A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  This is what You’re asking me for, isn’t it? I’ve been hiding in a glass box all this time. I haven’t wanted to let anybody else inside.

  Nelson Hull’s voice came just a tad softer than usual when he said, “We’re going to change the schedule around a little bit today. Something has come up. We’ve decided it would be appropriate to share this with the congregation.”

  Abby had just gone back to her seat. Everyone peered around to see who might be standing up next. Seconds passed. Congregants scrunched lower in their seats as if they were concerned Pastor Hull might call on them. Only Viola Uptergrove rose higher, pushing herself up on her walker as if she needed to take stock of every head.

  For a moment, everyone thought Viola was the one going to say something. But she sat back down, too.

  Nelson extended his hand. “Braden Treasure, will you come to the altar, please?”

  Braden stood up and laid his picture of the warrior on his seat. Samantha rose beside him. Braden smiled and took Sam’s hand, then led her sidelong into the aisle.

  They got to the front of the church, climbed up the steps to the altar, and didn’t know where to stand. Together, they sidestepped one way, and then the other. Nelson stooped low, murmured something, and braced Braden with a broad, firm hand behind the shoulders.

  The pastor retrieved the microphone from its stand, checked to make sure it was on, and positioned the children to one side of the pulpit so their faces could be seen.

  “Hi,” Braden said into the microphone. His voice rang out loud. “I’m Braden Treasure.”

  An undertone moved through the audience. David sat back hard in his chair. Beside him, his wife’s shoulders rose and fell. When she turned to meet his face, their look was long.

  “Hi,” Braden said again as he adjusted his weight from his left foot to his right one. “Lots of people just thought we had a friend visiting, but this is my sister, Samantha.”

  The whispering grew louder.

  “I’ve just met her because she came to find us. She has leukemia.”

  Well, that made everybody hush.

  Braden shifted the microphone from one hand to the other. “There’s this place called a bone-marrow register and they know where people are all over the world. If somebody needs the kind you have, they find you and take it out of you and they fly it to the person who needs it in a plane. There isn’t anybody registered who matches my sister, not even me.”

  While her son talked, Abby plopped her elbows on the pew in front of her and laid her forehead on her stacked hands. Oh, Father, she finally admitted, it’s been so dangerous to let myself care about Samantha. But I do. Oh, Lord, I do.

  “Samantha’s mom tried all the places like that before she ever called our family. My dad doesn’t match Sam, either, even though he’s her dad, too. I’ve talked to everybody on my baseball team. But then I started thinking, well, this is church. I started thinking that, if you all will go to the hospital and get that test like I did, we’ll be able to find somebody.” Braden found his mom and dad in the rows on the left side of the sanctuary and looked directly at them. “We’re all really sad, but things are better because we’re together—”

  David moved his hand from below his nose to his eye sockets and, with his thumb and his forefinger, pinched hard.

  Abby lifted her face and stared at the wooden cross at the front of the sanctuary.

  “Do you want to say something, Sam?” Braden held out the microphone to his sister in front of them all. Samantha shook her head no.

  “Come on. It’s okay. You take it.” He’d whispered, but the sound came over the loudspeakers.

  That didn’t leave her much choice. She did take it. She shot everyone a shy smile. “Hi,” she said, and her own voice rang so loudly it made her jump. She regained her composure before she went on. “I’d just like to say that I’m glad I found this place.”

  Many people in the congregation that day began praying for them. Many people made decisions that moment to drive to St. John’s and have a test. But only one person in the rows of seats prayed from a place of complete devotion. Only one prayed from a place where a wall had been broken down. She prayed as if her own life depended on what she gave that moment to the Lord.

  And maybe, maybe, it did.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  On Monday afternoon at the shelter, Sophie Henderson lugged her blue plastic trashcan toward the office, hugging it possessively against her chest. Her Dodge truck keys swung to and fro from her pinky finger on her favorite key chain, the skeletal-link fish. She paused in the middle of the courtyard and took one last look around.

