When Daniel reached the hospital, he learned that his mother had signed the paperwork necessary to go forward with the surgery later that afternoon.
“Mom, we should talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. My hip is shot. The doctors can replace it. As I have heard you say on numerous occasions, ‘it’s a done deal.’”
“Are you scared, Grams?”
It always amazed Daniel that just about the time he thought there might be no hope for his daughter to become more than a spoiled little rich girl, she would show this caring side of her personality.
“I am, a bit,” his mother admitted, holding out her hand to Jazz. “Will you pray for me?”
Jazz took Ella’s hand between hers and nodded. “Sure. There’s a chapel right here in the hospital. We passed it on our way up here.”
“And take your father with you—and Jo, if she’s around. Can’t have too many prayers, right?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Jazz assured her.
“And now, Jasmine dear, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind waiting outside while your father and I talk a little business.”
“Sure. I could get you some ice cream.”
Ella smiled. “Maybe after the surgery. Right now they’ve got me on this.” She motioned to the intravenous drip on the opposite side of the bed.
“Right. Now I remember. Dad got me ice cream after my tonsils came out.” She leaned in and kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “It’s going to be fine, Grams,” she said, but her voice broke and she hurried out of the room without saying any more.
“Stay in the waiting room,” Daniel called after her. He couldn’t help feeling torn between his daughter’s need for reassurance and his mother’s understandable anxiety as she faced surgery that could possibly have a life-changing outcome. He went to Ella’s bedside and took her hand.
“Mom, Jazz is right. Everything is going to turn out all right.”
“Well, of course it is. Now, stop wasting time and listen to me.” She indicated with a nod of her head that he should sit down. “Now then, while I am certain everything will turn out just fine, we need to face facts. I am not a young woman and surgery is—well, surgery.”
“Mom…”
“If something should go wrong, the doctor knows my wishes and has my living will on file, so that’s not the concern. The concern is what will happen to the farm once I’m gone. I have not spent my entire life working that land and keeping up that place to have you sell it off to some developer, Daniel.”
“Do we really need to talk about this now?” he asked with a glance toward the door.
“Jasmine will be fine. She has our resiliency, thank goodness. But that farm is her legacy, Daniel.”
Daniel could not imagine Jazz spending any time on the farm except under duress, and his expression must have said so.
“Oh, right now she thinks the place is the outer banks of never,” Ella continued, “but thanks to you and Gloria, she has had an unsettled life. I want her to know that she has this one place that will always be there no matter where she goes. If she never spends another day there, so be it. It’s the idea that she has this place called home—and for that matter, so do you.”
Daniel stood and paced the small room. “Mom, I know you’re nervous about the surgery, but this kind of talk is…”
“Straight talk, young man. Facing realities. Something you used to be quite adept at. God willing, the entire conversation is unnecessary at this time, but if not now…when?”
“If you want to leave Jazz a legacy, then leaving her the farm is fine, but don’t tie her to a promise that she won’t sell the place. You know what land on this island is worth. Why would you…”
“Because you cannot put a price tag on home,” Ella replied as the nurse and an orderly entered the room. “Ah, my escorts have arrived. Give me a kiss, dear, and then go find Jazz.”
After kissing Ella’s forehead, Daniel walked alongside as the orderly steered the gurney through the hallway to the elevator. “See you in a bit,” Ella called gaily as the elevator doors slid shut. Daniel swallowed his own fears and went in search of his daughter.
The crew left after they finished setting up and testing the sprinkler system. Jo was on her own now. She could certainly handle the bulk of the work involved in nurturing and harvesting ten acres of well-established cranberry vines. She stored the tools in the large prefabricated storage shed that stood a hundred yards beyond the farmhouse, checked the repaired hybrid plants and then went back to the cottage.
She’d called the hospital earlier, knowing Ella would be awake at dawn. Ella had told her she’d decided to go forward with the hip replacement surgery and asked Jo to pray for her. There was no point in calling the hospital now, she thought as she showered and changed. She wasn’t family and the receptionist would be unlikely to give her information about Ella’s condition. The surgery should be just getting started.
