Josephine said, “Mother, you go on and help her. I’m fine.”
But as her mother whisked Kit to the ladies’ room, Josephine missed those last whispered moments between mother and daughter, and she felt a pinching in her soul.
Thank goodness Kit didn’t make a fool of herself during the ceremony. Josephine looped her arm through her father’s and pecked his cheek. “My little girl. My little angel.” At least Father was sober for the occasion.
All through the reception Josephine smiled and nodded and watched Kit out of the corner of her eye. Kit insisting on a dance with Patrick, Kit talking way too loudly, her words slurred, Kit sobbing when Josephine tossed the bouquet, Kit wearing the bridesmaid’s gown so low off the shoulder that it showed way too much cleavage.
Josephine pretended not to notice, pretended that her dear friends who surrounded her and hugged her and whispered silliness in her ear could truly shield her from Kit’s antics. In reality, she was counting the minutes until Patrick would spirit her off with no way for Kit to follow.
They spent two weeks on their honeymoon in France, tucked away at the chic apartment in La Grande Motte. Alone! There in La Grande Motte, lying next to her lover, her husband, with the fiery sun setting over the Mediterranean just outside the window, the demons were far, far away, and she felt at peace.
The second week they ventured three hours north to Lyon to visit Patrick’s parents who, in turn, drove them around France so she could meet all the relatives who hadn’t been able to attend the wedding. Then they came back south to see Patrick’s beloved grandmother who lived in Montpellier, and all the while Josephine blushed and babbled in baby French. A fairy tale—she was living a fairy tale. No screaming parents, no inebriated Kit, no taunting whispers in her mind. Just Patrick and France.
PAIGE
We ended the evening by praying for Momma—well, Drake and Hannah prayed really sincere, heartfelt prayers, and I just listened. Then Drake pulled out the sofa bed in the den, which he’d slept on for months after his parents’ divorce, and Hannah went up to her old room on the second floor. I had planned to go to sleep too, and climbed to the third floor. But instead of turning to go into my room, I went into Momma’s office. The moon, a dazzling white, made the tree outside her window cast dancing shadows across the spines of those old, old books. I watched them for a moment, then flipped on the lights.
Every book in The Chalet held a memory. I reached to a shelf and fingered the brittle cover jacket of Gone with the Wind. 1936, first edition. Signed by Mrs. Mitchell herself. Beside it, early editions of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I could smell my past in those books, could feel the delight of sneaking into The Chalet and finding a stool and standing up high to get to this shelf. I’d pick one—maybe The Black Stallion Returns or Misty of Chincoteague or A Little Princess—and I’d cuddle up with my book, snuggled in my bed across the hall under a hundred-year-old quilt, with my ceiling falling away on either side of my bed, just as it did in this room. During The Awful Year, when I was nine, I read a children’s illustrated version of A Tale of Two Cities three times, finding in that tale of woe the only way I knew of escaping our own tale of woe with the whispers, the clawing grief, the hollow sound of an empty house.
“Momma! What’s the matter, Momma?”
I escaped The Awful Year. That was the title we gave it, Hannah and I. We titled everything in our lives, as if Momma were writing our stories—which in a sense she was. Most of the titles held a little hint of playfulness: The Year of the Crazy Crushes, The Month of Mono and Murder Mysteries, The Tequila Time, The Magnificent Month at the Motte, The Days of Drake, and on and on and on. . . .
But we found nothing the least bit humorous about The Awful Year, so the name stayed simply awful: the year both of Momma’s parents died, the year of the financial decline, the year when Drake’s parents divorced. The year that Daddy . . .
But I couldn’t go there. Could not revisit that pain.
I ran my fingers over the novels’ spines, then put the stool back by the wall, as if I were afraid Detective Blaylock would notice that I’d moved it and question me.
I sat down at Momma’s desk and opened her laptop, which Officer Hanley had returned. The computer lit up with Hannah’s lovely face bent over that sunflower. I went to Momma’s fan mail account and read through the latest emails.
Please get well, Mrs. Bourdillon. You are my favorite author, and your books have changed my life.
You’ve given me healing and offered me hope.
I’m sorry I never wrote you before. I hope and pray that you can read this, or someone will read it to you.
I’m praying for you, Mrs. Bourdillon.
