Rejoice

by Karen Kingsbury

  Peter took a break, looked at the date at the top-right corner, and calculated how old he must have been when he wrote it. Twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. He would have been doing his internship, serving time in the emergency room at night; and Brooke would have been finishing med school. He moved his eyes down the page and found his place again.

  I love being married to you, Brooke; I love that you make me laugh and look forward to tomorrow. I love that we can play tennis and backgammon and still find time to talk medicine. My cases, your courses, and all our dreams about the future.

  Isn’t it amazing, really? I’ve known you for three years, and I can’t remember what it was like to live without you. In every way imaginable, life is turning out just like I hoped it would. The way I dreamed about ever since I was thirteen.

  You know about my father, how he walked out on us when I was eight years old. But I’m not sure I ever told you this: After he left I went four years believing marriage was a death trap, promising myself I’d never get married, never put my children through the pain my dad put us through.

  But in my eighth-grade year, something changed.

  My friend Steve had me over to his house a couple times that summer, and I saw something I’d never seen before. His parents sat together and talked together and held hands. They actually liked each other, and the feeling I had at his house was one I remember to this day. That was the year I started dreaming that maybe . . . just maybe . . . marriage could be a good thing if only it could be like it was for Steve’s parents.

  And now, in some unbelievable cosmic event, I’m in a marriage just like that, convinced that no matter what, I will always love you, always like you, and never, ever leave. Not in a million years. Our children—when we have children—will never know what it feels like to wake up day after day wondering whatever happened to their daddy. Because you’re stuck with me forever, okay? Of course, I’m not worried about your leaving either, because you couldn’t find anyone who makes a meaner cup of coffee.

  Hey, Brooke, have I told you lately how proud I am of you? You’re not only a brilliant med student, but one day you’re going to make a wonderful doctor because you care about the little details. That and because you really care about people; I’ve seen that in your classwork. One day when you have your own practice, I’ll be your biggest fan, honey. I can’t wait.

  Well, I’m tired and I want to sleep. But I’ll leave this out so you can read it when you wake up. I love you more with every breath.

  Peter

  When he was finished reading the letter, his hands trembled more than before. He started at the beginning and read it again, his eyes narrowed, puzzled by the words he’d written. On the third time through, he was shaking too much to make out the writing. He set the blue pages down on the floor, pulled the plastic bag from his pants pocket, and grabbed two pills.

  He popped them in his mouth in record time and watched the clock, watched the second hand march slow and steady around the circle. Four minutes . . . five. Sweat beaded across his forehead. His legs began to shake and his heartbeat doubled, pounding harder, faster, harder, faster.

  Eight minutes, ten.

  Peter felt his breathing quicken. Something was wrong. The pills usually worked in ten minutes, but this time . . . this time he was getting worse. Maybe he was having a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he’d taken too many pills in too few hours, and now he was having a reaction.

  Maybe he was dying.

  “Come on . . .” He whispered the words. Relief would come; it had to. The pills guaranteed it.

  But instead, sweat popped out along his arms, back, and upper chest, and at the twelve-minute mark it had soaked through his shirt. Did he need more medication? Was that the problem? Had the two-pill dose become too small or had he waited too long to take them? He felt like he was running a race, and again the floor began to move beneath him. But instead of pulling off to the side and catching his breath, he couldn’t. Nothing could ease his pounding heart or the fact that he couldn’t take a deep breath.

  Maybe something was wrong with the pills; maybe they were defective, inactive for some reason. He opened the plastic bag again and fingered another two pills. Come on, Peter, what could it hurt? Go ahead . . . take them . . . take them and you’ll feel better.

  The voice in his head taunted him, the feel of it, angry and defiant. Angry enough that it scared him. He stared at the two additional pills. No, not yet. He released the hold he had on them and closed the plastic bag. He would wait; if he didn’t have relief at the twenty-minute mark he’d take them for sure.

