Word is spreading, and requests are now coming in from all over the world, mainly from medical clinics, but also occasionally from orphanages. Each request receives a response from Aviva, and she develops a plan for each one, however exotic or distant the locale, or how tiny the population. Because of Bears Without Borders’ medical connections, Aviva and Erez have created a sister organization to provide services and medical equipment—such as the mammography unit they, in collaboration with the Greater Good Network, will soon be providing to a South African hospital—to developing countries.
The couple’s commitment to helping needy children has grown along with their expanding outreach. As Erez puts it, “Bears Without Borders has become a part of who we are to each other.”
Aviva’s bears have truly become global ambassadors, bringing hope and healing to a troubled world. And they’ve only just begun.
For more information visit www.bearswithoutborders.org or write to Bears Without Borders, 270 Windsor Street, #4, Cambridge, MA 02139.
JENNIFER ARCHER
HANNAH’S HUGS
JENNIFER ARCHER
Publishers Weekly calls Jennifer Archer a writer who “captures the voices and vulnerabilities of her characters with precision.” Jennifer was a 2006 finalist for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award with her novel The Me I Used To Be, and her novel Sandwiched was a 2006 nominee for a Romantic Times BOOK reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award.
Jennifer holds a bachelor of business administration degree from West Texas A& M University. A frequent speaker at writing workshops, women’s events and creative writing classes, she enjoys inspiring others to set goals and pursue dreams. She is the mother of two grown sons and resides in Texas with her husband and two dogs—Marge, a proud mutt, and Harry, a miniature dachshund. Jennifer can be contacted through her Web site, www.jenniferarcher.net.
PROLOGUE
Terri Roxton tapped her fingernail against the face of her watch but the second hand failed to start ticking again. “That’s weird,” she murmured.
“What, Mommy?” Hannah asked, twisting in her folding chair to look up at Terri, a red ribbon trailing from her hand.
“My new watch just stopped,” Terri answered, surprised her daughter had heard her over the chatter and giggling of the eleven other first-grade girls in the school cafeteria. Hannah’s Girl Scout Brownie troop had gathered here for their meeting. Three months ago, when Hannah started school and signed up to be a Brownie, Terri volunteered to assist with several of the after-school get-togethers. Today, with Thanksgiving behind them and the Christmas holidays fast approaching, the girls were dressing and decorating stuffed bears to donate to an organization that would send them overseas to sick and orphaned children. Hannah’s troop leader, Jana Adams, had set up the Christmas project and Terri was thrilled to be helping out, though she was feeling especially pressed for time right now.
Terri shook her wrist and glanced at the watch again. Still no luck. She turned to look at the clock mounted on the wall at the far end of the large room. Five-fifteen. The meeting was running late. Her motherin-law, Marilyn, was coming for dinner tonight. It was Marilyn’s birthday, and Terri needed to pick up a few things at the store that she had forgotten—namely a cake and candles.
“Maybe Santa will bring you a new watch,” Hannah said as she struggled to tie the ribbon into a bow around the plush bear’s neck.
“I think I’ll see if this one can be fixed before I ask him for a new one. It’s extra special to me.”
“Because I gave it to you?”
“That’s right, ma’am.” Terri cupped a hand around her mouth, leaned closer to Hannah and whispered, “Don’t tell Daddy, but it was my favorite birthday present.”
Hannah giggled. “Daddy let me pick it out. He should’a let me pick out the present he bought for you, too.” Holding the bear up for Terri’s inspection, she asked, “Is this good?” The red bow was loosely looped, one side twice as big as the other.
“That’s close to perfect!” Terri exclaimed. “Let me tighten it just a little.”
After evening up the sides and securing the knot, Terri sat the bear next to an identical one with a green bow that Hannah had tied earlier. Each girl in the troop had two bears to dress; one to donate and one to keep for herself—a link to the child across the ocean whose spirit they hoped to lighten with their gift.
