“I…thought you were staying with Tilda while I washed up.”
He straightened. “Her grandmothers wanted some time with her.”
“Oh, your mom got here?” she asked. He’d told her earlier that Judith would be here as soon as possible.
“Yeah. She’d have been here last night, but her night vision is terrible and Stu was out of town.”
“Good, that’s good. I’m glad she’s here.” She swallowed hard. “Joey…you don’t think Tilda’s going to…” Her voice cracked, and the question became a choked whisper.
“No.” He pulled her hard into his arms, held her close, rocked her slowly. “No, Emily, I do not think that.” He lifted her chin, looked into her eyes, then said, “Come on,” and turning her in his arm, started walking down the hall, not in the direction of Tilda, or the waiting room, but the opposite.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere private. Where we can sit down and talk.” He kept walking, scanning both sides of every hallway, until he saw something that made him stop and go inside.
Chapel. The sign on the door said chapel.
But it was just a room. A few chairs, a small table, a bookshelf holding the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the Dao, and other holy books in a number of languages. There were a dozen white taper candles, all of them burned down to various heights on a metal shelf. Long wooden matchsticks lined up in front of them, and along the edge of the shelf, there were objects. Trinkets, people had left, maybe in offering. Silver coins, tiny medallions, tumbled stones. Most of the candles were already lit.
She looked at their steady flames. The moisture in her eyes making orange and yellow kaleidoscopes of their light. “I’ll bet most of those are for Tilda.”
“I’ll bet you’re right.” He moved closer and picked up a match stick. “Let’s light one together.”
Nodding, she put her hand on top of his, and they moved the matchstick to steal a little fire from a nearby prayer, and carry it to the tallest of the few unlit candles. They touched their flame to its wick. Emily closed her eyes and wished with everything in her. “Make Tilda well,” she whispered.
They drew the matchstick away, and she lowered her hand. Instead of crushing its flame out, Joey moved it to another unlighted taper, and touched its wick with the flame. “Make Emily say yes.”
She frowned at him. He crushed out the burning matchstick, dropped it back where it belonged and pulled something out of his pocket. Then he dropped to one knee and gazed up at her.
“I know this might seem like bad timing, Em, but I gave it a lot of thought, and I think it’s just the opposite. I need you in my life as much as I need that little girl in there. Now more than ever. I love you, Emily Hawkins. I’ve loved you since I was a little guy, and I imagine I’ll die loving you still. I want you to marry me.”
Everything inside her seemed to condense itself into a fresh batch of tears and welled and spilled over and rolled down her cheeks. “I love you, too,” she said, but it came out garbled because she was crying so hard. She fell to her knees to kiss him, and their kisses tasted of tears.
Then she felt him fumbling with her left hand, and broke the kiss long enough to help. She watched in wonder as he slid a rose-tinted diamond ring surrounded by tiny blue sapphires onto her finger.
“It was my great grandmother’s,” he said. “I asked Mom to bring it.”
“It’s beautiful.” The ring on her finger winked and twinkled the reflection of the dancing candles beside her.
“How’s the fit?”
“Almost perfect.”
He took hold of her hand, to look at the fit. “I’ll have it sized.”
“It’s not leaving my finger,” she said, pulling her hand away. Then she held her hand up and moved the ring in the candlelight to watch it shoot fire.“It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen. Truly.” Then she blinked at him and realized he’d distracted her from their vigil. Given her a moment of joy in the middle of her soul’s darkest night.
“So we’re really doing this? Getting married?” she asked softly.
He smiled. “We’re really doing this.” He sounded as surprised as she felt. But it felt good. It felt right.
He grabbed her and kissed her, and she let herself be completely engulfed in him, in the kissing, in the holding, in the sharing love to dispel, ever so briefly, the awfulness happening just beyond the chapel doors.
He lifted his head. “We’re really doing this,” he said, and this time he sounded confident and sure.
