“I don’t suppose you could change the ticket?”
Sarah was spared yet another explanation when Janie glanced sideways and straightened, her one hand drifting up to her hair in a preening gesture. “I wondered when Logan would remember his work gloves.”
Sarah wasn’t going to look, the very sound of his name sending a shiver of apprehension chasing down her spine but as Janie got up to get the gloves her head moved of its own accord. And she saw Logan pause in the process of opening the frost-
encrusted glass door to the coffee shop. He was looking back over his shoulder. An older man coming out of the bank across the street had caught his attention.
Her father. Frank Westerveld.
And he was coming here. From the tight look on her father’s face, Sarah could tell he was not one bit happy to see Logan Carleton.
Her father’s tailored wool coat, crisp white shirt and silk tie were an elegant contrast to the canvas coat, stained jean jacket and faded blue jeans of the younger man who had turned to face him.
Sarah found herself clenching her fists as she watched Logan, the man she had once dated, face down her father, the man who had demanded they stop. Her father was talking... Logan replying. But while her father stabbed the air with his finger as if punctuating his words, Logan kept his hands in his pockets when he spoke; the picture of nonchalance.
“Oh, boy,” Janie murmured, returning. “This will not turn out well.”
“Some things haven’t changed,” Sarah said with a sigh, watching her father, remembering his fury when he found out that she had been seeing the rugged young man. It would seem her father’s latent anger with her old boyfriend hadn’t abated one jot in spite of Sarah having fallen in with her father’s wishes.
“I didn’t expect to be facing both my dad and Logan as soon as I got here.”
“Looks like Logan doesn’t want his gloves after all,” Janie said.
Sarah turned in time to see Logan salute her father, then turn away, his coat still open.
Her father stood with his back to the shop, his hands clenched into fists at his side.
“Doesn’t look as if Logan’s gained any more points with your dad,” Janie said.
“Logan has never been concerned with points, or my father’s opinion,” Sarah murmured. “Or anyone else’s for that matter.”
“Oh c’mon. I know there was a time he cared what you thought,” Janie said, giving Sarah a playful poke.
“Not for very long.” Sarah pulled her attention away from Logan’s retreating figure.
The door jangled, heralding some new customers, but still her father stood outside.
“You’d better see to your customers. I should go say hi to my dad, let him know I’m here.” Sarah got up and, before she knew what was happening, Janie caught her in a quick, hard hug. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
Sarah felt a flood of sentiment for her brusque and straightforward cousin.
The hug felt better than she remembered.
Janie drew back and patted her awkwardly on her shoulder. “I’ll see you on Sunday? At church?”
She felt it again. The gentle tug of expectations. She knew the drill. If you were a Westerveld and you were in town on Sunday, showing up at church was mandatory. But Sarah, who used to love church, hadn’t been since she left Riverbend. However, though she had let the faith of her childhood slip, she couldn’t completely eradicate the notion that God did still have some small hold on her life.
And there was the guilt. Always a good motivator.
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
“You’ll have to be or you’ll have all the aunties calling you up demanding to know if you’re sick. Or dead.” Janie stopped, her eyes growing wide, then pressed her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said behind her fingers. “Wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Sarah stroked her cousin’s arm to reassure her.
But Janie wasn’t looking at her. “What...something’s wrong.”
The frightened note in Janie’s voice made Sarah look up in time to see her father’s head drop, his gloved hand pressed against the window, his other hanging by his side.
She moved, her chair clattering to the floor behind her. Her feet wouldn’t move fast enough. She burst out of the coffee shop in time to keep her father from falling to the sidewalk.
When she regained her senses, she realized Logan had also seen what had happened and returned.
“Here. I got him,” he said, catching Sarah’s father under his arms.
But Frank pushed Logan’s hand away, his face growing red. “Go away, Carleton.”
“Call nine-one-one,” Logan said, ignoring Frank’s warning. “Use my cell phone,” Logan ordered. “Coat pocket. Right side.”
Sarah hesitated only a moment, then dug into Logan’s jacket and pulled out the small phone.
Her father pushed at Logan, his breath coming in short gasps of distress. “I asked you.” He glanced at Sarah. “I asked him...”
“I’ll hold him. You call,” Sarah said, holding out the phone to Logan while her father pushed at him with increasing clumsiness.
“Why? Logan. Why?” Her father’s speech grew slurred, his eyes unfocused.
What was going on?
Whatever it was, her father seemed more distressed about Logan’s presence than about what was happening to him.
“Dad. I’m here.” Sarah pushed Logan’s hand away, slipping her arm under her father.
She put her finger on her father’s neck, not knowing what she should be doing but knowing that she had to keep Logan away from her father because his presence wasn’t helping him calm down at all. “Dad. Look at me. What is happening? Does your chest hurt? Is the pain going down your arm?”
He shook his head, his eyes growing wide.
Oh, dear Lord, not now, she thought, helplessness washing over her in a wave. Not after all these years. He had to tell me something. Had to say something. Don’t take that away from me.
Sarah’s prayer was instinctive, a hearkening back to a time when she thought God listened.