“Now all you need to do is dress those two cuties and we’ll go home and fix Grandma’s birthday dinner,” Terri said, wanting to hurry her daughter along.
Hannah reached toward one of the grab bags at the center of the long table. The leader and several of the moms had sent assorted decorating materials and old doll clothes for the girls to use to adorn the bears. She dug through it and pulled out a white ruffled dress.
In the chair next to her, Hannah’s best friend, McKenzie, said, “Ooh…I like that one. It’s pretty.”
Hannah frowned. “But what if they give my bear to a boy? Boys don’t want ruffles.”
“Good point,” Terri said. “I’m sure you can find something else in one of the bags. There’s plenty to choose from.”
Hannah pulled out a brown doll coat, a tiny denim jacket, a filmy striped blouse and pink elastic-waist pants. She laid them all out on the table in front of her, studied each outfit, chose the striped blouse, then debated with McKenzie and changed her mind.
“Hannah…” Terri started to say “hurry,” but then Hannah giggled over something McKenzie said and the sound of her laughter stopped Terri short.
Outside, shadows crept into the neighborhood. Those shadows, though, couldn’t touch them inside the glowing cafeteria. The gathering dusk only made the room seem brighter, warmer, safe, set apart from the uncertain world beyond the long line of windows.
Terri sat back and watched the organized chaos around her, watched the twelve bright-eyed girls dressing and undressing their bears. They hummed and talked while they worked, squirmed and danced in front of their chairs. The innocent voices and laughter spread through her, warm and sweet as the hot chocolate they had sipped from paper cups at the start of the meeting. It seemed to Terri her watch wasn’t the only thing that had stopped; time had, too. Something told her that this was one of those moments her mother had mentioned when Terri became a mother herself, one of those simple, perfect moments she should not rush through, but savor. Her mother had said that, later, when Hannah was grown and off on her own, these were the memories Terri would cherish most.
“Oh, look!” Hannah pulled two more coats from a grab bag, one red and one green, identical in every way except for their color. Arching one brow in a perfect imitation of her father, Kyle, she said, “Mah-ve-lous,” and managed to sound like Kyle, too. Though the coats were too small for the bears, Hannah tugged them onto the animals, zipped the zippers, then asked her mother’s opinion.
“I think I know a couple of bears who’ve been eating ice cream with their berries.” Terri poked a finger into one stuffed animal’s pudgy stomach.
“Mo-om.” Giggling, Hannah settled a fist on one hip and tilted her head to the side. “Bears don’t eat ice cream.”
“Oh, really? And how do you know this, madame?”
Hannah gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “They don’t have bowls or spoons.”
“Which bear are you keeping?” Terri asked with a laugh.
“Hmmm.” Hannah looked from one animal to the other. “The red bear, I think. I’ll give this one away.” She picked up the bear in the green coat and hugged it. “Make some kid happy!” she told the stuffed animal.
Smiling and humming “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” Terri began to clean up the work area.
Ten minutes later in the school’s parking lot, she put the key into her car ignition and glanced into the rearview mirror. “You buckled up back there?”
In her car seat, Hannah grabbed for the seat belt and pulled it across her lap. “Oops, I almost forgot.”
Terri started the engine and d
rove away from the school, waving to several other mothers as she passed. Traffic was heavy with weary workers making their way home and shoppers eager for a head start on the holiday rush.
“Look, Hannah,” Terri said as they approached the red light at the last intersection before the grocery store. Fat, slushy drops fell onto the windshield. She switched on the wipers. “It’s starting to snow.”
“Does it snow in that place where they’re sending the bears?” Hannah asked.
“Rwanda,” Terri said, slowing for the stoplight ahead. “I don’t think so. It’s tropical there…hot and rainy. They have mountains, though. Maybe they get a little snow up there.”
“I wouldn’t like not having much snow. Snow’s magical, isn’t it, Mom? Daddy told me that.”
