Slow Moon Rising (29 page)

“Manny said we'd meet them where the parade ends and then, as a family, continue on with the evening. Chase and the girls are welcome to hang with us. We'll keep a close watch, I promise. Are you planning to go to the chili cook-off?”

“Yes. And I've entered Max in the doggie parade. I'll go home after that. Dad and Anise are coming to the house, and then we'll all go to the cook-off together.”

She didn't say anything at first. Her eyes shimmered with tears. Then, “You are lucky, chica, having . . . them. I know you lost your mother way too soon. So did I, truth be told. We are never ready to lose them, are we?”

“No.”

“Hector was . . . no real father to me. When he died, I was more upset about the fact that I'd never had any real relationship with him at all. I cried not for what I lost but for what I never had.”

I cradled Patsy closer to me. By now her eyes had fluttered shut again. “I'm sorry, Rosa. I really am. And, you know, if you ever need a father figure, Dad has always had a special place in his heart for you.”

Rosa's eyes traveled to the window and beyond. Mine did the same, to see if I could ascertain what she had seen that
caught her attention. Other than the usual scene, nothing out of the ordinary stirred. “He has, hasn't he?” she said.

“He's a good man.”

She looked at me again. “Yes. I suppose he is.”

“It was weird,” I told Steven. We were in our bedroom getting dressed for the night's festivities—the community chili dinner to be held in the park, the boat parade, and the grand finale, which was when Santa Clam arrived at the park in an airboat. We'd already had the doggie parade in the park, where my golden retriever Max and I had dressed alike. Max brought home 2nd place. I brought home Max, who went in search of his new housemate, Patsy's cat, Oreo. I can only assume to show off his ribbon.

The little bit of light leftover from the day managed to sneak in through the open windows. Our room was bathed in gray. I switched on the bedside table light. Amber shot across our bed and pooled on the floor.

Steven stepped into a pair of jeans and looped the buttonhole around the button. He wore a tee but had yet to don the long-sleeved shirt I'd set out for him. “What do you mean by ‘weird'?”

I sat on the side of the bed to pull Uggs over thick white socks. “I don't know how to explain it.” I adjusted the top of the boots over black leggings. I also wore a mid-thigh-length red cowl-neck sweater, which was cinched at the waist by a wide black belt.

“Explain Rosa,” Steven said. “I've never completely understood her.”

I turned to look at my husband. “I admit . . .”

Steven shoved both shirts into the waist of his jeans, tucking . . . tucking. My gracious, how this man had me wrapped around his little finger, and he didn't even have to try. “What?” he asked.

“I'm just thinking how absolutely adorable you are,” I said, walking to him and slipping my arms around his waist. “You. Me. Back here, say in . . .” I glanced at the digital clock on Steven's side of the bed. “Five hours?”

He kissed the tip of my nose. “You betcha.”

I stepped back and extended my arms. “Are you sure I don't look like Santa's elf?”

He pressed his lips together. Smirked. Mirth filled his eyes. “Maybe a little.”

I walked toward my closet. “I'm changing.”

Steven grabbed my hand and pulled me back, drawing me into his embrace. He pressed his lips against mine. “I have a thing,” he said, “for elves. Did I ever tell you that?”

I shook my head.

“I do.”

“Mmm?”

“Mmm.”

“So don't change?”

“Well . . . in five hours.”

I laughed against his mouth just as the doorbell rang. “Dad and Anise are here.”

“You, sweetheart, were just saved by the bell.”

I kissed him quickly. “And you definitely had the talk with Chase?” I asked at the closed door.

“He's good to go. Are you going to finish telling me what was so weird about Rosa this morning?”

I twisted the doorknob and shook my head. “Maybe later. It was just . . .” I shrugged. “Something in the way she reacted about . . . I dunno.” I looked at the door. “What do you think? Should I have Dad talk to Chase?”

“Leave it be. I don't see any reason to make more of this than it is.”

I opened the door in time to hear Cody shouting, “Pop! Nana!”

I sighed. “Okay. All right. I can do this. I can watch my son on a boat with some . . . girl.”

Steven headed to where he'd left his shoes. “You'll be fine.”

