Until Angels Close My Eyes

The revelations about her father, mother and grandmother haunted her. How could she have never known the truth? Why hadn’t anyone told her until now?

“You should have been the one to tell me,” Leah said to her mother, knowing she sounded hurt. “Why am I always the last to know about everything in this family?”

“It isn’t a conspiracy, Leah. I was going to tell you about your father. I just never knew how.”

This book is dedicated to
Josiah Christian McDaniel,
a lamb of God.

“L
eah, we need to talk.”

Leah Lewis-Hall flicked off the TV and gave her mother her full attention. “What’s up?” She knew something was wrong. For days, her mother had seemed edgy and uncommunicative. Most unlike herself. Leah’s mother usually had something to say about everything. When Leah had come home from school that day, the house had been empty and there had only been a terse note:
Neil and I will be back before supper.

Her mother sat down on the edge of the sofa. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that things
haven’t been exactly normal around here lately.”

“Are you and Neil having problems?” Leah asked, fearing the worst. Since Neil was husband number five for her mother, Leah had reason to feel apprehensive.
Don’t let it be divorce,
she pleaded silently. She liked Neil. A lot. He was the best stepfather she had ever had. Not only that, but she didn’t want to be uprooted and moved again. Not in her senior year. It was only October. Couldn’t her mother at least gut it out until June?

“Yes, we’re having problems,” her mother said.

“What’s wrong?” Leah’s heart sank.

Her mother stood, wrung her hands, and began pacing the living room floor. “Neil had a doctor’s appointment last week. Then, today, we went back for a consultation.”

“Where is Neil anyway?” All at once Leah realized that Neil was not in the house.

“He’s been checked into the hospital.”

“What?”
Leah’s heart began to thud. “Is he sick? What’s happened?” She knew a lot
about being sick. Almost a year before, Leah had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Leah’s mother had all but threatened the doctor with a lawsuit for incompetence and a misdiagnosis. Now her mother looked ghastly pale. Her face reminded Leah of her own excruciating experience.

“I—I never told you something about Neil when he and I first got married,” her mother said, her voice quivering. “When Neil and I first met back in Dallas, when we first started dating, I never dreamed it would lead to marriage. He knew I didn’t have a great track record when it came to matrimony. But we fell in love. I want you to remember that. I love Neil very much. Even the age difference between us never mattered to me.”

Leah thought she might scream, waiting for her mother to get to the point.

“When things first started getting serious between us, Neil confided that he had a serious medical problem. It began even before his first wife died. Leah, Neil was diagnosed with cancer in one of his kidneys.”

“Cancer?
Neil has cancer? What are you telling me?” Leah’s voice was trembling.

“Calm down, Leah, please. The affected kidney was removed and he went through chemotherapy to destroy any lingering malignant cells. He’s never had another problem. I just assumed he was cured. You know how doctors are.”

Leah was reeling, unable to absorb all the emotions that were shooting through her. “You’re telling me that Neil Dutton, my stepfather, has had cancer? Why didn’t you ever
tell
me? I should have been told, Mother. Especially with my condition.”

“We were going to tell you. But the timing was just never right. We were going to tell you when we got back from our honeymoon in Japan. But then you were in the hospital, and Dr. Thomas insisted that you had cancer. We thought it best not to tell you then.”

Leah’s stay in the hospital had been traumatic. First the diagnosis of cancer. Then the appearance, to Leah anyway, of the mysterious Gabriella, followed by the strange and seemingly impossible retreat of the cancer from Leah’s leg bone. She had undergone six long weeks of chemotherapy and still returned to her doctor for periodic
workups and evaluations. “I can’t believe this! You had plenty of opportunities to say something about this.”

“Neil didn’t want to. He thought it best for you to concentrate on getting through chemo. And when that was over, he didn’t want to burden you.”

By now Leah was on her feet. “Burden me? How can you say such a thing? Even if Neil didn’t tell me, you should have, Mom. It was
your
place to tell me!” She stopped abruptly. A new fear gripped her, overshadowing her anger. She turned to face her mother. “So why is Neil in the hospital?”

Her mother’s chin began to tremble. “Because it appears his cancer has recurred.”

Leah moved around her bedroom as if in a trance, preparing to go with her mother to the hospital to see Neil. She could hear her mother crying in the bathroom down the hall.
This can’t be happening,
she kept telling herself.

She stopped at the window and stared out at the twilight. The farm fields stretched into the distance, broken only by a
line of trees whose leaves were shot through with red and gold. It seemed all the leaves were on the brink of death.

Leah longed to talk to Ethan. He would help her sort everything out. The clear image of his tanned face, eyes as blue as sky, hair the color of wheat and sunlight, seemed to smile back at her from the window.

“I love you, Leah,”
he had told her that last afternoon they’d been together in August. But he was Amish, she was English. They were worlds apart in every way—miles apart physically. Yet she ached to see him, touch him. She missed him. She missed the rest of his family, too, especially his sisters Charity and Rebekah. Leah shook her head sadly. She’d never see Rebekah again—at least, not in this world.

Leah leaned her forehead against the cool pane. She had no way of getting hold of Ethan. The Amish had no phones, no computers for E-mail, no fax machines. Only snail mail, the U.S. postal system. Although she’d write him that very, night to tell him about Neil, it would take days for him to get her letter and respond. She needed him
now. No one at her new school would understand what she was going through. She wasn’t particularly close to anybody there. Sure, she had friends, but no one as special as Ethan.

“Are you ready?”

Her mother’s question brought Leah back to the moment. “Sure. Let’s go.”

They didn’t talk during the fifteen-minute ride to the hospital. Leah knew what it was like to hear doctors say, “You have cancer.” And apparently, so did Neil. At the moment, Leah just wanted to see him with her own eyes.

The community hospital wasn’t huge, but it was new. As she stepped into the hospital corridor, Leah’s own hospital stay in Indianapolis flooded back to her. The smell was the same: clean and antiseptic.

Leah’s mother stepped up to the nurse’s station. “I’m Roberta Dutton. Has the doctor been in to see my husband yet?” she asked.

“Dr. Howser is in with Mr. Dutton now,” the nurse said.

Leah remembered Dr. Howser, Neil’s physician. She had gone to see him when
her finger broke for no apparent reason while Neil and her mother were honeymooning in Japan. Dr. Howser had X-rayed the finger, then sent her off to the hospital in Indianapolis. Except for meeting the Amish family she never would otherwise have known, the experience had been horrifying.

Leah’s mother stopped in front of a door, squared her shoulders and pasted a smile on her face. She breezed into the room, and Leah followed.

Neil was propped up in the hospital bed. “Hey, girls,” he said as Roberta kissed him on the cheek. Neil was sixty-eight, but he had always looked and acted much younger. The beautiful tan he’d gotten aboard the windjammer the past summer was gone. His skin looked sallow and papery. Leah swallowed against a lump in her throat. This change hadn’t happened overnight, and she was upset with herself for not noticing it before.