Love Comes Home (32 page)

“Didn’t you ever go back home after he sent you to live with your aunt and uncle?”

“A few times, but I never belonged after that. I was extra. Unwanted extra.”

“But you had brothers and sisters, didn’t you?” Kate felt ashamed she didn’t already know that.

“One sister. Three or four half brothers. Maybe more after I quit going to see them.” Jay seemed to look inward then. “I didn’t want to like them, so I didn’t give them much reason to like me.”

“Why?” Kate couldn’t imagine life without her sisters. “Why didn’t you want to like them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was mad because I had to go back to live with my aunt and uncle.”

“Were they that bad? Your aunt and uncle.”

“Yes,” Jay said flatly. Then he sighed. “I guess I was that bad too.”

“No, you were just a kid.” Kate caressed his cheek. He needed a shave, but her mother hadn’t thought to bring a razor when she brought his clean clothes that morning.

“A kid who was always in trouble. Then a man who chased after trouble before I met you.” His eyes looked watery again. “Anyway, when I was afraid I might lose you along with our baby, I thought maybe the Lord was punishing me.”

“No, no.” Kate put her hand behind his neck and pulled his head down closer to her. “Why would you think that?”

“That maybe the Lord was punishing me for not trusting him enough. Or that he might have taken our baby because he knew I couldn’t be the good father you would want for our child.”

“You would have been a wonderful father.” Kate swallowed and changed her words. “You will be a wonderful father.” Hope. She needed hope. They both did. Then the sweet welcome sound of Aunt Hattie’s words whispered through her mind. “Aunt Hattie would tell us storms of life come on us all. It’s what we do in the storms that matter.”

“What would she tell us to do then in this storm?” His eyes looked so sad and yet brimming with love for her.

Kate searched her mind for the words Aunt Hattie would give her. Words they both needed. At last she said, “That nothing’s wrong with shedding tears when bad things happen, but that there’s no use wallowing in whatever misery comes our way. The Lord is always with us to help us through the hard times.”

He grasped both of her hands. “I can hear her saying that.”

“I don’t want her to be gone.” Kate felt a yawning hole inside her. “I don’t want our baby to be gone.”

They were silent a minute, sharing more than could be shared with words. Finally Jay said, “I’m going to miss Aunt Hattie.”

“Mama said she must have died while Fern was with me.”
Kate’s unshed tears made a knot in her throat. She pushed her words out around it. “She knew. I think she knew when I was with her on Sunday that I was going to lose the baby. It was just a matter of when. So that’s why she sent Fern to see about me. And then she died. Both of them gone at the same time.”

“That Aunt Hattie.” Jay squeezed her hands and actually smiled. “You know what happened, don’t you?”

Kate frowned a little. “About what?”

“I’ve been hearing Aunt Hattie talk about being ready to head on up to heaven ever since I got home. She couldn’t figure out why the Lord kept her here, but now we know. It was so she could come by the house on her way to heaven and pick up our little boy. He didn’t have to go alone.”

Tears flowed down Kate’s cheeks then but a smile edged out through them to match Jay’s. “She would do that.”

“Give him a name.” His smile slid away as he stared into Kate’s eyes. “We don’t ever have to tell anyone else if you don’t want to, but he needs a name in our hearts.”

“What about Miss Myrtle?” Kate glanced toward the curtain between the beds.

“She’s been asleep for a while now. Don’t you hear her snoring?” He turned an ear toward the other woman’s bed.

“I thought that was her oxygen machine.”

“Nope. She’s sawing logs. So what should we name him?” When she didn’t say anything right away, he went on. “Unless that’s too hard for you to think about.”

“I want to think about him. His life barely flickered, but he was real.”

“So give him a real name.”

“All right. The names have to mean something special.
Do you have someone you want to remember with one of the names?”

“Graham?”

She shook her head. “No, I want Graham to get to tell stories to the baby we name after him.”