“Maybe I'm as slightly off-kilter as Rosa.” I heard commotion from the front of the house. “What in the world?”

Cody ran down the hall toward me. Wispy blond hair billowed around his head. “Mom! Hurry! Pop's got blood pouring all out his nose!”

Jayme-Leigh

Isaac found me at the dining room table surrounded by volumes of books and with my laptop open in front of me. Next to it, a legal pad, on which I furiously made notes.

He stepped up behind me and kissed the top of my head. “What are you doing?” he mumbled.

“What do you think?”

He sighed deeply. “Hon, it's nearly one in the morning.”

“I know what time it is, Isaac.”

He backed away, walked around the antique mahogany table, and sat in one of the six shield-back needlepoint chairs. He laid his forearms along the highly polished tabletop and leaned over. “So what have you got?”

I laid the pen down, ran my nails through my hair, catching the scrunchie and pulling it through. Throwing it between two large volumes I said, “Nothing I like reading.”

“If you want to share, I'll listen.”

I shook my head. “I don't even know how to say these words. It's one thing talking about it to a patient—not that
I've ever had a patient with AML—but this is my father, Isaac. My father
 
. . .” As soon as the tears started to burn my eyes, I looked from my husband to a large, framed replica of Sir Edward Burne-Jones's
An Angel
.

Focus, Jayme-Leigh. Focus. Wings made of feathers. Blue feathers. Halo of flowers. An angel gently blowing into the slender horn. Lovely, lovely . . .

I returned controlled attention to my husband. “I'm going tomorrow to be tested. To see if I'm a match.”

Isaac rubbed his eyes before answering. “Do you really think, Jaymes, that with your chemo treatments a few years back, you are going to be a candidate?”

“Stupid cancer.” I slammed my fists onto the table. “What is wrong with this world that we have to deal with all this?” In one sweep, I managed to knock several of the books to the floor.

My husband stood slowly. He walked to my side of the table. Squatting, he picked up each book, closing them quietly and placing them back on the table in a neat stack. “I want you to listen to me,” he said, placing his hands on my knees and drawing them around until they faced him.

I looked into his incredible eyes. There couldn't have been more compassion or love there if he'd had three.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes.” I wasn't happy, but I was listening.

“You can't beat yourself up over this. Your dad getting sick is no more your fault than when your mom got sick or when—what was that child's name? The one you grieved over so?”

My heart cinched. “Eryaka Johnson.” Eryaka had been
my first death after medical school. Lovely African-American child, only ten years old with an infectious smile and overly large ebony eyes, who suffered and withered away from sickle-cell anemia under my care. I'd nearly quit medicine after she died. If it hadn't been for Dad, I probably would have.

“You don't have the kind of control you'd like to have when it comes to sickness and death.” He stood, pulled me to my feet, and walked me into the living room. He dropped onto the sofa, bringing me with him. We shifted until we found comfort, Isaac's arms draped around me protectively. Lovingly. “Listen,” he whispered into my ear.

I was starting to hate that word.

“Take a deep breath and tell me what you've found out. Let's talk logically about what you can and what you cannot do.”

I gritted my teeth long enough to think through what I wanted to say. “Isaac,” I finally began, “when my father told me he had AML, my first thought was, ‘What is AML?' I mean, I
know
what it is, but I couldn't imagine leukemia being in any way connected to my father.”

“I know.”

I turned enough to see his face. “No, you don't know, Isaac. Both of your parents are alive and well. My mother is
dead
. My father is
dying
. You and I both know his chances of surviving this disease are slim to none. Less than slim to none.” I started to get up. There was still much to research, and knowledge was power. Knowledge would at least give me a head start on what was about to happen to my father. To my family, none of whom knew what lay ahead.

Isaac's arms tightened. “Stay. I know you. You'll sit up all night reading and you'll gain just enough insight to be argumentative with the experts.”

I struggled against him, but he was clearly not going to let me up. When I relaxed against him, his arms remained flexed for a moment before easing.

“Let me,” he said.

I faced forward. “Let you what?”

“Let me do the research. That's what I do, after all. I'm in research, am I not?”

“I guess.”

“Jayme-Leigh . . .”

