Mother's Promise (11 page)

He sat down by the window, his arms folded tightly across his thin chest. He was not looking at her.

“I explained why.” She sat on the other bed, across from him. “Until I've had a chance to settle into my new job, this is the best plan. We'll be living close to my work and your school.”

Justin said nothing.

“The Shepherds have a daughter about your age. She asked me tonight if you played baseball.” She saw a flicker of interest cross his features, but he continued looking out the window. “She goes to the same school you'll be attending. I asked her to look for you.”

This, at last, got his attention. “You didn't,” he moaned. “Mom, it's bad enough that I'm starting a school where nobody is—you know—like us.”

“There will be lots of children who are different from you and from each other. They'll come from all sorts of backgrounds like the people I'll be working with at the hospital do. And besides, you won't be the only new student there.”

“You don't know that for sure.”

“No, I don't, Justin.” She felt so inadequate to calm her son's fears. “I know that tonight it all seems overwhelming,” she said. “That's the way I felt last night knowing this morning I would be starting a new job where I knew no one. But I got there and right away someone welcomed me and made sure I got to the right place. And throughout the day I met other people—good, caring people. Some of them needed my help, and before I knew what was happening, all of that nervousness seemed to disappear.”

“Kids aren't like grown-ups,” he muttered.

Rachel resisted the urge to put her arms around him. “It's not forever, Justin,” she said.

“Promise?”

“Yes, now go brush your teeth.”

Later after they'd said their prayers and Rachel had read a passage from the Bible, they lay in their separate beds in the dark. She was aware that Justin was not sleeping. Finally he flipped over onto his side facing her.

“Mom?”

“Ja?”

“Will I have my own room?”

“Ja.”

“When are we moving?”

“On Saturday. The cottage is furnished already, but Hester and John will help us move the boxes that Gramma sent from the farm. We'll make the place our own, Justin—just like home.”

Her son did not reply, and she thought perhaps he had finally dozed off. But after a moment he said, “Not just like home—we never had a swimming pool.” This was followed by a snort of laughter muffled by his pillow.

“That's true,” Rachel agreed. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you. In place of paying rent, you and I will be tending the garden.”

There was a pause while he digested this news. “How big is this garden?”

“Big.”

Justin groaned, and this time it was Rachel who smothered a laugh.

Rachel's second day at work was every bit as busy as her first, and she began to accept that the pace for this job would be double what it had been back in Ohio in her role as school nurse. Thankfully there were no emergencies like the Olson boy's encounter with the shark, but there was plenty to fill the hours, including visiting David and his parents as well as meeting the young mother she'd seen sitting by her child's bedside that first day.

In between she attended a training session on using the computer, accepted Eileen's invitation to join her and other hospital staff members for lunch, and accompanied Pastor Paul on rounds. In the hours she spent at her desk she worked on the assignment that Paul had given her to develop a draft for a training manual for volunteers working in the children's wing.

When she returned to Hester's that evening, she was relieved to see that Justin seemed resigned to the idea that they were in Florida to stay—at least for now. And the following morning—Justin's first day of school—she was not surprised to open her eyes and see Justin already dressed and standing at the window.

Sometime in the night it had started to rain, and it didn't appear that it would let up any time soon. “Well, this rain should cool things off a bit,” she said, making conversation as the two of them sat at breakfast with Hester and some of the women who worked at the co-op. She could see by the slight tremor of his hands when he picked up his glass of juice and drained it without pausing for a breath that he was nervous.

“I'd better go help John,” he said. “Danke,” he added with a nod to Hester as he wiped his mouth on his forearm and bolted out the back door. He was wearing jeans, a solid blue T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes that Hester had insisted on taking him to buy at the thrift store in Pinecraft. Earlier Justin had asked Hester if she thought he looked okay.

“Like any other Sarasota seventh grader,” Hester had assured him. Justin had grinned with obvious relief.

Now Rachel stood at the kitchen window of the farmhouse that served as both headquarters for the fruit co-op and home to the Steiner family. Behind her Hester was giving the women their assignments for the day before they too headed off to the packinghouse. Outside Justin ran through the steady rain to where John Steiner was directing a team of men as they unloaded a truckload of empty crates.

“How's Justin doing?” Hester asked, coming to stand next to her.

“He's nervous.”

“About school?”

Rachel thought about the way his hands had actually trembled. “About everything,” she admitted.

“Well, that's to be expected. He'll be fine, Rachel.”

Rachel turned her attention to washing the dishes. “He's changed so much since James died. He's so quiet and reserved when he used to be—”

Hester laughed. “He's twelve. Neither fish nor fowl in the world of boys—too young to count as a teenager but too old to be one of the kids. Give him some time.”

“Ja.” But in her heart, Rachel wasn't so certain that this was simply a phase. She had asked a lot of Justin since his father died. “Perhaps once we move on Saturday and he's settled in one place, some of the old Justin will return. He'll have his own room there and he seems excited about the swimming pool,” she added more to herself than to Hester.