  Thirteen minutes. His heartbeat stumbled some and shot into an irregular rhythm, one that could be dangerous if it didn’t convert back to normal. He started high-chest breathing, never fully exhaling, never fully inhaling, grabbing quick mouthfuls of air and feeling like he was suffocating all at the same time.

  The symptoms were familiar to him, but he’d never experienced them himself. He was short of breath, unable to find that sweetly calm pattern of breathing he’d always taken for granted. And what was his heart doing? He felt his pulse. Thud. Silence. Thud, thud, thud. Long silence. Thud, thud, thud. Silence. Thud, thud. Long silence.

  Too much silence.

  He held his breath and tightened his stomach, pushing against the panic, urging his heart to beat and find a way back to a steady rhythm.

  Six seconds . . . seven . . . suddenly his heart gave a loud thud and flipped into a normal pattern. Far too fast, but regular at least. Gradually, his legs and then his arms stopped shaking and his breathing slowed.

  Fourteen minutes since he’d taken the pills.

  Another minute and he could feel his body stop sweating, the wetness no longer running down his arms and ribs. He studied the clock, shocked, frightened.

  A little more than seventeen minutes after taking the pills, his body was finally feeling normal again. Six minutes longer than it had ever taken before. And that was a bad thing. He stuffed the plastic bag of pills back into his pants pocket and exhaled. No, it was a terrible thing.

  It meant he’d have to start taking them sooner or take more of them. And that would make it hard to lie to himself about whether he did or didn’t have a problem. If he needed more than two pills every hour to feel okay, then he couldn’t lie about it another day.

  He had a problem.

  But if he could wait out the seventeen minutes, maybe he wouldn’t have to increase the dose. He’d survived, after all. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t go through that again if he needed to. It would be better than increasing the dose and winding up in some detox center.

  The awful anxiety forgotten, Peter picked up the letter again. Key phrases jumped off the page at him, taunting him and telling him how far he’d fallen since those long-ago days.

  I love being married to you, Brooke; I love that you make me laugh and look forward to tomorrow. . . . I will always love you, always like you, and never, ever leave. Not in a million years. Our children—when we have children—will never know what it feels like to wake up day after day wondering whatever happened to their daddy.

  The words couldn’t have been more foreign if they were in Spanish. He went over each of those statements again and realized something sad. Not one of them was true today. Not one. He hadn’t loved being married to Brooke for a year or more, hadn’t found reasons to laugh or look forward to tomorrow when the two of them were together. She was too caught up with the kids and her career to care much for him, so he’d stopped loving her a long time ago. He was pretty sure he didn’t even like her.

  Brooke was different now. When was the last time they played backgammon or talked medicine together? For that matter, when was the last time they’d laughed at the same thing? No, Brooke was too busy building her practice, making a name for herself as the latest up-and-coming pediatrician in Bloomington. Too busy giving herself to her patients to have anything left for him.

  And the girls?

  He wasn’t sure about Hayl
ey, because with any kind of luck she would probably forget he ever existed, forget she ever had a father who let her wander out to a backyard pool by herself. But Maddie would certainly grow up knowing what it felt like to live without a father.

  The fact should’ve made him sad, as though he’d failed somehow. Instead he felt nothing but inevitability, an understanding of what his own father had gone through because sometimes marriages died. And when that happened, kids simply had to find a way to understand.

  He gazed at the letter one more time. His belief system was much different back then. Fate or karma? Cosmic twists? Reincarnation? How immature he’d been to believe in any of that. Not a stitch of evidence existed for those beliefs. They were nothing but romantic meanderings, wishful thinking.

  Long before Hayley was born he’d stopped believing anything of the sort. Life and everything about life could be explained by science. Scientific method or scientific discovery or scientific theory. One of the three.

  Then, after September 11, he’d agreed to go to church with Brooke, and the strangest thing happened. The idea of God—one God, the creator of Earth and everything in it—began to make sense. Certain scientific discoveries or unexplainable phenomena were proof that God existed, after all. Creation, a great flood, a crucified Christ brought back to life, an empty tomb. All of it had suddenly seemed real, more real than a lifetime of textbooks and scientific ideas. Pastor Mark’s sermons spoke to his heart and for a while, life had meaning and purpose that went beyond careers and relationships.

