by Lois Richer
“The lady has a problem with responsibility,” she finished.
“Me, too,” David muttered after he’d hung up.
But his problem was of another kind. He’d been so preoccupied with being overwhelmed with responsibility, he now realized he’d missed out on a lot of what life offered. Now he desperately craved the opportunity to be responsible for Susannah and the life she carried. But she would have none of it.
And he didn’t know what to do about that.
For years after his father’s death, David had believed he had to be in control of everything in his world. But when Susannah came along, she’d inadvertently forced him to realize that he needed to surrender the controls of his life. Recently Wade and Jared, too, had helped him realize he needed to completely surrender his past, present and future to God.
“Jared Hornby is on line two.” His secretary cut into his thoughts.
David picked up the phone.
“You called?”
“Yeah.” David proposed lunch with his old friend. “I need to pick your brain again,” he explained.
“Oh, so then you’d be buying,” Jared said. “Great. I’m not far away. Fifteen minutes at Scarfies? We haven’t been there in ages.”
“Okay.” David left the office immediately. He needed to get outside, breathe the fresh spring air and think as he walked the few blocks to their favorite lunch place. But when he arrived, his brain was more knotted than ever.
Jared sat waiting, his iced tea half gone.
“Hi.” David hurriedly ordered the special. When Jared had placed his order and their server had left, he cleared his throat. “I feel like I’m drowning,” he said.
“Susannah,” Jared guessed.
“I believe she is God’s choice for me, Jared. She’s the only woman I want in my life.”
“And her past?” His old friend hunched forward to study him.
David crossed his arms over his chest. “I couldn’t care less about her past, except that whatever happened, it made her into the woman I love.”
“You can’t write it off that easily, pal.” Jared shook his head. “Susannah has had some bad things happen to her. It’s got to impact her.”
“Where are you going with this?” David frowned.
“Wade and I advised you to tell Susannah how you felt.” Jared shrugged. “Okay, you did that. And she didn’t respond the way you wanted. I think you have to accept her response, buddy. I think that you have to leave the future with God.” Jared sipped his iced tea.
“Just give up. That’s what you mean?” Even the idea left a bad taste in David’s mouth.
“Give it up to God,” Jared corrected. “If she’s His choice for you, let God work it out.”
David shook his head. “I don’t think God expects me to sit back and do nothing here, Jared. I can’t do that. What if she gives her child away?”
“David, she is going to give her baby away,” Jared said.
“Her past and her mistakes are exactly why she has to keep that baby,” he insisted. “If she doesn’t, that will only be one more thing Susannah will regret.”
Jared thought about it a moment. “You said her mother’s blame is at the root of all her feelings of unworthiness?”
“I’m no psychologist,” David said, “but I think her mother’s accusation that Susannah caused her sisters’ deaths left a pretty big wound, yeah.”
“Maybe you should go see her mother, try and get her to show some compassion for the only daughter she has left?” Jared quirked one eyebrow.
“It’s worth a try, I suppose.” David hated the thought of it. Intruding into someone else’s past, reopening old wounds—everything in him protested at the depth of involvement. Susannah would be furious. But if it would help her…
“I’ll pray. So will Wade.” Jared leaned back as their food was delivered. “We’ll keep a steady line going to heaven while you talk to this woman. There’s just one thing.”
“Yeah?” Personally David thought there was a lot more than one thing, but he waited for his friend to finish.
“What if none of it makes any difference to Susannah?” he asked.
David stalled, taking a bite of his burger and chewing it thoroughly. Finally he met Jared’s gaze.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can’t think that far ahead.”
“I don’t know you.” The woman flopped herself into the easy chair, her silver-blond hair tumbling to her shoulders. A more mature Susannah. “Do I?”
“No. David Foster. I’m a friend of Susannah’s.”
A spark of interest lit the green eyes before she covered with a lackluster shrug. He held out a hand, which she declined to shake.
“Your daughter Susannah,” he said as anger surged up.
“I haven’t seen her in years.” Sara Wells looked at him balefully.
“Since the fire.” He nodded. “I know. Why is that?”
“Look,” she bristled, “I don’t know who you think you are or why you’re poking your nose into something that isn’t any of your business, but—”
“It is my business.” David leaned back and chose another tack. “Do you know you’re going to be a grandmother?”
She leaned forward, intrigued in spite of herself.
“Congratulations.” Her lips curled.
“It’s not my child. But I would like it to be,” he said. He felt a rush of love as the words resounded to his soul. “I love Susannah. I want to marry her. She’s a wonderful woman—loving, caring, gentle and courageous.”
“Everything I’m not, is that what you mean?” Her eyes darkened.
“This isn’t about you,” David assured her. “You cut your own daughter out of your life.”
“I have my reasons.”
“I know all about your reasons. To make yourself look innocent. To ease your own pain. You blamed Susannah for her sisters’ deaths. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
Sara Wells remained silent.
“She was a child, a little girl with far too much responsibility.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Sara’s face tightened.
“Then why?” he asked quietly. “You weren’t the only one who lost. She lost her sisters. And she’s spent all these years believing the lie you told her.”
