By Your Side (19 page)

“Great.” Taylor looked toward the doorway. “Did his daughter leave?”

“Out in the waiting room. She needed to make some calls,” Macy explained, thinking of the girl
 
—pretty face, incredibly worried expression. “Mrs. Chan’s at the airport picking up some relatives.”

“For the daughter’s high school graduation tonight.” Taylor smiled at her sleeping patient. “That’s one proud father.”

“I . . .” Macy’s throat squeezed without warning. “He told me that too. At least twice.”
And that’s why it hit home.

“Your other two patients were discharged,” she continued,
eager to leave the room. “So if you’re up to speed, I think I’ll get back to the desk.”

“Go.” Taylor reached up for the IV bag. “Thanks again for letting me take a few minutes longer. I wanted a chance to pop upstairs to see Andi and
 
—”

“Whoops, what’s that?” Macy asked, pointing to a dark stain on Taylor’s scrub top. “Betadine?”

“No. It’s why I’m wearing these stupid shoe covers.” Taylor lifted a foot, displaying a blue-paper surgical bootie. “I had to run over to the HR office during lunch. And I stepped right in it.”

“In what?”

“Motor oil. Big puddle.”

The video . . . the vehicle that leaked oil in the parking lot across from the bank.

“Of course they’ve got kitty litter soaking it up now,” Taylor continued, “but it’s just my luck to
 
—” She stopped, studying Macy’s face. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” Macy smiled despite her queasy stomach. “Fine.”

There was nothing wrong with Mr. Chan being proud of his daughter. A puddle of oil in the parking lot didn’t mean that ruthless sniper had been to Sacramento Hope. None of this had anything to do with Macy. After she called Leah, she’d take a long bike ride.

Clearly she needed to put things back into perspective.

“R
AT .
 . . what?”

Fletcher laughed into the phone, imagining his father’s expression. “Ratatouille. It’s a French recipe. Mom’s taking it to her Bible study potluck tonight. Near as I can figure, it’s got a chunk of everything she bought at the Cesar Chavez farmers’ market. Plus some of the neighbors’ lawn clippings, maybe.” He glanced down the short hallway toward the kitchen, the epicenter of a rich, garlicky-tomato aroma. “She’s got this new thing about going meatless two days a week. It’s healthier, she says. If this keeps up, I see Thanksgiving Tofurky in your future.” Fletcher thought of Macy’s grilled veggie wrap and smiled.

“Your mother sounds . . . good.” There was a deep sigh. “You can’t know how much I appreciate your being there, Fletcher. The weight it takes off. If it was anybody else
telling me to hold my horses and not jump on a jet when she had that bleeding spell . . . But I trust you, Son.”

“I know that, sir. And she is good. I promise. Aunt Thena’s visit helped keep her mind off things.” He decided not to mention the scrapbooks his mother was making; the thought was still too unsettling. “And like you said, you’re at a critical point in your work there. Taking time off now might extend the project and keep you away longer. None of us wants that.”

“I wish I didn’t need to travel at all, but with these new medical expenses . . .” His father’s voice trailed off; Fletcher was sure he’d decided to shield his son from his concerns. The man would heft a Yosemite boulder to spare the people he loved. “I know we can’t expect to understand these things, but when Charlise passed that five-year mark after the first cancer, I thought we had it licked.”

“Yeah.” Fletcher remembered something one of his teachers had said all those years ago when Beth was killed. About “why bad things happen to good people.” An attempt, no doubt, to comfort and explain away the inexplicable
 
—with harmless if unhelpful clichés. Now, in the throes of his mother’s suffering and his father’s worry, it made Fletcher want to shoot somebody. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her, Dad,” he heard himself say. “You can count on me.”
Right down to my bone marrow.

“I know I can.” There was a bear hug in John Holt’s voice. “So . . . French lawn clippings?”

Fletcher chuckled. “We’ll put some in the freezer for you.”

They said their good-byes and Fletcher ambled back to
the kitchen. He found his mother standing in taste mode over the simmering stainless-steel pot, wooden spoon to her lips, eyes closed.

