by Jillian Hart
But then he lifted her knuckles to his lips and kissed each finger. Warm and sweet and reverent.
“Christian was eighteen months, three weeks and five days old. The coroner said my son never suffered. The door to his room was left open, so my wife could listen for him in case he needed her, and the smoke took him. But she…she tried to get through the flames to the baby.”
He shook his head as if he didn’t want to remember, as if it were impossible for him to say the words. With care, he kissed her hand one more time and, as if with regret, laid her hand on the bench, away from him…and stood.
He walked away, the invincible line of his shoulders defeated. Across the street, the traffic monitors wearing their bright orange vests came out with their cones and flags. Amy doubted that he even noticed, although he was facing them as they spread out at the intersections, setting up the safety cones and chatting as they worked. Alone, he stood feet apart and braced, arms behind him, his head bowed.
Amy knew there were no words that could comfort him. There was no comfort for such a loss. She could say she was sorry, but what good were those words? She wished she could hold him until his pain stopped. Find a way to heal the broken places in his soul.
Across the street, a bell jangled shrilly, announcing the schoolday’s end. Within a few seconds the doors flew open, busses were puffing into place, and children’s shouts of freedom filled the air. Kids with lunch pails, kids with art projects, kids streaming to the busses and others arrowing toward the intersections. The monitors stood at attention, ready to direct the inflow of cars hurrying to jockey for position along the front of the school.
Life, it was everywhere he looked. Heath squeezed his eyes shut, but the brilliant colors and images remained like a snapshot in his head. The shrill screams, the gleeful laughter, the shouts as boys called out to other boys and the giggle of girls reminded him that life went on, without him, but it went on just the same.
“Mom!” A little boy was hopping up and down at the corner across the street, a paper he held flapping in the breeze.
Heath recognized Amy’s son, dressed neatly in a navy T-shirt that said Astronaut In Training in white letters beneath a print of a space shuttle orbiting earth. The boy was so animated, leaping in place, hair sticking straight up, and a smudge of what looked like paint on his cheek.
The traffic monitors stepped out to hold up traffic, their bright flags snapping. Westin sort of skip-walked across the street, separated from the pack of kids, and dashed across the grass to his mother.
“Look what I made. And I didn’t make one mistake! And I got in trouble.” To his credit, the boy tried to look contrite.
“What did you do this time?” Amy sounded stern, but it was only an act.
Heath wasn’t fooled as she knelt to draw her child into her arms, holding him close, keeping him safe. Studying his artwork of Jupiter with the big storm and narrow tiny rings. Amy remarked over his excellent painting skills and then got him to hand over the note from his teacher.
“I talked when it was quiet time. I know.” Westin rolled his eyes. “But it’s very, very hard to be quiet all the time.”
“On your second-to-the-last day of school? We’ll talk about this when we get home, young man. Why don’t you go see what books I got for you. They’re on the bench, go look.” With a loving pat, she steered him in the direction of the bench.
Heath heard Westin’s, “All right! Excellent!” and was surprised it wasn’t agony to watch the boy drop to his knees and flip open the first book. He was instantly absorbed by the color photographs from the Hubbell telescope.
Watching him, Heath felt his throat ache, trying not to look back into the past. Fighting to stay in the moment instead of being pulled backward into suffocating sorrow.
As if she knew how hard he was struggling, she came up beside him and laid her hand on his forearm. A simple gesture, but the connection reminded him that, for this moment anyhow, he wasn’t alone.
This was a pretty fine moment in the right-here-and-now.
“Mr. Murdock!” It was Westin, holding open the book with care. “Mom! You gotta see this. Look at this cool picture. It’s seventeen light years away. That’s really, really far.”
It hurt to look. It would have hurt more not to. Heath fought the tiny flicker of fondness for Amy’s son. A little boy so different than his Christian would have been, but the boy made him remember the cheerful toddler babbling away, building his simple vocabulary of “Da!” And “No!” And “Uh-oh!”
