This Side of Heaven Page 17

  In light of all Josh had hoped for his future, the child probably gave him what Becky Wheaton gave him: a reason to believe that someday the pain and torment from his accident would end. He would find a new career and financial freedom and the life he’d always wanted. That’s all the little girl in the photograph really was. A reason for Josh to believe that tomorrow would be better than today.

  SIXTEEN

  Savannah wasn’t sure what happened, or how come her life seemed so different now, but she believed the change had something to do with her daddy. Her mama didn’t grab her arm like before, and twice she even let Savannah sleep in the big bed with her instead of under the desk.

  “The good times are just beginning, Savannah,” her mama told her this morning on their way to a place called the clinic. “A few more weeks and we’ll have a big house and a maid and the best food and clothes and cars.”

  Savannah listened with wide eyes, and sometimes she wondered if her mama was crazy or just kidding about all that. But one thing she wasn’t kidding about was the clinic. They walked from the subway to the small building, where her mama filled out a piece of paper. The place smelled like the bathrooms in Central Park, and Savannah’s tummy felt topsy-turvy. Why were they here, anyway? Was this where her daddy was going to find her?

  She had her little plastic cross from Grandpa Ted in her pocket and she felt it through her jeans, just to be sure it was there. Her mama finished writing on the piece of paper, and together they sat in a little room full of people who looked sad or hurt or sick. An old man sitting next to them had a cut across his arm and blood was coming through his Band-Aid. Savannah tried not to look. She leaned up to her mama’s ear. “Why are we here again?”

  “For the test.” Her mama seemed a little nervous. Not as happy as she was when they had their hot dogs in the park or when they went to the zoo yesterday.

  “What sort of test?” Savannah crossed her ankles and swung her feet. She was thirsty, but she didn’t want to drink too much water. Her mama said she didn’t have time for the bathroom until after the test.

  “A blood test.” Her mama picked up a magazine from a table next to her and she started flipping the pages.

  A blood test? Savannah’s stomach felt sick, because what sort of test was that? She glanced next to her at the man’s reddish Band-Aid. Was he here for a blood test, too? Because she didn’t want to look like that when she left. She remembered the cross in her pocket and Jesus, who was always with her. Jesus, it’s me, Savannah. I’m sort of scared about the blood test, so can You stay with me, please?

  She was waiting for an answer in her heart when a big lady in a tight white dress stepped into the little room. “Savannah Cameron?”

  “Here.” Her mother stood and smoothed the wrinkles in her short skirt. She reached for Savannah’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “This is Savannah.”

  The woman looked at her notes. “Follow me.” Savannah tried not to think about the man and his bloody arm. She stayed close to her mama and the big lady took them to a room the size of a closet. “Sit here,” she said. The woman and Mama talked about how “ ’rangements” had been made and some other words Savannah didn’t understand. Then the woman rolled up the sleeve of Savannah’s sweatshirt and rubbed a wet little ball of white fur over her arm. “This won’t hurt much.” She opened a small white bag and took out a sharp needle and a plastic tube the size of a pencil. “Hold still.”

  “Very still.” Her mama raised one eyebrow the way she did when Savannah had better listen, or else.

  The big lady stuck the needle into Savannah’s arm and held it there. “You don’t have to watch, sweetie.”

  But Savannah did watch, because little by little her blood came from her arm into the tube. The lady was right, the needle didn’t hurt too bad once it was in her. When the tube was filled, the woman pulled out the needle and put a Band-Aid on her arm—a smaller one than on the man in the room full of people. “There you go.”

  “The blood test is finished?” Savannah felt her stomach settle down a little.

  “All done.” The lady ripped a few smiley stickers from a roll on the wall. “These are for you.”

  “You did good, sweetheart.” Her mama smiled at her. Savannah wasn’t sure what to do with the stickers. “Thank you, ma’am.” She peeled off one and then the other and stuck them to the backs of her hands. She could see them there and remember that she’d done a good job on her blood test. The big lady was telling her mama that something would be sent to her in a few days.