“We’ve got to tell Tilda,” she said.
He took her hand, and they took a single step, then stopped at the sound of something clattering to the floor behind them.
Emily turned, frowning, to see that one of the little offerings had fallen from the metal shelf of candles, and she bent to pick it up, and then just stayed there, crouched, staring at the object she held in her hand.
“What is it, Em?” Joe came behind her as she rose.
She held the tiny figurine up. A miniature, porcelain likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She stared at it, then at him. “Joey…?”
He blinked at her. “Didn’t you say you left that money my father gave your father….at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in New Mexico?”
She nodded, dumbfounded. “With a note that said, ‘you owe me one.’” Again and again she looked at the lady, at the exquisite serenity in Her face. Gently, she placed Her back on the shelf, right in front of the candle she’d lit for Matilda.
Emily didn’t believe in magic and miracles. If she ever had, even a little bit, that kind of thinking had been crushed the day Matilda’s doctor had given her the dire diagnosis. Or so she’d thought.
But since coming to Big Falls, she’d seen things, felt things…she’d changed, she realized. Something inside her had been broken open. Some tender center she’d kept locked away since her father’s death. She was different now.
Hand in hand, she and Joey left the chapel, heading back down the hall toward Tilda’s room.
Sophie was in the hallway outside Tilda’s door, talking to Vidalia and Judith, and all three of them were crying.
Emily’s heart fell. “No,” she whispered, breaking into a run. “No, no, no!”
Chapter Fourteen
Joey’s feet felt like lead. He tried to run, to keep up with Em as she charged toward his mom and Vidalia and Sophie, her shoes sliding on the floor when she reached them, her hands clutching Sophie’s shoulders, her eyes searching her face.
“She’s okay, Emily. She’s okay.”
Joey was suddenly able to move his feet a little faster. Emily turned to look through the glass into Tilda’s room. The crushing fear on her face changed. She smiled. Her hands came to her cheeks. Then she looked his way, beaming, but still with rivers of tears.
“Joe, come look! She’s sitting up, flipping channels with the remote, eyes glued to the TV screen.”
He finally made it to her side, looked past her through the glass in the door. There was beautiful Tilda, her long honey and copper curls in need of brushing, working the remote like a pro. She wasn’t deathly pale, and the circles under her eyes had all but vanished.
Emily covered his hand with hers, and he caressed the ring she wore with his thumb. He heard Vidalia gasp and whisper, “Is that–?” and his mom reply, “It is.”
“She looks so much better,” Emily said, as if she hadn’t noticed the two grandmothers noticing her ring. “What’s going on, Sophie?”
“Well, it turns out that her pneumonia was not caused by Sanguis Morbo,” Sophie said. “It had another source. She probably got some river water into her lungs the other day, and there’s been an infection brewing ever since. IV antibiotics are taking care of it, as you can tell by looking at her. She’s responding so well, she can probably go home tonight, though I’d like her to stay a few more hours just to be sure.”
“Then the Sanguis Morbo hasn’t become active yet, after all?” Joey asked, almost limp w
ith relief.
“Better than that,” Sophie said, smiling as those who’d been in the waiting room—and that was a lot of people now that morning had come—came crowding into the hallway. They had a clear view of Tilda’s room from there, and it was obvious there was news being shared. Sophie took a beat to let them get within earshot, and speaking a little more loudly than before, said, “Matilda doesn’t have Sanguis Morbo. She never had it. I’ve retested her three times. There’s no sign of SM whatsoever.”
Dead silence. No one seemed to be able to absorb that information. Joey’s heart started beating so fast he thought it was going to jackhammer a hole straight through his chest.
Emily was trembling, her eyes shifting from Sophie’s to his and back again. “But…but…her doctor told me… her tests showed… how can this be?”
She was afraid to believe. Joey understood it because he was, too. He put an arm around her, held her tight to his side.
