by Chris Fabry
Mrs. Brooks kept silent until Hannah’s eyes wandered back to hers. “Hannah, you cannot control what other people say. You can only choose the way you respond.”
She looked out the window again. There was a nice view of the trees in front. She remembered the trees she was under when the Harrisons found her, gasping for breath, two days earlier. It was the same feeling she had now.
She gritted her teeth and said something she wasn’t expecting. “I hate asthma.”
There it was. The truth about her life. Her life was asthma. She’d been controlled by it. She would always be held back by it. It was with her every morning when she awoke and every night when she went to sleep.
She waited for the yelling, like she’d heard from her grandmother. She waited for stern words and an angry look. That didn’t come. Instead, Mrs. Brooks pushed back from her desk and moved to the chair next to Hannah. She looked her straight in the eyes.
“I am sorry that you have to deal with that. I really am. But your life is worth so much more than this.”
It sounded like something the principal of a Christian school would say. Hannah looked at her and said, “To who?”
“To me. To us. To your grandmother. Hannah, even more than that, to God.”
Hannah had been wondering when Mrs. Brooks would pull out the God card. But she’d been expecting it to be played against her. Mrs. Brooks seemed to be offering it to her.
“He created you,” Mrs. Brooks said like she believed it. “He loves you. Do you believe that?”
Hannah felt trapped. If she said what she really thought, maybe she’d get kicked out of school. If you didn’t believe God loved you, would they do that? She wanted to say, If God loved me so much, why did He give me asthma? Why did He let my mother and father die? Doesn’t seem like He cares a whole lot.
Instead, she said something that felt as close to the truth as she could get. “I don’t know.”
Mrs. Brooks looked at Hannah and her face showed pain, like Hannah’s words had touched some deep nerve. There was a commotion in the outer office and Hannah heard Robert’s voice. “She ruined my new shirt. There’s supposed to be a zero-tolerance policy. If she’s not expelled, my dad’s going to come here and you’ll answer to him.”
Mrs. Brooks rose primly, opened the door, then closed it behind her. Hannah heard the woman speaking in low tones and Robert saying, “But . . .” every now and then. A few moments later Mrs. Brooks returned to the room and Robert was gone.
“Is he right about the zero-tolerance policy?”
“I’m the principal, Hannah. It’s my job to be fair and to enforce the policies. What you did was wrong. Do you admit that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll talk with Robert. He’s upset about what you did, but given the information you’ve shared, I’m sure he’ll want me to be fair with him rather than follow the policy to the letter. Everybody wants justice until they do something wrong. And then they want mercy.”
“So I’m not expelled?”
“No.”
“Can I still be on the cross-country team?”
She nodded. “I don’t see this changing that.” She paused a moment. “Mrs. Charles said you didn’t have a whole lot to eat. I brought an extra sandwich in my lunch. Would you like that? Or I could get you Robert’s shirt.”
Mrs. Brooks raised an eyebrow and Hannah almost saw her smile. It made Hannah think she might want to become a principal someday.
CHAPTER 22
John heard about Hannah’s confrontation with Robert from Bonnie Reese, who worked in the lunchroom. Bonnie hadn’t seen everything, but she had cleaned up the food and red soda after the incident. He talked with Olivia Brooks, who advised him to simply move forward without making a big deal of it. Hannah needed stability and encouragement and grace.
“There’s a lot going on inside that girl,” Olivia said.
John nodded. He wanted to tell her what he’d discovered about Thomas Hill but hesitated.
That afternoon at practice, Amy helped Hannah stretch and Will sat on the bench working on rules for Tackle Ball Extreme, complete with pictures and diagrams. He’d decided to include a paintball section in each run.
John studied Hannah’s times. There was no doubt she was stronger. She shaved a few seconds off her time each practice.
“Hannah, you’ve been doing intervals for a while. You want to see if you can break twenty-one minutes?”
Before Hannah could respond, someone said, “I can break twenty-one minutes.”
John turned and saw Ethan walk up—swagger was more like it. “What are you doing here?”
“I went to work, and they’re closed,” Ethan said. “Roger told me he’s moving Race2Escape to Fairview.”
John shook his head. Was there no end to the bad news? However, there was something different about Ethan’s response, something in the way he spoke.
“So who am I racing?” Ethan said.
“You want to run?” John said.
Ethan glanced at Hannah, who continued stretching. “I want to see if Hannah can catch me.”
Hannah looked up and smiled.
“Oh, I want to see this,” Will said, laughing.
John could see the disaster ahead for his son because he had experienced it. “You haven’t been running. You think you can handle three miles?”
“Oh, please,” Ethan said, lifting a foot behind him to stretch.
“He is your son,” Amy said.
John stared at Ethan. There were some things you could tell your kids about life and others they needed to experience themselves. And somehow he thought this was a lesson Ethan needed to feel.
Ethan and Hannah lined up, Will pretended he was firing the gun, and they were off. Ethan shot ahead as if running from one baseline to another for a layup. He glanced over his shoulder to see how far ahead he was after a hundred yards, his cheeks flushing and sweat already staining his shirt.
