Tapping. No, hammering. Someone must be building a hay barn.
Emily rolled over and squinted at the clock next to her bed.
6:05 a.m. Thursday. She must’ve been dreaming. But the sound of knocking continued, this time insistent.
Who would come by this early? She grabbed a hoodie, slipped it on over her p.j.’s, and shuffled to the front room. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a riot of loose waves. She tucked some behind one ear and opened the door.
A man stood on the porch.
Emily blinked hard. “Dad—?” She stared at her disheveled father, her fuzzy mind working to register that this was really her dad standing on the front porch for the first time in—ever.
He looked awful, like he’d been drinking. She glanced past him at his Suburban and then looked into his eyes. No, not drunk, but definitely a mess. Distraught.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing here?” Her voice cracked with sleep.
Her dad’s swollen, bloodshot eyes glanced around the room behind her. “Where’s Grace?”
“Sleeping. What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to you. Outside.” He withdrew to a spot at the edge of the porch and stood with his back to her, facing the valley.
Emily hesitated, then stepped out and closed the door behind her. What would her dad have to say that would make him drive all the way out here at the crack of dawn?
His back swelled as he drew a deep breath. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’ve given me no choice. It’ll be even worse if I don’t.” He lifted his face skyward and muttered, “And I don’t need any more guilt.”
Guilt? Her mind raced, but she held her tongue.
He propped a stiff arm against the post. “Your mom and Grandma Janice both died of a rare type of heart disease. It shows very little symptoms until adulthood. It’s fatal.” He pulled in another deep breath. “And ... it’s genetic.”
So you knew about it. All this time. Trembling, she whispered, “Go on.”
He deflated. “They inherited it. And so did you.”
“What are you saying? That you know this for sure? About me?”
He nodded.
“How could you possibly know?”
“Your great-uncle Thomas told me.”
“Uncle Thomas?” Her mom’s uncle? “When?” Images from the past jumbled in her mind as she tried to do a mental rewind. “He died eight years ago. And he’d retired from medicine years before that.”
“When your mom died, so young and in such a similar way as his sister, Thomas suspected a connection.” Dad carefully nudged a flower pot away from the edge of the porch with the toe of his boot. “He researched it with a medical university team, both here and overseas.”
That didn’t mean anything. Had this research specifically included Emily? She didn’t remember anything about it. But then, she’d drifted in a fog after her mom died and very little from those years registered in her memory.
“Dad, I don’t understand. He studied it, but what made him think I have it?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t remember the details, the genetic science involved was beyond me. He came to me with folders of research notes. Explained how it’s inherited and how you would—” He lifted his head skyward, as though he expected someone else to finish the sentence for him.
“Die?” A cold fist struck into Emily’s belly, numbing her. Uncle Thomas knew she had it? Did Aunt Grace know too? No. That wasn’t possible. “No. He would have told me.”
“Wait.” Her dad trudged down the steps to his rig, took something from the dash and returned with a stained, wrinkly envelope. Without meeting her eyes, he held it out to her.
She turned it over and stared at the faded word written in the center. Emily.
“It’s from Thomas. He wanted to wait to tell you because you’d just lost your mom. He thought it would be better to let me decide when the time was right to give that to you.”
“The right time? And you think this is it?”
The image of her mom’s pretty, young face as she lay dying flooded her thoughts. Emily had come home from school and heard a faint moan. She hurried down the hall to her parents’ bedroom and gasped. Her mom lay in an awkward heap beside the lodge pine bed, covers askew and tangled around her feet, skin blue.
“Mom! What happened?” Emily knelt near her mom’s head and reached a hand under her neck. “Let me help you up—”
Mom breathed another weak moan. “No, Emmy.” Her eyes fluttered but only opened to thin slits, her breath so faint Emily could barely hear her. The smell of urine was unmistakable. How long had she been lying here?
“Okay, just a sec. Dad’s coming, okay? He’s out feeding the dogs, he’ll—”
Mom’s eyes closed.
Emily gasped. “Mom?”
“My sweet, sunshine girl,” Mom whispered. Her eyes opened a little, drifted into focus on Emily. “Remember our secret place? We’ll share one again, Em. A far … better one. Forever.”
The meaning of her words hit Emily like a sandbag, sending a numbing wave through her. “Mom, you’re gonna be okay. I’m calling 911.” She moved to get up, but another moan held her.
Mom’s lips moved without sound.
Emily leaned close.
“Remember … I love you more than life, Em.”
Emily whimpered, her panic rising. “I—I love you too, Mom.”
“And remember to … help your daddy.”
“Help him do what?
“Keep living. Please, Em ... promise me.”
“Okay—yes, I promise.”
Mom’s eyes closed and, with barely a sound, she breathed, “Ray ...”
Emily’s breath came in panicked bursts.
Her dad’s boots sounded on the porch and the front door opened.