Email after email, from the thirteen-year-old girl who dreamed of being a writer to the eighty-three-year-old great-grandmother who read all of Momma’s books and then passed them on to her daughters and granddaughters, they all had a similar thread. Thank you for writing your books. They’ve been important in my life.
Momma always said that the painful things in life got redeemed in her stories. “It’s like what C. S. Lewis talks about, Paige. He says that even though pain hurts, that doesn’t discredit what the Bible says about people being made perfect through suffering.”
I didn’t want to think about C. S. Lewis and pain. I clicked back on the last email and read it again. The next time I sat with Momma, I’d read her more of these messages, as well as the snail mail. Maybe in her semivegetative state the words would travel into her brain. And lying there, as her brain rested, she’d actually believe what these people had written, and then the other things that swirled and tumbled around in her beautiful, sometimes-tormented mind would be quieted for just a little while.
HENRY
I couldn’t quite believe I was here again, same as last night but with everything completely different. Dr. Martin met us at the Mission Hospital at ten that evening, and by that time Jase was in a room and pretty stable—at least he was sleeping.
“Surgery tomorrow morning—I’m bumping my other patient—he’s got to have it now.”
Libby was trembling. “But you said he needed to be strong enough for surgery. Is he strong enough now?”
And there was that big, important doctor towering over my little Libby, putting his big, skilled hand on her thin shoulder and saying, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hughes, but we don’t have a choice.”
Libby grabbed me tight around the waist and buried her head in my chest and cried.
The surgeon’s voice didn’t sound soothing, but his words were okay. “Remember, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes, there’s a good chance we can repair his heart so that he won’t need any more surgeries.”
But I didn’t hear the words repair his heart after Dr. Martin had left. All I heard again and again and again was that maybe my boy wouldn’t need any more surgeries. Maybe not, because he’d be dead.
Libs and I decided she’d go on and drive back home and get to her work on Wednesday morning while I stayed during the operation. She couldn’t risk losing her job—that’d mean we’d lose our health insurance too. It didn’t pay for a lot, but it was something. I knew Mr. Dan wasn’t gonna like my call, but at least we’d finished the project that had been stressing him out for the past month. And Libby’s boss, well, he counted on her to keep his schedule—said she was the most organized assistant he’d ever had—but he didn’t have a real tender side.
“He’s got several important meetings tomorrow, and if I’m not there, he’ll throw a fit.” Poor Libby; she had a boss with a temper almost as bad as mine.
The doctor had already told us we couldn’t stay in Jase’s room that night, but a nurse explained to Libby about the place where families of patients from out of town could stay.
“It’s free, babe,” she reported to me, “and there’s a room open tonight. I’ll drop you off there, and they’ll get you back in the morning so you can see Jase before surgery.”
The hope that sang out of Libby warmed me a bit, helped calm all the crazy thoughts that kept rumbling around in my mind.
About midnight Libs and I went into Jase’s room. All the machines were lighted up and helping him breathe, and Libs went over and bent down and brushed away all that hair and kissed him on the forehead.
“I love you, Jase,” she whispered. “I love you so much it hurts. A good hurt, you know. A corn-puddin’ kind of good.” He didn’t wake up, and I didn’t say anything to him at all, because my voice wasn’t always as calming on him.
Libby followed the directions to the hospitality house, a big ole sprawling place, far as I could tell in the dark, and soon as we drove in that circle driveway, an older couple came out to greet us, real friendly like, even though it was after midnight.
I left my overnight bag in the lobby, and I walked Libby out to the pickup. The moon was full and so bright. I held her and said, “It’s gonna work out—it’s all gonna work out. Now you drive real safe back home and try to sleep a little. I’ll call you at work soon as he gets out of surgery.”
“If I see my boss and explain it, I know he’ll let me come back. I just have to see him in person. Then he’ll understand.”
I watched her drive away, my pretty little wife. I knew she’d put on the radio to some religious station that played hopeful music or maybe some kind of sermon all night long. She’d drive and cry and pray.
The old couple showed me to my room, and I thanked them. For the past few hours I hadn’t thought one second about Miz Bourdillon, but now, in that real nice big room with her book as my only companion, I started reading again. And I couldn’t help thinking about the kindness of the staff at the hospital and that couple here at the hospitality house waiting up for us, and being so kind and thoughtful, and how they wouldn’t be welcoming us like this if they knew who I was.
But they didn’t. Thank God, they didn’t.