Darcy kissed her finger, then touched the boy’s face, her heart tightening as always. The raw grief of missing these two—her husband and son—had lessened in the time since they’d both died in a car accident, but she still felt their absence keenly.
With one last look at the photo, she moved into the living room to sit on the sofa and sort the mail: junk, bill, magazine, junk, junk, bill, ju— She froze in the act of tossing the last letter onto the junk pile. She read the return address on the meter-stamped envelope: Colorado Donor Alliance, Denver.
She stared at it a long time, her insides liquid. Nightmare images filled her head—harsh hospital lighting, beeping monitors, the concern of a woman explaining about organ donation, a pile of paperwork… Darcy struggled to push the ugly memories away. Why were these people contacting her now, after two years?
“They probably just want a donation,” she muttered as she tore open the envelope with shaking hands.
Your information and information about organ recipients is always kept in strictest confidence unless both parties give their permission for it to be released. Though some donor families wish to remain forever anonymous, others find closure in meeting the recipients of their gift.
We have recently been contacted by the family of the child who received your son’s heart. They would like to meet you, to personally thank you and to allow you to see the results of your decision.
We will be happy to facilitate such a meeting, if you so desire. If you prefer to maintain your anonymity, we will respect that also.
Sincerely,
Mavis Shehadi
Donor Coordinator
Darcy had been assured he’d died without suffering. A head injury had damaged his brain, but his other organs had functioned long enough that they could be given to others. The Donor Alliance counselor had assured her that donating Riley’s heart, kidneys and liver might spare some other mother the agony Darcy had endured. Overwhelmed by grief and guilt, Darcy had signed the papers, numb to anything but the pain of losing her son. She was convinced she should have done more to save him. Saving his organs for others had seemed such a small thing at the time.
Only later, as some of the blackness receded, had she wondered about those children and their families. But she quickly decided she didn’t want to know.
The idea that part of Riley lived on somewhere was comforting in the abstract, but she was afraid hearing about the lives of those children would hurt too much. They got to live…. No amount of heartfelt thanks from other parents could ever make up for the fact that they had their children and she’d lost hers forever.
She’d received a couple of moving letters from grateful parents, their identities carefully blacked out. She’d put them away with other mementos that were too painful to look at—the funeral program, Riley’s last report card, his baseball cap.
So she’d never contacted the donor registry and hadn’t considered the possibility that they might contact her after all this time.
She reread the letter and waited for the familiar pain to overwhelm her. The guilt was still there, and the ache of longing, but the resentment had faded. That Riley had been taken from her was tremendously unfair, but she would never wish the loss she’d endured on another.
And to think that Riley’s heart lived on filled her with a flood of good memories. She had called Riley her sweetheart. When he did something kind for someone, she told him he had a good heart. Before he was born, she had listened to the beating of his heart in her doctor’s office and begun to know and love him as someone precious who was part of her, yet his own person.
Did Riley’s heart, beating in this other child, sound the same? Would Darcy recognize its rhythm?
What would she do if she
did
recognize something of Riley in this other child? The idea stopped her short.
If she met this child, she wouldn’t be anything like Riley, Darcy reassured herself. She had a vague recollection of the donor coordinator telling her Riley’s heart was going to a girl. And she would belong to other parents.
Grief was a kind of insanity she only recently felt she’d emerged from. Would meeting this child plunge her back into that darkness, making the loss of Riley fresh again?
She shook her head, and replaced the letter in the envelope. That wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She’d write to the Donor Alliance and refuse. Maybe one day she’d be strong enough to meet one of the transplant children, but she wasn’t there yet.
“Isn’t she awesome?”
Awesome
was Taylor’s word of the moment, used to describe everything from her favorite song on the radio to the macaroni and cheese they’d had for dinner last night. And apparently her new dance teacher. “Ms. O’Connor seems very nice,” he said. Though not what he’d expected. “Belly dancer” conjured an image in his mind of someone dark and exotic; Darcy O’Connor was blond and blue-eyed with the kind of curves that would make any man take a second look. Even as concerned as he was for Taylor, Mike had had a hard time not staring.
“She’s so beautiful.” Taylor ran both hands through her dark curls. “I wish I had hair like hers.”