“Right.” Jay thought a moment. “I had this Sergeant in the Army. I never called him anything but Sarge. Sarge Crane. But his given name was Marion.”

“Marion.” Kate tried out the name on her tongue. Something wasn’t quite right about it. Then she knew. “Marion Bo,” she said.

Jay smiled. “After Aunt Hattie’s boy.”

“I only knew him through Aunt Hattie’s stories, but she never forgot him.”

“And we won’t forget our baby either,” Jay said.

They locked eyes and tightened their hold on each other’s hands as they spoke in unison. “His name is Marion Bo Tanner.”

And a smile curled up in Kate’s heart where her baby would always live.

30

F
or a moment, Kate hovered in the shadowy world of some dream she couldn’t quite remember, but then the whisper of silky cloth brought her fully awake as Glenda, the night nurse, stepped around the curtain. Looking greatly relieved to see Kate alone in the bed, she stuck a thermometer under Kate’s tongue.

“You should have told him to go home.” She glanced at Jay, asleep in the chair, as she felt for Kate’s pulse.

“I did,” Kate said when the nurse took the thermometer. Jay had looked so tired, but he refused to leave.

“It’s sweet the way he stays right with you.” The nurse kept her voice low.

“We were apart a long time during the war.”

“He told me he got home in December.” The nurse pumped up the blood pressure cuff and listened through her stethoscope before she went on. “A man comes home from war, he expects things to go better. Now here he is, the both of you, having to face this.” She clucked her tongue as she rolled up the blood pressure cuff. “Everything’s looking good, sweetie.”

“Good,” Kate echoed. “I’m going home in the morning.”

“You’ll have to talk to the doctor about that.” The nurse patted Kate’s hand and looked at Jay again. “I want you to know I’ve been a nurse a long time and I think that was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. Him holding you like that last night.”

“Thank you for not making him move. He was right. I did need him to hold me.”

“I know.” The nurse smoothed down Kate’s covers. “Sometimes the most powerful medicine is love and prayers. You’re a lucky woman.”

After the nurse left, Kate smiled over at Jay, still sound asleep. “You’ve charmed another one,” she whispered.

From the first day she met Jay, she knew he was a charmer. Mike had even warned her not to fall for Jay because he had a way of leaving broken hearts in his wake. She didn’t doubt that was true, but he’d come home to love when he found Rosey Corner. She was so glad she’d let him charm her.

She reached toward him, wanting to feel his skin under her fingers, but his chair was too far from the bed. Then almost as if he sensed her need even in his sleep, his eyes opened.

“Are you all right?” He leaned forward and caught her hand in both of his.

“I’m all right.” And she was. Sad and feeling empty, but somehow all right in spite of that.

He scooted his chair closer to the bed. “Do you need me to stay awake?”

“No. I’m not afraid of the dark, and even if I was, it’s not dark in here.”

“So many ways for it to be dark,” Jay said softly.

“And so many ways to reach for the light.” Kate looked up toward the ceiling. “Aunt Hattie would tell me the best light to reach for is Jesus.”

“Don’t you know she’s doing some shouting and dancing tonight up in heaven?”

“With her Bo.”

“And our Marion Bo.” Jay leaned closer to gently touch her face. “Now go to sleep.”

“You first.”

He was asleep again almost before the words were out of her mouth. She held his hand and the night passed. The darkness of grief was there inside her, but the light was too. The Lord would help her through. Jay would help her through. The whole family would be ready to love them both through. And sooner or later, the emptiness would fade away. Perhaps even be filled with a new hope.

The next morning, the room didn’t spin when she stood up. After Jay helped her dress, Kate insisted he go get breakfast in the cafeteria while they waited for her to be released. She missed him as soon as he walked out of the room, but she didn’t call him back. He had to eat.

“He’s such a nice young man,” Miss Myrtle said.

“Yes, he is,” Kate agreed with a smile. Smiling was easier with the morning sun. Sadness sat heavy on her heart, but she was trying to do as Aunt Hattie would tell her and not wallow in her misery.

