It was after nine when the rain slowed, then came to a stop.
Tom and Meghan were alone in the kitchen. Once he’d insisted on doing the cleanup, Lila retired to her room to watch a show she’d recorded earlier. Tracy, claiming it was way past Lucas’s bedtime, disappeared minutes later.
After the last pot had been scrubbed and put away, Meghan lifted her arms over her head and gave a leisurely stretch. “Now that that’s done . . . ”
Tom turned and playfully wrapped his arms around her waist. With one hand cradling the small of her back and the other centered between her shoulder blades, he pulled her to him. All at once they were so close he could feel her heartbeat.
She lowered her arms and rested them on his shoulders, her breath warm against the side of his neck.
“I thought maybe the rain would have cooled us down a bit,” she said.
“I don’t feel the least bit cooled down,” he replied, and covered her mouth with his. When their lips parted, he cupped his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face to his again. For a long moment he fixed his eyes on hers, and it was as if they were the last two people on earth. There was no one else, just the two of them, breathing the same air, feeling the same heat, burning with the same desire. He kissed her again and again, and she quivered beneath his touch.
Suddenly there was the thud of something beside them.
Tom’s head snapped back, and he looked around. Beulah sat on the kitchen counter, her bushy tail in the air and her eyes aglow.
Meghan swished her hand across the counter, and the cat jumped down.
Tom gave a soft chuckle. “You don’t suppose your mama had anything to do with that, do you?”
Meghan smiled and shook her head. “I doubt it. Beulah doesn’t listen to Mama any more than she listens to anyone else.”
Tom bent, brushed a tender kiss across the tip of Meghan’s nose, then stepped back and sucked in a deep breath. “I think maybe we’d better go for a walk or something.”
Meghan knew he was giving them some space, air enough to cool down before passion carried them off to a place they hadn’t intended.
“How about we sit on the front porch swing?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “The front porch sounds good.”
They started toward the door, and Sox, who’d been sleeping beneath a kitchen chair, stood, gave a quick stretch, then followed along.
When they sat side by side in the swing, Sox jumped into the wicker chair and curled up on the cushion. Facing forward, he lowered his head onto his paws and looked at them, eyeball to eyeball.
Tom laughed. “I think we’ve got a chaperone.”
“Obviously a smart dog,” she replied.
As they sat, lazily pushing back and forth in the swing, the clouds drifted away, the sky cleared, and the stars came out. He wrapped his arm around her and eased her head onto his shoulder. Twining his fingers through hers, he began to speak softly about things like destiny, fate, and forever.
“I know it’s too soon,” he said, “and I don’t want to scare you off, but—”
She turned her face to his and silenced him with a kiss. When she pulled back she whispered, “It’s not too soon.”
Sox closed his eyes and tucked his face between his paws.
August
In the days that followed, the Briggs household all but bristled with anticipation. There were times when you could sense Meghan’s newfound love floating through the air and other times when the worry Tracy carried in her heart made the mood as grim as that of a funeral parlor.
Lila cooked constantly. She made trays of biscuits, chicken casseroles, and beef stew enough to feed an army. When the refrigerator was filled to overflowing, she carried casserole dishes to neighbors up and down Baker Street, saying it was a sin to waste perfectly good food.
Two days after Lucas’s CT scan, Dr. Goldstein’s office called and scheduled a second visit. Before Tracy hung up the telephone, Lila had written the appointment on her calendar.
“Luckily I’m free,” she said, and offered to drive.
Knowing how her mama disliked the drive to Barrington, Meghan claimed such a thing wasn’t necessary. “I can spare time enough to take Tracy.”
With an indignant pout, Lila glared across the room. “Lucas is my only grandchild!” she said pointedly, then insisted at the very least she would accompany them.
“I don’t actually need either of you to come,” Tracy said, but the words came out thin and fragile-sounding.
“You might not think you need me,” Lila replied, “but you do.”
The look on Lila’s face was one of determination.