  When they were back outside in the sunshine, her mama gave her a happy squeeze. “Savannah, I have a feeling about that blood test. I think this is the beginning of a very happy time for us.”

  Savannah felt a little shy of her mama, this new way her mama acted around her. She nodded her head and smiled. Then she looked back down at her happy face stickers.

  “Here, baby”—her mama reached for her—“take my hand.”

  Savannah did as she was told, and together they started walking. “Are we going to the park?”

  “Yes. It’ll be a beautiful day in the park, don’t you think?”

  “Are we gonna beg money?”

  “We are.” Her mama seemed less happy for a few seconds. But then she smiled big again. “Not for long, though. Your daddy is going to take care of us real good. Then we’ll never beg for money again.”

  Savannah’s heart felt suddenly light and free, like she was one of the birds over Central Park, the ones that landed on the top of the fountain and flew away whenever they wanted to. Her daddy was going to take care of them! Ever since the changes in her mama she had hoped in secret that it had to do with her daddy. She breathed in a very big breath and held her head high. The good things were finally going to happen! She was going to meet her daddy and he was going to take care of them. After so much waiting and talking to Jesus and hoping, all her dreams were finally going to come true.

  Her mama stayed happy that day, even while they begged money. She waited until they were on the subway on the way home, then she decided this was the right time to ask a few questions. “The good things that are going to happen are because of my daddy, right?”

  A little laugh came from her mama. “Yes, sweetie. All because of your daddy.”

  Savannah felt a little shiver of excitement. “So when will I meet him? Today or tomorrow? Or later this week?”

  Her mama’s smile fell back to a straight line. “Well . . . you’re not exactly going to meet him.” She had a worried look in her eyes, but then she smiled again. “He’s going to send us a gift instead. A very, very nice gift.”

  Savannah didn’t want a gift. She already had the plastic cross from Grandpa Ted and the framed picture of her daddy, which was all she needed. What she wanted was her daddy, not a present from him. She felt tears in her eyes and she wiped at them real fast so her mama wouldn’t think she was ungrateful. “Will—will I meet him later, then?”

  “Much later.” Her mama patted her on the head. “Don’t worry, Savannah. Your daddy’s gift will be enough for now.”

  She didn’t ask any more questions on the ride home. For now? She settled back against the hard, cracked seat and stared out the window at the walls rushing past. All day she’d been happy because sometime very soon she might meet her daddy. She was still going to meet him, but “much later” was a long time away. A whole week or a month, maybe. She was puzzled about her daddy because his eyes and his smile were very kind, and he wanted to send her a gift—which was also very kind. But didn’t he know that all she wanted was him? A daddy to hold her and swing her around and take care of her so her mama could have the break she always talked about. Her very own Prince Charming daddy.

  What could be a better gift than that?

  SEVENTEEN

  After one week of sorting through the pieces of Josh’s life, Annie had learned much about her son, and she had a strong feeling her quest wasn’t yet complete. She talked to Thomas Flynn and learned tha
t Josh had contacted him about his friend Keith’s need for airfare.

  “I had a million extra miles,” Thomas told her. “It was no problem donating some to Josh’s friend so he could get home to see his sick father.”

  But the trip never would have happened if Josh hadn’t made the phone call, if he hadn’t cared enough to put his own pride on the line for the sake of his friend’s great need.

  On Annie’s second day of searching through Josh’s apartment, Ethel, the old woman who lived in the apartment above his, made her way downstairs and sat with Annie and Lindsay for an hour.

  “I have no family,” the woman explained. “Josh was like the grandson I never had. It’s hard for me to get out, so one week a few years ago he asked if he could pick up a few groceries for me.” She had tears in her eyes as she talked. “After that it became a routine. Every Saturday he picked up just what I needed to get through the next seven days, and sometimes he brought me an extra little surprise—a box of fresh cookies from the bakery or a small bouquet of flowers for my kitchen table.”