The idea of Taylor with blond curls like Darcy O’Connor almost made Mike smile. “Your hair is beautiful just the way it is,” he said.
“You only say that because you’re my dad.”
Mike felt a pang of regret. Not so long ago his compliments had meant the most simply because he was her dad. Now, apparently, they didn’t count for as much.
“I really like the other girls, too,” Taylor said. “A couple of them I recognized from school.”
“Are any of your friends in it?” he asked. Taylor didn’t talk much about her classmates. This hadn’t worried Mike before. Yes, all her hospitalizations had put her behind some of her classmates academically. Maybe that had hindered her socially, as well.
“Keisha and Monica are the only girls I really hang out with much at school,” Taylor said. “And neither of them is in the class. I think dancing might help me make more friends.”
The note of wistfulness in her voice tugged at his heart, and he felt the tightness in his chest from the old anger he could never completely bury. Why had
his
daughter been singled out for such cruelty? Why did
she
have to suffer so much? “I’m sure you’ll make friends,” he said.
“I think so.” She sat back in the seat. “It’s kind of special, you know? Being part of the dance group, I mean. I’ll bet a lot of girls wish they could be in it.”
Mike forced himself to loosen his grip on the steering wheel and reminded himself that in spite of everything, Taylor had been very lucky. She was alive, and likely to live a long, happy life, if she was careful. He turned onto Sycamore Street. “Did you remember to take your medicine?” he asked.
“Yes. I took it before class.”
“Good.” She’d been so excited about the dance class he’d been afraid she’d forget. It needed to be taken on a strict schedule. “I want you to be honest with me—you didn’t overdo it today, did you? The class wasn’t too strenuous?”
“No. It was fun. Darcy’s a really good dancer.”
Darcy again. Taylor was clearly captivated by her attractive teacher. “I imagine she’s been practicing for quite a few years.” Though how long could that be, really? Maybe her petite size made her look young for her age, but she hadn’t seemed a day over twenty-five to Mike. At thirty-six, he felt positively ancient next to her.
“If I start now, I could be that good by the time I graduate high school.”
“I thought you wanted to be a doctor.” He tried to keep his voice neutral.
“I do. But I could belly dance on the side. As a hobby.”
A belly dancing doctor. “That would certainly give your patients something to talk about.”
“Dad, please!” Taylor’s voice drifted toward an unpleasant whine. “You’re always telling people how important it is to exercise. Dancing will be good for me.”
It probably would. And she was bored with spending so much time at his office after school, where he worried she might come down with an opportunistic infection despite all his precautions. But he hadn’t found a sitter he trusted and he couldn’t leave Taylor at home alone.
Even two years out from her transplant surgery, she was still so vulnerable. How could he trust her with a woman he barely knew? “Like it or not, you’re always going to be more vulnerable than other people to illness,” he said. “What if something happened while you were in dance class? What if you have a reaction to one of your medications?”
“Dad, that only happened one time! And it was months ago.”
“But what if it happened? I don’t know if Darcy is prepared to handle that.”
“She would do the same thing they would do at school—she’d call nine-one-one.”
Taylor had to go to school, but Mike tried to keep her away from large groups of people otherwise. Maybe he was being overly cautious, or even silly, but he couldn’t help himself. The knowledge of everything that could go wrong, and the memory of how close he’d come to losing the most precious person to him, haunted him. “I’d be happier if you’d wait a little longer,” he said. The past two years had been a nightmare of hospital rooms and surgeries, antirejection drugs, infections and the constant fear that something as simple as a cold virus could undo all her progress.
“I just want to do something a normal kid would do.”
The plaintive words cut through him. Wasn’t that all he wanted, too—for his little girl to be happy and healthy, and to live a full, normal life? And she was doing better. She’d started growing, and it had been four months since she’d been sick a single day.
“I know,” he said. “And dance class will probably be fine. But if you have any problems at all…”
“I’ll have to quit. But I’ll be fine, I promise. Thank you, Daddy. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.” All that love made making the right decisions for her even harder sometimes.