“Praying for a slab of chuck roast?” Fletcher teased as she lowered the spoon. “I could still run out and
 
—”

“Cloves,” she instructed, pointing toward the granite counter. “That brown powder. Right there next to the salt. Hand me the bottle, then convince me that your father’s not fretting himself into a head of hair the color of a polar bear.”

“He’s good,” Fletcher assured as he gave her the spice container, wondering once again if he’d ever have the kind of committed and loving relationship his parents had. He was surprised that on the heels of that thought came a memory of Macy Wynn in his arms. “Dad said you didn’t tell him I got the HLA testing.”

“No. I didn’t.” Charly took a slow breath, brushed the remnants of spice from her hands. Her eyes met Fletcher’s. “There are too many ifs to that, Fletcher. I can’t have your father
 
—or you
 
—hanging on to scientific hope that could be flimsy at best.”

“Are you talking about statistics again?” His frown deepened as he caught sight of the scrapbook paraphernalia she’d left on the kitchen table. “Where’s that faith you’ve always talked about?” Fletcher hated the edge in his tone, but he had to make her understand. “I’m not supposed to trust that God would want me to be a tissue match?”

His mother swept her fingers through her hair, released a small sigh. “Do you remember your swimming lessons?”

“Swimming?” He watched as she crossed to the table
and sat, gesturing for him to do the same. Fletcher settled opposite her, wishing the fatalistic scrapbook wasn’t inches away. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You were four,” Charly recalled, a smile teasing her lips. “I was seven months pregnant with Beth, and between the scent of chlorine and that wicked Houston heat, sitting on the bleachers at the community pool was the last place I wanted to be. But Elaine Ford’s grandson had drowned the month before . . .” Her brows pinched together. “You had a Superman bathing suit and a death grip on the side of the pool.”

The memory of chlorine made his nose sting. He had no clue where she was going with this.

“You took the guppy course twice. The instructor advised waiting another year. Because you were still so anxious. Then your dad and I drove you to Grandma’s house in Corpus Christi. Her next-door neighbor had a shallow lap pool. I carried you into it. We must have looked like a mother whale and calf.” Charly smiled. “You learned. You stopped trying to clutch on to the water and finally understood that thrashing only made you sink. You learned to trust, Son. To loosen up and float.” His mother’s eyes held his. “Faith is like that.”

Fletcher waited, knowing she hadn’t finished.

“We can’t know what will happen with my cancer,” his mother continued. “Whether the chemo has caught it. If I’ll need that marrow transplant
 
—if you’d be a tissue match. Or even if I’d survive if you were that selfless. We. Can’t. Know. We simply have to relax as best we can and trust God. Float on the beautiful hope in that.”

“But . . .” Fletcher tried to swallow the angry knot in his throat. “It isn’t fair.”

“No.” Charly reached across the table to grasp his hand, tears shimmering in her eyes. “A ‘fair’ outcome isn’t promised. Despite that, faith requires trust.”

“I do,” Fletcher managed, mostly for her sake. “I always have. But this, when it’s
you
. . .”

His mother nodded. “Now is the tough part. When you’re forced to ask yourself that hard question: Do you fully trust God, or do you simply trust him not to let something bad happen?”

“The bank accepted my counteroffer. We signed the papers! Can you even believe it?” Macy straddled the gym’s locker room bench and smiled at her sister’s image on the iPad, feeling breathless though she’d finished her workout ten minutes earlier. Elliot’s triumphant news had hit her like a defibrillator zap, and Macy was still reeling. She’d sent Fletcher a text, all caps, while waiting to hear back from her sister. Then finally got Leah’s request for video chat. “I’m going to be a homeowner, Sis!”

“That’s . . . amazing.” Leah’s teeth scraped across her lower lip. “I know how much you wanted that, Macy. It’s all done then?”

“Not completely.” Macy tried to tell herself that her sister didn’t look as pale and drawn as she had last week. And that she’d be smiling
 
—as over the moon as Macy was
 
—if she weren’t still in rehab. Hard to happy dance in that grim situation. “Elliot pulled strings to get the inspection done
today; the contractor is probably there right now. Checking the roof, looking for pests, all that stuff.”

“Oh.”

Just “oh”?

