Meghan held up one finger to the woman and rasped into the phone, “The nurse is here. She said I can go see Grandma now.”
“All right. Let me know how she’s doing.”
“I will.” She started to disconnect, then slapped the phone against her ear again. “Sean?”
“Yeah?”
She gulped. “Thank you.” Such simple words, but what deep meaning they held.
“You’re welcome. I’ll be praying for you both. Bye.”
Meghan dropped the phone in her pocket, grabbed up her crutches, and followed the nurse up a narrow hallway to an open door. The nurse gestured her inside, and Meghan nearly collapsed with relief when she found Grandma sitting in a plastic chair shaped like a scoop in front of a long, cluttered metal desk. Grandma held out her hand, and Meghan stumped over to her as fast as the crutches would allow.
She grabbed Grandma’s hand—her warm, soft, familiar hand—and clung. “I was worried sick. Why did they take you for a sonogram? What were they looking for? Are you all right?”
Grandma gave Meghan’s hand a little squeeze. Her eyes were red and watery, but her smile was intact. “Sit down and let me explain.”
Meghan sagged into the second scoop chair.
Grandma sandwiched Meghan’s hand between hers. “It looks like I won’t be able to go to Cumpton. At least not for a while. The doctor is arranging for a vascular surgeon to unclog one of my arteries.” She laughed softly. “This is good news. It means those funny spells I’ve been having where I can’t get ahold of a word or I feel light headed will go away when the surgery is done.”
Meghan blinked hard. She wanted to be as brave as Grandma, but underneath she was scared spitless. “They’re doing surgery? When?”
“Dr. Nobbs is arranging it right now. It will be sometime early next week.”
Meghan’s spine became a boiled noodle. She slid farther down the seat and gawked at her grandmother. “So soon?”
“Well, now”—Grandma raised one eyebrow and assumed a crisp tone—“these things can’t wait. I need blood flow to my brain. The quicker we get it done, the better for me. Don’t you agree?”
Maybe Meghan had a blocked artery, too. Her head was spinning. “I…I suppose.”
“And there’s something I need you to do for me while I’m in the hospital.”
Meghan forced her frame to stiffen. “Anything.”
“I want you to let me buy you a plane ticket to Little Rock—”
“Grandma, no!”
“—to meet up with Sean and help him with the investigation.” Grandma scowled at her so fiercely all other protests died on Meghan’s tongue. “Don’t you see, Meghan? It’s as if God prearranged all of this. You’re a cold-case detective. I can entrust this search into the hands of my own granddaughter.” Tears swam in Grandma’s eyes, but her beautiful smile radiated. “If you find Maggie, I’ll be all fixed up and healthy and ready to meet her without any worry about forgetting something important or…or fainting at her feet.”
Despite herself, Meghan choked out a laugh. “Oh, Grandma…” She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her grandmother’s neck. With her cheek pressed to Grandma’s warm, moist temple, Meghan whispered, “I love you so much.”
Grandma hugged her so tight the breath wheezed from her lungs. “I love you, too, my precious girl.” She pulled loose and cupped Meghan’s cheeks in her hands. “You’ll go? For me?”
She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay at her grandmother’s side and make sure everything went okay with the surgery and recovery. Grandma had given and given and given to Meghan, but she’d never asked anything of her before. Could Meghan deny her now?
Sean’s voice echoed through her memory. “I have to trust Him to hold the people I care about even when I can’t.”
She drew in a fortifying breath and nodded, dislodging the tears wobbling on her eyelashes. “I’ll go. For you, Grandma, I’ll go.”
Thirty
Kendrickson, Nevada
Diane
Meghan slept soundly on the other side of the bed, stirring jealousy because Diane couldn’t sleep. Her mother was facing a carotid endarterectomy. Unfamiliar with the term, she’d asked to see the packet of information the doctor had sent with Mother. She’d also explored at least three different medical sites on the Internet. Now she knew too much. They would slice Mother’s artery open and clean the vessel. The thought made her shudder. The potential risks paraded in front of her mind’s eye, each accompanied by pictures straight from her imagination.
