Ashley made a mental note to call Luke immediately after meeting with her sisters. As she did, Brooke pulled up. Kari was with her, and the two of them looked happy, laughing about something. Kari’s car was probably parked back at Brooke’s medical office, since parking downtown, where the center was located, was always at a premium. They climbed out of the van, Brooke holding the hand of Kari’s three-year-old RJ and Kari with little Annie’s baby carrier looped over her arm.
Ashley hated to ruin the mood, but they needed to know. She took her still-sleeping Devin from her van, walked around, and leaned on the passenger door.
Kari noticed Ashley’s tears and the look on her face first. “What is it?” She set down the baby carrier and came to her. “What happened?”
“Let’s go inside.” Ashley dabbed her fingers at the wet trail on either cheek.
Brooke looked at her a moment longer, clearly worried. Then she pulled a key from her purse and unlocked the door, and the three of them and their kids moved in where it was warmer.
For the next ten minutes Ashley explained the dire straits Luke and Reagan were in. The news was sobering to all of them, and not until Brooke checked her watch did they remember the reason they had gathered.
“I hate to change the subject, but I have to get back to the office.” Brooke frowned. “Let’s take a look around. We can talk about Luke after that.”
The space was bigger than they’d hoped for—mainly because their dad had pulled strings with the building’s owner, a friend of his from both the hospital and church. Rent for the building would be half of what it might’ve been otherwise.
“We’ll put sofas along those two walls,” Brooke said, “and office furniture in each of the smaller rooms.”
“When’ll you be ready to open?” Kari shifted the baby carrier to her other arm. “The notice for volunteers has been running in the paper for a month now.”
Brooke smiled, even though the concern about Luke remained in her eyes. “We’ve got two retired nurses who are best friends and want to make this their full-time mission. A number of senior high school girls are willing to put in a few hours a week as part of their community service work. Bailey Flanigan is one of them.” She thought for a second. “Then, of course, you two will be on call, in case we need to cover for our regular staff.”
“What about ultrasound equipment?” The machines from the previous center had been sold when the center closed. Now they were the most critical item needed before they could open. “Did Dad’s contact come through?”
“He did. Between our families, CKT, and a few donations from church friends, it looks like we’ll have one here the day we open.”
Ashley could hardly believe how successful they’d been. Only a few months ago, reopening the center had been nothing more than a possibility, a distant idea. If Bailey Flanigan hadn’t said something about her high school friend, Ashley might never have heard about the need from Jenny. She certainly wouldn’t have called Brooke with the suggestion. And now, people from church and the community had pulled together to answer the need. It gave Ashley hope about every aspect of the future—even where it concerned her extended family.
Brooke held out her hands to Ashley and Kari. “Let’s pray.”
This was the real reason they’d come—to dedicate the space to God and to ask Him to bless every woman who might ever walk through the doors.
They formed a small circle, and RJ tugged at Kari’s sweater. “I pray too, ’kay, Mommy?”
“Okay, sweetie.” Kari smiled at him. “Pray that lots of babies will be helped by this place.”
“I like babies.” RJ shifted around her and stood protectively over his little sister. “Annie likes me too.”
“Yes. Very much.”
Devin was awake now, still in Ashley’s arms. He put his fingers in his mouth as he watched his cousins. RJ patted Annie’s head, and for an instant, Ashley felt the pang of deep loss and maybe even a little jealousy. Her boy should have a baby sister to protect too.
She sniffed and met the eyes of her sisters. This wasn’t the time for regrets, and she could see that Kari and Brooke were watching, weighing her reaction to the poignant scene. Ashley smiled. “It’s okay. Let’s pray.”
They thanked God for the idea of reopening the center and for providing the space and people and equipment.
With tears in her voice, Ashley finished the prayer. “May every girl who walks through Sarah’s Door know the loving touch from You, our Father, and may they make a decision for life, both for themselves and for their babies. So that Sarah’s legacy, a legacy of the value of life, however brief, will live on.”
She held tighter to Devin and leaned her head against his. “As for our brothers, Lord, they need Your intervention now. We beg You. Help Dayne and Katy clear up their misunderstandings, and convince Luke that he needs to be home to work at his marriage. Let Luke and Reagan see that they need counseling, and they need it now.” Ashley paused. “Teach them that no one wins by walking away.”
When the prayer was over, the sisters hugged before Brooke and Kari piled back into Brooke’s van and headed out.
Ashley wanted a few more moments. She switched Devin to her other hip and pressed her free hand against her flat abdomen. She could still remember clearly the gentle kicks and turns, the sweet rolling sensation that Sarah had brought throughout her pregnancy.
Before Ashley left, she turned the lock on the inside. Then, for a while, she stood out front staring at the newly painted front window and the sign that hung on the door. This was the first time she’d really focused on it. Sarah’s Door—A Crisis Pregnancy Center.
