Any Minute (28 page)

She tried to smile. But when Wingtip lifted her chin and bent to inspect her face, she turned quickly aside so he wouldn’t see her holding back tears.

Sarah inspected her grandmother’s face. Maybe their time together was drawing to a close too, because Annie’s colors seemed to be gradually fading away. Her lacquered, pin-curled hair, which seemed brighter than a sunflower when Sarah first saw it, now had softened to a color resembling a sparrow’s lair. Somewhere along the way even the flamboyant dress had faded and the shoes were a bit down at the heel. When Sarah grasped Annie’s hand, she felt knuckles knobby as acorns.

“Wingtip?” Sarah asked him. “What’s happening? Does Annie have to leave?”

“Not quite yet.”

But Sarah noticed how his enthusiasm about baseball waned, how his expression grew even more pensive. It hinted that her time with both of them was drawing to a close.

“There’s one more place your grandmother needs to take you.”

“The future?” Sarah asked. “Aren’t you going? I thought you were supposed to take us there.”

“Relax, Sarah,” Wingtip said. “God always has a good plan. He just doesn’t always let us in on it.”

Wingtip’s telling Sarah to relax didn’t help one bit. Her knees weakened with fear again. Maybe it was selfish, but she didn’t think she could bear to let go of Annie this second time. Each place she had stopped with Annie and Wingtip and the Father’s loving guidance had brought her from a place of pain and unhappiness to a place where she felt like she was being made new.

“If I ever get back to my old life, you’ll be there. I know you will!” Sarah called after Wingtip. “I’ll see you on LaSalle Street picking out a new pair of shoes! I’ll see you changing the score by hand at Wrigley just the way Mitchell says you do. This time I will see you, Wingtip. This time I’ll believe that angels watch over us every step of the way.”

“Ah,” Wingtip reminded her. “You won’t ever be able to go back to that old life, remember? Sarah, you are on a new journey now, and you must let go of the old one.”

She didn’t know what she would do without either of them, Sarah thought as she wrapped her arms around herself. She was in uncharted territory, which excited her and frightened her all at once.

As she and Annie made their last journey together, Sarah couldn’t tell whether they’d become a part of the clouds or the clouds had become a part of the two of them. She remembered dreams like this from when she was a little girl, like she was dog-paddling across the horizon, swimming through air.

Annie stopped outside an open door. “I think this is it.” For the first time in a while, she seemed worried, as if she wasn’t certain what Sarah’s response would be.

If it could be possible, this room seemed even smaller than Mrs. Pavik’s place.
Much
smaller. College dorm small, with strategically placed bookshelves lined with psychology titles and political science volumes and even a gargantuan volume called
Macroeconomics: Understanding Supply and Demand.

“Freshman year.” Sarah ran her fingers along the spines. “I’d recognize these subjects anywhere.”

A young woman sat at the desktop computer, her face bowed over its keyboard, her glasses reflecting numbers as she perused data on the screen.

“Do you recognize her?” Annie asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Should I know this person?”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Perhaps you’d better have another look.”

Dark wispy brown hair, not quite as curly as Sarah’s own. Highlights shining in streaks of Italian Chianti red. The profile, so different yet so familiar. She could have been a young-girl version of Joe. That’s when Sarah finally knew.

She felt like her knees might go out from under her again. “It’s Kate. Oh, Annie. It’s Kate.”

Annie smiled knowingly.

“My daughter. How old is she? What? Eighteen?”

The first thing to be said was, “She looks just the same.” The second was, “Of course she doesn’t look the same.” But the features were there, made more distinct and more unique by time. “Oh, she’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”

At second look, Sarah could see Kate wasn’t happy. As Kate stared at the screen it seemed like her eyes alighted on the same line over and over again. She couldn’t take anything in. Every so often, she sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. Sarah lost track of how many times Kate fiddled with her hair, pulling it away from her face, binding it into a messy chignon with a scrunchie, tugging it free until it fell across her face again.

Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off this beautiful young woman. There she sat, this child who had so recently nursed at Sarah’s breast, the baby who had once felt so weighty, so like an obligation in Sarah’s arms. Kate had turned into the most beautiful young woman Sarah had ever seen.

A knock sounded at the door behind them. Another young lady stuck her head in. “Come on, girl. You going to study all night?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to give yourself mono.”

“Excuse me, April. Studying is not the way to get mono. Who told you that?”

The roommate plopped her books on the bed and held up both hands like a scale, weighing the odds. “I’ll never tell.”

