Any Minute (30 page)

“Dad!”

“—it’s good to talk. I’m sorry I haven’t—”

“Dad, listen.”

“There isn’t anything to say about your mom yet, Mitchell. They still haven’t—”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

“—found her. There still isn’t any news.”

“No, Dad. Listen. He was here.”

“Who was there?”

“The man from the scoreboard. Remember? I told you about him at the Cubs game?”

This call was coming from the opposite side of the world. It seemed so out of place that momentarily Joe was completely stumped.

“He came to Nona’s house.”

“Son. I’m sorry, but those things aren’t important right now.”

“They
are
. He came to Nona’s house to tell me Mom is going to be okay.”

“I know you want everything to be okay with your mom, Mitch. I know it’s what you wish for.”

“I’m not just wishing, Dad. He
said—
”

Icy fear threaded Joe’s veins. “Who is this man talking to you about your mom?”

“He’s an angel sent by God,” Mitchell said. As matter-of-fact as if he’d said, “He’s a shoe salesman.”

“For the Cubs? That man you saw in the scoreboard?” Joe gripped the chaplain’s arm in terror. He hadn’t suspected Mitchell might take this so hard. “Mitchell, can you put your grandmother on the phone?”

“That’s what he said, Dad. He said they’re going to find her. Right now.”

“Son, I know that’s what you want to
hear
. Please, Mitchell. Tell Nona I want to talk to her.”

“He says they’re going to find her any minute.”

At that precise moment, an earsplitting whistle speared the width of the river. Joe snapped to attention, stood erect. The phone clattered to the ground.

“Joe,” Patterson said. “Joe, get off the phone.”

The cry went up across the water. Patterson’s radio exploded in a celebration of static. “She’s down there. They’ve got her!” Voices twisting against each other made it difficult to decipher the words.

…when we cable-lined the car.

…got that clean shot.

…don’t know how we missed her…

The diver appeared midriver with a sodden bundle in his arms. It couldn’t be Sarah, Joe thought as his whole body buckled. She looked no bigger than the dog that had accosted him.

The swimmer powered his way to the makeshift platform, toting the rag-doll body. Many hands hauled her toward dry land. Joe saw the CPR begin. He felt Pete’s grip on his elbow, holding him upright. An ambulance engine started up from what seemed, through the blur, to be a great distance. Its light bar remained dark, bleak with emptiness.

Joe had seen emergency vehicles rush to accidents, lights fencing the sky. He’d seen those same vehicles slink back to dispatch, lights off and sirens silenced—embarrassed to have made such a fuss and not be needed—after a fatality.

The joy of finding Sarah would be short-lived. In the end, they’d say it had been a blessing just to find a body. A gift. “The family should be thankful for closure,” mourners would whisper at the memorial service. How could Joe even think about getting everyone—or even just himself—through a funeral?

Joe didn’t recognize his own voice when he spoke. The frantic EMTs working over the crumpled silhouette had blurred. “I want to see her. Will they let me see her?”

That’s when the ambulance light bar flashed to life like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. That’s when a disbelieving voice overrode everything else on the frequency. “Do we have cold-water revival?”

“It doesn’t make sense. Water’s not that—”

Someone interrupted. “We’ve got a pulse over here, guys. I kid you not. I repeat: we’ve got a pulse. It is faint, but we’ve got one.”

Pete gasped at Joe’s side.

When she finally coughed and the fluid rushed from Sarah’s lungs, she took her first breath since everyone had thought she was dead. Joe felt his chest heave with a jolt of relief. He gasped for air as though, all along, he’d been the one who’d needed to breathe for her. How could it be? How could she be in the water that long and still be alive?

Realization tunneled around him as his fists fell open at his sides. The worst hadn’t happened. He hadn’t lost his wife yet.

Was it possible that he and Sarah still had a chance? Could they possibly make things work?

Joe vaguely wondered what was ahead. He was grateful to have her back, but he didn’t want things to be like they were. He felt deep inside that he had to find a way to love Sarah into wholeness, even if that meant being firm with her. He had to stand behind the words he had spoken to her. He knew he would have to be strong.

