Outside, she walked along the sidewalk in front of the hospital, her mind wandering. She was almost past him when she heard him clear his throat. He was seated on a bench; despite the heat, he wore the same kind of long-sleeved shirt he always did.
“Hi, Ronnie,” Pastor Harris said.
“Oh… hi.”
“I was hoping to visit with your father.”
“He’s sleeping,” she said. “But you can go up there if you want.”
He tapped his cane, buying time. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through, Ronnie.”
She nodded, finding it hard to concentrate. Even this simple conversation seemed impossibly arduous.
Somehow, she got the sense he felt the same way.
“Would you pray with me?” His blue eyes held a plea. “I like to pray before I see your dad. It… helps me.”
Her surprise gave way to an unexpected sense of relief.
“I’d like that very much,” she answered.
She began to pray regularly after that, and she found that Pastor Harris was right.
Not that she believed her dad would be cured. She’d spoken to the doctor and seen the scans, and after their conversation, she’d left the hospital and gone to the beach and cried for an hour while her tears dried in the wind.
She didn’t believe in miracles. She knew that some people did, but she couldn’t force herself to think that her dad was somehow going to make it. Not after what she’d seen, not after the way the doctor had explained it. The cancer, she’d learned, had metastasized from his stomach to his pancreas and lungs, and holding out hope seemed… dangerous. She couldn’t imagine having to come to terms a second time with what was happening to him. It was hard enough already, especially late at night when the house was quiet and she was alone with her thoughts.
Instead she prayed for the strength she needed to help her dad; she prayed for the ability to stay positive in his presence, instead of crying every time she saw him. She knew he needed her laughter and he needed the daughter she’d recently become.
The first thing she did after bringing him home from the hospital was to take him to see the stained-glass window. She watched as he slowly approached the table, his eyes taking in everything, his expression one of shocked disbelief. She knew then that there had been moments when he’d wondered whether he would live long enough to see it through. More than anything, she wished Jonah had been there with them, and she knew her dad was thinking the same thing. It had been their project, the way they’d spent their summer. He missed Jonah terribly, he missed him more than anything, and though he turned away so she couldn’t see his face, she knew there were tears in his eyes as he made his way back to the house.
He called Jonah as soon as he got back inside. From the living room, Ronnie could hear her dad’s assurances that he was feeling better, and though Jonah would likely misinterpret that, she knew her dad had done the right thing. He wanted Jonah to remember the happiness of the summer, not dwell on what was coming next.
That night, as he sat on the couch, he opened the Bible and began to read. Ronnie now understood his reasons. She took a seat beside him and asked the question she’d been wondering about since she’d examined the book herself.
“Do you have a favorite passage?” she asked.
“Many,” he said. “I’ve always enjoyed the Psalms. And I always learn a lot from the letters of Paul.”
“But you don’t underline anything,” she said. When he raised an eyebrow, she shrugged. “I looked through it while you were gone and I didn’t see anything.”
He thought about his answer. “If I tried to underline something important, I’d probably end up underlining almost everything. I’ve read it so many times and I always learn something new.”
She studied him carefully. “I don’t remember you reading the Bible before…”
“That’s because you were young. I kept this Bible by my bed, and I’d read through parts of it once or twice a week. Ask your mom. She’ll tell you.”
“Have you read anything lately that you’d like to share?”
“Do you want me to?”
After she nodded, it took him only a minute to find the passage he wanted.
“It’s Galatians 5:22,” he said, pressing the Bible flat in his lap. He cleared his throat before he started. “But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
She watched him as he read the verse, remembering how she’d acted when she’d first arrived and how he’d responded to her anger. She remembered the times he’d refused to argue with her mom, even when she’d tried to provoke him. She’d seen that as weakness and often wished her father were different. But all at once, she knew she’d been wrong about everything.
Her dad, she saw now, had never been acting alone. The Holy Spirit had been controlling his life all along.