  She would miss Abby, but she honestly hoped she would never have to see this place again.

  Sophie set the trashcan by the stoop. Before she went inside she bent to give the cat one last, long rub. Phoebe the cat curved low, dipping her vertebrae beneath Sophie’s hand, curling her tail and pushing it as high as it would go.

  That taken care of, Sophie gave the door handle a twist and bumped the door open with her hip.

  She found Abby sitting at her desk, her fingers splayed on a stack of forms she must have been processing for a new client. She was staring sightlessly at a line of self-help books, the ones Sophie knew she trusted for a quick reference. Sophie watched her studying the spines of the books, the colors of the jackets, the embossed titles, before she began to thumb through forms again.

  “Hey,” Sophie whispered.

  “You ready?” Abby asked, without pivoting in her chair.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Abby tamped the papers on her desktop, aligning them in one perfect rectangle. Sophie touched her friend’s arm with sadness.

  Abby said, “It’s not going to be the same without you, you know.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Sophie took a deep breath, deep enough to move her shoulders and sink all the way to her diaphragm. “Talking about going is a whole lot easier than really doing it.”

  “I checked out your truck. It’s full of gas.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I had to put air in one of the tires. There are a couple quarts of oil in the back in case you need to top it off.”

  “I probably will.”

  They stood square and looked at each other, neither of them wanting this to be quite the last they said. “Oh, Soph—”

  “Wish me luck.”

  “Luck. Prayers. Send me your address when you get settled. Or your e-mail so we can stay in touch.”

  “You’ll have to give it to me.”

  Another quick scramble while Abby jotted it down. “There.” And then, another hug.

  “Thank you for everything. Words won’t do this.”

  “Don’t try.”

  “I mean it, Abby.”

  “It’s okay, Soph. I know.”

  Sophie hurried down the steps and turned one last time to wave. The phone rang inside and Abby stepped back, shutting the front door so she could answer the call. Sophie bent, brandished the truck key to unlock the door, and found a scrap of paper stuck inside the truck handle. She unrolled it, and read.

  Oh, dear. Not what she needed right now.

  You are the apple of my eye,

  the blue in every sky,

  the—

  Sophie wadded Mike’s poem and shoved it inside her pocket. She wrestled with the key, opened the lock, and had just opened the truck door and pushed her belongings across the front seat when a rough hand clenched her arm.

  “What’s wrong?” Mike had come from nowhere. He must have been hiding in the bushes behind her. “Don’t you like what I wrote?” His hand clamped around her elbow like a vice.

  “S-sure,” she said, hating herself because she stammered. “Sure I do. I’m just not in the mood—”

  “You’re going away, aren’t you? I knew you were going somewhere. I saw the truck at the gas station a few hours ago.”

  “I’m jus
t—”

  “Just what? Leaving town?” His lip curled against his teeth. “I know you aren’t going to Elaine’s.”

  “No, I’m not going to Elaine’s. I haven’t even talked to her.”

  “She thinks you’re wrong. I’ve got your sister on my side.”

  “What are you doing, Mike?” She wrenched her arm free. “Writing me poetry? Sending me flowers? Bringing me a wild pheasant?”

  “You can’t do this to us. I’m letting you know how I feel. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Mike, we can’t ever have an argument of equals. You start out ahead every time because I know what you’re going to do at the end. In the end, you always hit me.”

  She tried to climb up into the truck but he held her down by the arm. “How do you know what I do at the end? You’re running away. You aren’t even staying until the end.”

  “If you’d stop to count, you’d realize how many endings I’ve stayed around for.” She tried to step up again, struggling against his grip. Mike’s fingers tightened against her biceps. Her arm had gotten past the point of throbbing. She didn’t feel the pain anymore.

  “I have to go, Mike. It was a bad poem,” she said. “It wasn’t even any good.”