Before the day was over, she’d have to say goodbye to Aunt Hattie’s earthly remains, but her spirit was already in paradise with Bo and Kate’s baby boy, fully formed now. Marion Bo Tanner. She let the name circle in her mind as she imagined a little boy running through a field of daisies in heaven.

Miss Myrtle broke in on her thoughts. “I finally remembered why your name sounded so familiar. It was just there in my head this morning when I woke up. Isn’t that the way it
is? We think and think on something and then we stop thinking and the answer pops right up to the top of our minds.”

“My name?”

“Well, I suppose your maiden name. Birdsong.”

“Oh no, my name isn’t Birdsong.”

“But I thought that sweet child was your sister.” Miss Myrtle frowned a little.

“She is. We sort of adopted her when she was five. Her family couldn’t take care of her.” Kate hoped that would be enough of an explanation for Miss Myrtle. It was too long a story to tell before the nurse came to let her go home.

“Is that so? I suppose that happened often enough during the Depression when things were so hard for everybody. Things were hard for the Birdsong man I knew too.”

Kate stared over at Miss Myrtle. “You knew someone named Birdsong?”

The woman bobbed her head and pushed herself up higher in her bed. “It’s such an unusual name, I don’t know why it didn’t come right to me. I used to be able to remember things without a whit of trouble. I knew everybody’s name at the home and their grandchildren’s names too.” She let out a long sigh. “Age has a way of catching up with a person.”

Kate clamped down on her impatience. “But you remember now. The man named Birdsong.”

“Indeed I do. My cousin lives up in Cincinnati and one of her daughters, guess that would be my second cousin once removed or something like that, anyway she married a Birdsong. Juanita, I think was her name. Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s it. Juanita Birdsong. Well, Juanita Hastings Birdsong. She was a Hastings before she married.”

Kate jumped in when Miss Myrtle paused for breath. “Do
you know if she had children?” Kate went still listening for her answer.

“I couldn’t say for certain. I haven’t heard from Mattie for some time now. She probably thinks I’ve passed on or maybe she did. She wasn’t much younger than me. I’d say it’s been seven or eight years since Mattie wrote me about Juanita getting married. At last. Those were her very words. She’d about given up on Juanita finding anybody. The girl was getting a little long in the tooth, you know.”

“Oh.” Kate let out her breath. Juanita couldn’t be Lorena’s mother.

“I sent her a present. Some pretty glasses. Never did get a thank-you note.”

“Did you go to their wedding?”

“Goodness no. Not all the way up there in Cincinnati. Mattie just wrote me about it all. Said the Birdsong fellow was a widower but didn’t have any children. At least none they knew about. He came from out west somewhere and wasn’t much of a talker. That bothered Mattie some.” Miss Myrtle smoothed down the covers over her middle.

“Why’s that?” Kate readjusted her thinking again. Lorena’s father perhaps, but that would mean the mother Lorena hoped to find had died long ago.

“She was sure he was hiding something. Maybe something bad. He told Mattie straight out that it was better talking about the now than what was. But a body loses a lot if he doesn’t remember all the times of his life. The hard ones and the easy ones.” Miss Myrtle wiped her eyes with an edge of the sheet as though her words put her in mind of some of her own hard memories.

That might be the way Kate would be when she was Miss
Myrtle’s age and thinking back on losing her baby. And it could be what the Birdsong man didn’t want to remember was deserting his daughter in Rosey Corner.

“Do they still live in Cincinnati?” Kate asked.

“Oh, honey, I just don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t heard from Mattie in ages. Juanita could have moved down here next door to the home and I’d never know it these days. That’s how living in the home is. We’re stuck in that private little world. It can be lonely there, but now I’ll have you sweet people to think about when I go back. And I can brag about knowing Lorena Birdsong. Somebody who sings on the radio. Imagine that.” Miss Myrtle smiled.

“When you go back to the home, I’ll bring Lorena to see you. She can sing a song for you there.”