“Daddy’s right. It is magical.” And cold, Terri thought with a shiver as she reached to turn up the heat. Though she’d lived in the Texas Panhandle all of her life, she still wasn’t used to the often bitter-cold winters. Truth be told, she wouldn’t mind if it never snowed again.
Before Terri reached the stoplight, it changed to green and she pressed down the accelerator and continued on. Glancing into the rearview mirror again, she asked, “What kind of cake do you want for Grandma’s—”
The blare of a horn drowned out the rest of her sentence, and Terri’s heart lurched. In the time it took to blink, she turned and saw the truck.
The shadows found them, grabbed hold, then swallowed the car whole.
CHAPTER
ONE
One Year Later
Kyle took the mail from the box then unlocked the door and stepped into the entry hall. The silence slammed into him. After four months of living alone, he still wasn’t used to it. Flipping on the light switch, he shouldered the door shut behind him and started into the house. The living room and kitchen looked as bleak and cold as the weather outside. Funny, he’d never thought so before he and Terri separated. When she left to move in with her parents forty miles away in her small hometown, it was as if she took all the color and warmth in the house along with her.
These days, Kyle preferred his twenty-four-hour shifts at the firehouse to his off time at home. He’d become a firefighter just before Hannah was born. The guys at Station Number 2 were his family; he had worked and lived alongside them for the past seven years. At least while on duty, he wasn’t alone. He always had someone with whom to talk and share meals. And he heard laughter from time to time, though seldom his own. Kyle wasn’t looking forward to the four days off that stretched ahead.
He tossed the mail on the coffee table, then shrugged out of his jacket. Laying the leather garment over the back of the couch, he sat down and sorted through bills and promotional flyers. The envelope at the bottom of the pile shot a chill straight through him, one having nothing to do with the freezing rain that had just begun to strike the windowpanes. Harold McKay Attorney at Law. Kyle hesitated, drew a long breath and blew it out before ripping open the seal.
As he skimmed the divorce papers, he told himself he should be angry at fate or God or whatever force had stolen Hannah’s life and his along with it. But Kyle had stopped cursing the heavens months ago; now he only blamed himself. Over the course of his firefighting career, he had saved more than one stranger’s life, but he couldn’t even save his own daughter.
Lowering the papers to his lap, Kyle leaned back and closed his eyes, remembering that terrible night of the car wreck and the phone call that changed everything. Terri’s injuries were minor, but the truck that ran the intersection had hit the rear passenger side of the car where Hannah sat. Over the phone, the emergency room nurse told him his daughter had sustained multiple injuries, the worst being a clipped femoral artery that required immediate repair. Hannah was already being prepped for surgery.
The next day, the doctors said Hannah was recuperating nicely, that she would be fine, and Kyle had believed them. Why wouldn’t he? His beautiful blue-eyed little girl was pale but alert. Talking. Even smiling. But on the third day, she contracted an infection that weakened the artery and they were told she would need another operation to strengthen it. Two weeks later, with the infection under control, Hannah was airlifted to Dallas so a specialist there could perform the second surgery.
Opening his eyes, Kyle scrubbed a hand across his face. He felt almost as weary as he had on that morning in Dallas as he and Terri waited for the big-shot doctor to come out and say Hannah had breezed through the second surgery, as she had the first one. But the news the doctor brought wasn’t good; it was a nightmare come true. During the operation her artery had burst. Hannah had died on the table.
Kyle left the couch and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. What could he have done differently? He asked that question of himself every day. Every minute of every long, dark night. Something. He should’ve done something. He was Hannah’s father. Terri had been beside herself with worry. It was his duty to be the strong one, to protect their child. Maybe…Kyle glanced up, stared at himself in the mirror. There were dozens of “maybes”…thousands. But none of them mattered anymore. Hannah was gone. And now Terri was, too. He couldn’t hold on to either of them.