“All right.” From a logical, intelligent standpoint, he was right, of course. I was so emotionally involved, I wasn't reading or discovering anything that was making me less anxious at what lay ahead. “All right.”

We remained quiet until he asked, “What is your dad planning to do about the others?”

I sighed. “He said he'd tell them at Christmas when everyone is there.” I took another deep breath. “He said he'd give them all the options he's looking at. The meds, the chemo, the possible transplant, if we can find a match.”

“His siblings would have been the best chance.”

“I know that. But with Uncle Morris and Aunt Kathleen both gone already . . .”

“Okay. So the chances are slim. But there's always Kim and Heather and Ami.”

Tears fought their way to the surface again. In the recesses of my mind, I screamed. Loudly. A wail tearing at my soul in its release. I bit down, hard, on my bottom lip. “I'm going to
get tested, Isaac. I know the results will probably be negative, but I have to at least try.”

His lips pressed against the side of my head. “Then try. I'm not going to stop you. But I think you and I both know—”

“Stop. Just stop. I don't want to talk about what I know. I want to know what I don't know.”

Isaac wisely said not another word. Within minutes I heard rhythmic breathing, telling me he had fallen asleep. I made a final attempt to slip out of his arms, but by reflex they tightened again.

Too exhausted to fight further, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to drift away. Tomorrow—a final thought came to me—I'd see what needed to be done for testing. If I was even a four-point match to Dad, maybe they'd let me donate my bone marrow.

But, if not me . . . okay. Maybe Kim. Or Heather. Or Ami.

Ami

Gray and I had been on I-75 south for over an hour and hadn't said more than a few words to each other. My husband had made it clear he wasn't happy about spending the Christmas holidays with my family in Cedar Key from the moment I told him “we have to,” and he'd kept the sour mood pretty much ever since.

“We must,” I'd said to him earlier that month. “We spent Thanksgiving here with your family. We have to spend Christmas with my family.”

Gray lay sprawled across the sofa with one foot on the floor. He wore sweatpants and a tee, which was wrinkled because he'd had to fish it out of the dirty laundry or go bare chested. His left arm covered his forehead. The wedding band I'd placed on his finger just months before caught the sunlight streaming from a nearby window. “Since when do you care, Ami? When was the last time you spent any significant holiday with your family?”

I crossed my arms. “I don't deny I haven't been home in a while, Gray. But I think now . . . more than ever . . .”

Gray sat up, bringing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “Now more than ever I need to be with
my
family. Don't you think? It's Christmas. The first without Carole.”

I did think he needed to be with them. Of course I did. More than that, his family needed to be with him. But I also had needs, namely to be with my family. Dad and Anise. Jaymes. Kimberly-Boo. And, yes, even Heather. Especially now.

“I'm going to Cedar Key for Christmas,” I told him. “I know I'm supposed to ‘submit to your authority,'” I said, hooking my fingers in the air. “Whatever
you
decide is best for us. But I need to be with my family right now. Stay if you want to, but
I'm
going.”

He threw his head back in exasperation. “This has nothing to do with ‘authority.'” Gray mocked my hand motion. “Not to mention that you're twisting Scripture, Ami.” For a while I watched his lips move with his eyes closed until, finally, he looked at me and said, “All right. All right. It's only fair, I guess. After all, you haven't seen your family since the funeral.” He blanched. “And we did spend Thanksgiving with mine so . . . yeah. It's only fair.”

In spite of his acquiescing, the near-constant tension we'd experienced since Carole's murder remained between us. Written in the air. Laying in the wake of the way his muscles flexed when I touched him as though my hand was made of hot coals. Or, when he touched me, whether as a husband reaching for his wife or what just came naturally when two people lived together.

We'd been married three months. Everything I had hoped and believed for the two of us hadn't come to be. The wedding with all the trimmings would never be. The weeklong honeymoon we'd talked about would have to wait. Possibly for years. The first year of what should have been wedded bliss—of getting to know how he squeezed his toothpaste tube and his learning to accept my tossing dirty clothes on the floor—was instead a year of strain. The man who'd murdered Carole had seen to that. That, and so much more . . .

“Do you want to listen to something else or should I just turn it off?”

I looked from the passenger's side of my car to where Gray sat in the driver's seat. One hand rested lazily over the top of the wheel, the other on his thigh. “What?”