“Dad!” she screamed.
He was there in seconds. “Jess!” He dropped to one knee and placed his fingertips on the side of her throat. “Emily, call 911!”
Emily stumbled to the kitchen and brought back the cordless phone, punching the numbers as she hurried to the bedroom.
Her dad was still pressing fingers to her mom’s neck. Her oddly blue neck. “No, baby, no. Come on!”
Come on, Mom! Please, God!
Dad started chest compressions. The ringing on the other end of the phone line kept time with his steady rhythm.
“C’mon, Jess ... c’mon!” He kept at it, stopping briefly to feel her neck with a shaking hand. His face went pale. “C’mon, baby, please!”
The sight of her strong dad pleading like that sent paralyzing fear ripping through her. She trembled so hard she almost dropped the phone. When the dispatcher answered, Emily sobbed something incoherent about needing an ambulance and then fell silent.
Dad picked up her mom’s lifeless body and pulled her to his chest. “No, no, no! Don’t do this! Don’t do this!” Huge, shuddering sobs shook his entire body.
“Mom?” Emily clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the rising scream and moved toward her mother, trembling at the nearness of her dad’s agonized weeping.
He laid Mom on the bed, then pounded the wall, roaring “No!” with each thunderous blow.
Shaking, Emily reached out and touched her mom’s unmoving arm.
“She’s gone.” Dad choked on the words.
Emily burst into tears.
He sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to his wife’s. “You should have let me take you somewhere else. We could have kept trying.”
“But she said nothing could be done.” The words caught in her aching throat.
Dad lifted his head and pushed the hair away from Mom’s temple. His face twisted with a mix of pain and anger. “She was tired. Tired of tests. Spending all her time running around, getting the same answers.” His face crumpled as he studied her face. “She made me stop, Emily. She—” The words came out tight. “She didn’t want to miss out on any more of your life.”
Cold crept through Emily, quickening along every nerve and muscle, enveloping her.
Sirens grew louder and bright pink light flickered bigger and higher against one wall until the whole room was a blinking, neon strobe.
Emily could hear those sirens even now as she stood on the porch staring at her uncle’s unopened letter. “I didn’t just lose her, Dad,” Emily said in a choked whisper. “I watched her die. Then I watched you fall apart and shut yourself off. I lost you too.” Saying the words touched off a wave of sorrow that hit with hurricane force. She rushed past him and ran down the steps, but her legs buckled. She stumbled and fell to the dirt. Numb, she couldn’t move.
As his footsteps approached, the chill of his shadow fell over her.
“Why did you keep this from me?”
He didn’t answer.
She looked up, wiping her wet face with her sweatshirt sleeve.
His shoulders sagged under the weight of some unseen burden. Pain twisted his face.
“Why didn’t you—” Gasping, she stood up and faced him. “Is that why you’ve been pushing me away?”
He turned from her and looked across the desert without answering. Finally, he spoke, his coarse whisper barely audible. “I can’t go through that again.” He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You can’t?” She stared at his back. “Because you couldn’t stand to lose anyone else, you chose to not love me?” Tears clogged her throat, nearly choking her, as she fought for control.
His frame shuddered and the weight of his pain hit Emily. Seeing her dad cry sent a fresh blast of sorrow through her.
Such crushing burdens they both bore and yet never shared.
She covered her face and wept. When she could finally steady her voice, she spoke. “You said you weren’t going to tell me. Why now?”
“I have no choice,” he said quietly. “You said he loves you.”
Ian.
She tried to breathe, but no air would come. It was as if a giant boulder had landed on her chest and pressed all the air from her lungs.
“He already lost one wife, Emily. I can’t stand back and let him walk straight into that again.” Dad’s body trembled as he turned to her. He wiped his eyes with a shaky hand and met her gaze. “It’s a nightmare to watch someone you love more than life slipping away. I lived that hell. I still live it. It’s a wound that never stops bleeding.”
Emily shook her head. “But, Dad, what if—”
“You can’t put him through that again, Emily. It’ll kill him.”
His words swirled around her like dead leaves in a whirlwind. Dizzy, Emily closed her eyes and felt his hands clamp her shoulders.
“Look at me.”
She opened her eyes and tried to focus.
“If you really love him, you’ll end it. Now.”
In her room, Emily lay on her back, smeared tears away from her temples, and stared at the envelope.
Creased, smudged, and unopened, it looked as if it had been through battle.
With trembling fingers, she drew out a handwritten letter bearing Uncle Thomas’s signature. The letter began with his sorrow at the loss of Emily’s mother, and an encouragement to remember the Lord is good, always, and is near to comfort the brokenhearted.
She read on, noting his apology and reasons for not giving her this news himself. When he learned of the disease, Emily was so young. He felt she needed time after the loss of her mother. She read each line slowly until she got to one particular phrase.
Freyer’s Syndrome. A rare form of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.