But her father’s angry focus was on Logan, who was barking directions into his cell phone.
“Logan...” Frank tried to lift his arm, but it fell back to his side.
His speech grew increasingly slurred.
“Never mind him, Dad. Talk to me. Look at me,” she called, trying desperately to get him to even glance her way.
He took a breath and Sarah caught his head as it slumped to the side, turning his face to her. But even as Sarah tried to catch his attention, Frank Westerveld’s entire focus was on Logan Carleton.
And then his eyes fell shut.
“Dad. Talk to me,” she found herself screaming.
Chapter Two
The unconscious man lying on the bed wasn’t her father. Frank Westerveld would never have allowed anyone to invade his body this way.
Tubes and drains and electrodes and monitors indicated changes in his breathing and his pulse. An oxygen line hooked over his ears, tiny tubes inserted in his nose.
Ischemic stroke the doctor had called it. Prognosis? Time would tell whether he would gain control of his body, whether he would be able to speak again, walk again.
The hospital in Riverbend wasn’t equipped to deal with her father’s condition. As soon as he had come into the emergency room there, he had been stabilized and rushed off to Edmonton.
Janie had called the family and by the time Frank had arrived, the uncles and aunts had gathered at the city hospital.
“You’re looking at a long, slow recovery,” Dr. Williamson said, his hands hanging in the pockets of his lab coat. “The CT scan showed a clot as the cause of stroke, which means that the injury sustained did some irreversible damag
e, the extent of which we can only discover in time.”
“Will he be able to speak at all?” Dot, Sarah’s aunt, asked.
Sarah was thankful for Dot Westerveld’s presence. Other than “why,” Sarah didn’t know what questions to ask.
Her emotions were thrown into turmoil. Too well she remembered another panicked drive to the hospital, her sister’s broken and battered body laying on a bed in the emergency room.
But Marilee was already gone by the time she and her father got to the hospital. Her sister’s vital and fragile spark of life had been extinguished sometime between Sarah telling Marilee that she wasn’t going to break curfew to pick her up and the police showing up on her father’s doorstep, two hours later.
They never even got to say goodbye.
She wrapped her hands around the rail of her father’s bed, desperately trying to blank the memory from her mind, turning her focus instead to her father now lying helpless but alive.
Marilee was gone and father needed her now.
“He’ll have some type of speech ability, but as to how much, that depends on how he responds to therapy.” Dr. Williamson lifted his shoulder in a vague shrug. “Each stroke patient is different, so I can only give you a vague prognosis.”
The words long and slow resonated in Sarah’s brain.
“How long? Can you tell us anything?” Sarah finally asked.
Dr. Williamson shook his head slowly. “I’d say you’re looking at at least three months of therapy, and even then...”
Three months.
In twenty-two days her friends were meeting her in Toronto to begin the first leg of a European trip Sarah had been saving toward for the past year.
But she was here now. Her father lay silent in the hospital and Sarah had to make a decision. Could she really leave her father here?
“And what do you need me to do?” she asked, fighting a mixture of exhausted tears and frustration.
The doctor spoke of the need for stability, the importance of having family close by, reinforcing her vague decision. “Right now your father just needs your presence,” the doctor said.
How odd that now, when he couldn’t speak or act, he needed her. For most of Sarah’s life, he hadn’t seemed to need anything from her.
Questions and self-recrimination beat at her like ravens around a carcass, just as they had the last time she’d stood by the hospital bed of someone she loved.
Why hadn’t she gone out and talked to her father before Logan had made him angry? Why had she avoided him? Would this have happened if she had greeted him right away?
And had Logan said something to cause her father such distress?
“The stroke...could something stressful have caused it?” Sarah asked.
The doctor shrugged. “There’s a study that has shown that a sudden change in behavior can trigger the stroke. Anger does seem to be a potent trigger for ischemic strokes.”
Anger. Arguing. What if she had gone out before, as she should have, what if Logan hadn’t come back for his gloves, what if...
The words were too familiar. Six years ago she had spent months going over “what if” scenarios about Marilee. What if she had gone and picked her up? What if she hadn’t tried to do what her father wanted? What if she and Marilee hadn’t had that fight before she left the house? What if Marilee hadn’t gone out with Logan?
“You look exhausted, Sarah.”
Sarah jumped as her aunt’s voice penetrated the memories and regrets burying her.
“Do you want me to take you home?” Aunt Dot continued.
Sarah wanted nothing more than to go home and rest. But concern mixed with guilt kept her standing beside her father in ICU. If she’d gone outside, stopped him from talking to Logan, he might not be lying here.
“I should have gone out,” Sarah whispered to her aunt, still looking at her father, who lay so silent on the bed. “I was waiting for him, so why couldn’t I go out and talk to him? Why did this happen?”
Dot clutched her niece’s arm. “We don’t know why things happen, but you know, I believe it was our heavenly Father’s will that brought you here. He knew that you needed to be right here, right now.”
If this was God’s will, then Sarah was ready to give up on Him completely. Six years ago, after Marilee’s death, Sarah’s faith in God had taken a severe beating. Nothing she had seen since had reinforced the impression that she needed to spend any time with Him anymore.
