Red Rose Bouquet: A Contemporary Christian Novel (Grace Revealed Book 2) Page 5

  “Okay then.” Blinking, Cheryl played along, ushering Nana up the stairs and down the hall.

  She made sure the woman was secure in her room before she sank back into her own bed. She didn’t know which was worse—watching Nana slip into a world of dementia or hearing Nana’s point of view about her life.

  Shutting her eyes, Cheryl commanded sleep to drape over her consciousness.

  As the blackness slowly descended, a single tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

  ~*~

  Cold.

  So, so cold. Not the kind that touched her skin. The kind that sank into the marrow of her bones. Into the soul she tried to deny. Gooseflesh covered the whole surface of her body as she moved through the dark passage.

  Don’t go in…

  The voice, always the same, whispered. The feathery breath of whoever was behind her rustled the stray hairs that fell against her neck. It sent a tremor down her spine.

  She turned her head, but a hand, hard and insistent, pushed her forward.

  Don’t…

  Despite the warning, her feet—naked, as were her legs—carried her forward anyway. A hand—hers—reached for the single knob on a gray steel door—the only thing she could see in the darkness.

  Don’t…

  She shut her eyes against the voice and turned the knob. The heavy door opened. She opened her eyes, and a harsh, piercing light pushed her into a white blindness. She reached to cover her eyes, but the same hard hands grasped her wrists and held them firmly to her side. Pain ripped through her body. Pain like she’d never known before. Scalding, immeasurable agony seared through her core.

  Screaming filled the room, vibrating her skin, filling her ears. Hers. Others. A chorus of agony, of souls being divided and flesh being torn. So loud. Awful and unforgettable.

  Cheryl fought against the cruel hands that held her as she tried to cover her ears.

  Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop…

  With a jolt, she sat up. Unconstrained, she felt around her. The bed beneath her. The covers that had been thrown to the side. Her body, shivering and drenched with sweat, but free from anything that would cause pain. Blinking, she sat up and placed her feet on the floor, willing her heart rate to drop back to normal and banishing the wailing echoes that lingered in her ears.

  Make it stop. Please make it stop.

  She trembled as she reached for her phone. Four thirty a.m. Reasonable enough to get up. She could go for a run, take a long, hot shower, and start her day.

  Still shivering, she reached for the bedside lamp and flipped it on. Gentle yellow light flooded the room. Her pulse slowed. Long breath in. Slow breath out. Repeat. She continued until her limbs stopped quivering.

  Would this ever end?

  She searched for her running clothes in her suitcase, tugged them over her slim frame, and applied tennis shoes to her feet. The run would help. She’d feel the freedom of her own strength and speed, neither of which she’d had in the dream. They would assure her of reality—the dreams were only that. Dreams.

  Nightmares. That wouldn’t leave her alone.

  Run. She’d run. That was the only thing she could do.

  You were always there for me. My hero.

  But I couldn’t face you anymore. If you knew…

  I missed you. More than anyone else, I think. We aren’t anything alike, you and I. You are the bounce-back kind. I am the shattering type. But we had each other. Even when we didn’t have anything else, we had each other.

  Over the years, I’ve wanted to tell you so many times; it wasn’t you. The fracture between us was not your fault. I chose the divergent path, and now I can’t find my way back.

  But I want so desperately for you to know.

  I miss you.

  ~7~

  “You know it’s not safe to run alone in the dark, right?”

  Ethan’s voice caught her before she set her foot on the first riser to go upstairs. She’d pulled the earbuds from her ears before she’d come into the house, but the static of music coming from her iPod still scratched near her throat. With one hand, she reached to the opposite arm and tapped the noise off.

  “I often run in the early mornings.”

  “Right.” Ethan leaned against the front door and crossed his arms. “Probably in the safety of the gym in your building. Yes?”

  Cheryl ground her teeth. “I’m a big girl, E. I can take care of myself.”

