The Still of Night (12 page)

“Shell? Burgers are on the grill; we need—” Brett stopped just inside the patio door.

Shuddering, Jill looked up and saw Dan come in behind him.

He pushed past Brett and dropped to the floor. “What’s wrong? Are you injured? Did you fall?” He touched the lump on her head.

“Shelly, what’s going on?” Brett demanded.

Jill snatched the letter and pressed it to her breast, sending Shelly a beseeching look.

But Shelly shook her head. “No way. I’m not letting you face this alone. We’re your friends, Jill. At least I thought so.”

Jill dropped her chin, fresh tears flowing. What did it matter? What if the whole world knew? Her daughter was dying, and she could do nothing to stop it.

Dan came around behind her and lifted her to a chair at the table. “Could someone tell me what’s going on? Face what?” He looked at Shelly.

Shelly shrugged and eyed Jill expectantly.

Jill looked from one to another. Her three closest friends. Shelly must have come to borrow something across the narrow yard that separated their patio doors. She could smell the smoke from their grill and remembered she’d been invited to join them but had turned down the invitation. She dropped her forehead to her palm, then pressed the letter flat on the table. “I can’t donate bone marrow to my daughter.” She looked up and saw just the expression on Dan’s face that she expected.

His jaw hung slack and his brown eyes searched her face as though he’d never seen her. “Your daughter?”

She smiled dryly. “Safe sex, just the way you teach it.”

He frowned. “Jill …”

Shelly pulled out a chair and sat. “Brett, sit down. Dan, stop hovering.”

When the table was full, Jill looked at her friends again, Shelly’s face sympathetic but hurt. Brett, uncomfortable. Dan … poor Dan. Jill wanted to laugh. It was so … but tears came instead. She fought them away. “I was seventeen. I gave her up for adoption.” Her throattightened, looking into Dan’s face. She saw understanding dawn.

“A few weeks ago, I got a letter saying she had leukemia.” Her voice broke. Grimly she contained the horror that word still gave her. She’d read everything she found on the Internet about the disease and spent hours sifting the library catalogue for the best available books on the subject.

“The parents knew where to find you?” This from Shelly.

“I always update my address with them just in case.” In case Kelsey wanted to find her, not in case she needed to die.

They all sat in silence. Of course, they didn’t know what to say. Her friends were all revamping their image of her, trying to catch up with the truth but needing to discard so many appearances, starting with chaste. Jill flicked a glance at Dan.

He reached over and took her hand. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Shelly’s tone was betrayed. “It’s not like we’d pin a scarlet A to your dress.”

Jill shook her head. “It was fifteen years ago, long before I knew any of you. I—it was behind me.” Except for all the times she’d imagined her child, longed for her, and cried.

Dan’s hand was warm, his eyes gentle, almost relieved. Maybe now he considered her “normal.” “What’s her name?”

“Kelsey. Kelsey Renée Benson. She’s fourteen. She’s …” Tears stung again.

Dan’s hand tightened. “These are the kinds of things you don’t try to handle alone, Jill.”

She sniffed back the tears. What could they possibly do? Kelsey was going to die and there was nothing they could do.

Shelly picked up the letter. “So they asked you to donate marrow to stop the leukemia?”

Jill nodded. “Without a transplant there’s no chance of cure. The initial test result was good, but the cytotoxic antibody screen gave a positive reading for anti-HLA class one antibody.” Stabbing pain shot through her chest as she babbled. Like Cinda, she spouted the right medical terms, but they did not siphon the pain. “If they did the transplant, Kelsey would reject my cells. I can’t help her.”

Shelly looked up from the letter. “What about her father?”

Jill’s spine went cold.
Morgan
. She hadn’t even thought it.
Oh,
God, I can’t. You can’t ask it
. But it seemed God could ask anything. Go to Morgan? Tell him her daughter, their daughter needed him?
Wouldn’t he have the other haplotype match and possibly no antibodycross match? In spite of the June heat in the kitchen, she started to shake.

Dan shot a glance to Brett and chafed her hand. “Take it easy, Jill.”

But Shelly had fixed her with a piercing gaze. “It’s Morgan Spencer, isn’t it?”