Kyle left the bathroom and started down the hallway. He paused beside Hannah’s bedroom door and longing ripped through him, jagged as a serrated knife. How many times had he stood here after coming home past Hannah’s bedtime and looked in just for a glimpse of her? He imagined doing so now, pushing the door in quietly, seeing blond hair splayed across the pillow, her innocent features softened by sleep and the night-light’s glow. He reached for the doorknob, hesitated, then lowered his hand. The room would look the same, but Hannah would not be in it.
In the months after she died, he had encouraged Terri to put their daughter’s things away, told her they could do it together, thinking it would be easier for them both to have fewer reminders around of all they had lost. Terri refused, again and again. Now Kyle sorely regretted pushing her. After she moved out, he tried himself to pack up Hannah’s toys and bedding, to take down the posters covering her walls, and found he couldn’t do it, either.
He returned to the living room by way of the kitchen, where he found a pen in a drawer full of grocery store coupons and loose rubber bands. Lifting the divorce papers from the coffee table, he flipped to the back page, stared at the signature line. After a moment, he glanced up at the framed wedding photo on the bookcase across the room, one of him and Terri when their future looked bright. Tomorrow. He would sign the papers tomorrow, Kyle decided. He took them and the rest of the mail to the small desk in the corner where Terri used to sit when she paid bills.
With the papers and mail shoved aside, he reached for the phone and punched in his best buddy’s number. He and T. J. Boone shared the same shifts at work and the same time off. The two men were closer than brothers and knew each other’s minds so well they sometimes finished each other’s sentences. Kyle could be the worst of company, and T.J. would be there, sitting silently beside him while he rode out his misery.
“Hey,” Kyle said, when T.J. answered. “Is Marge still out of town?”
“Yeah, and this place is a wreck.”
“You want to meet me at Smokey’s for some barbecue? I don’t feel like sitting home alone tonight.”
“I just ate half a bag of potato chips and I’m not hungry.”
“Me, neither. I could use a beer, though.” Kyle sensed concern in T.J.’s short hesitation and feared his friend heard the troubled tone of his voice. He didn’t want tonight to turn into a pity party. Just the thought of that happening made him cringe. He only wanted some company. “So? How about it?” he asked.
“Okay,” T.J. said. “See you in ten.”
A CHRISTMAS TREE COVERED with twinkling white lights filled one corner of the bar. The restaurant noise was a welcome relief to Kyle. Televisions droned from every corner of the ceiling. Happy Hour laughter trickled through the room. Glasses clinked and silverware clattered.
Kyle s
at back and watched T.J. finish off a plate of ribs. Apparently, the aroma of barbecue sauce had revived his appetite.
“You’re in a mood,” T.J. noted, halfway through beer number two, his bald head gleaming beneath the hanging light above him. “Something bothering you?”
“Maybe.” Kyle picked up his beer, avoiding his buddy’s stare.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Kyle told him about the divorce papers.
T.J. set down his longneck. “You’re gonna fight for her, right?”
Kyle thought about that a few seconds. “When Terri left, she said our marriage doesn’t mean anything anymore. That it doesn’t have a purpose without Hannah.” He shrugged, irritated with himself for getting into this, for revealing too much. “I don’t want the split. But, the truth is, I guess I feel the same way.” T.J. frowned, and Kyle added, “You know how we were. Our lives revolved around Hannah. And now…”
What else could he say? The truth was obvious. The joy of raising their child had been the glue that held his marriage together. He and Terri married young after only four months of dating. Terri was three months pregnant when they stood in front of the preacher. They had never really been a couple; they’d always been a three-some—he, Terri and Hannah.
T.J. averted his attention to the bartender, took another drink of beer, then met Kyle’s gaze. “You said you don’t want the split.” He lifted a bushy brow. “You still love her?”
Heat suffused Kyle’s face. Nodding, he looked away.
“The two of you have been to hell. Maybe you ought to give yourselves some time to find your way back out again before you do something so final.”
“I don’t know.” Kyle shook his head and shoved his bottle across the table. “I’m not sure I could stand to keep watching her torture herself.”
More Than Words Volume 4 Page 25