  He stared, his expression hard until he looked away. “At least now I know.” He looked back to her again. “Would it kill you to let others—me—care enough about you to worry?”

  Five thirty was too early for an argument. “Fine. I run in the mornings. Now you know, so don’t let your blood pressure spike.” She crossed her arms as she faced him straight on. “What are you doing up?”

  “Getting ready to head over to the bakery. Same as always. Nana will be down in a minute.”

  “About her.” She took a step closer. “How long has the dementia thing been going on?”

  “You saw that, did you?”

  “You could have told me.”

  “When? You and I, we don’t talk. We barely text. I wasn’t sure if you’d even care.”

  Cheryl filled her lungs with air, as if that billow would protect her heart from his sharp words. “Of course I care. You should have told me. How long?”

  Sighing, Ethan let his arms fall to his sides and began moving to the kitchen. “Signs have been coming on for over a year. Forgetting orders. Recipes that she’s known by heart for years… Nothing really all that concerning until a few months back. Brock came in, and she didn’t recognize him. I took her to the doctor the following week. Early stages of Alzheimer’s.”

  Alarms went off in E’s head because Nana didn’t recognize Brock? Okay, so he’d been a fixture in their home growing up, but he’d also been on the road quite a bit since then. World competitors have a habit of not sticking around.

  As she followed Ethan into the kitchen, Cheryl sorted through the oddity of that scenario and decided it didn’t matter. “Why’d you decide to tell me now?”

  “I told you. I need your help with her.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve got it handled.”

  Ethan crammed a hand through his shaggy hair and then leaned with both palms against the counter on the small kitchen island. “I’m getting married, Cheryl. Next week.”

  Motion seemed to stop. Married? Married! Ethan wasn’t the kind of guy who got married. He’d barely had a relationship that lasted longer than two months. What made him think that he should get married?

  He pushed up straight and crossed his arms. The defensive stance. “Look, I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t even know me. Not who I am now. I’m getting married, and I’m happy. Nana’s happy for us too. But the deal is, Brandi is a social worker, and she works with Brock—she’s his state liaison—and she has to be on site pretty much twenty-four seven. That means I either continue to live here without my wife—which is not even an option—or I take Nana out of the home she’s known for the last fifty years, which doesn’t seem like a good idea, considering her mental issues.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. Are you implying that I move here? Live with Nana, here?”

  Ethan’s eyebrows hiked, as if that were the dumbest question ever.

  “No.” With her fists clenched, Cheryl crossed her arms. “No. No. No.”

  “That woman practically raised you.”

  “And she knows I love her, but—”

  “Really? How does she know that, Sherbert? By the expensive fruit and wine baskets you send at Christmas? The happy birthday phone calls you managed to fit into your self-centered life? Grow up. There’s more to life than the girl you look at in the mirror every morning.”

  His words pummeled against her like rapid-fire ammo out of an automatic weapon. She pulled up her shield of feigned indifference. “You must have been dying to say that to me.”

  “No.” Should
ers slumped, Ethan leaned back against the sink behind him and looked to the floor. “It kills me that you need to hear it.” Slowly, his eyes found hers, and the expression in them threatened to break through her ice. “Where are you, kid? Why’d you leave us?”

  Stillness settled between them, and the silence worked with his sincerity, chipping away at her resolve. None of it had been his fault, and if he knew the truth…

  No. If he knew the truth, he wouldn’t care where she was.

  “Look at this.” Nana came through the door, smiling. “Both my kids, back home at last.” She went first to Cheryl and then to Ethan, patting their arms and planting a kiss against each of their cheeks. “Bless it, today feels like a holiday. Let’s go bake something special.”

  Off they went. One big happy. If only that were true.

  If she’d known how much she was going to lose that day that had changed everything, she would have run. But regrets didn’t matter when it came to reality. The only choice was to continue pushing forward.

  Which left Cheryl with an impossible problem. Hayden was in her past. It couldn’t be a part of her future, even if Nana needed her there.