They pulled up to their townhome and Mike pressed the button to open the garage. He and Melissa had purchased the home shortly after their wedding. When they’d divorced they’d both agreed it would be better for Taylor to remain in the only home she’d ever known, and Melissa had moved into an apartment near the airport, convenient to her work. If not for Taylor, Mike would have moved, too. The house was one more reminder of dreams that hadn’t come true. He and Melissa had planned to raise a family in this home.
Taylor was out of the car as soon as Mike released the child locks. “I’m gonna call Mom and tell her about the class,” she called over her shoulder as she raced to the door.
Mike hoped Melissa would be able to answer Taylor’s call. If she was in the middle of a flight that wasn’t possible. Taylor could leave a message, but Melissa wasn’t always good about returning her calls right away.
He followed Taylor inside, stopping to hang his coat on the rack in the foyer, opposite the portrait of the three of them as a family. Melissa smiled straight into the camera; a younger Mike focused on the toddler in Melissa’s lap. Taylor, in a lacy white dress, had been barely two then. She was laughing up at Mike—the happiest baby in the world.
And he’d been the happiest man, just beginning his practice, starting a family. How naive he’d been.
Taylor’s illness had changed all that. Mike didn’t know if he’d ever trust happiness again. He’d always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’d emerged from more than two years in hell with his daughter safe, for now, but the perfect family was gone. The messiness—both emotional and physical—of dealing with a chronically ill child had ended a marriage already strained by Mike’s long hours at work and Melissa’s erratic schedule.
The failure to save his marriage still stung. Mike’s parents had been married more than forty years now, while his grandparents had lived to celebrate seventy-five years together. His two sisters both enjoyed long marriages. Only Mike had failed.
He didn’t blame Melissa. Mike had deserted her when she needed him most. He’d been too focused on Taylor and on keeping his practice going to have much left over for his wife.
He found Taylor in the living room, curled on one end of the sofa, the phone still in her lap. “Did you talk to your mom?” he asked.
“I had to leave a message.” Her shoulders drooped.
“I should talk to your mother about setting up a schedule to see you more often,” Mike said. As it was, Melissa flew in and out of town, and her daughter’s life, with no predictable regularity. Taylor missed her mother, though she seldom said it.
He and Melissa had agreed to family counseling to help Taylor deal with the divorce, but her frequent hospitalizations had interfered with those sessions, and Mike wasn’t sure how much good they’d done. Taylor seemed well adjusted to their situation, but how could he be sure?
Right now, Taylor looked as worried as he felt. She was chewing on her lower lip, an unattractive habit he’d tried to discourage. “Honey, is something wrong?”
She glanced at him, then away. “Mom told me something last time I saw her. She didn’t tell me not to tell you, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”
“What is it?” What had Melissa done that had Taylor so worried?
“She said she has a boyfriend. His name is Alex and he’s a pilot.”
“Oh.” He shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable with the idea of his wife—he still thought of her that way sometimes—dating another man. The emotion that rose to the surface wasn’t so much jealousy as regret that things hadn’t worked out the way they were supposed to.
One of them ought to at least be happy; he wouldn’t begrudge Melissa that. “That’s good, honey,” he said. “Are you okay with it?”
“It would be nice if she had someone, so she wouldn’t be alone,” Taylor said thoughtfully. “I mean, you and I have each other, except…” The words trailed away.
“Except what?”
“Do you think you’ll ever get married again, Dad?”
Was Melissa close to marrying this guy? Was that why she’d mentioned him to Taylor? “I don’t plan on getting married again, honey,” he said. “Not for a very long time, anyway.” Not before Taylor was grown, if then. He’d already proved he was lousy at dividing his attention.
“I wouldn’t mind if you did,” she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind having a stepmom, if she was nice.”
So that’s what this was all about. Mike moved to sit beside his daughter and pulled her close. “I know you miss your mom,” he said. “There’s not much I can do about that, but I’m not sure a stepmom is the answer. You and I will just have to muddle along like we have been.” He kissed the top of her head.
“I’m okay, Dad.” She squirmed around to look up at him. “Really. I just thought you might, you know, be lonely sometimes.”
Yes, he was lonely sometimes, but he’d survive. “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart,” he said. Life demanded sacrifices sometimes. Right now his priorities were Taylor and his medical practice, in that order. Any woman in his life would be shortchanged. He wouldn’t put himself or anyone else through that hurt again.