“…Will ya, Mr. Murdock?”
Heath focused, realizing Amy’s son was asking him something. “Sure.” Whatever it was, he didn’t mind. He just needed to think about something other than Christian. “What do you need?”
“Ice cream, but Mom’s bringin’ it.”
“Sorry.” Amy shrugged. “Don’t worry about bringing anything. Just come as you are. With the upset over the vandalism, we didn’t get to the welcome-home dinner we planned for Paige. And then we’ve got Westin’s upcoming graduation to celebrate.”
“I’m gonna be a first-grader!”
Amy saw the hesitation pass across Heath’s face. It was strange how she could read his emotions. She knew he was uncertain about what he’d agreed to. She knew so many things that lived in his tattered heart. Those were the things that mattered. One day, he’d be gone, he was not a man to come to love or lean on.
But she loved him all the same. For the way he smiled, as if he wasn’t breaking apart or remembering another little boy, while he hunkered down on the bench. “A first-grader, huh? That’s pretty fine.”
“Yeah. I know.” Simply, Westin held out the book and turned the picture. “Cool. Did you wanna see?”
Heath’s eyes looked so bleak. Then he smiled, just a little, but it was like the full moon rising on a bleak night.
It changed everything.
Chapter Thirteen
Amy lit a second citronella candle, shook out the match and set it into the cooling barbecue coals. Supper had been simple grilled burgers over hot coals in the barbecue pit at her development’s riverside park. Not fancy, but then, she figured Heath hadn’t been living with luxuries since he’d walked away from his job as a surgeon.
After everyone had stuffed themselves with more dessert than was wise, it was hard not to drift off for a quick nap. The sun hazed through the cottonwoods and glinted on the swift river, moving faster for the snowmelt still occurring in the mountains.
The only one who seemed as if he wasn’t content was Heath, finishing off a second slice of lemon pudding cake. Paige’s teenaged son, the one with the endless appetite, was working on his fourth piece of cake.
“See what you get to look forward to.” Tender, Paige ruffled her son’s hair on her way from the table. “Feeding a bottomless pit. I think the government ought to give two deductions for teenaged boys, since they eat enough for at least three people. Maybe even four.”
“It makes sense to me,” Rachel commented from the folding camping chair where she was watching over Westin and one of the neighbor girls who were wading along the river’s tamer edge. “I’ll start a petition. I’m sure there are a lot of people who’d sign it.”
“Mom, is there any more cake left?” Alex set down his fork, his plate clean of even the tiniest crumb. “I’m still hungry.”
“See what I mean?” Paige dumped the empties in the nearby garbage can and carried the cake plate over to him. “You might as well just eat all of it. Unless anyone else wants a piece. Speak up now or forever hold your peace.”
She waggled the plate in Heath’s direction, but he shook his head. He’d spent the entire meal being polite, speaking rarely and watching them just as he was doing now, his face set, his arms folded over his chest, so invincible and stoic it was hard to read his emotions. The shadows in his eyes remained.
Every time he noticed Westin, did he remember all that he’d lost? It troubled her deeply, how silent Heath was. She longed to comfort him. To
lay her hand on his cheek and feel the pain of his heart move through hers. If only she could let him know he had a friend.
She held the last can up to him, dripping from the melting ice in the cooler. “More soda?”
“Nope. I’m good.”
“There’s one of Rachel’s oatmeal cookies left.”
“No thanks.” He turned so he couldn’t see the sun-warmed river where Westin waded, busily searching for rocks. He focused his interest on the last bites of cake on his plate, when really it was her he was trying to avoid seeing.
He’d tried to stay numb, tried to keep enough distance, but she pulled at him like temptation, making him want what was forbidden. What he could never let himself have again.
“Westin! Not so deep.” She called out while she returned the can to the cooler and began stacking in the jars of mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup. “You know to stay where it’s shallow.”