Dan looked confused. Jill could almost read his thoughts. Should he know something here?

“Um.” She raised a shaking hand to flick back the soft strands falling into her face. “He doesn’t know anything.” She had lied to the judge at the termination hearing, listed the father as unknown, and served notice to all putative fathers in a newspaper in her aunt’s county where she knew Morgan would never see it. “My parents told him I had an abortion.”

Shelly drew a long breath and sat back in the chair. “Well, maybe it’s time to enlighten him. Where do men get off thinking if the woman has an abortion it magically all goes away? I bet he was just so relieved.”

Jill bit her lower lip. She hadn’t been there when her parents told him, but she’d seen his face when she first mentioned it, and she’d heard her father yelling at Morgan’s over the phone. No, she didn’t really think the Spencers, or Morgan, had felt relieved. But what could she do?

“So,” Shelly said, forcing the issue again. “Do you know where to find him?”

“Only a post office box in California.”

Shelly’s face reflected Jill’s own uncertainty. As much as she would like to, it shouldn’t come to him in a letter. And she had just seen him! Could have told him, but instead they’d exchanged stupid words that meant nothing.

“His family lives near here.” At least they had. She pictured the classy Spencer farm where she’d spent some wonderful times. “I guess they’d know where he is.” She sniffed back tears and noticed a distinct smell.

“Oh no!” Brett shot up. “The burgers.” He hurried out, the rest of them staring after him.

Dan said, “Those burgers will be charcoal. Shelly, why don’t you and Brett go out for dinner? I’ll stay here with Jill.”

Shelly looked from him to her. Jill sensed her indecision but knew she would obey. Anything Dan wanted. Even if it meant she wasn’t the first to get the whole story. Weariness settled like a blanket.

Shelly stood up. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Shelly’s expression left no doubt that she would.

Jill sent her a bleak smile. What if she said no? Did Shelly ever take no for an answer? At the door Shelly glanced back, then went after her husband. Jill sat without speaking, her hand cupped between Dan’s.

“So that’s the real reason, isn’t it?” Dan spoke softly, but there was an edge in his voice.

She looked into his blunt, suntanned face. He was the guy they’d call for a good-cop/bad-cop routine. His was the face you would trust. But she hadn’t. She lowered her eyes. “I meant everything I told you.

I believe in marriage. Intimacy belongs within the covenant. All of that is true.”

“Now.”

She drew her hands away. “I was seventeen years old, Dan. I had people like you telling me I could and should be sexual.”

“And of course Morgan Spencer.” Again the clipped tone. Was he jealous?

She sat back in her chair. “I don’t need this now. Yes, I learned the hard way. Does that make the lesson less valid? If I had done things right, do you think I’d be sitting here begging God not to make me tell Morgan the truth, and praying he doesn’t hate me so much he’ll let our daughter die?”

“Real boy scout, is he?”

Jill pictured the cold, cynical man Morgan had become and started shaking again. “I don’t know. We were kids. He was eighteen years old; what do you expect, Dan? My parents gave us no choice. They blamed it all on Morgan and sent me away before I could even see him again.”

He released a long breath. “Okay. I’m sorry. But we’ve been together almost a year and I had no idea. I thought I knew you. This is the kind of thing that scares the you-know-what out of me. If we can be in a relationship this long and you keep something like this to yourself …” He shook his head. “It’s Liz all over again.”

Jill knew it was his hurt speaking, but that was uncalled for. “I never lied to you, Dan. And I certainly didn’t cheat on you.” And now anger covered her hurt. “And the fact that I have a daughter is really none of your business at all.” She tried to stand, but he caught her wrist.

“Jill. I’m sorry. That was unfair.”

She settled back, wishing the anger wouldn’t subside. But it did, leaving only the terrible fear and disappointment.

“What are you going to do?”

Her chest tightened like a vise. “Find Morgan.” She didn’t want to say it, but she had to. Kelsey needed any chance there was.

Dan rubbed her hand. “You don’t look too good.”

“I don’t feel too good.”

“How’s your head?”

She reached her fingers to the bump. “It’s all right.”

“Why don’t I start you a hot bath? While you soak I’ll make us something ….”