Gratitude swelled in Ashley’s heart and she felt overwhelmed by the goodness of God. He hadn’t planned for death to be a part of life. But it was because they lived in a fallen world, where eventually everything and everyone would die. Even so, God’s promise was that He would make good come out of any situation. Any heartache. Sarah’s Door and all it would mean to the community of Bloomington for months and years to come was proof that the Lord would keep His promise. Because of Sarah’s death, He would be exalted in Bloomington, at the very least.
Now Ashley could only pray that God would make good come out of Luke’s and Dayne’s situations too.
The task of putting Elizabeth’s letters into scrapbooks for his kids had been far more draining than John ever could’ve imagined. Not the copying and sorting and adding pages to the scrapbooks, but the emotional drain of reading each of Elizabeth’s letters many times over and making sure the personal ones wound up in the proper books and that the ones written to him or with general thoughts for her family wound up in each.
John knew he couldn’t make plans for his upcoming wedding without putting this project behind him. And now—finally—at just after nine o’clock the second Monday in December, he was finished. He stood back and admired the six books spread across the dining room table. They smelled faintly of smoke but were otherwise undamaged by the fire.
He’d found photos of Elizabeth for the covers, each one special for the son or daughter it belonged to. For the five youngest Baxter kids, he’d made a collage of Elizabeth with each of them. On Brooke’s, for example, was a picture of Elizabeth standing next to Brooke just inside the doors of Clear Creek Elementary School on her first day of kindergarten. Next to it was a picture of Elizabeth and Brooke dancing in the living room and one of the two of them on Brooke’s graduation day and again on the day Brooke married Peter. Maybe the most precious was the photo of Elizabeth with Maddie and Hayley the day Hayley came home from the hospital after her near drowning.
Elizabeth had been there through so many milestones, so many key moments in the lives of their children. The photos were similar for Kari, Ashley, Erin, and Luke.
Only Dayne’s was different. On the cover of his, John had used just two pictures. A photo of Elizabeth as a young college girl, the way she’d looked when Dayne had been born. It was the same picture she’d left with Dayne’s
adoptive parents, the one that Dayne had used to find Elizabeth several years ago.
Next to it was a favorite picture of Elizabeth that John had taken after one of their big family outings to Lake Monroe. Elizabeth was sitting in a beach chair, her sun hat shading her face. The lighting had been just right, and John had grabbed the camera and snapped her picture. It wasn’t often that a photograph captured a person’s eyes in such a way as to get the exact feel of her heart. But this one did. John hoped Dayne would treasure it.
He was grateful for Ashley’s reminder about the letter Elizabeth had written specifically for their firstborn. It was the one Ashley had found when she’d pulled down the box of letters from John’s closet back when he hadn’t been sure how to tell his kids about their older brother. Or even if he should tell them.
The letter was the reason Ashley had become driven to find her brother, but more than that, it was something deeply personal that belonged to Dayne. A letter he still hadn’t seen or read. John opened the front cover of Dayne’s scrapbook. Yes, everything about the book was bound to touch Dayne in a most special way. More than the others, maybe, because though Dayne carried inside him Elizabeth’s sentimental spirit and love of family, he hadn’t had the privilege of knowing her. Not for more than an hour, anyway.
John looked to the far end of the table, to the place where one much smaller scrapbook lay. The seventh book. On the cover was a series of four photographs of John and Elizabeth, each taken during a special season in their lives. When they were very young, when they were in the throes of raising toddlers, during their kids’ teenage years, and again when their kids started having families of their own. The photos represented love personified. John and Elizabeth connected for all time—mind, body, heart, and soul.
He hadn’t planned on making an album for himself, but in the end he’d had no choice. There were things Elizabeth had written to him that would encourage him, push him to be his best for the rest of his days. John wouldn’t keep the scrapbook on his bedside table. But he would pull it out every now and then. Elaine would understand.
He flipped open the front cover of his book and let his eyes fall one more time on the first letter inside. It was brief and to the point, the way Elizabeth had rarely been when she put pen to paper. But it spoke volumes to his heart every time he read it.
My dearest John,
He stopped and caught his breath. The tears didn’t come as easily or as often now, but here, with the project finally completed, his eyes grew watery. Just the act of reading those three words made Elizabeth’s voice ring clear in his mind. My dearest John . . . They were words she said often, sometimes when she was being silly or when she was tired at the end of the day. “My dearest John, I’m exhausted. I believe it’s time for me to turn in.” Or “So . . . my dearest John, how was work for Bloomington’s best doctor?”
He let his eyes linger on the words, and when he could see clearly, he continued reading.
You just called and told me about your patient, about how you were at his bedside and how you played a role in saving his life. As we hung up, God brought something to mind, and I had to write it now, had to tell you in case I forget or I never get the chance again.
You’re a brilliant doctor, John. The life you saved today wasn’t your first, and it won’t be your last. But you should know something, my loving husband. You saved my life first. My parents had rejected me, dismissed me as a lost cause and an embarrassment. God used you to redeem me, to show me the redemption He had planned for my life.
For our lives.
Just remember that when you set out for work each day. I sit here, mom and wife, lover and friend, because you breathed life into me. I’ll love you with every heartbeat, my darling.