When they settled in front of Dr. Goldstein’s large mahogany desk, Tracy clasped her mama’s hand.
“Well, the CT scan has confirmed what I expected,” he said. “Lucas has enlarged vestibular aqueducts, or EVA, in both ears. The right ear is marginally worse, but both are badly damaged.”
Tracy felt her heart stop. Before it was simply a hearing test. An outside measurement of the sound going through Lucas’s ears. This time it was a picture, proof positive of the structural damage that prevented him from hearing. There was no longer even the slightest margin of doubt, and the reality of it was suffocating. It was as if a giant vacuum had suddenly sucked the oxygen from the air.
He kept talking. “EVA is a condition that begins in the first trimester of pregnancy.”
She inhaled sharply. “Was it something I did? Could I have taken more vitamins? Maybe it was something I ate or drank—”
“Nothing you did or didn’t do would have made a difference,” Dr. Goldstein cut in. “This is a congenital malformation, and its cause is unknown. Some schools of thought indicate it could be genetic, but even that’s debatable.”
“Genetic? How can that be? No one in our family . . . ”
Suddenly, Tracy realized she knew next to nothing about Dominic’s family. Her eyes filled with tears, and try as she may, she couldn’t stop them.
“That’s only a single possibility,” Dr. Goldstein said, “and there’s no proof.”
He continued, explaining that the vestibular aqueduct tube in the fetus’s ear usually narrows to the proper width by midterm.
“But in cases such as Lucas’s, it doesn’t.”
His voice droned on like a runaway train moving at breakneck speed, a disaster in the making with no way to stop it. He told how fluid collected in this tube and, over time, destroyed the tiny hairs that carried sound through the cochlea.
“There’s no way to repair the existing damage, but fortunately, Lucas is an excellent candidate for a bilateral cochlear implant, and with it, he should have near-normal hearing.”
Tracy tried to focus on the word normal, but it seemed impossible. How could you find even a semblance of normal in a situation such as this? She ran her hand over her forehead and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to picture what normal would look like.
It came to mind as Ella, a child thrilled to say the word cat. And after Ella, Gabriel Hawke, a man who loved music, ran a school for deaf children, used a cell phone, and spoke without fault. Tracy knew this was the normal she wanted for Lucas.
She lifted her eyes and looked across the desk. “Okay. What’s the next step?”
Dr. Goldstein said his office would schedule an appointment with Dr. Phyllis Crawford, the implant surgeon. “She’ll take over from here.”
Tracy asked question after question, some about Lucas’s condition and others about the possible cause.
When she ran out of questions, Lila took over, asking if certain foods would be more beneficial than others. Then, recalling how Lucas played with Sox, she asked, “What about dogs?”
“Dogs?” Dr. Goldstein repeated quizzically.
Lila nodded. “Lucas likes to play with the dog. Is that permissible? You know, because of germs?”
“A dog is no problem. It may even be a good distraction to keep Lucas’s focus off the implant site, which
will feel a bit strange at first.”
“Will it be painful?” Tracy asked.
“No more so than any other surgery.”
It seemed the questions were endless. Every answer only brought about another question, and when they finally left the office, Tracy had an overwhelming need to talk with Gabriel again. He was the one person who could truly understand what Lucas was facing.
“Mama, there’s somebody I want you to meet,” she said.
That afternoon, they spent two hours with Gabriel, first talking about the challenges that lay ahead and then looking down the road to a time when they might expect Lucas to begin learning to speak full sentences. After Gabriel had explained the auditory mapping process, he suggested Tracy might want to watch part of a therapy session.
“Yes, I would,” she answered eagerly.
Lila gave Tracy a nod. “You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll stay here in the playroom with Lucas.”
With his hand touching her elbow ever so lightly, Gabriel guided Tracy along the corridor to the window of a therapy room where a toddler was learning to speak. For twenty minutes they stood shoulder to shoulder watching the boy give a name to each item and connect words.
