The Reason

  Mommy, Daddy, and their 1979 Harley Davidson Roadster had not.

  Now this. I can’t do this, Lord. Not again. Not again!

  “Why? Why us?” Brooke said, sitting down. “What in the world am I supposed to do now?”

  “For starters, continue to be the great mother I saw yesterday,” Macey answered. “And, Brooke, there are going to be lots of steps—lots of steps and lots of tests, then more steps and more tests. It’s a complicated process, but I promise you you’ll know what we are doing every step of the way.”

  Brooke shook her head. “I’m so afraid.”

  “It’s normal to be afraid. It’s normal to be confused.”

  Brooke put her elbows back on her knees and leaned forward to rest her forehead on the heels of her palms. “This can’t be happening. This can’t really be happening. Please, God.”

  “Look at me, Brooke,” Macey said, kneeling in front of her.

  Brooke raised her head. She could feel the tears streaking down her cheeks. “Please, Macey. Please tell me this isn’t really happening.”

  “I’m going to tell you again,” Macey said confidently. “We’re going to win. We will beat this. But we all have to do our parts.”

  “I will do anything for him,” Brooke said through her tears.

  “I know you will,” Macey said. “Alex isn’t the only one we’re going to be doing tests on. We’ll be starting Alex with something called a bone marrow aspiration to determine—”

  “A what?”

  “A bone marrow aspiration,” Macey repeated. “Leukemia is a cancer of the blood cells, and the bone marrow is where the majority of our blood cells originate. We are going to need to remove a tiny sample from Alex to make a final diagnosis.”

  “Final diagnosis?” Brooke asked hopefully. “Is there any chance he doesn’t have it?”

  “I would say no.”

  “When do you want to do this aspiration thing?” Brooke sighed. “Is it going to hurt him?”

  “Excellent question,” Macey said, standing. “Most kids have a tendency to fight any invasive process. I don’t want to use the word hurt, and I will never mislead you. But I will tell you again that there will be times during the various parts of his treatment when he will be uncomfortable—extremely uncomfortable. But we’ll do our best to minimize his discomfort.”

  “You said Alex won’t be the only one you need to do tests on. What do you mean? Who else?”

  “The most likely candidates for a bone marrow match for Alex would be siblings, which he doesn’t have, right? Even half siblings?”

  “Right. As far as I know . . .”

  “Then along with trying to find a marrow match through a donor registry, we are also going to want to run tests on you and Alex’s father.”

  “His father?” Brooke winced. “What does he need to do?”

  “Are you in contact with the father?” Macey asked carefully.

  “No,” Brooke said quickly. “Can’t we test me first to see if I’m a match? Alex doesn’t even know his father.”

  “We will certainly test you, Brooke. But is there a way to get in contact with Alex’s father? We need all possible biological matches as soon as possible. Time is a card we want to play well.”

  Brooke wondered how much bad news this windowless room had played host to in the past—this room with the clown paintings and the little boy who was about to get a shot. If only Alex had been so lucky.

  “Alex’s father . . . ,” Brooke said, wiping her cheek and then looking around at the walls. They suddenly seemed so much closer together. “Doesn’t know he’s Alex’s father.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that he may be the marrow match we’re looking for—that Alex is looking for. It’s extremely rare for a parent to be a match, but I want to make sure we have all of our options on the table.”

  Brooke could hear fate knocking. It was loud, impatient, and pounding mercilessly on a door she had kept so neatly locked for over six years now. But it had to open. It needed to open for Alex.

  “He was my boss at the plant,” Brooke said. “There was a party for a big contract we had won. We were both drunk and it ended up happening. That was it. Just that one time. Not a single time before or after.”

  “That’s all it takes,” Macey said. “Regardless, you have a beautiful son.”

  “We both felt really stupid about what happened and never talked about it. When I realized I was pregnant, I was afraid to tell anybody who the father was.”

  “Even him?” Macey frowned.

  “He was married,” Brooke said. “He was a really nice guy and we both knew it was a mistake. I could only imagine the kind of problems it would cause with his wife, and I knew he’d get fired from the plant. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “So you decided to go it alone?”

  “Yeah,” Brooke said. She hesitated. “I’m sorry for dumping this on you.”

  “I asked you about Alex’s father and you’re telling me. It’s all right. You can tell me whatever you want.”

  Brooke crossed her arms and leaned to her side. She knew Macey meant it.

  “I was living at my aunt’s house when I found out I was pregnant. She and her third husband weren’t doing too well at the time. She kept asking and asking and asking who the father was and I would never say. A few months later she and I were taking a walk at the park over near the church that runs along the lake. My aunt asked me if Frank was the baby’s father.”

  “Was Frank your boss at the plant?”

  “No,” Brooke said. “My aunt’s third husband.”

  “Oh,” Macey said. “No wonder she kept asking you who the father was.”

  “I thought she was kidding and laughed at her.”

  “What happened?”

  “She hit me with something,” Brooke said. “I don’t remember, but it was probably part of a branch. It broke my jaw and my nose, and I guess she hit me again in the back of the head after I was on the ground.”