Some were mild, such as allergic reactions to medicines or an infection at the incision site. Others—bleeding on the brain, brain damage, a heart attack or stroke, a seizure—made her stomach churn with anxiety. Mother had always been so healthy, so strong and active. What would they do if she suffered a stroke and became incapable of caring for herself? Or had a heart attack and died in the middle of the surgery?
The worries were ludicrous, considering how she’d wanted an excuse to place Mother in some sort of care facility so Meghan wouldn’t feel obligated to visit her every year. The possibility now loomed in front of her, stronger than before, and all she could do was lie awake and quiver in fear. What on earth was the matter with her?
She slipped out of bed. The dachshunds had been sleeping as soundly as Meghan, but when Diane tiptoed toward the hallway, a soft whimper rose from one box. She didn’t need to turn on a light to know which dog had made the sound. She bent down at the first crate and unlatched it.
“Come on, Ginger.” The dog nosed Diane’s hand and delivered a warm kiss. Diane scooped the animal into her arms and carried her to the living room, where she found Mother sitting in her wingback chair.
“What are you doing up?” They asked the question at the same time.
Mother chuckled. She reached for the 1930s-style floor lamp next to her chair and pulled the chain for the second bulb. “Does Ginger need to go out?”
“No.” Diane sank onto the sofa and tucked her feet beside her. She placed Ginger on the cushion next to her, and the dog wriggled halfway into her lap, her tail wagging. “I woke her, and I was afraid she’d wake the others, so I brought her out with me.” She frowned. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“Probably.” Mother didn’t sound concerned, but the fact that she had been sitting in the room alone at nearly midnight offered mute evidence of inner turmoil. “You said you woke the dog. Why are you still awake?”
Diane hung her head. How hypocritical she’d sound if she admitted she was worried about the surgery. About losing her mother. The hateful words she’d flung at Mother before storming out of the house when Meghan was a newborn haunted her. Did Mother remember, too?
Early November 1985
Little Rock, Arkansas
Diane left the steam-filled bathroom wearing her fuzzy robe and a towel wrapped loosely around her head. She’d spent nearly twenty minutes in the shower, letting the pulsing hot water penetrate her sore muscles. Even though Meghan was a full six weeks old and the doctor said the soreness of childbirth should be gone, Diane still suffered a deep ache in her lower back. If she never had another baby it would be too soon.
She rubbed the towel over her wet hair as she tiptoed across the bedroom floor to the bassinet in the corner. Not a peep came from the oversized wicker basket. She peeked over the edge, then drew back with a grunt of irritation. “She did it again.” Why couldn’t Mother stop interfering? Diane hated looking into the bassinet and seeing a burrito where a baby should be. How would Meghan grow if she was always bound up tight?
Diane threw the damp towel aside and unwound the receiving blanket from Meghan’s sleeping form. The baby stirred, scrunched up her face in an awful yet somehow adorable scowl, then let out a weak wail.
At once Mother appeared in the doorway. “Is she all right?”
Diane huffed. “No, she’s not. Why didn’t you leave her the way I had her?” She scooped Meghan from the bassinet, cradled her in one a
rm, and bounced. The baby’s wails increased in volume. Diane bounced harder, rocking back and forth at the same time. Meghan flailed her arms and poked her little feet from the bottom of the gown. Her wails turned into screeches of fury.
Mother hurried over and held out her arms. “Let me take her while you brush your hair.”
Diane jerked away from her mother. “Shhh…Shhh…” She forced the sound through gritted teeth, but Meghan’s piercing cries drowned it out.
Mother wrung her hands and followed Diane. “She likes to be held on your shoulder. And she’s probably cold with her feet sticking out. If you’re not going to use a blanket, let me put little socks on her.”
“No!” Diane scurried to the opposite side of her bed.
“Margaret Diane, you’re getting yourself worked up, which won’t help calm her at all.” She held out her arms. “Let me take her for a few minutes. When you’ve calmed yourself—”
“I’m fine!” Diane screamed the statement. For one second Meghan stopped howling. Then she began again in earnest. Diane growled and placed the baby on the bed. She stood back and watched Meghan kick and flail in spasmodic jerks, her little face so red it looked ready to pop.