“Why not study like this? There isn’t anything else better to do.”

“On Saturday night? Are you kidding me? There’s a big group of us going bowling. Hot guys all over the place, Kate. I don’t think you should miss it.”

“Go have fun. I don’t have my hot-guy radar turned on right now. Anybody I’d meet would never measure up to Cooper.”

“Anybody you’d meet would take your mind
off
of Cooper Dawson. He’s a jerk. You deserve so much better.”

“You should never say that to your best friend. What if we get back together again and end up getting married? Then on my twenty-fifth anniversary, when you and I go shopping or something, I’ll always look at you and remember you said my husband was a jerk.”

“He’s a jerk. Read my lips.
Jerk.
Player. Boy toy to the masses. Doesn’t respect you. Looking for any girl who is unsure enough about herself that she’ll let him have his cake and eat it too.”

“Don’t they all?”

“Guys like Cooper Dawson have a sixth sense, Kate. They know the girls who’ll give them what they want. They prey on the ones who don’t have enough self-esteem and are looking for guys to give it to them. You’re selling yourself short if you even think about doing this.”

Baby Kate, who’d been left so many times at Mrs. Pavik’s, who’d smelled like Dreft and lotion and gummed bits of baby cookie. Who, this very morning, had held her mother’s face with one tiny, prickly fingernailed hand. Kate, who made every iota of Sarah’s motherly instincts kick in.

Some unknown boy was trying to take advantage of her! Some unknown young womanizer was trying to convince Kate she wasn’t worth his time if she didn’t cave in to his wishes. What if she was looking at this predator to give her self-esteem? Well! Sarah would certainly have something to say about that.

She marched directly toward her daughter’s desk before she remembered Kate couldn’t see or hear her.

At that precise moment, Kate said to her friend, “I’d give anything if I had a mother I could talk to. I wish so hard that I could talk to her about things like this.”

April said, “Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“I really miss having someone to share my heart with.”

Sarah wheeled toward Annie. “I’m not there for her,” she said as the guilt and shame deluged her again. “That’s the cost of the choice I made today. She doesn’t have a mother to talk to because I’m gone.”

Annie was backing away. And Sarah’s heart froze because she could see her grandmother almost completely faded now. It seemed like she could see through her, to the shapes of boxes and Kate’s storage trunks and the little refrigerator on the other side.

“You don’t understand, Sarah. This visit was meant to show you Kate’s future if you hadn’t driven off the bridge. This is to show you what would be happening to Kate if you were still around.”

“No,” Sarah whispered, reaching for Annie’s hand, feeling like she’d been struck in the chest with a bulldozer.

“I’m not the one you need to reach for anymore, Sarah.” At first she’d barely noticed Annie’s voice fading, but now Sarah faintly heard her grandmother say, “The one you need is Jesus, not me.”

“But where can I find him? Will he help me even after the way I’ve lived?”

“He’s been waiting for you to ask for help all your life.” Then, faint as a whisper, “And should you decide to go back—”

“What do you mean, ‘Should I decide to go back’?”

Then silence.

“Annie?
Annie?
” When she whispered her grandmother’s name again, no one answered.

“I never knew,” Sarah wept as she called out to Jesus. “I never knew.”

She felt strength, amazing strength, and love like warm liquid pouring into her and all over her. She was too stunned to talk. Whatever happened to her now, it didn’t matter. She knew without any doubt that she would be taken care of and loved forever. Someone besides Annie, a Savior who had always yearned for her to call his name, held Sarah close and wouldn’t let go.

Chapter Nineteen

T
he sun slipped from behind a cloud, sending a shaft of gold toward the river. Joe, who’d been rocking on the edge of the concrete barrier, lifted his head. The rain had soaked his shirt clear through.

Joe felt like such a heel. Earlier, while traffic was backed up in every direction, Gail had walked a long way to find him a breakfast bagel. When she’d unwrapped the hard roll with its greasy flaps of ham and cheese, he’d stared at it like it was made of rubber. He shook his head. His eyes felt full of grit. “I don’t want that.”

Gail rearranged the cheese so it flopped to the other side. As if that would make it better. “Come on. You need to eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.” He didn’t think he’d ever be able to do normal things like eat, sleep, or drink again. “Thanks for getting it, Gail, but I just can’t—”

He tried to hand it away but no one would take it from him. Somewhere during the next half hour, while Joe watched the fire department stand down and the hydraulic Jaws of Life get reloaded onto the waiting truck bed, the sandwich disappeared from its paper. Maybe he ate it. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t know where it had gone.