Emily was right about the diagnosis. It even had a name.
The monster that killed her mom and grandma had a name.
And it’s going to kill me.
The letter said that after taking part in a study of the disease, Thomas and a research team were able to isolate the mutant gene by performing a DNA test on Emily from a sample of her hair. The test of her DNA was beneficial in confirming the study. And for Emily, the result was positive for Freyer’s.
Positive.
Emily forced her hand to hold the paper steady and stared at the word until it blurred. Uncle Thomas said he hoped that when she’d had time to accept the news, she might consider participating in research to help the medical community better understand this rare disease. Perhaps in time, she might see her participation as a way to make something good come from all the suffering her family had endured. Make the pain count for something, turn loss into gain.
So that was it.
Hadn’t she prayed and asked God to help her know one way or the other? Here was her answer in bold black and white. If the disease progressed for her the way it had for the others, she might have four to six years. She had no future. No hope for a family. No home of her own.
The time she’d spent with Aunt Grace and the kids at Juniper Ranch had been special, but she’d wanted to see those kids grow up secure and confident, ready to take on the world. She wanted to make a real difference in the life of a child. She’d wanted her life to count.
And so it could. When she returned from Scotland, she wouldn’t waste a minute. She would love those kids and help them believe in themselves enough to make a difference with their lives.
But it wasn’t fair. What about a life of her own? What about ...
Ian.
“God, why did You let us meet?” Her agonized whisper sounded like someone else, like some other dying woman, not her. Why had God allowed this amazing man into her life if she couldn’t have him? Didn’t God know the silent desire of her heart, her deepest longings?
Dragging herself upright, she leaned against the wall with a groan and saw Ian’s face. The way his eyes sparkled when he teased her. His kindness and the quiet way he cared for others without calling attention to it. His deep desire to do the right thing. His tender embrace. His spoken words of love to her.
A subtle whisper sneaked in from someplace deep in her heart: Hadn’t she waited long enough for someone to love? She’d never dreamed she would meet someone like Ian. Wouldn’t a few years with him be better than none?
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head with dizzying force. Her dad was right. She couldn’t put Ian through that kind of pain and grief again. It would be far better for him if she ended her involvement with him now—the sooner the better.
How would she tell him? She couldn’t drop something like this on him by phone or email—it had to be in person. And how would he take the news? She could picture him waiting for her to arrive, eager to share what was on his heart and show her what was special to him.
God, I encouraged him to pray and seek the ability to forgive. Because of me, he is finding healing in his heart. The heart I’m going to crush now.
Maybe she should send him a brief message, to help prepare him a little. But what?
She slid her laptop onto the bed and pulled up her mail server. In her inbox, there was a new message from Ian. Her pulse raced as she clicked it open.
Dear Emily,
I’m thinking about you and what you said. If it’s true—if you love me even a little—then I’m the luckiest man alive. But I should warn you about what you’re getting. If you could look at my heart, you would see some ugly scars. But if you can look past those, I promise you my heart is whole now, thanks to you. It’s yours, so do with it as you please. All I ask is that you take it. And keep it.
Emily, I’m not the patient man you think I am. I love you. I can’t wait to tell you in person. I don’t know if I can say it right, so perhaps you’ll let me show you. It may take the rest of my life to do that properly. I hope you don’t mind.
Two days, love. I’m dying here.
Love, Ian
Emily squeezed her eyes tight, but the crushing ache in her chest rushed to her throat. Falling to her bed, she grabbed the pillow to muffle the sobs and cried long and hard until her tears were spent and she drifted to sleep.
When she awoke, her head throbbed. She dragged herself off the bed, shuffled to the kitchen, and found Aunt Grace up and collecting more items to pack.
For their trip tomorrow.
How could Emily handle an entire month with Ian? She could cut the trip short, but that would break Aunt Grace’s heart. She’d just have to deal with being near him as best she could.
The decision not to share her news with Aunt Grace came easily. Her sweet little aunt had suffered enough. Apparently Uncle Thomas hadn’t told her his findings about Emily either.
Emily followed Grace in a disconnected fog and went through the motions of packing. Movement was an effort, as if sand bags hung from her limbs. As Emily put some of Grace’s things in little zipper baggies, it dawned on her. The Juniper Ranch kids and Dad and Ian weren’t the only ones who could be affected by Emily’s early death.
Grace could outlive her.
She froze and stared at her aunt, a zipper bag in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other.
“What is it, dearie?”
“Nothing.” Emily shook her head and poked through the pile without seeing. What would another loss do to Aunt Grace? And how would the old woman manage all alone?
“Ye’re tired today, child.”
“I’m fine.” She avoided her aunt’s eyes—she had to. There would be no turning to Aunt Grace for comfort.
And with a dull twinge to the heart, it hit her.
Without Grace to turn to, there would be no comforting arms for Emily at all.