“I know, but it’s not high over here!” He shouted, hardly audible over the rushing gurgles of the river and the faster rumble of the white rapids farther downstream. The hem of his denim shorts had dipped into the water, growing darker and tugging down around his knees. “I gotta look for moon rocks.”
“Look for moon rocks closer to the beach.” She snapped a lid on the plastic container of macaroni salad. “I mean it, young man. Do it now, or get out.”
“Okay, okay!” Westin took one more step. “One more moon rock. Please, Mom? Ple-e—ease?”
“No, you’re out too far.” Riverbeds were in constant change, and what had been safe only a few days ago might not be today. Amy didn’t like how close her little guy was to the swift current that made no noise as it rushed endlessly downstream. “Come in a few—”
“Mommm—!” Westin’s shout was cut as he plunged downward as if someone had grabbed his ankles and wrenched.
Amy watched in horror as he disappeared completely from her sight. He didn’t pop back up again. The plastic lid slid from her fingertips and rolled out of sight. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen—he was gone. Completely gone.
“No!” She was running, twisting and turning her ankles as she hit the big river rocks along the outer bank. Three minutes. That’s all she could remember from her safety days when she took swimming lessons. That’s all the time she had to get into the river, find him and get him breathing again.
Panic made it seem as if she flew across the sandy shore and there was no pain as she hit a small boulder with the inside of her foot and dropped to her knees on ragged rocks. She surged upward, seeing only the spot where Westin had disappeared. The quick menacing waters rippled and rushed, as if he’d never been.
She heard splashing sounds and suddenly there was Heath, running and then jumping as the water swallowed his feet and calves. Knee-deep he lunged, swimming like an expert, swift strokes that took him in seconds to where Westin had gone down.
Rocks impeded her as she hurried, lunging into the deep water, which ran across her skin like cold ice. With a power of its own, the river grabbed her and drew her away from where Heath took a great gulp of air, dove head first, his long muscled legs kicking water everywhere. And then he, too, was gone from her sight.
Please, God, please. Give me back my Westin. Oh, God, please. She wasn’t the best swimmer and the current had her, she was spinning along like a big piece of driftwood past the point where Heath had dived. Heath surfaced in front of her, his big solid body a barrier that kept her from being carried away on the current.
Water sluiced off him. His skin was as cold as hers as he pulled her the few feet out of the strongest part of the current. “My cell phone’s on the table. Someone call 911.”
Heath took another great gulp of air, his black hair slicked to his scalp, his features sharp, his concentration focused. In a flash she could see the doctor in him, how he’d fought for his patients on the operating-room table. This is how he fought for Westin now.
As hard as she would fight. She dove again, seeing nothing but silt-tinted water and jagged rocks on the riverbed. She heard more splashing as Paige and Rachel joined the search. Shouting his name over and over as water closed over Amy’s head and became silence.
How many seconds had gone by? She let the current take her as she desperately scanned from left to right. He had to be here. Her lungs burned and she came up, panting and coughing.
She could see Heath’s dark form rising up to the surface, bursting through like a whale, spewing water. Empty-handed. No Westin.
Amy dove back into the water. She was going to find him. She was going to haul him up by his collar, lecture him on the dangers of getting into the deep current and he’d be grounded. For about six million years. He’d be grounded so good, he wouldn’t be able to leave for college until he was forty-six years old. Like a mad woman, she let the water take her, keeping her eyes open as she tried to study the rock bed through the shifting green waters for the bright white T-shirt her little boy had been wearing.
“Amy!” A steeled hand gripped her upper arm, hauling her up. Her lungs exploded and she gratefully dragged in air.
Heath. He looked like a different man, harsh jaw set, eyes narrowed. He looked warrior-fierce. Marine tough. “He would have gone with the current. You get the others to start combing downstream. I’m going to go into the deeper part of the river. We don’t have much time. Do you understand?”
She nodded, barely responding. Wild-eyed, she searched the silent water. “He’s here. He’s got to be right here.”