Tears flowed down her cheeks unchecked, but she stayed silent.
“Everything Susannah does is colored by her guilt, her belief that she was responsible,” he said, but he moderated his voice because her tears touched his heart. This woman had lost her children. There was enough pain to go around.
Sara still said nothing. David knew he had to jar her out of her silence.
“This is a picture of her.” He slid his favorite photo of Susannah across the table. She was daydreaming about something, staring into the lens, a small smile lifting her lips. “She’s beautiful inside and out. She’d be a wonderful mother.”
One hand reached out to trace the features on Susannah’s lovely face. The tears did not stop. A flicker of empathy rose inside David’s heart for this woman—she’d never known the wonderful beauty of what her child had become in spite of her.
“She’s going to give away her baby to someone else, to adopt, because she thinks she’s unworthy and because she’s afraid she won’t be the kind of mother she wants to be,” David explained.
“She thinks she’ll be like me. A drunk?” Finally Sara looked at him. Her excruciating pain engulfed him like a tidal wave and sucked all his anger away.
“She needs your forgiveness,” David told her. “She needs to hear you say that her sisters’ deaths were not her fault. This pain, this hurt—hasn’t it gone on long enough, Sara? Your daughter needs you. Susannah needs the mother who abandoned her all those years ago.”
“I’m sorry but your time is up.” A guard waited at his elbow.
David rose, but he left the picture on the table.
“Susannah’s baby is due very soon,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “If
you’re going to help her, it must be quickly, before the baby’s born. Otherwise it will be too late to repair the past.”
Sara simply sat there, staring at her daughter. He laid a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll pray for you, Sara. I’ll ask God to heal your heart and soul and show you that He has plans for your future, something beautiful that you can’t even imagine.”
As he drove home, he prayed harder than he had in his entire life.
For all of them.
Susannah was miserable.
“I’m tired all the time,” she told her doctor. “I can’t see my toes anymore, let alone polish them. I feel like a limp rag even first thing in the morning.”
“It’s spring and this is the desert. It’s only going to get warmer. Rest,” the doctor advised.
“That’s what everyone says,” Susannah complained. “I do almost nothing but rest, and I’m still tired.”
“Then rest some more. You’re carrying a baby, Susannah. That’s hard work. Probably the hardest job you’ll ever have. You have to save your strength. Did you go to those Lamaze classes?”
“Yes.” She’d gone with Connie and Darla. Precious, poignant, bittersweet evenings, full of laughter and tears.
“So you’re ready,” the doctor said. “Now you’re just going to have to wait patiently until this baby decides its arrival date. Relax.”
Connie also kept telling her to slow down but Susannah was frantic to find a family for her baby, and without David’s help she floundered. How could you know about anyone’s real intent through an internet profile?
As she made her way to pick up Darla, Susannah realized anew how difficult she was finding it, keeping up with Darla’s activities, though her charge was always solicitous about Susannah’s health. Darla fussed about the baby constantly, monitoring what Susannah ate and when. She insisted Susannah take frequent rests and offered water so often Susannah worried she’d float away during soccer practice or while waiting for Darla at the botanical garden. She made her way into David’s house with Darla dancing attendance.
“Sixty-seven percent of pregnant women do not drink enough water,” Darla declared. She was quoting statistics less often now, but the odd one still popped out whenever she wanted to defend her actions.
“I’m fine, Darla. Oh.” The Braxton-Hicks contraction grabbed and held on, forcing Susannah to sit down on David’s sofa and wait it out. “We’ll make cookies in a little while,” she promised with a gasp.
“Okay.” Darla flopped down at the coffee table. “I’m going to draw some of the butterflies from the botanical garden so I can show the people at the center what I do.” She plugged in her headphones and began humming to the music as her fingers flew across the page.
Once the tension in her stomach relaxed, Susannah closed her eyes. Just for a minute. Then she’d get up and make the cookies Darla wanted to take to school tomorrow. As she lay there, the scent from roses David had cut from the garden filled her senses. How wonderful to have your own rose bushes.
It was just one of the things Susannah was going to miss about this job. Each day had proven harder than the one before as she realized exactly what she was giving up by refusing David’s proposal. Once she took Darla to the desert museum, her lovely life here would be over and all she’d have left were memories.
“I’m only asking You for one thing, God,” she whispered. “Just please make sure my baby is healthy.”
The house was quiet when he arrived home. Too quiet.
David tucked the packet of key lime-flavored mints under Susannah’s purse. She’d mentioned she liked them last week, so today, on the way home, he’d made a special trip to the candy store to get them for her.
Not that she’d said it specifically to him. She hadn’t. Susannah barely said two words to him anymore, and if she did, she made sure to keep her gaze averted. Ever since he’d proposed she’d been shy around him—hesitant, quiet.
But that didn’t stop David from noting her likes and dislikes—Susannah liked lime-flavored anything, and it gave him great pleasure to seek out little gifts and leave them for her enjoyment. He’d wait like a kid and watch for her to discover his surprise, and then treasure that moment when she closed her eyes and hugged the treat to her heart.