Mother scooped her up, cradling her in the curve of her neck with one hand and snapping up a receiving blanket from the stack on the corner of Diane’s dresser with the other. She draped Meghan while crooning and gently swaying to and fro. Within a few minutes, the baby had calmed and lay hiccuping on Mother’s shoulder.
Mother sighed and sent a puzzled look across the bed to Diane. “I heard her fussing when you were in the bathroom, so I came in. Her little hands were cold, so I wrapped her and she went right back to sleep. Did she awaken again? I’m sorry if I didn’t hear her.”
Diane balled her hands into fists. Her baby shouldn’t be so comfortable in Mother’s arms. Meghan was her child, not her mother’s. Meghan needed to learn who was in charge, and it wasn’t Grandma Hazel. “I accidentally woke her up when I took the blanket off her. I’ve told you and told you I don’t want you winding those blankets so tight she can’t move. Why do you keep doing it?”
“Because the binding reminds her of being in your womb. It offers her security.”
Diane broke out in a cold sweat. She yanked the tie on her robe loose. “I can’t stand being all bound up.”
Mother’s eyebrows descended. “But it isn’t binding you up to wrap the baby.”
Somehow in that moment, the tight hold Mother had always kept on Diane became the wrappings around Meghan. She would smother if her baby couldn’t breathe.
She darted around the bed and snatched the baby from Mother’s arms. The blanket fell on the floor. Diane kicked it across the room and deliberately raised the hem on Meghan’s little gown so her feet were free. Even when the baby began to wail again, she didn’t cover her.
Anger ignited on Mother’s face. She pointed at Diane. “Margaret Diane DeFord, stop behaving like a spoiled child and do what is best for your baby. You’re a mother now. Start acting like it.”
“You mean start acting like you, Miss Perfect?” Diane snarled the words.
Mother pursed her lips. She drew back and shook her head. “If your father were here you wouldn’t speak to me in that tone of voice.”
The pain of loss swooped in with force. She wanted her father. She wanted Meghan’s father. Tears filled Diane’s eyes—hot tears of anger and longing and loneliness. “If Daddy were here he wouldn’t let you touch Meghan. He’d protect both of us from you.”
Mother closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a slow breath. “Obviously your hormones are still running amok. When you can speak rationally, we’ll talk. Until then, give me the baby and let me wrap her.” She held out her arms.
Diane pressed her spine against the wall. “No.”
“Margaret Diane, you are too distraught to make good decisions. So I must make them for you.” She moved closer.
Bound up…Mother was binding her up again. Diane double-wrapped her arms around Meghan’s tiny frame. “You think you’re the only one who can ever make the right decisions, but you’re wrong. I can’t change how you messed up my life, but you’re not going to do the same thing with Meghan. We’re leaving.”
Mother folded her arms over her chest. “And where do you think you’re going?”
Her calm demeanor, her implication that Diane had no other options, increased the fire of fury. “It doesn’t matter as long as it’s away from you.”
“You’re behaving shamefully right now, but I’m willing to excuse it if you’ll give me the baby and take some time to calm yourself.”
Diane released a shrill laugh. “It’s not going to work. You’re not going to take her away from me.”
“Fine. Then I’ll leave the room. Is that better? If I leave the room will you put a blanket around her and then dress yourself?” Mother lowered her arms and retreated a few steps.
Diane glared at her. “Yes.”
“All right.” She turned and moved stiffly out of the room.
Diane darted after her, then closed and locked the door. She put Meghan back in the bassinet and draped a blanket over her. While the baby weakly sobbed, Diane yanked a sweatshirt over her head and rummaged through her drawers for clean underwear and a pair of jeans that didn’t cut her postpregnancy middle in two. Once dressed, she wadded up half of her dresser’s contents into the big duffle Daddy used to take on the road with him. The zippered pouches on both ends held Meghan’s blankets, sleeping gowns, socks, and diapers.