“Brown dog,” he said.
The therapist asked, “Is the brown dog small?”
Shaking his head, he replied, “Brown dog big,” and proudly puffed out his tiny little chest.
Tracy turned her eyes to Gabriel, and before she asked the question, he knew what was on her mind. He took her hand in his and smiled. “Yes, given time, Lucas should be able to speak just as well.”
On the drive home, Lila was silent for a long while. She nervously picked at a loose thread on her jacket, crossing and uncrossing her ankles several times. They were close to Magnolia Grove when she finally asked, “Do you really think Lucas will be able to talk as well as the children we saw in the video?”
Tracy hesitated a few moments, then nodded. “That’s what I’m praying for, Mama. With every breath I take, I ask God to let Lucas hear, to let him speak, to let him live a normal life.” As she spoke, a tiny tear slid across the rim of Tracy’s eye and rolled down her cheek.
In the sunlight slanted across the dashboard, Lila saw the glisten of its track. “I’m praying for that also,” she said, then reached across and squeezed Tracy’s hand.
Late that evening, after Lila had gone to bed, Tracy called Dominic. Until now, she had told him only that Lucas had a problem. Now it was something she could name, and it had a solution.
She’d barely had time to say hello before Dominic said, “You ready to come home yet?” His voice was sharp with that undertone of arrogance she’d come to expect.
“I am home,” she replied. “And this isn’t about us, Dominic. It’s about Lucas.”
She went on to tell of the visit with Dr. Goldstein, then asked, “Is there any sort of deafness in your family? Maybe an aunt or uncle?”
“No,” he said with an air of agitation. “Don’t try to lay this problem on my doorstep. Whatever’s wrong with Lucas isn’t because of me.”
“I didn’t say it was,” she replied. “I’m only trying to figure out where—”
“So you right away suspect me? That’s what your sister said, huh?”
“This has nothing to do with Meghan. I told you, it’s about Lucas, so I thought maybe you—”
“Forget it. I don’t have any money. As it is I’m barely making the rent.”
“I wasn’t asking—”
“You should have thought about how you were gonna handle things before you walked out, stuck me with the apartment, and—”
“Dominic!” she shouted. “Will you just shut up and listen? I don’t want anything from you. Absolutely nothing. But since you’re Lucas’s daddy, I thought you deserved to know.”
“Okay, now I know.” His voice was flat with a rock-hard edge. “So what do you expect me to do about it?”
“Not a damn thing!” Tracy said, and slammed down the receiver.
In the back of her mind, she’d suspected something like this would happen, but she hadn’t been prepared for the heartache it would bring. She sat there for several minutes letting the tears roll down her cheeks, then she got up and tiptoed down the hall. From beneath the door she could see Meghan’s light was still on.
Before she had a chance to knock, Sox grumbled a warning. Meghan shushed him, then got up from her desk and opened the door.
Still red-eyed and teary, Tracy asked, “Do you have time to talk?”
“Of course,” Meghan answered, and pulled Tracy into her arms.
Meghan
Last night when I opened the bedroom door and saw Tracy standing there, my heart just about broke for her. She looked like the saddest person in the entire world. After she told me what Dominic had said, I could understand why. She blames herself for Lucas not having a daddy who cares about him.
How can a man not care for a child who’s his own flesh and blood? she asked.
Of course I didn’t have an answer for such a question, and I doubt anyone else would, either. Behavior like that goes against nature.
I tried to console her by saying she should just forget about Dominic, that he’s the kind of man she doesn’t need in her life. She agreed with me, but the truth is I could see she still loves him—although I simply do not understand why. How can you love a man who brings you that much unhappiness?
Love is a two-way street where people come together and meet in the middle. If it’s just one person going one way, then you know for sure it’ll end up being a road to heartache.
Tracy deserves better. She’s funny and smart and has a good heart. She deserves to have someone like Tom love her. The problem is she’s got to get Dominic out of her heart before anyone else can get in.