Chapter Twenty

S
arah didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten here.

Small things began to ply her awake. The sharp smell of disinfectant. The crisp burned scent of laundered bedsheets, which she’d always loved. The cradle of a pillow beneath her head. A blanket tucked so tight around her feet that she felt the need to kick free.

For a moment she suffered from a bout of claustrophobia. She thrashed in the bed, trying to spring herself loose, until she felt the cool touch of a hand calming her, the click of dosage being turned up in an IV overhead. She remembered this from giving birth to Kate; when nurses entered the room on their soundless soles while you were sleeping, their uniforms sounded like rustling angels’ wings.

A distant beep called her toward consciousness. Still, she drifted, floating in and out. She was aware, or so she thought, of the passage of time. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so odd. And somewhere in her dreams, she thought she might be at Annie’s house—a lost, faded memory from when she was a child.

It had been like this, waking up at Annie’s when she was a little girl. She’d never wanted to sleep late at Annie’s. She’d always wanted to get up and play with the kittens or find out what was happening with Grandpa Gordy in his workshop out in the garage.

She remembered the day of Annie’s funeral when she’d walked to the grocery store and bought flowers because her mother didn’t have time to take her to the florist. She remembered laying the pale pink roses in the casket around her grandmother’s shoulders. She remembered how even light pink had looked garish, how Annie’s hair looked an awful blue, the way the funeral home had done it up. For as far back as she could remember, Annie’s complexion had always shown like pale crepe, a blush of satin.

The names were on her lips when she slit open her eyes against that blinding light. “Wingtip. Annie.” She sprang to life and gripped the coat sleeve of the woman leaning over her. “They were there. I was with them.”

Even though the nurse had hurried away, someone was still in the room with her. Sarah sensed it, rather than knowing for sure. A presence lingered at the foot of her bed.

“Annie?” she whispered again.

There wasn’t any answer. Only a gasp and a soft shift of fabric as someone stood from a chair.

For reasons she didn’t understand, Sarah felt a burst of freedom. She wiggled her toes, realizing someone must have loosened the blankets around them. What an odd dream she’d had! It flittered through her mind the way moonlit clouds flitter unnoticed through a night sky.

Sarah opened her eyes and struggled to sit up. Where was Kate? She’d seen Kate. She’d been with Annie. And what about the angel that seemed a bit off his rocker? Where had
he
gone?

It
was
a hospital. The beeping came from a monitor, the rhythm of her own chest. The lights splayed down on her face from a deck of fluorescents overhead. As she raised herself on her elbows, she shook her head to clear the fog.

“Joe?” she asked.

But the person she recognized took her back much further than that. She realized who had unfastened all those sheets at the foot of the bed. She’d always made perfectly sure her mama knew how she hated to be confined.

“Mother?”

Jane jumped when Sarah said her name. She looked as guilty as someone who had just been released from the slammer.

“Why am I in the hospital? How did I get here?”

Jane didn’t even try to answer her questions. She just started scolding. “Goodness, Sarah. You can’t wake up right now. They’ve all been waiting. I’m not the person you should be seeing first.”

Normally Sarah would have thought,
You don’t want to see me, Mama? You aren’t glad I’m here?
But to her own surprise, she found herself feeling sorry for Jane. She wanted to say,
Mother, I know why you’ve been so unhappy. I know why you never really liked me, and I forgive you.
But that had all been a dream, hadn’t it? Sarah’s thoughts were so confused; she didn’t understand any of them.

Jane continued: “You got yourself in an accident. That’s what you did.”

“Is Joe angry at me? We had a terrible argument.” Sarah covered her face, at least remembering that much. “And I wrecked the Lincoln.”

“Let me go get them,” her mother said.

“Would you? Would you get my kids? I want to see them.”

Something flickered through Sarah’s mind, as evasive as a child hiding among trees—a name, although she didn’t know where it had come from. “Ronny,” she framed the name in a whisper. “Ronny Lee Perkins.” Now what did that name have to do with anything?

“What’s that?” Jane asked, thunderstruck.

Sarah shook her head. “I don’t really know. Something about—” Sarah frowned. It had been there, but now she couldn’t remember.