Mother's Promise (16 page)

“Everything's loaded into the van,” John said, glancing at Rachel and then Justin. “Zeke should be here soon. He's volunteered to drive you over and help with the heavy lifting.”

“I'm sorry we can't help.” Hester's eyes filled with tears as they had ever since her friends had lost their daughter in the accident.

“Zeke will be a great help,” Rachel assured her, “and besides, there's not that much to be moved.”

Malcolm Shepherd's younger brother could not be more different than Ben. The one thing they had in common was that they were both devoted to Sally.

“Yoo-hoo,” a raspy female voice called from the back porch.

“Come on in, Margery,” John called. “Have some breakfast.”

“Already ate,” Margery Barker announced. “But I could use a refill on my coffee.” She helped herself, filling her travel mug from the pot Hester had left warming on the stove. Like Rachel, Margery was a widow, although she was at least a couple of decades older than Rachel and several more years down the path of her grief. She ran a marina and charter boat business not far from the co-op, and Hester said she stopped by often to visit. She loved to tease John and tell stories of the time when his property had been completely destroyed by a hurricane named Hester.

“And then he came face-to-face with the real deal,” she would say as she patted Hester's hand, “and bingo-bongo his life was changed.”

Being around Margery gave Rachel hope that one day she and Justin would find their place in a world without James.

“Busy week for you two.” Margery pulled a chair closer to the table, next to Justin who was picking at his food. “You gonna eat those pancakes or let them drown in all that syrup?”

Rachel saw Justin flash Margery a hint of a smile as he stuffed a large piece of pancake into his mouth. She could see that he liked Margery, probably because she reminded him of his grandmother. James's mother, like Margery, was a no-nonsense woman with a soft side that she could bring out whenever the occasion seemed to warrant it. But she had little patience for what she called wallowing, and she'd made that clear to Justin the day they'd first met.

“Is Zeke here?” Justin asked, knowing that Zeke often caught a ride with Margery on the boat she used to ferry herself and the homeless people working at the co-op back and forth.

“He's around here somewhere. I saw his guitar leaning up against the porch, and you know Zeke, he and that guitar of his are joined at the hip most times.” She took a sip of her coffee and turned her attention to Hester. “I was sorry to hear about the Messner girl.” She shook her head. “How's Jeannie holding up?”

Hester shrugged. “It's so very hard, on all of them. Sadie has been arrested and taken to a detention center in Bradenton. Emma and Lars can only visit her for half an hour at a time and only on certain days.”

Justin seemed to be following this conversation with interest. “Sadie is the girl who was driving the car that struck the girl who died,” she explained.

“She's in jail?”

“Sounds like it,” Margery said with a heavy sigh as she stood and headed for the door. “Well, got to go take care of my own business. Got two fishing charters going out today.” Margery glanced outside. “Good day for fishing and a good day for moving,” she announced. “See you folks later.”

“Margery's right,” John said, wiping his mouth. “I'll go get Zeke. And, Justin, you help your mother bring out the rest of your things.”

“We're staying at the new place tonight?” Justin asked as if the idea had just struck him.

“Of course we are. We're moving there.”

Her son glanced around the large kitchen. “But we'll come back here—I mean for visits and stuff?”

John laughed and ruffled Justin's sandy hair. “You're not getting out of working here that easy. I've gotten used to having you around, and soon we'll be getting into the busiest part of the season.”

“But how will we get back and forth? It's a long way to the Shepherds' house.”

“The boy's right, John,” Hester said with a worried frown as she ran water over the dishes. “Wait a minute. What's that Zeke is working on out there?”

John carried his dishes to the sink and looked out the window. “Well, will you look at that? It's a bike,” he said. “He's putting a bike together.”

“For?” Hester coached as Justin ran to the open door to see for himself.

“For … me?” Justin looked from Hester to John and back for confirmation.

“It's a gift from your grandparents,” Rachel told him, happy beyond words to see him finally excited about something. “You can ride it to the park and even to the hospital and out here when you come for visits and to help at the packinghouse.”

“And to school?”

“You'll take the bus to and from school.” She saw his disappointment, but Sharon Shepherd had advised, and she agreed, that riding the bus would provide more opportunities for Justin to make new friends. Besides, he had all those books to carry back and forth.

“Can I go help Zeke finish putting it together?”

Rachel nodded, and Justin bounded out of the kitchen, taking the porch steps in a single leap and running across the yard to where Zeke was working in the shade of the packinghouse.

Hester put her arm around Rachel's waist. “A new bicycle for Justin and a new home for you both.”

“Well, good morning,” Sharon said when she saw her brother having coffee with Malcolm. “You might as well move in—you're here more than at that mausoleum of a condo you bought. What's all this?”

Ben gathered up the papers spread across the glass-topped table and stuffed them into a manila folder. “And good morning to you, sleepyhead.”

But Sharon was not to be pacified. “What's going on?” She indicated the papers.

“I asked Ben to get us copies of Sally's records from Memorial so when we transfer her care to Gulf Coast …”

“We haven't decided that for sure yet,” Sharon reminded him.

“Just in case,” Malcolm replied.

Ben fished a second set of papers out of his briefcase and handed them to her.

Sharon accepted the stack of papers and flipped through it without really pausing to read any of it. “So many medical people,” she said.

“It takes a village,” Ben said.