“I called her doctor,” Sophie went on. “Woke him up. He said this would be the fifth false positive this year from the lab he uses. Used to use, that is.”
Emily’s frown deepened. “It was…it was a false positive?” She looked at Joey again, searching his eyes, asking him if she could trust this. If this could be real. For the life of him, he didn’t know the answer. “All we’ve been through was nothing more than a mistake?”
“Yes.” Sophie clasped each of them by a shoulder. “Yes, Emily, it was a false positive. A lab error.”
“Lab error my backside,” Vidalia hooted. “It’s a miracle, is what it is! Prayer works.”
“I love when Reiki works so quickly,” Ben Brand said, smiling Joey’s way, and lifting his hand toward his closest cousin for a high five.
“Reiki, my ass,” Selene said, leaving him hanging. “My witches and I conjured the biggest healing spell you ever saw.”
Wes said, “My sources say it was not her time. This was all about…something else.” He nodded toward Joe and Emily, and Joey felt his face get warm.
Everyone smiled at them, so he took the moment to grab Emily’s wrist and hold her hand up. “And we’re engaged.”
Everyone cheered, and a half dozen nurses showed up to start herding Brands and McIntyres outside. They took turns clapping Joe’s shoulder or taking Emily’s hand and offering congratulations.
As they all finally cleared out, Joey opened the hospital room door, and together they went in.
“What was everybody yellin’ about?” Tilda asked, lifting her little hands, palms up.
“Well, for one thing,” Emily said, “you are going to be all better in no time flat, and you get to come home today.”
“That’s good. Santa would never find me here.”
“So…Tilda,” Emily said, sliding up onto the bed and pulling her little girl into her arms. “What would you think about us all living together?”
“You and Daddy and me?” Tilda asked, and Em nodded. “But we already do. In the cabin, for Christmas.”
“What would you think about us living together…for always?”
Tilda widened her eyes and her mouth formed an O as she looked at Joey. “Really?”
“I asked your mom to marry me. What do you think about that?”
She sprang upright and started jumping on the bed. The IV pole tipped and he lunged to catch it at the same instant Emily caught Tilda round the waist and set her gently down. Then she carefully untangled the IV lines, met his eyes, widened hers and smiled.
“I guess that means you like the idea,” Joey said, moving closer to his girls.
“Did you get a ring, Mommy?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, holding out her hand for inspection.
Tilda giggled. “Now you gotta kiss.”
“Not gonna argue with the princess,” Joey said, and he leaned in to kiss Emily softly on the lips. They were both smiling before they stopped clinging, and suddenly a loud cheer went up from outside the hospital.
“Apparently the news has been shared with those sitting vigil outside.” He moved just far enough to crank the window open.
The cheering went on and on, and then, bit by bit, it morphed into another round of “Silent Night.”
“That’s gonna be my favorite Christmas song for the rest of my life,” Emily said.
“Mine, too,” Joey said. He sat on the opposite side of the bed, his arm around Emily with Tilda snuggled in between them. “Mine, too.”
–The End–
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Oklahoma Christmas Blues.
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The Brands Who Came For Christmas.
Oklahoma Christmas Blues
The Long Branch Saloon didn’t open for another hour, but how could anyone resist Santa Claus peering through the window, tapping on the glass?
Sophia wiped her hands on a bar towel and went to let him in, and he beamed a smile at her. His dimples were very real, and so, she thought, was his snowy white beard. “Chilly out there today,” he said. “I brought my lunch, but I’m craving a hot cocoa to go with it.”
“Hot cocoa it is.”
“I’ll take it to go,” he said, looking around. “You’re not open yet, are you?” “Not quite. I’m just getting familiar with the layout. My first day on the job and all.”
“Ah, and here I thought I recognized you. You’re new in town?”