Now and forever yours,
Elizabeth
God had used him to save her. Until he’d found the letter a few weeks ago—near the bottom of the box—he hadn’t remembered ever considering such a thought. Elizabeth had been intelligent and confident, a natural born counselor with a knack for understanding God’s wisdom in relationships. He had always believed she did him a favor in standing by him through their troubled early years.
But now he saw that she felt otherwise. It was fitting, really. They had always complemented each other, and now—even into death—they would complement each other in this. That each of them would spend their days knowing they’d become the person they were because of the other.
John blinked, and for a few seconds he considered heading outside into the dark, walking along the path and finding the familiar bench where he and Elizabeth had spent so many wonderful hours talking about their family, praying about the day-to-day challenges of life.
But it was late, and he had something even more important to do before he turned in. He needed to box up the scrapbooks and deliver them to the houses of his kids. Brooke’s, Kari’s, and Ashley’s would be easy. They lived within ten minutes of him. He would drop Dayne’s in the mail in the morning and overnight it to the set in Cabo so Dayne would have the words of his mother as soon as possible.
But the one he was sure mattered most was the one that would take him nearly an hour out of Bloomington before the night was through. That was okay. John would’ve driven all night to get the book into the hands of his youngest son.
Ashley had told him the latest, and the news had driven him to double his efforts on the project. Luke had been particularly close to Elizabeth, and maybe . . . maybe her death had hurt him more than the others. It was something he hadn’t considered until the last few days. Luke had been through a lot in recent years, so perhaps it wasn’t any surprise that he was struggling with the task of being the man everyone expected him to be. No amount of hurt or loss would excuse his behavior, of course. But if anyone could use a reminder of his mother’s love, it was Luke.
Even if—by all indications—the message was coming too late to make a difference.
Ashley didn’t want to read her scrapbook yet. Not until she’d spent an hour working on the painting of her mother and baby Sarah. She laid the boxed scrapbook on the bed in the corner of the room and set about finishing the field of flowers. Never had the brilliance of color so taken her breath as it did in this painting. With God’s help it felt like she’d actually captured a piece of paradise—the beautiful, alive way that heaven would have to look with her mother there.
It was early Tuesday afternoon, and Landon was home with the boys. It was his day off, and ever since her dad dropped the scrapbook off the night before, he had known Ashley was anxious to break away by herself and read it.
“Will you go to the cemetery?” He’d put his arms around her this morning in the kitchen.
He didn’t need to clarify himself. She knew what he meant. Her eyes got lost in his, and she smiled sadly. “No. I thought I’d spend a few hours on my painting. Then maybe sit by the window in my old room and look at it there.”
Landon nodded. “I like that.” He kissed her gently. “Take as long as you need.”
Now, with the field of flowers just about finished, Ashley had the strangest sense that her mother was actually in the room with her. The memories of yesterday were alive and tangible. The smells of the old room. The sound of a gentle wind through the trees outside. Winter in the air and Christmas around the corner.
As she worked, she could almost hear her mother downstairs calling to her. “Ashley, I’m putting on the kettle. Want some tea?”
Yes, Mom . . . I’d give anything for one more cup of tea with you. Tears blurred her eyes, and she blinked them back. There was something about the end of another year, something that had a way of putting distance between the vividness of her memories of her mother and the reality of life without her.
Her mother was gone. Life had moved on, the way life always had the nerve of doing.
But here in this room a few feet behind her was a reminder of her mother’s words, her heart and love for Ashley and each of her siblings. Because of that, she could almost see her mot
her in the doorway, smiling at her, watching her paint. “I love your paintings, Ashley. . . . You have a gift from God. I hope you use it for Him always.”
A stream of tears left a hot trail on each of her cheeks. God, am I doing that? Is my gift helping anyone get closer to You?
God gave her not an answer but a picture. That was how the Lord often talked to her, how He showed her precious moments and glimpses of life. The picture was of a large playroom. Cole and Devin were on the floor building LEGO villages, and in the distance there was a little girl—maybe two years old—with golden hair. Ashley could see only the back of her, but she seemed to belong in the picture somehow.
There on the wall of the playroom was the painting, the very one she was working on right now. Ashley had the strongest sense that the painting gave her children peace and certainty of God’s love and the reality of heaven. Where they would all live forever one day.
The picture consumed her, giving her purpose and renewing her energy not only for finishing this painting but for putting the other pictures in her mind on canvas. Where they would leave a legacy for her kids, if not for the world. She put the final accents of deep purple into the field of flowers and then set her brush in a jar of cleaner.
Okay, God . . . help me get through this. Ashley turned and faced the book. Suddenly she felt none of the fear or trepidation about the sweet sorrow that would certainly lie ahead in the coming hour. This was a chance to spend a little time with her mother. There was nothing frightening about that, no matter how bittersweet.
Before she started, she did what her mother would’ve done. She went downstairs, made herself a cup of tea in her mother’s favorite mug, and then returned to the head of her old bed. She set the cup on the sill in front of the window that was opened just enough to allow fresh air to clear the paint fumes.