  ~*~

  “Thanks for helping me with this, Brandi.” Brock stood from the round table in the lodge where they’d been working. “I’m sorry about all the extra paperwork this week.”

  “This week?” Brandi snorted, though her smile belied her attempt at irritation. “You have irregularities regularly. This is SOP at Kelly’s Ranch.”

  True that. But those irregularities didn’t always end up with a medical report to file, along with all of the redundant papers necessary to fill out for Medicaid and CDHS.

  Brock finished sorting the papers according to the colorful tabs. Yellow for him, blue to mail to his lawyer—just in case—green for the CDHS office, and red for Medicaid. The small piles looked like a whole lot of pulp for one kid. His mind drifted back to her. So-J. She was one of those kids—the kind that could infuriate him and grip his heart all within two breaths. She had a mouth and a temper. She also had some wreckage in her heart—her eyes told him so. One week didn’t do that kind of kid a whole lot of good.

  “Can I ask you something?” Brock looked up to Brandi, who stood ready to head for the door.

  “Yep.”

  “Do you ever get calloused?”

  “No.” She sighed, dropping back into the chair she’d abandoned. “It’s tempting, and honestly, I may be more jaded about the world since I started. But when it comes to them, as individuals? No. They still break my heart, and I let them.”

  He nodded. He’d never felt so deeply about anything as a snowboarder. Nothing touched him the way these kids did—and sometimes he wished he could go back to the safety of ignorance.

  “Anything in particular tugging on you?”

  He wanted to laugh—the social worker in Brandi never really took a day off.

  “Sonja. She was worried that she’d get kicked out of her foster home because she had to go to the doctor.” Brock glanced to her. She sat mute, listening. That was what made her good at her job. She listened more than she spoke. “It burns me that she maybe has a real reason to worry, you know? I just wish I could know that these kids would be safe and loved when they leave this place. And if they weren’t…”

  “We do what we can. One child at a time, Brock.”

  Sometimes that didn’t seem like enough. While one child was safe, loved in a home that was sane and caring, another kid would be subjected to a personal hell the child hadn’t asked for and didn’t deserve. Where was the justice?

  Words wouldn’t come. Ranting wouldn’t help.

  “I’ll check up on her, okay?” Brandi reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “I’ve got a meeting next week anyway. I’ll set up a conference with her case worker while I’m there.”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  “I already told you. This is what E and I have decided. We have a lifetime.”

  Brock lifted an eyebrow. “Kind of seems like a honeymoon is a one-shot deal.”

  “Not your business.” Brandi stood, nailed a look on him that said discussion closed, and moved toward the exit. “Ethan and I are fine, so don’t worry about it. I’ll check on Sonja and get back to you.”

  He couldn’t not worry about her and Ethan. Granted, it wasn’t his business, but Ethan was his best friend, and Brandi had become pretty important to his world as well. When it came to the idea of the two of them married, Brock was all for it. But this no-honeymoon thing? Something in the situation wasn’t right.

  And then there was the whole So-J deal. Brandi checking on Sonja wasn’t really a fix. But it was all they could do. Like the paperwork they’d just finished, it was simply something they had to file.

  He hated that part of this job.

  “Ethan called.” Brandi paused with her hand on the doorframe. “He and his sister are coming out late this afternoon. Are you hanging around?”

  For the impending blizzard named Cheryl Thompson? Not if he could help it. “I don’t know. Thought I’d go fishing.”

  Brandi bit her bottom lip and nodded.

  No fishing then. Brandi didn’t have any reason to feel intimidated, from Brock’s perspective. Cheryl didn’t scare him. Then again, he wasn’t about to become her in-law.

  Brock stood and crossed the room. “Cheryl’s just a person, same as anyone else.”

  Her mouth twisted. “True in theory. Ethan worries about her though. More now than even two weeks ago.” She looked up, and they connected with a glance. “Last night, when she got here… E hadn’t seen her in so long, and when he did…”

  “What?” He had doubts about the wedding? That couldn’t be it.