When we talk, I don’t say much about Tom. I feel almost guilty being happy with him when I know she’s so miserable. There are so many things I could say—like how delicious and satisfying it is when he holds me, or how he puts his thumb on my lower lip and tugs it down just before he kisses me, or how when he whispers about forever I feel his warm breath against my ear and want to give myself to him right then and there.
I have a million things to say, but I don’t. I keep those thoughts in my head and then write them in my journal. Someday, when Tracy’s heartache is gone and forgotten, maybe I’ll read them to her. I’ll say, This is the kind of love you deserve. A love that sets itself apart from everything else and makes you feel happier than you ever dreamed possible.
Once she’s no longer thinking about Dominic, she’ll see the truth of what I say.
Operation Day
The next two weeks flew by. Tracy drove into Barrington three times, once for Lucas’s appointment with Dr. Crawford and twice just to talk with Gabriel Hawke. It seemed that he could calm her fears as no one else could. When Tracy talked of possible complications, Gabriel came back with stories of children, some younger than Lucas, who had gone through the same surgery and were now chattering like magpies.
Tears of joy ran down her face when they sat together and watched videos of toddlers hearing the sound of their mama’s voice for the first time.
“Do you really believe this will happen with Lucas?” she asked.
Gabriel nodded. “I can probably guarantee it.”
Tracy wanted positive, not probable. She hated probability; it was an ever-widening crack in her world, a world that could split open at any minute. When she’d left Magnolia Grove with Dominic, he’d said they would probably get married, but they didn’t. At the time she’d felt positive about it, but as the months and years passed, probability widened the gap, and it never happened.
She turned to Gabriel, her brown eyes dulled with worry. “I wish you would say positively.”
“There are very few absolute things in this world. The years between birth and death are filled with possibility and probability. What you make of those years is up to you.” He let his eyes linger on her face and smiled
. “However, I can say I’m positive you’re doing the right thing for Lucas.”
The slightest hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
On the day of Lucas’s surgery, Meghan arranged for Sheldon to cover the Snip ’N’ Save. She programmed the office phone so that it would forward calls to his cell and set an auto-response e-mail on the website.
Lila, who was normally an early riser anyway, had breakfast on the table by six thirty that morning, but no one ate. Meghan picked at a piece of toast, and Tracy barely sipped the coffee that was set in front of her. Having been forewarned Lucas was not to eat or drink anything, his high chair sat empty as he followed Sox from room to room. Shortly before eight, the table was cleared, and they all climbed into the car for the trek to Barrington.
The surgery was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. They arrived at Trinity Hospital an hour early, and when Lucas was taken back for pre-op, Tracy was the only one allowed to accompany him. She remained by his side until the gurney came and they lifted him onto it. The sight of him lying there, so small, so fragile, to be facing such an ordeal alone, was terrifying. Yet there was nothing more she could do.
It was a feeling of helplessness far greater than anything Tracy had ever known. With her heart pushed up into her throat, she cupped her hand around his chubby cheek, then kissed his forehead. “You’ll do just fine,” she promised. In her heart she had to believe this was true.
Once the gurney disappeared down the hall, Tracy turned back to the waiting room and was surprised to see Gabriel sitting alongside Meghan and her mama.
“I thought you might need an extra shoulder,” he said, smiling.
“Thank you,” she replied, then crossed over and gave him an affectionate hug.
In a waiting room, time is measured differently. A second becomes a minute, and minutes turn into hours that plod along as if held back by a team of invisible horses. The minute hand of the clock barely moves, and the hour hand appears stuck in the same spot forever.
After a painfully slow hour finally ticked by, Gabriel went to the cafeteria and brought back coffee for everyone. Tracy opened the lid, dumped in two packets of sugar, then left the container sitting on the table until the coffee grew cold and the cream clotted on top.
The Summer of New Beginnings: A Magnolia Grove Novel Page 18