She looked at him for a moment then dropped the papers onto the table and sank into a chaise lounge next to them. As she looked out toward the gardens, her eyes welled with tears. “I can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that after everything we went through our Sally has come to a place where she can be in school instead of a hospital. Where she can go to the mall with her friends. That our lives can be normal again.”

Malcolm reached over and held her hand. “Believe it, honey,” he told her. “All the waiting for a donor, all the fear and sleepless nights, that's all in the past.”

Sharon wove her fingers between his. A single tear leaked down her cheek. “I think about that girl killed in the car accident and her parents and what they must be going through. We're so very blessed.”

The three of them sat quietly for several long minutes. What more was there to say? Getting Sally to the point where she was finally in remission—a remission that hopefully would last her the rest of her life—had been a journey riddled with medical land mines. Ben understood his sister's hesitancy to put her faith in the idea that Sally might finally be on her way toward a future free of hospitals and medical procedures.

No more false hopes that the second round of chemotherapy would work better than the first induction therapy had. That Sharon or Malcolm would be a match for a transplant. That someone from their extended family would match when Sharon and Malcolm had not. No more if onlys—“If only we had had more children” being Sharon's main regret.

“It's over, sis,” Ben said. “Time to start living again.”

Sharon brushed her tears away. “You're right. No more living in the past.” She stretched her arms over her head and sighed as she looked up at the cloudless sky. “We are so very blessed,” she repeated. Ben understood it for the prayer of gratitude that he knew it was.

From the front of the house they heard a vehicle turn onto the property, and a few seconds later the orange van from the co-op made its way past the garage and down the side lane to the guesthouse.

Sharon leaped to her feet. “It's moving day. I almost forgot.” She bent and kissed Malcolm's forehead. “I should take them some snacks and lemonade.” Then she pushed the papers Ben had shown her back across the table. “We don't need to decide this today. There's plenty of time.”

Ben watched his sister walk back into the house. She had aged—Sally's illness had taken years off her life, and she was only in her midthirties.

“Did you and Sharon ever think of trying again, having another child?” he asked and then shook off the question that he couldn't believe he'd spoken aloud. “Don't answer that,” he said. “I'm sorry. I just …”

Malcolm's expression was that of a man trying hard to control his temper. “We could never replace Sally, Ben.” He stood up abruptly and followed his wife inside.

Having managed to upset his brother-in-law with his stupid question, Ben got up and wandered down the path that wound its way through the gardens. Through an arbor of wisteria vines he saw Justin pedaling a shiny new bike up and down the service road that ran behind the guesthouse. Ben paused to watch him for a moment, recalling the way he'd observed Sally on her bike a mere three months after her transplant, her head thrown back, her eyes closed and an aura of utter joy lighting her entire being in spite of the surgical mask that Sharon insisted she wear anytime she was outside the house. This boy rode with his head down, and his body tensed as if he could not possibly ride fast enough to escape whatever he imagined was chasing him.

Not wanting to startle the kid, Ben waited until he'd pedaled to the end of the drive and turned to come back before stepping out from the foliage of the garden and walking toward him. “Hey there,” he called.

The boy looked up, and the bike's front wheel wobbled unsteadily for an instant. He squinted and held his position as if waiting for Ben's next move.

“Remember me? Sally's uncle?” Ben jerked his head in the general direction of the main house.

The boy continued to stare at him, offering nothing more than a slight nod.

“Is your mom here?”

Another nod. “She's inside,” Justin said, his pubescent voice vacillating between the tenor of childhood and something deeper.

“I thought maybe I could lend a hand,” Ben continued. “With the moving.”

The boy shrugged. “It's mostly boxes and stuff.”

“Boxes can be heavy,” Ben said as he headed toward the open back of the van. “Give me a hand here, will you?”

“Mom wants us to wait. She wants to get things put away as she opens each box. There's not that much.”

“So you're kind of on call?”

“Ja.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes sir. Mr. Shepherd's with her.”

“That would be Zeke Shepherd?”

“Yes sir.”

“I'll go see if I can be of any help.” He paused as he passed by the boy still balancing his bike ready to take off again. “Maybe later if your mom says it's okay you'd like to come with us to watch Sally's baseball game over in the park?”

Justin stopped short of rolling his eyes, but Ben did not miss the expression of distaste the boy fought to control. Clearly Justin thought he was being asked to watch a girls' game and no self-respecting twelve-year-old boy would be caught dead at such an event. He grinned. “Sally's not playing today, but when she does she's the only girl on the team,” he said and walked around the van toward the guesthouse. “I'll check with you later,” he called and heard Justin take off on his bike in the opposite direction.

“ 'Bout time you showed up.” Zeke Shepherd greeted Ben with a grin. “Now that the work's half done.” He was sitting at the bistro-style table in the small kitchen, sipping a cup of steaming coffee. The two men bumped fists in greeting.

“Yeah, I can see you're really working hard,” Ben said. He glanced around. The place was small but had an open feeling to it with a high white-beamed ceiling and lots of windows that looked out onto the garden. Sharon had chosen the cast-off furnishings with care—a mishmash of pieces, some of which he recognized from their childhood home, blended with new pieces like the bistro table and chairs that served as dining space.

Sharon regularly visited their father, especially now that their mom had died. Ben always begged off going with her to the family home in Tennessee, but he knew that Sharon saw through his excuse that he had too much work to do.

“You and Dad are the two most stubborn men I have ever known,” she would say, but she never pressed him to do more.