Sarah glanced around the ICU ward. Nurses moved about, monitors beeped and oxygen sighed. The buzzing in her head told her it must be late,
but she had no idea of the time. Frank’s brothers, Morris, Dan and Sam, had come and stood vigil and were now waiting outside of the ICU, waiting to take their turns to stay by his side.
“He’s okay for now. We’ll come back tomorrow,” Dot assured her. “Uncle Sam is waiting. He’ll watch while you’re gone.”
As the others left the room, Sarah looked down at her father, so helpless now.
Then, miraculously, Sarah saw her father’s head move and his eyes open.
And he was looking directly at her. His one eye widened and one corner of his mouth moved just a fraction. She caught sight of a small movement of his opposite hand, his fingers curling ever so slightly.
She waited but then his face relaxed again and his eyes closed.
Was he trying to talk to her? Trying to tell her something?
Whatever it was, it was again locked behind that immobile face.
Sarah reached out and touched her father’s hand, willing the response to return. But nothing happened.
Finally, after another twenty minutes of waiting, she allowed her aunt to usher her past the nurse’s desk to the waiting room. Uncle Morris, Dot’s husband, Dan and Sam stood up from the bench and each took a turn giving her a hug.
“We’ll be praying,” Sam whispered into her ear. “You go rest.”
Sarah nodded and slowly walked down the hallway, her aunt’s arm around her, holding her up.
“Janie said you were staying with her. Shall I take you there?”
Sarah shook her head. Right now, she just wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Alone with her regrets.
“I’ll call her and tell her to meet us at the house with your car.”
“That would be nice,” Sarah said as they stepped out of the warmth of the hospital into the chill air outside.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, she and her aunt pulled up in front of her father’s house, her car indicating Janie had already arrived. A light from the living room glowed, sending a falsely comforting image of a family at home, doing family things.
Janie came to the door and, as Sarah came in, her cousin reached out to take her coat. “I brought your suitcases. They’re up in your old room.”
Sarah thought of the airline tickets tucked deep in her coat pockets.
Thought of her father’s prognosis.
Three months.
Tomorrow, she thought, repressing a shiver. Time enough to deal with that tomorrow.
“It might take a few minutes for the house to warm up. Your dad keeps the thermostat turned way low,” Janie continued.
“I’ll wait outside, Janie,” Aunt Dot said. “I’ll be back tomorrow if you want, Sarah. Tilly said she would be willing to drive, too. Just say the word.”
“Thanks, Aunt Dot. Thanks for everything you did today.”
Dot just smiled at her. “That’s what family is for.” Then she leaned over and dropped a light kiss on Sarah’s head. “It’s good to have you here, again, Kitten.” And then she left.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Janie asked as the door closed behind their aunt. “Do you want me to stay with you?”
“Thanks for the offer. I really need some alone time.
”
“Don’t blame you. Your wish to get eased into family life didn’t exactly happen, did it?” Janie stroked Sarah’s hair back from her face in a motherly gesture. “Do you want me to take you to the hospital tomorrow?”
Sarah just shook her head, stifling a yawn. “I’ll drive myself.”
“I’m sure Mom and Dad and Uncle Morris and Aunty Dot are going.”
And Sarah was sure she didn’t want to depend on someone else’s schedule. “I like to have my own transportation.”
“I hear you,” Janie said. “I hope you can sleep.”
“Thanks.” Sarah followed Janie out the door and stood on the step, waving as Aunt Dot and Janie drove down the driveway, then closed the door on the outside world.
Silence, heavy and dark, fell on her.
As Sarah dragged her feet up the stairs, exhaustion fuzzed her mind and blurred her eyes. Driving overnight to get here had been a very bad idea to start with. Had Sarah known what lay ahead she would have taken more time. Started earlier. Had Sarah known what would happen, she would have gotten up off the chair at Janie’s coffee shop and gone outside to talk to her father.
Unfortunately, no one knew what the repercussions of their decisions would be. Not until events played out.
Just as they had those many years ago.
Sarah’s steps slowed as she came to the door to her sister’s bedroom. A door that had stayed closed and locked for the last few months she had lived here.
On impulse, Sarah grabbed the cold metal handle but froze as she saw, etched into the frame, lines marking out Marilee’s height, her age and the year behind each one. The last one was dated six years ago. Four days before the accident. Four days before Sarah found out that her sister had sneaked out to meet the boy Sarah had just broken up with.
Logan Carleton.
Sarah swallowed down the unexpected pain.
The wrong daughter had died...
Sarah twisted the knob. To her surprise, it wasn’t locked. Slowly she nudged the door open. The light of the hallway fell into the room and Sarah’s heart leaped into her throat.
It was as if she had stepped back in time.
Marilee’s favorite pink shirt was draped over the back of the chair, her blue jeans bunched up in a crumpled heap on the floor. A schoolbook lay open on the desk, a notebook beside it, Marilee’s scrawling handwriting was visible even from where Sarah stood just inside the room.
A Family-Style Christmas and Yuletide Homecoming Page 19