Why hadn’t she given Daniel her cell number and asked him to call?
“Because that would have been the sensible thing to do and there’s something about being around that man—and his kid—that seems to make good common sense fly right out the window,” she grumbled as she towel dried her short hair.
Fifteen minutes later she was in her truck and on her way to the hospital. She’d stopped once to check Ella’s house and found the door unlocked, the kitchen sink filled with dirty dishes and the coffeemaker still on. Shaking her head, she turned off the appliance, washed the dishes and left them to air dry then switched on the outside lights. It would be after dark before Daniel and Jazz returned. She locked the door behind her.
She’d just stepped off the elevator at the hospital when she saw Jazz walking very quickly down the hall. The teen’s head was bent, her face obscured by her long hair, but her demeanor exuded obvious distress.
“Jazz?”
The girl paused, glanced back and then kept walking. In that instant Jo saw that she was crying and hurried to catch up with her. “What’s happened?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice calm even as her throat tightened with panic. “Did the surgery…”
“They haven’t taken her to surgery yet—some delay. She told me…” The girl swallowed a sob, then blurted, “She told me to pray for her.”
“Well, that’s not a bad idea,” Jo murmured as her heart slowed to a more normal beat and she was able to focus all of her attention on the girl. “Come on. I’ll pray with you.”
Jo took it as a mark of just how frightened the girl was that Jazz did not resist when Jo wrapped her arm around her shoulder and led the way down the hall to the hospital chapel. Inside they took chairs in the front row. Jo looked up at the small stained-glass window while Jazz glanced sideways at her and muttered something indecipherable.
“What?” Jo whispered, in spite of the fact they were the only occupants of the room.
“I don’t know how to pray,” Jazz said through gritted teeth. “I went to Sunday school when I was a kid, but the ’rents were never big on the church thing.”
Jo responded with the first thing that came to mind. “Not even your dad?” After all, she didn’t know Jazz’s mother, but any son of Ella’s would surely have been raised with a strong sense of faith.
“He works most Sundays. You know a hotel is 24/7 year-round.” Jazz sounded more like her defensive self. She waited a beat. “So, can you show me how? Grams is counting on me.”
Okay, this temporary farming idea was turning out to be a whole lot more complicated than Jo or her brother had ever imagined. What did she know about mentoring a teenage girl? What did she know about teaching anyone how to pray? A person just did it.
“Well, everybody has their own way, I guess.”
“So, what’s your way?”
“I just sit quietly and think about whatever is on my mind that needs God’s intervention—or that has turned out well because of God’s intervention—and then I consider all the ways I’ve been blessed.”
Jazz faced forward, clasped her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. After ten seconds she started tapping one foot impatiently. Then she sighed. “Nothing,” she lamented. “Aren’t I supposed to feel something?” she asked Jo.
Peace. Reassurance. God’s promise that life has purpose and meaning.
Jo reached for the Bible on the table that served as an altar. “Let’s try it this way,” she said, flipping through the onionskin pages until she found what she wanted, even as she prayed that God would give her the guidance she needed to help this child.
Suddenly she had an idea. “Jazz, do you ever practice yoga?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Come here.” Jo moved from the chair to the floor, where she folded her legs in the traditional yoga seated position. Jazz gave her an exasperated look, but followed her lead.
“Now what?”
“Close your eyes,” Jo instructed. “Breathe.”
In less than a minute the strained lines around the girl’s mouth and eyes had smoothed and she was breathing deeply. Jo opened the Bible and in a low voice began reading the Twenty-third Psalm. When she came to the line about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, she hesitated and glanced up.
Tears were leaking from under Jazz’s closed lids and her lips were moving. Unaware that Jo had stopped reading, she was going on with the psalm, clearly drawing on a memory from those days when she had attended Sunday school and probably memorized the verses. Matching her words to Jazz’s lip-syncing, Jo finished reading the psalm. She waited a beat and then quietly added, “Amen.”
