by Karen Rock
“He’s dead,” she gasped, acid burning her throat.
“Who’s dead?”
“My father. He’s not breathing,” she cried.
“Responders are on their way to the address coming up with your phone number. Thirty-one Macey Lane, Holly Springs. Is that correct?”
Heather nodded, then forced out a yes.
“EMS will be there in ten minutes. Have you begun CPR?”
“Not yet.” Her voice was so low that she was startled when the operator answered her.
“If you know how to perform it, please begin resuscitation until help arrives. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes,” she gasped, louder, then dropped the phone and raced back to her father. CPR. Why hadn’t she thought of it first? She could do this. She could save him.
She pushed Scout out of the way and grabbed her dad around the waist and knees, struggling to slide him out of the recliner and onto the carpet. When his head banged against the side of the coffee table, she winced.
“Sorry!” she cried, soothing his temple, shriveling inside at the bluish tinge there and around his mouth. With the back of her hand, she swiped away her tears. She had to get a grip. Gadways didn’t cry. Especially in emergencies. She forced her emotions behind the wall that let her function and began to work, methodically pressing on her father’s chest.
One and two and three and...
She executed her training ritualistically, her body falling into a physical rhythm that blocked out reality. She didn’t have to think or feel. Just perform.
She didn’t realize how much her arms ached until a man and women burst through the unlocked front door, emergency gear in hand, and pulled her, protesting, from her father.
“Ma’am. Please let us do our job and step away.”
Step away?! Heather’s feet were rooted to the floor as one of the EMS professionals bustled around her father, checking his vitals.
“No pulse or respirations,” the woman said. Her confirmation of his condition, delivered in a flat, toneless voice, leveled Heather.
The male responder brought out a portable defibrillator and connected it to her father.
“Stand back!” The man commanded. Heather stumbled backward as her father’s bare chest jerked upward, then fell. She held her breath, hoping that his pulse would return.
But he remained motionless. The responders administered CPR again, and Heather held Scout’s collar, keeping him from joining the fray.
After a moment, they applied the defibrillator again.
“All clear,” yelled one, and they stepped back. Her father jerked again and flopped to the floor.
He was so pale, Heather thought, looking at the white skin that blended with his silver curls of chest hair. As a girl, she remembered resting her head on his chest as she sat on his lap. Would he ever hold her again?
“Pulse is back, but it’s thready,” murmured the male EMS. Heather’s heart leaped. Yes! Her father would make it. Beat this. He was a fighter. Air rushed from her, relief leaving her weak. Dad wasn’t out of the woods, but they’d bring him through the rest of the way. He’d need more surgery, maybe a bypass on that blocked artery they were watching. But that would be the worst of it, and compared to what she’d imagined, it felt like winning the lottery.
“Ma’am. Can you grab your father’s medicines? We’re going to need you to ride in the ambulance and give us his medical history on the way.”
She scooped up his bottles and grabbed his Falcons cap. He never went anywhere without it. Would ask for it when he came around. She forced a resisting Scout to stay inside the house, hurried after the twosome and her father and hopped inside the vehicle.
“Is he going to be okay?” she asked, just to be sure, as her father was loaded into the back with her, his body strapped to a gurney.
Without answering, they set to work, one inserting an IV lock and drip while the other continued CPR. The ambulance roared down the driveway, the private dirt road jarring them at high speed.
Heather scanned her father’s face, waiting for an eye flutter, a grimace, anything to tell her that he was conscious. Aware. But maybe it was better if he wasn’t?
An EKG was hooked up to his chest, and the electronic results flashed on the monitor overhead. One of the EMSs talked to the hospital through a radio, his hand cupped over his mouth, his eyes raised to the electronic signal. She waited for the line to spike upward, as it had before, but it stayed flat. Was it malfunctioning, or was Dad’s heart not beating? Her own seized.