“Sure am,” she said. “I grew up in a small town a lot like this one, though.” At seventeen, she’d thought she couldn’t shake the dust of her hometown off her boots fast enough. At twenty-nine and counting (loudly, inside her head), she’d come running to Big Falls, Oklahoma like her tail was on fire. Her dream life had crumbled. This small town was the only place where she had family these days. Coming here had been a knee-jerk reaction, an impulse. Whether it had been a good one remained to be se
“Sophia McIntyre,” she said, extending a hand. Santa pulled off his thin white gloves and clasped her hand in his. It was warm and strong. “You just find a comfortable stool, Santa. You can eat your lunch right here where it’s warm. I’ll get that cocoa.”
She went behind the bar and took down one of the heavy stoneware mugs. “Marshmallows?”
“Absolutely.”
Smiling, Sophia mixed and stirred and dropped some marshmallows on top, then set the mug full of chocolate in front of her first customer. Santa pressed his palms to the mug and, closing his eyes, inhaled the steam. “Mmm. Simple pleasures.”
She couldn’t reply, not having had many of those lately.
“Are you a bartender by trade, Sophie?” “Sophia,” she corrected. “Time will tell, I guess.” He frowned at her, but waited for more, and she found herself talking though she didn’t know why. “I worked my way through college and med school slinging drinks. It’s like riding a bike. You never forget.”
“So you’re a doctor then? My, my. Small-town girl makes good.” She didn’t reply, but he went on. “What brings you to Big Falls?”
She shrugged. “I have family here. I don’t know, it seemed like the best place to be while waiting to hear whether my license will be pulled for the creative way my ex-fiancé was using my prescription pad.”
“Oh dear.” He reached across the bar to pat her hand. “I’m sorry to hear that, Sophie.”
She glanced up at him, shook her head. “Maybe it’s not like riding a bike. I think you’re supposed to be telling me your problems, aren’t you, Santa?” “Oh, I don’t have problems. There are no such things, you know.”
“No such things as problems?” She lifted her head, met his impossibly blue eyes.
“Absolutely not. Nothing happens to you. Everything happens for you. That’s what I always say. Everything that comes along is designed to help you get where you’re supposed to be.
If you ask me, you’re supposed to be right here. You didn’t know it, so life gave you a little nudge.”
He sipped his cocoa, his elbow on the bar. She’d seen him from a distance yesterday, when she’d first arrived. She’d been driving her Subaru real slow through downtown Big Falls. He’d been in the park that Main Street encircled, holding court in the pavilion on a red velvet throne. Now that he was up close, her memory tried to tell her he was the same Santa who’d been in her own small town when she’d been a little girl. For just a second, she was eight years old again, sitting on his knee, looking up at him with wonder in her eyes.
But that wasn’t very likely, was it? No. Not even possible, really.
“Maybe, Sophie, everything you really want is right here in Big Falls, waiting for you. Maybe you don’t belong in New York City after all.”
“It’s Sophia,” she corrected again. Sophia was successful, respected and wealthy. Sophie was just a country girl with big dreams. And then she said, “You really believe that? A fiancé who’s dealing drugs on the side? A criminal investigation and my medical license in jeopardy? All that’s happening for me?”
He shrugged, sipped, studied her. “What if it was?”
She frowned, starting to think this Santa Claus was, perhaps, suffering from the onset of dementia. Poor thing.
“No, no, hear me out now,” he said, just as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Santa knows these things. What if all those recent events happened because your true calling, your true happiness, the life of your dreams, is right here in Big Falls?”
She frowned, tilting her head to one side and looking into his eyes. “I wish that was true.”
“Don’t wish it.” He leaned back a little, sipped his cocoa and put his mug down. There was chocolate decorating the edges of his whiskers. “I think for right now you ought to try hoping it. Just hope, even if only for the next few days, that everything in your life is happening exactly the way it’s supposed to. You might be surprised.” He smiled, and chugged the rest of his cocoa. “Gotta run, Sophie. Children are waiting.” Then he slid off his stool and reached into the pocket of his red velvet coat.
Oklahoma Starshine Page 18