After a moment, Jazz’s lids fluttered open and she glanced around as if she had forgotten where she was. Then in a voice filled with awe she whispered, “I feel…better.”
Jo breathed a silent prayer of thanks and got to her feet. “Good. How about we go find your dad and see how things are going?”
The last thing Daniel expected to see was Jo Cooper coming out of the chapel with Jazz, and for once his daughter wasn’t scowling. When he hadn’t found Jazz in the waiting room or downstairs in the hospital’s coffee café, he remembered that his mother had asked her to pray for her. It had seemed a long shot, but he preferred to think his daughter might have gone to the chapel, rather than entertain his fear that once again she had seen her chance to get back to New York and had run away.
“Dad! How’s Grams?”
“They took her up to surgery about twenty minutes ago.” Daniel included Jo in the delivery of this news.
“She’ll be fine, Dad,” Jazz assured him. “Are you okay?”
If he lived to be a hundred, Daniel did not think he would ever get used to the rhythms that guided the teenage mind. One minute his daughter was pure attitude and rebellion, and the next she was the caring young woman he had always hoped she would become.
“Fine, honey. How about we grab some lunch?” Again, he included Jo.
“Why don’t the two of you go on to the waiting room and I’ll go to the café and bring something up?”
“I’ll get it,” Jazz said, holding out her hand to Daniel.
“Turkey sandwich and water?”
Daniel nodded and handed her a twenty.
“Jo?”
“Oh, just some hot tea,” Jo said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“You have to eat,” Daniel insisted in a perfect imitation of his mother. “Get two turkey sandwiches and some chips,” he told Jazz before adding another five to the money.
“How do you know I’m not a vegetarian?” Jo asked after Jazz had caught the elevator and they were on their way back to the waiting room.
“I don’t. Are you? I can go catch Jazz and…”
“Nope. Carnivore,” Jo assured him. “And thanks for lunch.”
Daniel grinned. “Better hold off on that. Hospital food is usually not exactly fine dining.”
“How bad can they mess up a turkey sandwich?” Jo sat down and picked up a magazine while Daniel checked in with the nurse’s station.
“No news,” he said after returning and taking the seat next to her. “That’s good, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure of it.” Jo resumed flipping through the magazine to cover her own anxiety about Ella. “Your mother is a strong woman. A wonderful woman.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Daniel leaned forward, hands dangling between his knees. “Look, whatever you did to help Jazz in the chapel just now, thanks for that.”
“She’s just worried about Ella. We all are.”
“Mom and I had a talk before they took her to surgery.” He swallowed. “About what she wanted if things didn’t…” He looked toward the window and didn’t finish the thought.
Jo laid the magazine aside and gave Daniel her full attention. “From what I know of Ella, she’s a practical woman. I expect she’s thought a great deal about that, the same way she’s given a lot of thought to her future if things go well.”
“Planting a whole new bed of hybrids that won’t produce for another three years? At her age? How practical is that?”
“Chronological age is a number.” She hesitated. “Take you, for instance.”
Daniel felt his defenses automatically kick into a higher gear. “What about me?”
“Well, looking at you and having had several opportunities to interact with you these last few days, I’d guess you’re what? Mid-forties?”
“I’m thirty-nine,” he protested. At least for another couple of months. “Obviously people even in their late twenties tend to view anyone over thirty as ancient.”
She burst out laughing. “Late twenties? I wish. Well, actually I don’t wish. I wouldn’t go back.”
He lifted an eyebrow and waited.
“I’m thirty-six,” she said and picked up the magazine. “As I said, chronological age is nothing more than a number.”
Daniel openly studied her. Well, sure, there were those tiny little laugh lines around her eyes, but otherwise her skin was smooth and firm. A little freckled across the cheekbones and nose but certainly not aged. He scrubbed his own face with one hand and could practically feel its haggardness.