“The bank requires the inspections for the loan,” Macy continued, noticing how distracted her sister seemed. “I’m on such a learning curve here. But Elliot thinks it will be fine. He says I should have the keys in my hand by the end of next month. The actual
keys
! And then
 
—” Macy stopped short as Leah closed her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Leah forced a smile, failing utterly. “It’s just . . . I can’t think about all of this right now. The landlord told Sean he can’t hold our apartment much longer.”

“You won’t need the apartment.” Macy struggled to keep the impatience out of her voice as she watched her sister press fingers to her forehead. “We talked about this. You’ll come here, stay with me until you get back on your feet. Sean’s going to be in jail, Leah.”

“We don’t know that. Not for sure.” Leah’s lips tightened into a thin line, her eyes huge, sad. “He called me today. Even after all that with the landlord, Sean sounded better, more sort of . . . hopeful. I haven’t heard him sound like that in a long time. He’s been talking with one of his friends.”

Macy almost rolled her eyes.

“This guy he hung around with in school. He’s a pastor now, or an assistant pastor, I guess.” Leah bit at her fingernail. “It’s been helping Sean, talking with him like that.”

“Well . . . that’s good.” What was Macy supposed to say?

“They talk about it here too.”

“About what?”

“A higher power.” Leah’s brows pinched. “The twelve-step thing. Something like ‘Follow the dictates of a higher power and you will . . . live in a new, wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances.’”

“Leah . . .” Macy wanted to reach through the screen and take her sister by the shoulders. She wanted to make her come to her senses and understand that there
was
a wonderful new world; it was exactly what Macy was working so hard to make. In just over a month, she’d have the keys to that new world and
 
—

“Nonni trusted God,” her sister whispered. “She always said that it was the most important thing you could do. And if you trusted him with all your heart and soul, everything would be okay.”

Right. And then Nonni dropped dead, the bank stole her house . . . and you were raped, Leah. Have you forgotten that?

“I have to go.” Leah looked over her shoulder. “They’re having a special meeting for those of us who are being discharged.” She offered Macy a small smile. “Not much longer until I’m free.”

“Right.” Macy smiled back at her, aching to give her sister a reassuring hug. “And everything
is
going to be okay now. I promise.”

“Gotta go . . . good-bye.”

“Bye. Love you.”

The iPad screen went black, but Macy sat there for a moment, her fingertips gently touching the glass. She’d so hoped to see joy on her sister’s face, excitement at the news
about their house. She’d ached to talk about bedrooms and paint colors, the rose garden . . . a puppy maybe. And most of all, seeing that beloved brass door latch on their very own home. Dreams finally coming true. But instead their conversation had taken such a different turn. To Sean
 
—not unexpected
 
—and then more surprisingly to God. Faith. Trust?

Macy winced, remembering Leah’s sad eyes, her obvious pain. How could she tell her sister that Nonni, for all her loving-kindness, had been so very wrong? Leah would be as much a fool to trust God with her future as she would be to count on a boyfriend facing jail time for prescription fraud. Right now they could only trust that Elliot had everything in order. So that next month they’d be stepping across the threshold of their very own home. Right now it was their hope, the only real reason to smile, and
 
—

Macy reached into the pocket of her knit hoodie as her cell phone buzzed. Then traced her fingertip across the screen to connect.
Fletcher.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“The gym. What’s up?”

“I’ve got good news,” he said, his voice warming her ear. “I called in a favor and have tonight off. So that means . . .”

“What?” She was fairly certain her heart rate was faster now than when she’d performed that stellar cross power punch with her trainer. This man was a cardio workout even over the phone. “What does that mean?”

“Dinner. On the river
 
—Scott’s Seafood. Any kind of fish you want.” He chuckled low in his throat. “So you won’t have to toss your plate to the wildlife.”

Macy feigned an indignant groan.

“I thought,” Fletcher continued, “that your great news about the house deserved some celebrating. We could drive by Tahoe Park on the way. Then over dinner you can tell me what you plan to do with it. Carpet, paint, landscaping . . . that kind of stuff. What do you think?”

“I think . . .” Macy blinked against a foolish prickle of tears. “I think that’s exactly what I needed tonight.”

“Good. Pick you up at seven?”

“I’ll be ready.”

Macy disconnected, shook her head. She’d been wrong: there was definitely another reason to smile.