She tossed her toiletries on top of her clothes, then zipped the duffle closed. It probably weighed over thirty pounds—ten pounds more than she was supposed to carry—but she slung its strap over her shoulder and then reached for Meghan. The baby lay on her back with her little arms over her head, her fingers curled, blue-veined eyelids quivering, and rosy lips puckered in a pout. The swell of love she’d come to anticipate each time she gazed at the sleeping baby rose up and nearly sent her to her knees.
She touched Meghan’s flushed cheek. “She won’t bind us up, Meghan. I promise.”
Gently, she transferred the baby to the center of her largest baby quilt—the one Mother had saved from Diane’s infancy—and folded all four flaps loosely around her. Then she tucked the bundle in the curve of her arm and unlocked the door.
Mother was standing in the hallway. “What do you think you’re doing, young lady?”
“I told you I was leaving.”
Hurt glittered in Mother’s eyes, but Diane steeled herself against it. She wouldn’t be manipulated. Not anymore. “Move.”
Mother didn’t shift a muscle. “It’s dark outside. And cold. Is taking Meghan out of a warm house into the cold night a responsible thing to do?”
It wasn’t, which made Diane all the more determined to do it. “She’s my baby, Mother, not yours, so get out of my way and let me go.”
Mother still didn’t move, so Diane elbowed past her. Her head ached from listening to Meghan’s screams. Her back and stomach muscles ached from the weight of the duffle. Her heart ached from the weight of resentment. She wrenched open the door handle and slammed the door against the wall. A chill wind smacked her face and she hesitated.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
The quietly uttered question hovered around Diane like a storm cloud. How many times had Mother asked that same question? “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” when Diane took off her shoes to go barefoot on a hot July day. She’d burned her soles. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” when Diane chose an art-appreciation class over music theory. She’d hated it from beginning to end. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” when Diane refused to tell Daddy goodbye because if she didn’t tell him, he might not go. But then he hadn’t come home.
So much hurt filled her it had to come out. And it released in the ugliest words she’d ever spewed at her mother. “I wish you’d been the one to die instead of Daddy!”
&n
bsp; Mother pointed to the door. “Then leave my house.”
Present Day
Kendrickson, Nevada
The vivid memory sat like a stone on Diane’s chest, making it hard for her to breathe. She’d come back after only two days away. None of her friends would let her stay because they didn’t want a crying baby keeping them awake. But even though she’d gone back, she hadn’t apologized. Mother never mentioned their argument, but she let Diane in when she rang the doorbell, and she stopped wrapping Meghan up in a cocoon for naps. So, in a way, Mother had apologized.
If Mother had a heart attack on the operating table and died, would Diane wish she’d said she was sorry? She stroked Ginger’s silky ears and gathered her courage.
“Margaret Diane, it’s late. Why don’t you go to bed?”
Diane met her mother’s gaze. Searched her mother’s brown eyes. The droopy lids and the deep crow’s-feet showed her advanced years, yet somehow her velvety irises were still as vibrant and attentive as they’d been when Diane was a child. She swallowed. “Are you going, too?”
“Soon.” A slow smile tipped up her lips. She placed her hands on the armrests of the chair and raised her chin slightly, as regal as a queen. “I want to listen to the clock chime twelve.”
“At twelve the princess turns into a scullery maid.” Diane cringed. Why would she say such a thing?
Mother chuckled. “And the coach turns into a pumpkin, which isn’t so bad. Then we can have pie.”
Neither of them was making any sense. They should go to bed. Diane scooped Ginger into her arms and rose. She padded across the carpet. As she stepped through the hallway opening, she heard her mother’s quiet voice.
“Pleasant dreams, sweetheart.”
Diane froze. Without turning around, she nodded. “Yes. Thank you. You, too.”
Thirty-One
Little Rock, Arkansas
Meghan
When Meghan rounded the corner to baggage claim in the Little Rock airport, Sean was waiting. He broke into a trot, met her beside a motionless carousel, and wrapped her in a hug. She’d never been happier to receive an embrace.
Bringing Maggie Home Page 24