  But at the same time, something began to die in his marriage. Peter huffed. That’s what he got for going to church and believing in God. Not that faith caused them to grow apart, but it sure hadn’t helped.

  Peter returned the letter to the top of the stack and put the lid back on the box. Nothing good could come from reliving the way he’d felt about Brooke all those years ago. In every way he could imagine, she’d been a different person back then. The letters told him that much. But they told him something else, something sad and unavoidable.

  He was a different person, too.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the middle of December Ashley still hadn’t seen a doctor. Luke’s wedding was coming up fast, and then the holidays. Waiting a few more weeks wouldn’t hurt. Besides, doctors wouldn’t schedule new patients this late in the year. Not when they weren’t showing symptoms, and Ashley wasn’t.

  Other than the way she missed Landon, she felt fine.

  It was Monday afternoon, just before three o’clock, and Ashley was at her parents’ house finishing a painting. Kari was back to modeling part-time, now that Ryan’s football team was out of the play-offs, but today she and their mother had taken Jessie, Cole, and Maddie to lunch and the indoor play park so Ashley could work in the Baxters’ upstairs guest room.

  The day was cold, a few inches of snow on the ground and more expected that evening. Ashley loved the way winter made her feel; something about the cold weather drew her family together and made the Baxter house practically glow with warmth and love. The atmosphere was perfect for painting.

  The picture she was working on was a combination of recent images that had touched her heart. The foreground showed the back of a small boy decked out in a firefighter costume. The child was holding hands with an older woman, who from the back looked a great deal like Irvel. The two were standing on the sidewalk in front of a country fire station, an American flag flying from a pole outside.

  The little boy was saluting.

  Ashley studied it, the way the sky came to life and made the flag more pronounced. It was good . . . very good. Landon would’ve loved it. She bit her lip and thought about him. Where was he and what was he doing? Was he busier now, training for the new position?

  And did he ever think of her?

  She let her eyes move down the painting to the quaint firehouse. Funny how so much of her art reflected Landon and his line of work. As if even the core of her creativity could do nothing but be inspired by him, even now when their lives were finally headed in different directions.

  Something about the lawn in front of the firehouse wasn’t quite right, and Ashley picked up her smallest paintbrush. She mixed pale yellow with a summery green color and added a few selective wisps to the grass. There. She sat back and studied it.

  “Perfect.” She whispered the word, and then she did the thing she’d taken to doing now that she was painting again. She hung her head, closed her eyes, and spoke the words out loud. “God, thank you for letting me paint. Use this piece, this work, to soften hearts for you.”

  When she opened her eyes, she stared at the painting a little longer and knew for sure. This one had to go to the gallery. After getting the results of her blood test earlier in the fall, she had decided not to continue exhibiting her work in New York. Instead, she’d taken a few of her pieces over to the best-known local art shop, the one near the university. The owner had been thrilled.

  “I can see why they sold so well in Manhattan.” The woman was in her forties, her shop a fixture in Bloomington for the past decade. “I’d love to sell your paintings.”

  “I won’t be working full-time, but if you’re willing, I’d like a place to showcase my work. Even if it’s only one piece a month.”

  The woman had agreed, and now Ashley thought the piece she’d just finished would be the first one she’d take in. The shop was small, nothing like the intense, high-stakes, leather-and-mahogany storefront in New York City. Piece of My Art, it was called. And it was comfortable for Ashley’s new, slower pace.

  She heard a car in the driveway and smiled. They were home, and she could almost feel Cole’s arms around her neck. They came through the garage door, and Ashley heard Cole announce that he was going to find his mommy.

  “Where’s my best mommy? Here I come!”

  Ashley smiled. She and Cole were so much closer now; something else for which Landon would always deserve credit. Her son burst into the room and stopped when he saw her easel. Ever since he was a toddler, he’d known not to run up to her if she was painting.