“Did he not have a room of his own in Ohio?”

“He did until James's brother and his family moved into the farmhouse. His uncle was hard on him, far stricter than James ever was. And then I lost my job, and now I've brought him here. Everything is so new for him.”

“And for you,” Hester reminded her. “You can always go back home if things don't work out here.”

“Maybe.” But what Hester did not know was that Luke had made it plain that he thought she was making a huge mistake.

“You only think of yourself, Rachel,” he had said. “What about my folks? James's folks? Who is supposed to watch over them? Rosie has her hands full with the house and the little ones. I thought with all your nursing training and college at least we might be able to count on you for that. I'm telling you right now that James would be—”

“Do not tell me what James would or would not do,” she had told her brother-in-law. Rachel had never come so close to losing her temper with him.

“Suit yourself,” Luke had replied. “You always have, but know this—if things don't work out we'll take the boy in, but as for you …”

Rachel shook off the unpleasant memory.

“Hey,” Hester said as she glanced out the window at the rain now coming down in sheets, “you okay?”

Rachel inhaled, glancing at her friend. “I'm fine,” she finally whispered.

“Well, here's a good thing.” She motioned toward the window. “At least you aren't moving today in this rain.”

Both women laughed, and Hester folded the dish towel and hung it over the edge of the sink. “Tonight we should make a list of things you'll need, and tomorrow we can go shopping.”

“Oh, I don't think there's anything,” Rachel replied. “I mean every cabinet that Sharon opened was filled—dishes, pots and pans, even the basic foodstuffs like flour and sugar and such. And did you see the refrigerator and freezer?”

Hester nodded. “It's the way she is. Generous almost to a fault.”

Rachel accepted the refilled mug of coffee that Hester handed her. She had some time before Justin was due at school and she needed to be at the hospital. Today John would drive them each to their destinations. “Ja. Justin will like having his own room again,” she said as if they were still on that topic. “Sharing a room is hard. If James and I had been able to have more—to give him brothers and sisters …”

“It'll do you both good to be settled in one place, to know that at least for now, that's home,” Hester assured her. “And wait until he meets Sally Shepherd. I know she's a girl but that kid is a guy's girl if ever I met one.”

“She seems very nice,” Rachel agreed, remembering the effervescent girl they had shared ice cream cake with the evening before. “I didn't want to pry last night, but what kind of cancer does she have?”

“Acute myelogenous leukemia—AML for short.”

“We studied that in nursing school, but I thought it affected mostly older people.”

“That's right. Less than 10 percent are children. Go figure how a healthy active kid like Sally ends up getting it.”

“She's such a lovely child. So that form of leukemia is really fast growing?”

“Ja. It's pretty aggressive.”

“When did Sally have her transplant?”

Hester nodded. “Last February. Neither Sharon nor Malcolm was a match and of course, she has no siblings so they had to wait for a donor.”

“They must have considered using her own blood cells?”

Hester nodded. “The medical team thought it was too risky in her case.”

Rachel was well aware that using the patient's own blood increased the risk of a relapse since that blood could still carry some of the abnormal cells. “But an unrelated donor match is also risky.”

“True, but with a lower risk of relapse down the road. The reality is that there are downsides to both options.”

The two of them were silent for a moment as they continued to watch the rain.

“Will you listen to us—talking shop like we used to when we were in nursing school?” Hester said, shaking her head at the memory.

Rachel smiled, but she couldn't seem to get Sally Shepherd out of her mind. “She seems to be doing well now,” she ventured.

“Remarkably well.” Hester started folding clothes from an overflowing basket of laundry. “Can you imagine? One day your child is healthy and whole, and the next …” She held on to one of John's shirts, clutching it to her as she stared off into space imagining the impossible.

“She was very sick, then?” Rachel asked.

“Ja.”

Rachel thought about Ben and the way he and Sally had laughed together when they shared the ice cream cake. It had been clear that they adored each other. She remembered the watchful way that he studied Sally as the girl gobbled down a large piece of ice cream cake and quizzed Rachel about Justin. She had thought that she understood his concern for his niece. How often over these long months had she watched Justin as he struggled with coming to terms with his father's death? Ben wanting to make sure Sally was truly better was very similar to how Rachel felt whenever she was forced to face the fact that James was gone and there was nothing she could do to change that—for her son or herself.

“Mom? John says it's time,” Justin called out to her from the porch. “Bring my backpack, okay?” His voice quavered, and Rachel wasn't sure whether or not that was the result of excitement or nerves or more likely a combination of the two.

“Coming,” she called as she picked up her rain slicker and Justin's backpack. She hooked an arm through the straps of the nylon satchel that Hester had bought for her. She'd insisted that Rachel would need something for transporting books and papers for her certification studies from work to class to home and back again. She stepped outside she covered herself as well as Justin with the rain slicker as they ran down the steps to John's truck.

“It's all going to be fine,” she told her son as he waited for her to slide in next to John before climbing in beside her and wordlessly closing the door.

Chapter 7