Those few seconds made the bereft moments in his life bearable. That and the way she leaned into his nightly embrace before she remembered and pulled away….
David was going to call out, but then he stepped into the family room and saw Darla flopped on the floor, her headphones in her ears, her eyes closed. Her chest moved up and down in a soft, rhythmic snore. He found Susannah lying on the sofa with her eyes closed and a faint smile on her lips as she dozed.
Darla’s Sleeping Beauty.
One hand lay on top of her stomach, as if to protect the precious life within. Mother and child. Was there anything more beautiful?
He wondered again about Susannah’s mother. Would she do the right thing? Or would she stay in her self-imposed prison? Once more he prayed for the troubled Sara and asked God to release her heart so that she could reach out to the daughter who needed peace so badly.
David spent some time just watching Susannah, treasuring the moment because he didn’t know when it might happen again. One more day, that’s all she had left to work for him. Then—who knew?
“Oh, I didn’t realize it was so late.” She blinked at him, then struggled to sit up, grasping David’s hand when he held it out, easing herself off the sofa. “Thank you. I feel like an elephant.”
“You look beautiful,” he murmured. He touched her cheek with his fingers and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “Very beautiful.”
She gave him a look that said she thought he was fibbing.
“I mean it. Your skin has this amazing luminosity—it’s very attractive,” he said, finishing hurriedly, amazed at his newfound ability to be so poetic.
“Well.” Susannah stepped around him. “I shouldn’t be sleepng. Darla needs to take some cookies to school tomorrow and we haven’t baked them yet.”
“Let’s have dinner, and then we’ll make them together. I think Mrs. Peters left everything in the slow cooker.”
“I don’t need to stay for dinner,” Susannah said. “I can come back later.”
“Susannah, please. Just stay for dinner. It’s not a big deal, okay?” He woke Darla, then followed them both into the kitchen.
Darla made short work of setting the table. She put the kettle on to boil for tea, lifted a salad from the fridge and a freshly made loaf of bread from the cupboard. “Everything’s ready, Davy.”
They sat, and as he held out his hand for Darla’s to say grace, David also reached out for Susannah’s.
Please let her stay permanently, he prayed silently. She’s a part of our family.
Susannah bowed her head for the grace. The moment it was over she took her hand from his. She said little during the meal. She picked at her food, eating only a small fraction of what she was served.
“Are you all right?” he asked when Darla went to answer the phone.
“Fine. Just a little uncomfortable.” She smiled ruefully. “I’ll get in the pool tonight and stretch everything out. That should help.”
“I’m sorry it’s so hard on you,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I’d do it for you, if I could.”
She smiled faintly, her gaze finally meeting his. “Thank you,” she whispered.
While David cleared the table, Susannah helped Darla assemble the ingredients for cookies. But when he thought it might be best to leave the two alone with their baking, Darla suddenly said she had to finish her homework. David waved her off, then noticed how Susannah flagged, leaning against the counter.
“Sit down,” he ordered, easing her into a chair. “There’s no need to bake cookies tonight. I can stop by a bakery tomorrow.”
“Darla said everyone is bringing some from home. She wanted to do the same.” She began pulling out ingredients.
&nbs
p; “You are so stubborn.” He rolled up his sleeves. “Okay, tell me what to do.”
She would have argued but he guessed from the lines of weariness around her eyes that she was too tired. So he listened carefully and followed each step she gave until the batter was mixed.
“Darla and I will bake them later.” David was inordinately pleased with his accomplishment.
“You don’t know how to bake,” she said with a frown.
“Three hundred fifty degrees for about eight minutes,” he repeated, and then added before she could interrupt, “and watch they don’t burn.”
“But—”
“But now it’s time for you to go home.” He held up a hand so she wouldn’t argue. “You need to take care of yourself, Susannah. And that baby.”
“But this is my job,” she protested, though it sounded weak.
“You have done an amazing job. Darla and I both know that. You’ve gone way beyond anything I ever expected.” He drew her into the circle of his arms and pressed his lips against the top of her head. To his joy she rested against him and relaxed, letting him hold her. “I don’t want you to overdo. Not now. So go home. Take the car. Please?” he asked, tilting her head back so he could look into her eyes.
“You’re a very nice man, David,” she whispered against his chest. “I wish…”
So did he. Unfortunately wishing didn’t make your heart’s desire come true. And he couldn’t badger her about it now. So David kissed her tenderly, then set her away from him.
“Go home and rest,” he ordered.
He waited while she gathered up her handbag. Her hand paused on the mints. She lifted her head to stare at him, green eyes shiny with tears.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“It’s my pleasure.” And it was. Whatever he could do for her was so little and he only wanted to do more. “I love you.”
She searched his eyes, touched his cheek with her small delicate fingers then reached for the door.
“Good night,” she whispered.
He watched her get in the car, pull out and drive away as his sister emerged.
“Tomorrow is Susannah’s last day, Davy. Then what will we do?” Darla’s hand curved into his. Her troubled eyes searched his for reassurance.