  Annie hung on every word, sometimes jealous that Josh had lavished his attention on this stranger when he might have brought the flowers to her instead. But she quickly corrected her attitude and became overwhelmed with pride over her son’s decision to help a neighbor. “And you would pay him when he dropped off the food, is that how it worked?”

  “Never.” She touched her fingertips beneath her eyes, wiping at her tears. “Josh never let me pay for anything.”

  The woman’s story filled Annie’s heart with wonder. Her son was on an extremely tight budget, so tight that regularly he had to call her and Nate for an advance toward his settlement. Yet with what little he had, he made a point of buying the old woman’s groceries every week.

  Annie thought about the people who ran in their circles, the socialites and political types. Not long ago, the superintendent of Nate’s school district donated five thousand dollars of his own money to the local PTA. In doing so, he threw a party for the entire PTA, complete with a free barbecue dinner for the community and a speech midway through the night. The man himself contacted the media, and Lindsay had been assigned to the story, “Local Educator Gives Gift to PTA.”

  No one seemed to think anything of the man’s efforts to be noticed, but at the time Annie mentioned to Nate that the man’s gift seemed awfully self-serving. “The Bible says when a person gives something, the right hand shouldn’t know what the left hand’s doing.”

  Nate laughed. “Every hand in the PTA knew about this one.”

  But not so with Josh’s gift to his elderly neighbor. It was as though Josh inherently knew that the only way to feel good about a gift was to give it in such a way that no one else knew. It was a lesson Josh had no doubt heard again and again in Sunday school through the years, but until now Annie would have sworn her son had forgotten every valuable bit of Scripture from his childhood days.

  Now she knew differently.

  Everything she found she shared with Nate. Last night, when they were talking about the miles for Keith’s flight back home, Nate’s eyes welled with tears and, for a long while, he didn’t say anything. When he could talk, he took hold of her hand. “Like I told you, not everyone is an all-star in sports or in life. But that doesn’t mean Josh was a failure.” His chin quivered and he scrunched his face, fighting the breakdown. “I always believed in Josh, that he was a good boy, a good son.” He shook his head, getting a grasp on his emotions. “I appreciate these details, but they don’t surprise me, Annie. Not like they surprise you.”

  She wanted to argue with him, but she couldn’t. He was right, and rather than deny the light her discoveries were shedding on the memory of their son, she embraced it. Even the more painful pieces of information, like the letter she’d found from Maria Cameron stating that Josh couldn’t have visitation or any other rights to Savannah until he figured out a way to send her four thousand dollars a month.

  Your hundred dollars will never cut it, the woman wrote. I’ll keep Savannah from you until you figure out your finances. Savannah needs money, not some sentimental father figure. You won’t hear another word from us until you get the money. Otherwise I’ll tell her you’re a loser like every other guy.

  The letter was bathed in venom. Annie felt sick to her stomach just touching the paper, as if the woman’s filth might still be on the edges of the page. After reading it, she set it aside for the attorney. Her belief that the woman was nothing more than a gold digger looking for any man to bail her out doubled after finding the letter. The girl wasn’t Josh’s child. At the same time, she grieved the fact that her son had ever been tricked into sleeping with a woman like Maria Cameron. Josh knew better. The lessons about purity had come right along with the lessons about helping others.

  For two hours after reading Maria’s letter, she allowed herself to wonder where she and Nate had gone wrong that their son would go to Las Vegas, of all places, and spend the night with such a woman. But then gradually her heart softened, and she caught herself creating scenarios that might’ve explained Josh’s poor decision that weekend.

  He’d lost Becky Wheaton by then. She was tired of waiting for Josh to quit smoking and drinking, for him to get serious about life, and so she’d taken up with a young man in law school. Josh couldn’t compete with that, and after moving to Denver and taking the job at the garage, he must have been very lonely. The weekend in Vegas had probably been an impulsive decision, some way to forget about the emptiness in his heart created by Becky’s absence.