When they were almost out of sight, Will pointed to a knoll above the field. “Up there,” he said. He led John and Amy to the perch. From this vantage point they could see the two runners at different stages of the course.
Ethan was fast, no question, and had a sizable lead, but Hannah’s steady pace was like clockwork. She ignored Ethan’s speed and seemed to run with new confidence.
“Do you think he can stay ahead of her?” Will said.
“Wait till the switchback and we’ll see,” John said.
The two disappeared into the woods. The course wound back toward them and at the one-mile mark a runner appeared through the trees.
“Go, Hannah!” John yelled, pumping a fist in the air.
Will laughed. “Ethan was so far ahead.”
“Not anymore,” Amy said.
Two minutes later, Ethan huffed and puffed out of the woods, holding his side and lumbering like Frankenstein’s monster.
“Oh, we can’t let him keep going like that,” Amy said.
“Hey, he said he wanted to see if Hannah could catch him. We have to let him face reality.”
They returned to the field and Will and Amy packed up their things. Hannah came over the ridge, arms and legs in perfect position. Her feet struck the ground and she gained momentum as she came down the hill and crossed the finish line.
“How’d that feel?” John said, following her as she walked the length of the field.
“A lot better than during that last race,” Hannah said. “What was my time?”
“20:56.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Seriously? I broke twenty-one minutes!”
John nodded. “Hannah, something happened out there with Ethan sprinting ahead. You didn’t chase him. You were consistent the whole way, and coming down the hill at the end, it’s like you could have run another three miles.”
She smiled. “When I passed him, his legs were cramping up and he grabbed at his side. I almost stopped to help him.” She smiled. “Almost.”
“We might want to take t
he cart out there and get him,” Amy said.
“No, let’s wait,” John said. He glanced at his empty wrist.
When Ethan finally crossed the finish line, John was sitting alone on the bleachers. Ethan’s shirt was drenched and he moved like a zombie.
“You okay?” John said.
Ethan got enough breath to answer. “No.” He stretched out on his back. “That was crazy hard.”
John relaxed, taking in the sight.
“You said this wasn’t a sport,” Ethan said, pointing at his father.
John laughed and sat up. “Yeah, I was wrong. Mom, Will, and Hannah wanted to see you finish, but they got tired of waiting. They went home. I need to get a ride with you.”
He stood and patted his son on the shoulder.
“If you’ll drive,” Ethan said.
“All right,” John said, pausing to stretch in front of his son. “Boy, I’m tired.”
John chuckled all the way to the car and as they drove home, Ethan mentioned he was in the lunchroom when Hannah had tossed food at Robert. “Makes me want to bop that kid and teach him a lesson.”
“Maybe we should get him out here to run against Hannah,” John said.
“I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, not even Robert.” He lurched forward and grabbed his leg.
“You might want to drink some water. Like a couple of gallons. Or your legs are going to do that all night.”
“Sounds like you’re talking from experience,” Ethan said.
John smiled. “So why did you decide to do that today?”
“I don’t know—I feel bad for her. I thought maybe I could encourage her somehow, you know, push her for a couple of miles and then let her pass me.”
John laughed, then turned serious. “Hannah’s going through some things no kid her age ought to go through.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t go into detail. Trust me. I think she’s trying to figure out who she really is.”
“Kind of like the rest of us,” Ethan said.
John thought about what Thomas had said to him at the hospital—the question he asked. John knew he needed to bring that up with Hannah at some point, when she was ready.
“Ethan, I have a question.”
“I’m not going out for the team.”
John laughed. “No, not that kind of question. Who are you?”
Ethan scowled at him. “What do you mean?”
“What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you that? Who are you?”
The conversation lasted all the way home, and when they pulled in the driveway, John turned off the ignition and explained where he’d heard it. “I’m just learning this now, Ethan. If you can get this and really live the truth of it, there’s no holding you back.”
John and Amy asked to meet with Olivia Brooks the next day. Olivia came to Amy’s science classroom and heard the story of John’s chance meeting with a man named Thomas Hill.
Olivia’s mouth dropped open. “You met T-bone? That’s what people called him back when.”
“You knew him?”
Olivia ignored the question. “What did he say to you?”
John told her and didn’t hold anything back. When he finished, she looked out the window as the sun streamed in, casting shadows about the room. Olivia turned and faced them.
“And you think Barbara told her he was dead on purpose.”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” John said. “I mean, if his influence led to her daughter’s death, and then he abandoned Hannah, it makes sense that she wouldn’t want anything to do with him.”
With precise, clipped speech, Olivia said, “Well, I’d say that your assessment is correct.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I knew her daughter,” Olivia said.
“You knew Hannah’s mother?” Amy said.
There was deep pain on Olivia’s face. “We were friends, up until a year before she died. When this charming older guy came around, we warned her to be careful. She didn’t listen. The next thing we knew, she was pregnant. And she cut off contact with all of us. Then, after she gave birth, she became an addict.”
