A Promise to Remember (12 page)

"It surprised me. I had built her up into some kind of sainted
martyr. You know what? I think I'm ready to fight for what's mine.
What else can you think of that I should be doing?"

Melanie put away the last of the dishes and looked at the clock.
She still had time to clean the floor before Sarah got home from
youth group. Good. She had some aggression to work out.

She filled the bucket with pine cleaner and water, dipped
her brush, and began to scrub. Today, more than usual, she
was glad for the old-fashioned way she cleaned her linoleum.
As she scrubbed, she allowed all the pent-up anger to flow
through her arms and out the brush. This floor would never
again be so clean.

It had been two days since the article appeared in the NewsPress, but the sting had not lessened. How dare those people
dredge up her past like that? She knew why they did it, of course.
The resulting feeding frenzy turned the public's attention to her,
and off their son's toxicology report. Did they have no conscience
at all? Was money so important to them that they would ruin
another person to distract people from their own fault-all to
hold on to their precious possessions?

Apparently so. Their lack of caring about anything had cost
them a son. If only their selfishness hadn't cost Melanie hers,
as well.

The important thing now was to make certain that Jeff's
memory served a purpose, and to help Sarah make it through life
as well as possible. A stab of pain in Melanie's chest reminded
her that things had not been going so great with Sarah lately.

The kids at school had been only too happy to whisper through
the halls about the "partysville" past of Sarah's mother. Sarah
had been so mortified, she planned to stay home from youth
group tonight. She couldn't bear to face her friends. But Beth
fixed that.

Good old Beth.

She called this afternoon, told Sarah her parents had agreed
to let her take the car, since it was Valentine's Day. "I can't waste
this one-time offer on just myself. I'll pick you up at quarter
till seven."

Sarah couldn't refuse.

Melanie knew the excuse was a ruse. Beth was the truest of
friends. Most likely her parents had helped contrive a reason
to make certain Sarah didn't retreat to her room and hide from
the world. They were a nice family. Good people.

Melanie scrubbed the last section of floor, emptied the bucket,
and was rinsing out her brush when the headlights pulled into
the driveway. She pretended to stay busy at the sink, wanting
to give Sarah space to make the first move.

Would she disappear into her room without a word? Vent
her frustration on Melanie? Whatever it was she needed to do,
Melanie would make certain she had the opportunity to do it.
She promised herself no matter how angry she got, she would
not allow it to spill over onto Sarah. She was her only child now.
She couldn't afford to mess that up.

"You're not going to believe what happened tonight."

Melanie turned to find Sarah leaning against the doorjamb,
red heart stickers all over her T-shirt. She saw no hint of anger in
her daughter's face. In fact, her eyes danced with excitement.

"Let me guess-you got some Valentine stickers."

Sarah looked at her shirt and smiled. "Well, yeah, that, too.
We played `sticker tag.' Whoever got the most hearts lost." She
held out her shirt. "I came in next to last, but Kevin beat me out
by two stickers. But that's not what I'm talking about."

"Really? What, then?"

"Jake Sterling-you know who he is, right?"

A bolt of apprehension shot through Melanie. She wiped her
hands on a dish towel. "Yeah, I know who he is." In fact, she had
a meeting scheduled with him for tomorrow night-a meeting
she planned to cancel. No need to talk more about the mission
trip thing after that article. She figured that sealed her doom.

"Well, he marched all the youth into the auditorium where
the adults were having their Wednesday night class, then got
up and spoke to the entire church about me-and you-and
our situation."

The towel dropped from Melanie's hand to the floor. She
didn't bother to pick it up. "He did what? What did he say?"

"He told everyone that Jeff had been a devoted member of
our church, and that I still was. He said no matter what, we
were a hurting family and deserved the love and support of our
church. He said he didn't want to hear a word whispered by a
single member of our church about this week's article."

"Why would he say that? Isn't that what churches do, tell
people like me we need to clean up our act?"

"He said he'd met you and you were one of the finest, most
upstanding women he'd met in a long time. He said that his
past was much worse than yours, and if people in the church
could not accept our family, then they could not accept him,
either."

Melanie couldn't believe it. Jake had taken the hit for Sarah
and for her.

Late that night, when she finally turned out the light, she
lay in bed and thought about what he had done. One of the
finest, most upstanding women he had met in a long time. That's
what he'd said about her. Of course, he was probably building
her up for the sake of his cause, but still. To have someone say
those words, even with questionable sincerity, instilled vague
warmth into a heart that expected nothing but cold ever again.
Maybe she wouldn't rush to cancel tomorrow night's meeting
after all.

Andie forced herself to transcribe the phone numbers, though
anger burned with each stroke of the pencil. Bitterness finally
burst from her in screams-screams no one would hear in her
empty house.