Another defibrillator round produced no change in the EKG readout, and the EMS worker turned his back and talked fast and low into the radio. At last he turned and, with a somber face, began disconnecting the leads.
“Shouldn’t you be working on my dad?” Heather’s voice rose, breaking off sharply at the end as she rose from a drop-down bench beside the gurney. She shook off the other EMS professional’s hand on her arm.
“We’ve got the go-ahead from our signal doctor at the hospital to cease resuscitation efforts. Your father’s no longer responding to treatment. Without oxygen or a heartbeat for several minutes, I’m afraid it’s no longer sensible to continue.”
Heather’s head filled with a white-noise roar that didn’t let up. She didn’t have a clue where she was or where she was heading as the sound kept coming at her from every direction. All she could do was be led back to the bench because if she didn’t go somewhere, she’d want to just lie down and die herself.
“But he’s not dead!”
Her voice was ripe and swollen, like some dark rotten thing ready to burst. She’d been on that gurney once, years ago, when they’d used the Jaws of Life to extricate her from the car crash. Now she understood how it must have killed her father as he’d ridden beside her, holding her hand—she vaguely remembered that and his reassuring tone as he’d spoken to her. Begging her to stay with him.
“Don’t leave me,” she exclaimed and grabbed his icy hand. She stared into his face, wishing he’d yell at her for something. Anything. She’d take a life of criticism over one minute without him.
The woman began scribbling on a clipboard containing forms.
“Please! Do something,” Heather begged her. These were emergency professionals. Why weren’t they acting like it?
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid he’s gone.”
Heather doubled over, the announcement a sucker punch to her chest. Thunder rolled over the ambulance as they zipped down the highway to the county hospital, a wind gust making it rock.
Heather stared at the ceiling, wanting to shriek with the siren, but it suddenly cut off, the vacuum of sound more ominous. She blinked hard, not wanting to cry in front of strangers, before giving in and letting her sobs fill the silence.
Then they rolled up to the semicircle entrance at the hospital, the doors yanked open and two men in matching white uniforms pulled the gurney, taking her father away from her.
Heather cried out. She wouldn’t be separated from him. Not so soon.
But when she hopped off the ambulance, a calm-faced woman pulled her aside as her father disappeared through the swooshing glass doors.
“My dear. We’ll need some information from you. Would you tell me who you are?”
Heather blinked at her.
Who she was? Without her father, she hadn’t a clue.
* * *
HEATHER STUDIED HER father’s temporary marker as the minister finished a brief, final message she’d hadn’t heard. She shifted in her heels, her feet aching despite the Astroturf carpet rolled out beneath a large tent. It was the only thing she’d felt in the past couple of days. Everything else had happened at a distance—to someone else—not her. None of this was true. Yet here she stood, before a hole she dared not look at, Reed and Smythe flanking her like protective uncles.
A bright sun in a cloudless sky mocked the occasion, the light air belying the heaviness in her heart. She brought her father’s glove to her face, inhaling the f
amiliar leathery scent she always associated with him.
She shivered, despite the warm day, feeling alone in the crowd of friends and Falcons.
Who was she? That was the thing about losing a parent. A part of you stopped being. She was no longer “daughter.” Not to a parent who cared.
“Dave Gadway was a man of conviction and faith,” the minister intoned. “A born leader admired and respected by all. He’s earned his final reward.”
Heather wrapped her arms around herself, sure that if she didn’t, she’d fall apart. It’d taken everything she had to get through these past few days, to go along with what felt like a charade, like some kind of elaborate hoax.
Where would she like her father buried?
She’d named a cemetery close to home, feeling as though this was a trick question. Her father wasn’t dead...until it’d hit her, at the most unexpected times, that yes—yes—he was.
What should his obituary say?
How could she sum up a huge life like her father’s in a few paragraphs? It diminished him somehow. She’d slaved to get in every detail, desperate not to forget anything. Yet sometimes she did forget the most important thing.