“As you mentioned, it’s been a rough few days,” he said as if there had been no break in the conversation.
She kept flipping through the magazine.
“Are you going to help me or not?” he asked.
Once again she closed the magazine and placed it with a ragtag stack on the table. “That depends on what you want in the way of help,” she replied. “But let’s be clear about one thing—I work for Ella. She is also becoming a good friend. I will listen to what you have to say and consider it on its merits, but I will not be part of any scheme to get Ella off this island if she doesn’t want to leave.”
Daniel had no time to respond to that calmly delivered lecture before Jazz arrived with lunch, just as the doctor entered the waiting room from the opposite direction.
“Everything went fine,” he said. “She’s in recovery now. Should be back up to her room within the hour.” He smiled at Jazz, who was still holding the lunch tray. “That looks good.” Then he turned back to Daniel. “I’ll stop by later on evening rounds, but if you have any questions or concerns, just ask the nurse to page me.”
Then he shook Daniel’s hand, nodded to Jo and winked at Jazz as he made his escape. Jazz went to the table by the window and started setting up lunch, but Jo couldn’t help noticing that Daniel did not move.
“You okay?”
“They always say that,” Daniel muttered. “‘Everything went fine,’” he mimicked in a falsetto voice. “Fine for him. What about Mom?”
“One step at a time,” Jo said. “But for now Jazz is relieved, and you need to eat.”
Jazz was not only relieved. From the look on her face, she was clearly convinced that with the success of Ella’s surgery she would be back in the city in a few days. “So, Dad, we can probably leave for the city by the end of the week, right?”
“And leave me to manage the cranberry beds all by myself,” Jo protested.
Jazz’s head shot up and her eyes flashed with unspoken protest, then softened into relief. “Joke, right?”
“Joke,” Jo admitted. “Although I have to say you did a terrific job repairing the damage to that new bed. Must have some of Ella’s gift for nurturing the land.”
Jazz picked at her lunch. “One time when I was little,” she said after a moment, “I planted a kitchen herb garden for a school project. Remember, Dad?”
“I do,” he said. “You kept it on the roof of the hotel.”
“Mom was sure she was allergic to the smell of rosemary—or oregano. Maybe it was both.”
“Mom was not allergic,” Daniel said with a frown.
Jazz laughed nervously. “Yeah, how could she be allergic and go off to study cooking with some big-time French chef in Paris? I mean, those guys use herbs, right?” This comment was directed at Jo as if she were the expert.
“I’m not much of a gourmet cook,” Jo replied, “but the right combination of herbs can add flavor to any recipe.” Suspecting that the topic of Jazz’s mother was upsetting the girl, Jo changed the subject. “Hey, speaking of food, this lunch isn’t half-bad for hospital fare.” She glanced up at the wall clock. “Why don’t you two go on up to Ella’s room so you’re there when she gets back from recovery. Tell her I’ll stop by this evening.”
“You’re not coming?” Daniel asked.
Jo busied herself with clearing the table. “No. You go on. I have some errands to run and then I need to make some calls.” She pulled out one of her business cards and handed it to him. “My cell number is on there. Call me if anything changes.”
Daniel took out his wallet to store the card and handed her his business card. “Just in case,” he said.
Jazz released a long, dramatic sigh. “I’d give you my number as well, but I don’t seem to have a phone.”
Grinning, Daniel wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. “Let’s go see Grams. You can plead your case with her.”
Jo watched them go and tried to decipher the feelings churning inside her. Feelings of relief that Ella, who had become like a mother to her in just a few short weeks, was out of surgery. Feelings caught up in the constant knot of pain that came with knowing she would never see her own mother again. Feelings of empathy for Jazz, whose mother had apparently gone off to Paris at a time when her daughter needed her here. Feelings of compassion for Daniel, who was caught between his family responsibilities and his own needs. For the first time since meeting him, she felt a measure of charity toward the man. Maybe she could help him after all—not the way he had in mind, but nevertheless, help him find the solution that would work best for him, as well as for Ella.