  “That’s awful,” Macey said. “How far along were you?”

  “Four or five months,” Brooke said.

  “What happened?”

  “My aunt left me there.”

  “What?”

  “Other than Alex, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “H-How?”

  Brooke sighed and shook her head. “The only other thing I can remember about that day is that someone was carrying me, walking really fast, and he had blood all over his hand. I had no idea that it was my blood, but that hand . . . I can still see it, the way it crossed over the tops of both of my legs. I’d never seen a hand that huge. And then I saw the cross and blacked out again.” She paused and looked at Macey. “It was the same cross you came to salvage at St. Thomas.”

  Macey squinted and then her eyes rounded sadly like she was about to cry. She shook her head slowly back and forth as if to fight the tears, then became still. “It was Charlie, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Brooke said. “I’d lived in eleven different places by that time. I was twenty-one years old and I had finally made it home.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Macey said.

  “Yeah,” Brooke said again. “But you’re right, I decided to go it alone. Just me and Alex, Batman and Robin. I grew up without a father, Carla grew up without a father, and what better father figure could you ask for over Pastor Jim?”

  “He’s an amazing man.”

  “The Lindys wanted us there and I wanted to be there. The five of us don’t have much, but we have each other, and now this happens. Why?”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Macey said.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We have Alex come back in here.”

  “Good,” Brooke said, thinking about how Alex somehow now seemed so much younger than five. She wanted to hold him, cuddle him.

  “And, Brooke, we are not going to explain to Alex that he is sick or even ever use the word sick. We are only going to focus on how ev
erything we do is going to make him better. We keep it all positive.”

  “Okay,” Brooke said.

  “We’ll do the bone marrow aspiration on Alex tomorrow as an outpatient,” Macey said. “But for now, I want you to go home and prepare some things for us.”

  “Okay,” Brooke said again.

  Macey put her hand on Brooke’s shoulder. “I want to know everything about Alex’s personal preferences. What he likes to eat, what television shows he likes, what books he enjoys, what makes him laugh, what makes him cry—everything.”

  “What am I gonna do?” Brooke whispered. “I’m so scared.”

  “Here’s what you are going to do,” Macey said. “You are going to do two things.”

  Brooke looked at her, and the doctor had a reassuring smile on her face.

  “One. You are going to watch him get better. And two . . .”

  Brooke knew what “two” was before the smile faded off Macey’s lips.

  Fate had quit knocking. That door she’d kept locked for six years had just been kicked open, and on the other side was a man named Ian Tobias Jr.

  Alex’s father.

  Possibly a donor match.

  Brooke needed to talk to Ian right away.

  SIXTEEN

  My sugar really is feeling a little low right now,” Jim said aloud. He casually crossed his arms and then patiently listened for someone’s approval.

  Nobody said a word.

  “I had one at five this morning,” he added boldly. “Another one won’t hurt.”

  He put his hands on the edge of the kitchen sink, turned his head wishfully toward the pantry, and then began feeling a little embarrassed, realizing his voice held the pitch of a nine-year-old and the sincerity of a used-car salesman.

  He dearly wanted another strawberry Pop-Tart and was having one heck of a time persuading anyone in the house that he should go against his doctor’s recommended limit of only one per day. Truth be told, there was only one person he really needed to convince—himself.

  He was home alone.

  “Shirley?” he yelled, secretly hoping there would be no response. He got his wish. She had been gone for over two hours but apparently still wasn’t home.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, reminding himself of Wile E. Coyote and quietly tiptoeing to the pantry door before coming to an abrupt halt.

  “Charlie?” he said, turning his head cautiously toward the living room door. “You there, son?”

  Once again, there was no reply. There weren’t three taps on the kitchen table, three knocks on the living room or bedroom wall, or three tugs on his shirtsleeve, Charlie’s way of answering him.

  About an hour earlier he had heard the front door close and figured that his son was back up at the church, standing out in front of the cross again. Like he’d apparently done five other times, through the night and early morning hours.

  Jim timidly reached down to the second shelf of the pantry and was already feeling a little guilty by the time his fingers found the small cardboard Pop-Tart box. It seemed a little light. He shook it and laughed under his breath.

  “Thank you, Alex,” he said. “Thanks for looking out for Pastor Jim.”

  Alex had put the empty box back in the pantry.

  Jim dropped the box in the trash and poured himself another cup of coffee before sitting back at the table.

  “Charlie?” he called again, running his hand across the soft leather cover of the Bible in front of him. “Charlie?”

  He took a light sip of his coffee, set his cup back on the table, and then slowly opened the book. He dropped the heel of his palm to the base of the inside cover, then patiently began to guide the top pad of his index finger over and across the series of tiny raised dots on the page.

  He’d been impressed with Kenneth’s uncanny ability to recall and quote Bible verses. What had impressed him more, though, was the young man’s ability to seem even more convincing when he misquoted a verse.

  Jim flipped anxiously through the braille pages to the New Testament before feeling his way to Luke 8:50.

  He stopped and ran his finger across it.