Just this morning, she’d woken with a jolt, sure that she’d overslept and her dad would be at the kitchen island, ready to gripe about waiting on his egg-white omelet. Only, when she’d skidded into the empty space, no one but Scout had greeted her. The ache of it had made her sink to the floor beside her dog and weep.
“Several of you spoke at the funeral home. Given the heat, we have just a few moments left if there is anyone who would like to say something brief?” The minister shot her a look, and she met his eyes as steadily she could. What could she say that anyone would understand? That her father wasn’t in that aluminum-gray casket poised above the hole? That at any moment he’d amble up the hill behind them, giving them heck for skipping practice? That even though she knew none of these things were true, a part of her needed to believe it or she’d crumble into tiny bits and blow away like dust? It was all surreal.
Reed patted her arm and strode forward.
For once his cheek didn’t bulge from a wad of chewing tobacco, and he shifted in his dark suit, tugging at his tie.
“I knew Dave Gadway for over thirty years. We met when I joined the Falcons as a second baseman, and we became friends after he found out I like golf as much as I like ball. Through the years, Dave was always someone I could count on for advice. I knew he would back me up, and he made me proud to be a member of this franchise and his friend. He was a devoted father to Heather, and he loved her more than anything—even a league title.”
That earned a few quiet laughs, the respectful kind that broke the tension. But his words wound Heather up tighter. She knew her dad had loved her, yet it wasn’t something he’d said to her often. In fact, when she thought back to the last time he’d said it, her mind landed on the day she’d left for college. Ten years ago. Was it possible? And how long since she’d told him? A lump formed in her throat. She stuffed her clenched hands in her suit pockets to keep from lifting the casket’s lid and whispering it to him one last time.
Now it was too late. He had to have understood that she loved him. But the comfort of knowing that she’d told him recently—that, she’d never have.
Her gaze strayed to Garrett, who stood across from her, the casket between them. He clasped his hands in front of his charcoal-gray suit, his eyes on her rather than Reed. They stared at each other, the quiet strength in his expression making her stand a little taller, hold her chin a bit higher.
“Thank you,” she murmured to Reed when he returned.
Smythe ambled to the marker next, a hitch in his step, his cap twisting in his hands. “There was no better leader, better boss, better man than Dave Gadway. He made everyone he knew work harder and go that extra mile by his example. He was my idol and inspiration. When I tore my rotator cuff as a Falcons pitcher, I thought baseball was done for me until Dave offered me the coaching job. He never quit and didn’t let anyone else quit, either. He demanded the best from everyone and nearly always got it. We can learn a lot from his example. I’ll miss him.”
Heather’s eyes flitted to Garrett again, his gaze falling around her like a pair of strong arms. To her surprise, he broke their stare and strode to the front of the grave.
His smooth, low voice carried in the still air. “A little over a year ago, I would have been sitting in a bar after finishing my shift at the auto body shop, reminiscing about my former glory days playing in the Minor Leagues. One day, I ran into a guy I’d known in foster care. He’d just come back from Afghanistan and wanted to hear about my big baseball career, the one I’d left our group home for.”
Heather’s chest tightened when she saw a pulse throb in his temple, his jaw clench. This had to be hard for Garrett, who rarely opened up about anything. Why now? When his soulful eyes met hers, she had her answer. He was doing it for her, and the thought touched her deeply.
“I had to tell him that I’d been let go because of my alcoholism. That pissed him—sorry—that made him angry. He showed me his prosthetic arm and told me that he’d never waste any of his talents the way I was throwing away mine. After that, I knew I had to get my act together. I sobered up and got myself in shape, but wasn’t sure it’d be enough until Mr. Gadway offered me a tryout.”
Heather sorted through his words, fitting each together until they made a picture she recognized. She’d thought Smythe had recruited Garrett, had strong-armed her father into taking on an addict. Instead, her dad had been all for it...had even pushed to make it happen. Crazy.