His eyes darted from the traffic on the highway to the radio dial and back again. “The radio is becoming nothing but static. Do you want to listen to something else?”

I hadn't been listening to begin with. Mercy Me's “Joseph's Lullaby” faded in and out. “No. Not really.”

Gray pushed the on/off button. Silence seeped into the car.

“It's getting lighter outside.” I wrapped my jacket tighter around my body. Even with the heater on, the car was nearly as cold inside as the weather outside. Or maybe it was just me.

“Sun will be coming up soon.” Gray's eyes scanned to the east and back again. “I can't believe the traffic is already this bad. I guess a lot of folks have the same Christmas plans as we do.”

“When do you think we'll stop for breakfast?”

“You hungry?”

“A little.”

He shot a glance toward me, his brows up in the charming way that still made my heart beat a little faster. “You feel up to eating?”

I shook my head. “Not quite yet. But I shouldn't wait too long.”

“What are you hungry for?”

I didn't bother to look at him when I answered. “Anything but fast food.”

“Got it. So, do you want to go to a sit-down restaurant?”

Yes and no. Just the thought of breakfast foods cooking, the myriad aromas—eggs, greasy home-styled hash browns, pancakes and syrup—blending together stirred the acid in my stomach. I took in a long breath through my nose and blew it out between my lips. Slowly. Slowly. Repeat.

“Do I need to pull over?”

I shook my head. “I'll be okay in a minute.”

Gray remained quiet. Blessedly. Then: “Hey, Ami?”

“Mmm.”

“How much longer did the doctor say before the nausea stops?”

“He said most women find relief by the beginning of the second trimester.”

“Then shouldn't you be over this already?”

I closed my eyes, easing my head back against the headrest. “He also said some are sick their entire pregnancy.”
Dear Jesus, is this my punishment? Or just Eve's in general?

I felt his hand touch my belly. I jerked, whipping my head toward him.

“Sorry.” His hand returned to his thigh.

“It's okay. You just scared me.”

After several moments of additional silence—painful silence—he said, “Have you decided whether or not you're going to tell your parents? About the baby?”

“Not yet. I'm not showing so . . . if I can keep this awful nausea at bay, they won't have any reason to know.” After all, we'd only been married three months. At six months . . . maybe it would be easier to admit. Easier to own up to what had happened. What we'd sworn wouldn't happen until after we married.

And I could just hear Anise now, asking me if I'd asked Jesus for forgiveness and, when I said of course I had, telling me to stop carrying the guilt.

So sensible. So much truth. But the other side of that truthful coin was that, while I had accepted Jesus's forgiveness, I had not accepted my own. How could I with Gray carrying enough guilt for the two of us?

He forced a smile and sent it my way. “What do you want to bet Heather will see it all over your face?”

“Ugh.” That thought alone made me want to ask Gray to pull over.

“Well, maybe not. After all, my family hasn't guessed yet, even with you spending most of Thanksgiving either in the guest bedroom or over the toilet bowl.”

I guess she has a touch of the flu . . . it's been going around the studio
, he'd told them. A lamer excuse couldn't have been made up. I figured their minds were elsewhere.

I spied a billboard boasting home-cooked meals at down-home prices. “Let's stop there,” I suggested.

“Sure.”

“And please don't order anything fried.”

“I wouldn't do that to you.”

The simple line meant more than he could imagine. I pretended to smile, just as he had earlier. “Do you think you could talk everyone else in the restaurant into the same?”

Gray eased the car up the off-ramp. “I'm thinking no.”

I slipped my hand over his, and for once, he didn't seem to mind. “Gray?”

“Mmm?”

“You know what I'm more worried about than my family realizing I'm pregnant?”

“What's that?”

“That they'll see the tension between us and wonder why.”

“And if they do? What will you tell them?” He flipped the turn signal to indicate that we, as well as about six other cars, were heading right from the off-ramp.

I sighed. “That's a good question.”

We eased up in the line of traffic. “Why don't you tell them the truth?”

I cut my eyes to him. “I don't think so.”

“And if you decide to?” Gray cut his eyes to meet mine. “Who will you blame? Me or you?”