  “It was like looking at one of the kids.” She sighed, and her hand fell to her side. “Did you see it?”

  Yeah, he had. “So what does that mean for you and E?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t see it before, but he lived a different life, was a totally different person the last time they’d been together. Now he sees it, and it scares him. Throwing this little surprise—hey, guess what? I’m getting married next week—that might not be the best idea, you know? Not to mention Nana. He didn’t tell Cheryl about the issues there, so that’s going to be traumatic all by itself. I just don’t know how much to push on her, especially at the first meeting.”

  Hardly seemed fair. It took years for Ethan to pull his life together, and now he was in a good place. And Brandi, she was a gem. Didn’t deserve to be thrown into that kind of a mess.

  “Look, I know I’m not really qualified on this, but it seems like Cheryl’s a grown woman, and she’s made her choices every bit as much as Ethan made his. You two are happy, and you shouldn’t feel bad about that.”

  “Yeah. If only life were that simple.”

  It wasn’t. Simple, fair, predictable—life wasn’t any of those things.

  What about Cheryl’s life? Brock remembered the twelve-year-old version of the woman, specifically the day of her mother’s funeral. That’d been the first day he’d seen grief look like a shear granite face on the north side of a mountain. He’d been a little shocked, standing next to Ethan, whose silent tears dripped against his face, and watching Cheryl’s blue eyes grow cold and distant. The events after that…

  Not fair, any of it. But did that mean that Cheryl had the right to rob Brandi’s joy?

  “You know, hot dogs over a bonfire sound good tonight. Don’t you think?” Brock gave Brandi a sympathetic grin, certain she’d understand that his switch in topics really wasn’t a turn at all.

  “She doesn’t strike me as the hot dog type.”

  He laughed and shrugged. “Her choice. Not our problem. Tell E that we’ll have a spread down by the pond around six. Maybe the fire will thaw the ice this time around.”

  Brandi chuckled. It sounded more like not likely than hope. Probably because Brandi knew how hard it could be to reach a wounded heart.

  So hard, in fact, that
most didn’t even try.

  ~8~

  Cheryl leaned back against the passenger seat as Ethan killed the engine. She wasn’t up for this.

  “Please, Sherbert. You’ll like Brandi. She’s amazing.”

  Of course she was. “Stop calling me that.”

  “Look.” Ethan moved so that he could face her. “I know I threw a ton of stuff on you today, and I probably should have told you before. But that’s not Brandi’s fault. It’s mine. I just didn’t know how to handle this…and I really want you there.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Ethan. You called because you need me to step in with Nana. Wanting me at your wedding wasn’t even a thought in your head.”

  His expression fell, as if her words hurt. “Cheryl, you’re my sister—my only family besides Nana. How could you think that?”

  “We could count ten years’ worth of conversations on two hands, Ethan. Don’t pretend like we’re close.”

  “Are you okay with that?”

  Cheryl looked away. Outside her window, Brock moved down by the pond. Stacking wood, getting ready to light a fire. At least she wouldn’t be the third wheel.

  To her left, the door to the lodge opened, catching Cheryl’s attention. A woman with rich toffee-colored skin and thick brown hair carried a tray piled with hot dog fixings.

  “Is that her?”

  Ethan moved again, ducking to see out Cheryl’s window.

  “Yeah. That’s Brandi.” A love-sick smile carried through his voice.

  Yuck. And so not fair. “Kind of young, don’t you think?”

  He snorted. “Twenty-five.”

  Cheryl raised an eyebrow on him. “That means that she would have been learning to read when you were learning to drive.”

  “Good grief, Cheryl.” Ethan shook his head and opened his car door. “Is being difficult one of your life goals? Brandi’s awesome, and I love her.”

  His car door slapped shut before she reached to unlatch her seat belt. She watched while he strode toward the perky girl who smiled all gooey at him. After taking the tray from her hands, he leaned to kiss her. A very Leave It to Beaver moment.