“He isn’t. The current has taken him.” Heath couldn’t tell her it was hopeless. He knew. A parent never gave up. A parent never stopped loving. A child was the sweetest gift of them all, the greatest blessing that God could give two people in love, and he’d been at work, saving other people’s children when his had needed him.
He gave Amy, so fragile and valiant, a gentle shove into the calmer shallows where the others were combing the hip-deep waters. For a body. He couldn’t tell that to Amy, as he filled his lungs with air and submerged.
Heath let the current take him, knocking him along the rocky bottom. Boulders bashed into him and he scraped over them fighting to see through the silt stirring up from the bottom. Westin couldn’t have broken away from the powerful sweep of water.
It would have taken him from where the shallow shelf suddenly ended toward the middle, faster part of the river. It was like a jet stream, moving faster than the water surrounding it, and it would have taken him—
Darkness rose quickly ahead of him and the brutal force of the current slammed him against a submerged tree. Pain exploded in his left shoulder, he felt his fourth and fifth ribs crack and knew what the sharp arrow of pain was even before he felt the blood and the rest of the air in his left lung sluicing out of him. He had to get out of the water or he’d drown. He had a punctured lung.
Help me, Father. He prayed with all his might, to the bottom of his soul. He hadn’t been able to save his son, who’d been dead on arrival, but he had to do this. His life was forfeit anyway. But Westin. Please, let me do this one thing. This one right to put against the wrongs of my past. Please, do not let me fail.
That’s when he saw the flash of white. He clawed his way through the spear-sharp limbs, broken and bare, and prayed for one last ounce of strength.
“Over here!” Paige was waving the ambulance to the edge of the parking lot. Amy surfaced, hopes falling. The vehicle bounced over the curb and ambled across the grass, dodging picnic tables and barbecue pits and hauled up near the edge of the bank. Medics hopped out, and headed toward the river. Behind them a fire truck charged down the street.
No Westin. Time was running out. Treading water, losing hope, Amy started to pray one more time—
And then she saw Heath breaking the surface, Westin wrapped across his chest, and there was blood staining the river and streaming across Westin’s torn shirt. Agony tore from her throat as she took out after them.
Heath was coughing. It was his blood. Trickling
across his bottom lip. His face was gray, and his gaze locked on hers and she saw deep inside him, his soul that was no longer breaking. He began to sink, and she was there, holding him up as the first EMT reached them.
“Hold ’em steady!” the young man ordered and started mouth-to-mouth on Westin.
His lips were still pink, his little face nicked and gashed. The medic breathed life into him and after three breaths, he moaned, moved and threw up the water he’d swallowed. Somehow they were at the shore; she realized her sisters were pulling them in. And they weren’t alone.
Dozens of people had come out of their homes with blankets and pillows and first-aid kits, many more were in the water. They’d started a human-chain search. The cheers that lifted above the wind and the sirens and the fear brought tears to her eyes and gratitude to her soul.
The EMTs took Westin and he was awake, searching for her in the crowd. “Mama,” he said, the same way when he’d been much littler and sick or frightened.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said as someone wrapped her in a blanket and a fireman tried to take her vitals. “I’m fine. I have to see him.”
She pushed her way through the big bulky men with medical gear and stood at Westin’s feet, where he could see her while he was given oxygen and a heart monitor was set up.
“What about Heath?” she asked Paige, who’d come over to wrap her in a sisterly hug.
Rachel came with the news. They were calling in the medevac. “They’re not sure he’ll make it to the hospital, but they’re gonna try to save him. And how I hope God is with him, for the difference he’s made for us today.”
“We’re ready to go, ma’am,” one of the EMTs told her.
Westin looked so tiny and helpless, his eyes searching hers for comfort. She’d been given back her son, and for that she would be thankful until her last day. But her thoughts were with Heath who lay motionless, as if already gone, surrounded by a dozen firemen and a score of strangers.