"The Fair was my brain child! My baby!" she shouted to the
air, stabbing at the paper and cutting rather than writing the
numbers. The lead snapped. She flung the pencil across the
room. "Those people have no right to try to take this away from
me." She pushed her chair away from the desk and walked to the
window, where she stared at the distant Pacific. Three pelicans
flew low over the water.

Although she had not officially been removed from planning,
it was agreed that Susie, Janice, and Christi would make all
phone calls and keep Andie's name out of it. They asked her to
go through her piles of supporters and contributors and make
a phone list for the other women.

Until she had come up with the idea of a county-fair themed
fundraiser-for-the-masses three years ago, the Cancer Center
had lagged in their fundraising efforts. Bringing the event back
to the people, and away from black ties and fancy dinners, they
had basked in the added public support and increased donations. After all, cancer affected everyone.

"Those troublemakers want to ruin everything." Of all the
charity work she did out of obligation or guilt, this was the one
that came straight from the heart. A heart that had first been
broken twenty-two years ago. The year she lost her mother to
cancer.

She still dreamed about that tennis match-the first of the
season. She could see her mom's face behind the chain-link
fence, watching, cheering. Then she'd had one of those epic
points, maybe twenty or twenty-five back-and-forth returns
before she hit a winner. When she turned back, her mother
wasn't watching and someone was shouting.

"Doctor! Someone call a doctor!"

Andie remembered looking down. Her mother lay on the
ground, arms and legs spasming, eyes rolled back in her head.

The remaining memories from Andie's senior year were a blur
of scenes, pieced together by fuzzy mental images and haunting words. Words like cancel; chemotherapy, pain management,
terminal illness. The process lasted barely two months. Then
Andie and her father were alone.

Andie picked up the pencil and thrust it into the sharpener,
her anger still burning. "I'll bet all those troublemakers had a
fabulous senior year-dates, proms, future plans."

She collapsed back into the chair and rubbed her face. And
the cancer didn't stop there, did it?

She wiped her eyes and attempted to return to her task, trying in vain to block her mind from the rest of the story. It didn't
work. The memories flooded of the next September, when she
started USC still wrapped in the cocoon of grief that never
seemed to loosen.

The second day on her new campus, Grandpa Jim called.
"Andie . . ." His voice sounded funny, choked. "It's your father."

The heart that Andie thought would never feel anything again
suddenly convulsed in her chest. "What about him?"

"Andie, he's gone."

Her own father had put a pistol inside his mouth and pulled
the trigger. The memory still hit her like a physical blow. What
was the reason for it? Simple, really.

Cancer.

If there had never been the cancer, her father would never
have sunk to the depths of pain he couldn't rise above. Okay,
let's be honest, Andie. There are two reasons. If you'd been less
self-absorbed in your own pain, been a better daughter; maybe you
could have pulled him up out of his pit. Part of the reason you lost
your feather was your own failing.

Her guilt helped tamp down the anger and pushed her forward in the task at hand. She looked at the list of names yet
to be copied.

No other family should have to face that pain. No other
eighteen-year-old girl left on her own to fend for herself. That's
why the Fair is so important. Can't they see that? She forced
herself to finish the work.

"I'' going to show them all-just like Mom does with her cancer
fundraiser eveiy year." Chad's words continued to echo. She had
to do this. She had failed him by not doing the painting for the
car wash. The Fair was her last chance to make him proud.

She shoved her chair back and paced around the house,
looking at nothing. It was almost nine o'clock. Blair had always
worked long hours, but these days he barely made it home to
sleep.

She walked into her little studio and didn't even bother to
turn on the light. She sat on a small stool and stared into the
darkness, engulfed in pain.

A large white rectangle against the back wall drew her
attention. The blank canvas looked almost gray in the darkness. She crossed the room and stood before it.

A familiar longing stirred within her. The itch to have her
fingers wrapped around a paintbrush, to be creating something
with texture and imagination and planning.

She crossed the room and flipped the light switch. Slowly,
she walked over and picked up a brush. Blair wasn't around to
make a big fuss about it. Not that it mattered. At this point, he
didn't seem to care what she did with her time as long as he
didn't have to deal with her.

She was alone. Shouldn't she be allowed to do something that
offered her the slightest bit of joy? She removed her charcoal
pencils from the drawer. A flash of realization told her she'd
known for a long time what her next painting would be.

Several hours later, she had completed a sketch and begun
to paint. She mixed the blues on her palette until they reached
the perfect shade for the perfect sky. Just right. It was coming
together in a way she never dreamed possible. At last, she found
a reason to hope.

When she heard Blair's car coming up the driveway, she
flipped off the lights in her studio and moved quickly down the
hall. It was past midnight. She could rush upstairs and pretend
to be asleep if she moved fast enough.