John felt the air go out of the room. The weight of the story was too much. His mind raced with thoughts of what Hannah did and didn’t know and how to help her cross the bridge between them.
“I didn’t even know she was dead until after the funeral,” Olivia said. “I went to go see Barbara, but I just saw bitterness. I reconnected with her this year and saw more of the same.”
A switch clicked. Hannah’s grandmother certainly couldn’t afford the tuition for the school. “We wondered how Hannah was able to come here. You’re paying for it.”
Olivia’s face said it all. She nodded.
“Thomas Hill is not the same man, but he is sick,” John said. “If he and Hannah were to meet, it needs to happen sooner rather than later.”
“Barbara may not be telling Hannah the truth,” Amy said. “But she still is her guardian. How can we go around her?”
Olivia stared at the floor. It seemed to John she was weighing her words carefully as if this were some kind of court proceeding. He couldn’t imagine the burden she felt as a friend of the family, someone who cared deeply.
“In my official capacity as the principal of this school, I can’t advise you to go around Barbara. But I can tell you that if you include her, Hannah may never meet her father.”
The words hung between them and Olivia walked resolutely out of the room. John’s mind spun. If Amy hadn’t volunteered him for the hospital visit, he would never have met Thomas. If all the negative things hadn’t happened in town, he wouldn’t have met Hannah, wouldn’t have been assigned to coach her. His marriage had grown deeper because of all the seemingly bad things. There was more going on than he could understand, something bigger at work in their lives, bringing them together.
His thoughts turned to Hannah. Something was happening with her, too. He looked at Amy. “If it was you, would you want to meet your dad?”
Amy considered for a moment and he knew what a complicated question that was for her. Amy’s relationship with her own father had been a struggle, issues she had to work through, disappointments and questions. Without a word she nodded. It was clear for both of them they had been placed in this position, between father and daughter, for a reason. But what in the world should they do now?
“Yeah,” John said. “We need to pray.”
Amy put her hand in his. “Father, we are overwhelmed at what we’ve learned from Olivia. And my heart is breaking for this girl who has lived with the belief that her dad has been dead all these years. But in Your mercy, You reached out to him and You have given him a new heart. And we’re grateful for that. We thank You for that. But we don’t know what to do. We don’t know what’s best. So I’m asking for wisdom. You say in Your Word that if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, and You will give wisdom generously. So we ask for that today, Lord.”
John squeezed Amy’s hand and continued the prayer. “Lord, we need wisdom with how to tell Hannah. We need wisdom with how and when to tell Thomas. He’s been through so much, Lord. And we need wisdom with how to be sensitive to Barbara. It’s clear her heart has been broken by the loss of her daughter and all the pain she’s lived with for the past fifteen years. Soften her heart, Lord. Help us to show her the kind of love that can only come from You. Help her see Thomas has changed and it’s been a work You’ve done inside him.”
“And I pray You would preserve him, Father,” Amy said, “that You would restore his health so that he could spend time with his daughter and pour his life into hers. I don’t know if Hannah knows You. I don’t think she has a relationship with You. So would You draw her to Yourself through this—to her earthly father and her heavenly Father? And use us in any way You want. Make us sensitive to what’s really happening here. Keep us from hurting anyone. You know we want to do what You’ve prepared for us and nothing more. Show us the way
forward, I pray, in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
The bell rang. John stood and wiped a tear from Amy’s face. He felt it too. They were good tears, good emotion. The struggle was a sign of life, a sign that God was at work. And he was deliberately choosing to believe it.
CHAPTER 23
John and Amy walked hand in hand past the fourth-floor nurses’ station. Franklin General was becoming more of a home away from home for John. He used to avoid it at all costs, thinking only sick people were there. Now he saw it differently. Life was a hospital, everyone needing varying levels of care and compassion. Most didn’t know how much they needed until their condition became acute.
When they reached Thomas’s room, John looked at Amy and she nodded, telling him without words she was ready to walk together into whatever lay ahead. Praise music flowed from the room and John knocked lightly on the open door.
“Thomas?”
Thomas clicked Pause on the CD remote and his face lit. “John!”
“How are you?”
“Put me in, Coach. I’m tired of sitting on the bench.” He smiled broadly, unable to contain his joy that a friend had arrived for a visit.
John stood at the foot of the bed. “First, I need to introduce you to my number one teammate. I brought Amy with me.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Thomas said, stretching out a hand. “I can honestly say I did not see that coming.”
Amy chuckled. “Hi, Thomas. It’s nice to meet you.”
“The honor is all mine,” he said warmly.
John studied Thomas, who looked straight ahead. He could see the wheels turning inside his friend’s mind, sensing something was different.
“Well, the coach brought his wife. This must be an important day.”
“It is an important day,” Amy said.
John had rehearsed what he was about to say a dozen times and still his heart fluttered. Give me the right words, Lord, he prayed.
“We have something that we’d like to talk to you about,” John said.
“Okay, shoot.”
“You know that I have one runner that I’m coaching.”
“Yeah.”