  She felt him go stiff beside her. She wrenched around and found him staring at her the way he always did when she knew she was in trouble. The wind had changed, and Sophie felt danger.

  “Oh, Sophie Darling,” he said, shaking his head and chiding. “Sophie… Sophie… Sophie.”

  “I’m leaving because I never can catch my breath with you. You keep me off guard.” She kept on talking and talking, pressing it beyond her better judgment, beyond the point of caring. “I never know which one of you is coming in the door next.”

  “Well, why don’t we try it and see?” This time, instead of yanking her down from the truck, he began to shove her up inside. “Get in,” he ordered. “You’re the one who wanted to drive away so badly. Just get in.”

  “Not with you.” She felt herself being bodily lifted. “Not—”

  But it was too late. He forced her across and climbed in beside her. The trashcan fell over. All her belongings toppled out onto the floor.

  “Where’s the keys?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t want to.”

  “Sophie, give me the keys.” He grabbed her and tried to wrench them out of her hand. She dug into him with her fingernails.

  At that moment the front door to the shelter slammed open. Abby ran toward them across the yard, her cell phone in hand. “Sophie!” Mike saw her coming and banged the truck door shut.

  “Mike, c’mon.” Sophie pleaded with him. “Don’t make this worse than it is.”

  “You can’t abandon me, Soph. I won’t let you.”

  Abby grabbed the door handle on the passenger’s side and groped to open it. Like a mallet, Mike slapped the lock button down. “Let me have the keys.”

  It was a brave thing for Sophie to do. She hadn’t denied her husband anything but herself in a long time. She’d been too smart. “No.”

  Crack. Mike slapped her hard with one huge, wide-open hand. Her head snapped against the window behind her.

  Enormous pain, and things went black for a minute. She struggled upright again. Sophie curled the back of her hand against her mouth.

  She circled the sides of her mouth with her tongue, probing for damage, feeling the raw cuts her own teeth had made in her gums. She tasted blood. With the flat of her other hand, she touched her eye. She’d probably have another black one.

  Mike cursed in frustration. “Why do you make me do this?”

  “Sophie,” Abby called through the window, her voice a mixed tone of command and strength. “Open the door. Climb out.”

  “Leave us alone,” Mike said.

  “Come on, Sophie. You don’t have to be here. Come with me.”

  Mike throttled Sophie’s wrist and yanked her hair.

  She cried out in pain. Through a dim fog of shock, she saw Abby moving around the truck’s front fender, racing for Mike’s door. He let Sophie go long enough to swivel in his seat and lock his door.

  Sophie felt with blind hands, sorting through the belongings that had fallen to the floor. What was down here? Everything she’d brought with her, the day she’d run away. She tried to remember, and couldn’t.

  From the shadow beside her feet, she seized a canister and remembered her hair spray. With more courage than she’d ever summoned before, Sophie brandished the silver canister against him. EIGHTEEN-HOUR PROTECTION AND HOLD, the label read.

  Mike pivoted toward her. Before he had a chance to yank the can away, Sophie sprayed the toxic aerosol fumes straight into his eyes.

  He bellowed, clawing at his face.

  Sophie launched herself past Mike’s shoulder and unlocked the door.

  Abby jerked open the door and jammed her cell phone against the back of Mike’s neck. “Put your hands on the wheel,” she growled. “Both of them. Let her go.”

  “What’s back there?” he asked, panicking at the feel of something cold and blunt on his skin.

  “Let her go,” Abby said without missing a beat, “or I’ll hurt you.”

  “All right. All right.” How easily he gave in. Mike folded his hands over the steering wheel and laid his head atop his knuckles, as the two City of Jackson police cars rounded the corner, their blue-and-red lights swinging arcs against windowpanes and tree limbs. The sound of their sirens crescendoed, then abruptly cut, decrescendoing again to silence.

  For a long time, Abby would remember the snapshot views of these next moments, these next hours.