“Dan.” Jill covered his hand with her other. “No.” Then she drew both her hands away. “I need to be alone.” To think. To pray. But she didn’t say it aloud. She was already a hypocrite.

He was hurt. He wanted to make something happen between them that she knew now was not going to happen. Just the thought of facing Morgan was enough to keep her from ever risking that kind of intimacy again. She took the letter, folded it, and slipped it back into the envelope.

Dan stood up. For a long moment he looked down on her, wanting to change her mind. She kept her eyes on the envelope, so innocuous from the outside, so devastating within. Then he went out.

Jill closed her eyes. She sat there in numb silence. This couldn’t be real. Why had Shelly even mentioned Morgan? Of course the father could be the donor, but
her
mind hadn’t made the leap. She had not allowed it to because the very thought meant she would have failed.
Oh, God. Please don’t ask this of me
. She would call the number on the letter, the number for questions. And she would ask, could it be a mistake? Could they retest?

They’d had difficulty with her vein, and she had bruised and hurt afterward. But it would be less painful by far than going to Morgan with the truth. She couldn’t. God couldn’t expect it.

“Why?” She threaded her fingers together and pressed the knuckles of her fists to her lips. “Lord, I was so naïve.” And she’d been so in love. Nothing could have prepared her for Morgan—Morgan as she’d known him then. She had worshiped him. And God was a jealous God.

She could walk away. Cinda would learn the results, know the marrow didn’t match. Jill tried not to think how devastated all the Bensons would be right now. She had tried, but she couldn’t save her daughter’s life.
Could Morgan?
She didn’t know. He bore the other half of Kelsey’s antigens, but there was the lymphocyte cross-match test. Morgan might be no better match than herself. She might go to him, tell him everything, for nothing.

Forking her fingers into her hair, she pressed her forehead to her palm. Did she have the right to not take that chance?
Oh, God, why?
She suddenly sat up straight. She could let Cinda tell him. She could give Cinda his name and let her write, call, or go to him. Jill pictured Morgan hearing the news, the shock and disbelief. She sagged.

She refused to be that much of a coward. He deserved to hear it from her.
Okay, Lord. If you want me to tell him, show me
. She got up and went to the shelf where she kept her Bible. She knew it well enough from a Sunday school perspective—had all her Old and New Testament stories down pat. But she wasn’t very adept at applying Scripture to her own life. She depended on the pastor’s sermons for that.

One of the women at church had told her that she got answers by opening the book at random and reading the first verse that caught her eye. Jill had thought it crazy, but she was desperate enough to try anything. She let the Bible fall open in her hands. It was roughly in the middle, the book of Jonah, and her eyes landed on chapter three.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great
city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you
.”

Trembling, Jill closed the book. It was crazy to think that had been a divine message. It was nothing short of gambling. Of course the book would fall open in the middle, and she could probably read anything into what she found there. She opened the Bible again. This time it was Isaiah, an oracle to Edom, wherever that was.
Someone calls to me
from Seir, “Watchman, what is left of the night?” Watchman, what is left
of the night?” The watchman replies, “Morning is coming, but also the
night. If you would ask, then ask; and come back yet again.”

Meaningless words. But that just proved it. She could open a hundred places and get a hundred different passages.
If you would ask, then
ask; and come back yet again
. She had come back and the passage was no clearer than the first reading. She closed the Bible and sat down on the giraffe chair. Then, picturing Kelsey’s sweet, sweet face, she dropped to her knees. “I’m asking, Lord. What do you want me to do? How can I help her?”

Announce the message
. But that was to Jonah. Nineveh didn’t even exist anymore. She dropped her face to her hands. Why was this so
hard? She had no trouble praying for Joey when he was violent, for Sammi’s tantrums, for the others when they were hurt and rejected and misunderstood. She could pray for the children. Maybe it was Kelsey she must focus on now.

She pictured her daughter’s face again.
“Is it a ministry?”
What fourteen-year-old girl thought of help and kindness as a ministry? Had Jill even understood the word at that age? She moistened her lips.
Lord, what do you want from me?
But she knew. In her heart she knew. If it were anyone but Morgan. And she saw again the utter disdain in his eyes, the hatred he felt for her.