Garrett cleared his throat and began again. “When I met him, I thought Mr. Gadway was the last guy in the world who’d give me another shot. He was blunt, told me I’d messed up big-time and asked if I planned on doing it again. When I told him I wouldn’t, he took me at my word. It was the first time anyone ever had that much faith in me. It’s what made Mr. Gadway the kind of man I aspired to be—still do—one who believed in himself and didn’t need anyone else’s approval.”
Garrett’s eyes bored into hers, and she made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. All she’d ever wanted to know was that her father believed in her, was proud.
Heather’s stomach bottomed out. Why did her father have such confidence in someone with a track record like Garrett’s and none in her? She’d always had to fight to gain her father’s faith. Why? It was a question she should have asked before it was too late.
Her gaze flickered over to Garrett as he stood straight and tall beneath the tent, rows of well-wishers seated before him in folding chairs. Her father had trusted Garrett. Should she? After her childhood, it was hard to imagine, but being around him made it seem more possible every day.
Looking beyond the tent, Heather spied a slim, tall figure crest the hill. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, sure that the approaching woman couldn’t possibly be who she seemed to be. But before she could be sure, an electric hum sounded. Heather whirled as her father’s casket was lowered into the ground. Her heart beat in the roof of her mouth.
Her dad was going. Her father. Her rock. And he was disappearing into a dark place she couldn’t follow.
She stood, frozen, watching the rounded dome drop. Hands squeezed her shoulders as family and friends passed by. She pressed her father’s glove against her splintered heart. She stayed that way long after the last car door slammed, unwilling, unable, to leave him. To say goodbye. Even the funeral director’s kind reminder that the service was over hadn’t penetrated.
At last a hand tugged on her arm. She wiped away the tears blurring her vision, then blinked in shock.
“Hello, Heather,” her mother said. “It’s been too long.”
CHAPTER NINE
“HEATHER! WAIT!”
Heather’s heels clicked along Holly Springs’ Main Street sidewalk a week later. She hurried from the lawyer’s office, taking her as far, and as fast, as she could get from her mother
.
She seethed. How could her father have let this happen? It was too incredible to believe.
“Please, Heather. We need to talk.”
Her mom’s freckled face appeared in the rear passenger window of the expensive sedan that was pacing her. A suited man drove, his expression impassive.
Heather shook her head and lengthened her stride, everything in her line of vision tinted red. Did her mother believe she had anything to say after that shocking news?
The car jerked to a halt, and Heather gaped when the door swung open. She was not going to talk to her mother. Not here. Not ever. Her mother’s long legs appeared, and alarm seized her. She needed to get away. Now.
She bolted into the road. Screeching tires and the faintest brush of a bumper made her stumble and land on her backside, hard, her elbow scraping the pavement.
In seconds, a man knelt beside her, his familiar blue eyes so dark they were nearly black. His arm snaked behind her back, snatching her close.
“Heather. What were you doing? You could have been killed!”
Garrett sounded so like her father, her eyes stung. She wished she could speak, but the words tumbled in her head like laundry. Instead, she stared up at him, wincing at her stinging elbow. When a truck honked, Garrett waved, his impatient gesture ordering the pickup to go around.
“Oh my goodness. Are you okay?” she heard her mother exclaim, the hem of her green dress looming into view.
Heather closed her eyes. If only she could hit the rewind button on these past couple of minutes. Here she was, in the arms of the man she’d vowed never to touch again, dealing with a parent she’d hoped to forget. Even more difficult to take was the probate lawyer’s news. That defied understanding.
“Garrett. Please get me out of here.”
His eyes flicked up to her mother. She could see understanding dawning in his expression when he peered back at Heather. Except for the age difference, she and her mother could have been twins. But that was only on the outside. Inside, they were as different as could be.
“Sure.” He helped her to her feet. “But you’re not in any condition to drive.”