  Sophie staggering down from the truck, her face bruised and swollen, her upper lip dripping blood. Mike leaning his forehead against the truck beside the gas cap, his eyes downcast, his bangs sticking stiffly up from the coating of hairspray, wrists cuffed behind his hipbones, his jean legs straddled wide. The officers consulting among themselves as they loaded him up, congratulating one another on a completed mission.

  Their last view as the police had driven off while she and Sophie waited hipbone to hipbone on the plank steps, their arms encircling their shins and their chins on their knees, had been a view of Mike’s face through the squad car’s rear window. There he sat secured behind some sort of a metal cage, his eyes wide and following Sophie as he passed, devoid of any emotion.

  “He’s going to have to wear one of those outfits,” Sophie said after the cars and that haunting last view had gone. “One of those bright yellow ones that will make him look like a yield sign.”

  Abby waited a while, unwilling to leave Sophie alone, before she went into the shelter kitchen to get some ice. She dropped the cubes into a Ziploc baggie and folded it inside a washcloth. “Here.” She handed it to Sophie. “This’ll help with the swelling.”

  For a long time after Mike had gone, they heard only the sounds of siskins chittering in the pines above their heads and the click of ice in its little bag and the pounding of bass notes in the one car that went past. As Sophie stared out into the street where she’d run with Mike’s roses, she began to quiver.

  Abby touched her. “What’s up? You okay?”

  Sophie nodded and clamped her knees tighter together.

  “I’ll get you some water. You’re shaking. Maybe that will help.”

  “No, don’t leave.” Sophie laid a hand on top of hers. “Stay with me. Everything’s fine. I just get scared sometimes, feeling this much relief.”

  Abby reached for the cloth in Sophie’s hand, refolded it around the ice. “You don’t have to leave tonight. If you’re too shook up after what he’s done, you can wait until tomorrow.”

  Sophie gingerly reapplied the cold pack. “I’m doing it tonight. If I don’t take the next step while I’m feeling this courageous, I might not take it at all.”

  Abby stared at an ant as it scurried past a crack on the sidewalk, and said nothing.

  A second ant scurri
ed along the cement, a third, a fourth, before Sophie spoke again. “Will you…Well, you know how you’ve been telling me about God’s love and what it’s done for Braden and Sam? How you said, ‘God’s love never fails’?”

  Abby nodded.

  “Well, what about me and Mike, Abby? How can you say God’s love never failed for us? When I’ve waited so long for him to stop hitting me? And now, I’m leaving?”

  Oh, Lord. I can’t answer that. When Abby reached to enfold Sophie inside her arms, Sophie bent against her like someone starving. The top of her head pressed against Abby’s chest as Abby spread her hand wide across the dip of her spine. They rocked to and fro, to and fro.

  “Maybe God’s perfect will would be to have two people seeking Him together. But when there’s one who doesn’t…”

  Abby struggled to find her own answers as she stopped the hug and took over the icepack to dab it against her friend’s damaged face.

  “All I know is this.” She shrugged. “When you’re the one who allows God to love the other person through you, you haven’t any regrets when you look back. I think you can trust that with God. When you let Him work through you, you are changed for the good even if the other person isn’t.”

  You were never wrong to trust Me, Abby. Even when you couldn’t trust in people, you were right to trust in My love.

  Oh, Father. If I understood Your ways, I would tell her. If I understood everything You wanted from me, maybe I could tell Sophie, too.

  “Oh, Soph. I don’t know. I don’t know.” They hugged, rocked again. “Right now, I’m just learning to let people see my own heart.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Susan had agreed to remain in the valley for one week to allow Samantha time to get to know her new family. After that, she would travel home to Oregon, to the care of her oncologist. For three days, the Treasures had kept David’s daughter before her mother arrived. For six days more, Susan had stayed at the Elk Country Inn while Sam camped on the Treasures’ floor in Braden’s sleeping bag. A length of days that had changed everything in some respects and, in some respects, had changed nothing at all.