  “‘Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well.’”

  Why would Kenneth say “he” will be made well?

  “And who am I supposed to tell?” Jim asked the empty house. He drummed his fingers on top of the kitchen table, shoving away the thought of Alex, back at the hospital.

  And what did he mean when he said I’m not supposed to tell anyone about 7:14? The least he could have done was tell me the book.

  He’d gotten as far as Isaiah 7:14, checking each book, when there were three knocks on the front door. There’s my boy. “Hello, Charlie,” he said in greeting. “I was wondering where you were, son.”

  Charlie’s big shoes pounded across the living room floor in deliberate steps, moving him quickly to the table. Jim could hear Charlie’s labored breathing as his son’s enormous hand landed on his shoulder. The three light tugs on the sleeve of his sweatshirt meant that Charlie wanted his father to follow him.

  “What is it, son?”

  Three harder tugs almost pulled him off the chair. Whatever it was, he knew it was important to Charlie, so he stood and said, “I’ll follow you, Charlie. Let’s go.”

  Three light squeezes on his shoulder meant “okay.”

  As the two Lindy men made it out the door, Jim could tell that Charlie was anxious.

  He also knew it had something to do with the cross.

  ZACH WAS BACK IN THE ROOM.

  He was trapped again. Only he could save her. She couldn’t breathe, and time was running short. He yelled for help, but nobody could hear. They never heard him in that room.

  Please, she can’t breathe out there. Please . . .

  He slid across the cool white carpet. He needed to find that window. She would be in the window. He could save her.

  He found the window.

  There! There she is! I can save her . . .

  She wanted in so badly, but she couldn’t get in. She never could. He kicked at the window. She clawed at the window. He kept kicking. She kept clawing in panic, leaving tiny strings of scratches on the smooth, frigid glass. He punched at the window. She still scratched. He continued to punch wildly with both fists.

  Please! Please let her in. She can’t breathe . . .

  He kept kicking and punching at the center of the window. Why wouldn’t it ever break? Just once?

  She stopped clawing and then stared at him. Her brown, curly hair flowed and feathered in slow motion at the sides of her face— that beautiful face. He kicked one last time. She didn’t move.

  Don’t stop trying. Please.

  But his words were silent, as well as unanswered. As always.

  As she fell back into the darkness behind the window, he stepped back.

  He could see them—the hands. The hands were on her shoulders. They were the wrinkled and weathered hands of an old man. Zach put his face against the cold window and looked closer at the hands on her shoulders. Then he looked back at her face. The panic in her eyes was now gone . . .

  Behind her, an arm’s length away, another face was almost visible. An old man’s face. With shining white hair and a majestic beard, accented by fiery red eyes . . . Zach couldn’t look away as the face moved closer to him, shoving the girl behind him. The closer the face came, the younger it became. The glowing red eyes were developing an oval shape, and the color softening into a light green. The beard was gone, and the white hair darkened like dusk shadowing a snowy field.

  The man slowly turned and wrapped his arms under the girl’s limp body to effortlessly pick her up. The hair on top of his head was now almost completely brown. The man put his hand over her face, that beautiful face, and closed her blue eyes. Her head dropped back and bobbed lifelessly as he held her in his arms. The man tilted his head and kissed her on her forehead before turning around to carry her off into the darkness.

  No! Stop it! Bri
ng her to me! Help her! Come back!

  Zach pressed his face back against the window one last time. Tears flooded his cheeks, which he frantically wiped with his bloody knuckles.

  Please stop!

  The man did what he asked. And then the man looked back at him, over his shoulder.

  Please don’t take her! Help me!

  The man’s stare drifted through the darkness, directly through the window and into his eyes.

  It was then that the boy recognized the man.

  It was that construction worker. It was Kenneth.

  Zach Norman screamed and sat up in his bed. He was trying to make sense of his dream, remember where he was, when the phone rang. He edged across the sweat-drenched sheets and picked up the receiver. “Amy?” he said desperately.

  There was a pause. “No, Zach, it’s Macey. Who’s Amy?”

  Zach cradled the phone between his ear and his neck before rubbing his face, trying to wake completely.

  His fingers and cheeks felt like they were freezing, even as he sweat.

  The ice . . .

  CHARLIE TOOK JIM BY THE HAND AS THEY STOOD OUT in front of the church and carefully placed his fingers against the cross. Jim felt the smooth wood surface and could practically taste the scent of the lacquer that gently wafted from the cross by the breeze.

  “The cross is like new, isn’t it?” he said softly. “It was hit by lightning, and the carpenter fixed it yesterday. Remember? It’s okay, son.”

  Charlie then lowered his father’s hand down off the cross and placed what felt like three pieces of broken twig in it.

  “What’s this?” he asked, rolling the pieces across his open palm.

  Charlie snatched the broken pieces away and quickly placed a single twig in Pastor Jim’s hand.

  “What is it, Charlie?”

  Charlie tilted the twig straight upright in his hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  Charlie took the broken pieces and put them back in his father’s hand, then quickly replaced them with the unbroken piece of twig.