  “Still coloring, Mom?” He was bundled in a sweatshirt, turtleneck, and blue jeans.

  “Nope. All finished.” She set her paintbrush on her tray, wiped her hands on her apron, and climbed down off the high-backed stool. When she was a few feet from the easel she held out her hands and he ran to her, jumping into her arms. “How was the play park?”

  “So fun, Mommy. Me and Maddie raced on the slides.” His cheeks were ruddy, his dark blond hair matted and sweaty from playing so hard. “That’s the bestest place. Even baby Jessie had fun with the other babies.”

  “Good.” Ashley gave him a quick kiss on his forehead. He tasted salty, and she breathed in the smell of him, a mix of faint shampoo and buttered popcorn. “Sounds like me and you have to go soon.”

  “Maybe tomorrow!” Cole’s eyes lit up, and he slid back to the floor.

  “Maybe.” She took his hand. Her brushes needed cleaning, but they could wait a few minutes. “Let’s go talk to Grandma and Aunt Kari.”

  They bounded down the stairs together. Ashley found her mother and sister talking in quiet tones in the kitchen. Her mother was dabbing at her eyes. Ashley stopped short of them and looked down at her young son. “Uh . . . Cole, why don’t you go upstairs and play in the toy room.”

  “Okay.” He ran past the sofa, where Jessie was lying asleep, still bundled in her jacket. He stopped short and spun around. “Hey, Grandma, can I play with the Lincoln Logs?”

  “Yes, Cole.”

  Ashley made eye contact with her son. “Just clean up whatever you take out.”

  “All right.” Cole flashed her a grin and he was off, bounding back up the stairs, oblivious to the drama playing out in the kitchen.

  Ashley looked at her mother and stifled a deep sigh as she approached her. Since Hayley’s accident, her mother still hadn’t rebounded. Not to the cheerful, upbeat person she’d been before.

  “Hey . . .�
� She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood. “Cole says you had a great time.”

  Kari turned and leaned against the kitchen counter. She had her hand on their mother’s shoulder. “The kids were great.”

  “Good.” Ashley shifted her gaze to her mother. “What’s wrong?”

  Their mother gave a quick shake of her head and bit her lip. She held up a single hand, as if to say she couldn’t explain just yet. “I’m sorry.”

  Kari took over. “We stopped by Brooke’s house on the way home to drop off Maddie.”

  “Is everything okay with Hayley?” Ashley felt her heart drop a notch. Hayley had gone home a few days ago to be with Brooke and Maddie.

  “Yes.” Kari looked at their mother’s shoulder. “It was just hard. It’s one thing seeing Hayley in a hospital bed. Any progress looks good there. But seeing her strapped to a wheelchair . . .”

  Their mother reached for a tissue and used it to dab her eyes. “She’s doing so well. But still . . . I can’t imagine the day when she’ll ride that pink bike in the garage.”

  “That’s why we have to pray.” Ashley took another step closer and looked from her mother to her sister and back again. “God’s going to heal her, Mom. I know it.”

  Their mother nodded. “That’s not all.” She sniffed and her red, swollen eyes met Ashley’s. “Peter’s moved out. I think I hoped it wasn’t really going to happen. Like maybe Peter was only feeling guilty about Hayley, and that when he found out she was coming home, he might change his mind.”

  “And now Brooke isn’t sure if she’s going to Luke’s wedding.” Kari made a sad face in Ashley’s direction. “Mom didn’t cry until she got in the car. I think it was hard for her, pretending to be strong for Brooke.”

  “Mom . . .” This time Ashley came up along the other side of their mother and hugged her. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s my fault.” Mom managed a weak smile. “I pray all the time for Brooke, and I know God hears me. One of these days everything will work out, and life will make sense.” She hung her head for a moment. “All my life I’ve taught you kids to look for the joy, look for the reason to be happy despite your circumstances. And now . . .” Her voice cracked as she looked up again.