  Who knew what Maria had told Josh? She might’ve had some sad story about being lonely, like him. If she needed a friend or an ear or a place to stay, Josh would have helped her. She thought about the couple with Down syndrome, and Ethel from the apartment upstairs. Yes, certainly Josh would’ve helped her. He wasn’t wise enough in the ways of the world to recognize a trap like the one the woman had clearly set.

  The entire situation was too sad to dwell on, so Annie had moved on to other boxes of belongings, other memories that made up her son’s past.

  Now it was Tuesday, and she was at the apartment by herself. Nate and Lindsay were coming by later that day with more empty bags for Josh’s bedding. They were moving most of his furniture into an empty room at the back of their house in Black Forest. The room would be a guest suite now, a place where Josh’s memory could live on.

  Annie slid two more boxes into the entryway of Josh’s apartment and then stood to catch her breath. As she did, she looked at her son’s computer and she realized this was one area they hadn’t looked at yet. She sat in his chair and reached down to hit the power button. A minute later, the screen came to life and Annie wondered where to begin. She opened Microsoft Word and checked his list of documents.

  One of them read simply, “Savannah.”

  Annie’s heart missed a beat, and she felt the blood leave her face. Was he that certain about the little girl that he’d created a document about her? How sad that he believed someone like the Cameron woman enough to care this much. She double clicked the document and it appeared on the screen. The font was small, and the text was single-spaced.

  Dear Savannah, the last entry read. It’s been three days since I’ve written to you, so I thought I better catch up. . . .

  Annie’s stomach dropped to her feet. Her son had kept an ongoing journal for the girl? As if she really were his daughter, and someday she’d actually read everything he’d written to her? Annie checked the bottom descriptor, the line that contained the information about the document. What she read took her breath away. Fifty-three pages? Her son must have been keeping the journal ever since he found out about the girl.

  Everything in this document was what he might’ve said if he’d lived long enough to be a father. The photo on the mantel, the document tucked away in his Microsoft Word program, all of it allowed him to think and act and feel the way he might have if he’d been blessed with children. And since he never had that chance, Annie was s
ure every word would speak straight to her soul, to the place that would always belong to Josh.

  She checked the paper supply in Josh’s printer, and after a few clicks the machine came to life and the pages of his journal began falling gently onto the paper tray. But even as the document was printing, Annie finished reading the last entry:

  Dear Savannah,

  It’s been three days since I’ve written to you, so I thought I better catch up. I know I’ve told you this a lot lately, but I’m really feeling closer to God these days. He’s getting me through this trial, this stage in my life, and somewhere I know He’s getting you through something, too.

  I found a Bible verse I want to share with you, sweetheart. It’s from Psalm 119:50, and it says, “My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life.” You know about my accident, and how I’ve been in a lot of pain. But lately I’ve been reading from the Bible more and I find that this promise is true. Beyond true, even. God’s Word is reviving me, Savannah, and one day soon when I get my settlement, I’ll come find you. Together we can learn about Jesus and the promises in His Word.

  Annie felt tears on her cheeks, and she reached for a tissue. Lately, she kept the box within reach. The journal to a child who probably wasn’t his daughter was one thing. But when had her son gotten closer to God? And how come she and Nate hadn’t heard about this? She scanned the next few pages and saw that many times over the weeks that led up to his death, Josh talked about Jesus.

  She found an entry from two months earlier, and her eyes fell on a paragraph halfway down the page.

  I was watching country videos one night and Wynonna Judd came on, singing a song about heaven. “I Can Only Imagine,” it was called. Savannah, I can only tell you that in those next few minutes I realized I’d been running from God for too long. It was like I finally got it about having a relationship with Him, and how He wanted me to rely completely on His strength. I’ve been going to church every week since then, and I can feel God changing me. I love Him more than life, Savannah. One day you will, too.