The package from her mom arrived the following day, and Ronnie knew her mom had done what she’d asked. She brought the large envelope to the kitchen table and tore it straight across the top, then dumped the contents on the table.
Nineteen letters, all of them sent by her dad, all of them ignored and unopened. She noted the various return addresses he’d scrawled across the top: Bloomington, Tulsa, Little Rock…
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t read them. Had she really been that angry? That bitter? That… mean? Looking back, she knew the answer, but it still didn’t make sense to her.
Thumbing through the letters, she looked for the first one he’d written. Like most of the others, it was printed neatly in black ink, and the postmark had faded slightly. Beyond the kitchen window, her dad was standing on the beach with his back to the house: Like Pastor Harris, he’d begun to wear long sleeves despite the summer heat.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the letter, and there, in the sunlight of the kitchen, she began to read.
Dear Ronnie,
I don’t even know how to start a letter like this, other than to say that I’m sorry.
That’s why I asked you to meet with me at the café, and what I wanted to tell you later that night when I called. I can understand why you didn’t come and why you didn’t take my call. You’re angry with me, you’re disappointed in me, and in your heart, you believe I’ve run away. In your mind, I’ve abandoned you and abandoned the family.
I can’t deny that things are going to be different, but I want you to know that if I were in your shoes, I would probably feel much the way you do. You have every right to be angry with me. You have every right to be disappointed in me. I suppose I’ve earned the feelings you have, and it’s not my intent to try to make excuses or cast any blame or try to convince you that you might understand it in time.
In all honesty, you might not, and that would hurt me more than you could ever imagine. You and Jonah have always meant so much to me, and I want you to understand that neither you nor Jonah were to blame for anything. Sometimes, for reasons that aren’t always clear, marriages just don’t work out. But remember this: I will always love you, and I will always love Jonah. I will always love your mother, and she will always have my respect. She is the giver of the two greatest gifts I’ve ever received, and she’s been a wonderful mother. In many ways, despite the sadness I feel that your mother and I will no longer be together, I still believe it was a blessing to have been married to her for as long as I was.
I know this isn’t much and it’s certainly not enough to make you understand, but I want you to know that I still believe in the gift of love. I want you to believe in it, too. You deserve that in your life, for nothing is more fulfilling than love itself.
I hope that in your heart, you’ll find some way to forgive me for leaving. It doesn’t have to be now, or even soon. But I want you to know this: When you’re finally ready, I’ll be waiting with open arms on what will be the happiest day of my life.
I love you,
Dad
“I feel like I should be doing more for him,” Ronnie said.
She was sitting on the back porch across from Pastor Harris. Her dad was inside sleeping, and Pastor Harris had come by with a pan of vegetable lasagna that his wife had made. It was mid-September and still hot during the day, though there’d been an evening a couple of days earlier that hinted at the crispness of autumn. It lasted only a single night; in the morning the sun was hot, and Ronnie had found herself strolling the beach and wondering whether the night before had been an illusion.
“You’re doing all you can,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s anything more you could be doing.”
“I’m not talking about taking care of him. Right now, he doesn’t even need me that much. He still insists on cooking, and we go for walks on the beach. We even flew kites yesterday. Aside from the pain medication, which makes him really tired, he’s pretty much the same as before he went to the hospital. It’s just…”
Pastor Harris’s gaze was full of understanding. “You want to do something special. Something that means a lot to him.”
She nodded, glad that he was here. In the past few weeks, Pastor Harris had become not only her friend, but the only person she could really talk to.
“I have faith that God will show you the answer. But you have to understand that sometimes it takes a while to be able to recognize what God wants you to do. That’s how it often is. God’s voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell.”
She smiled, thinking she’d grown fond of their conversations. “You sound like you talk from experience.”
“I love your dad, too. And like you, I wanted to do something special for him.”
“And God answered?”
“God always answers.”
“Was it a whisper or a church bell?”
For the first time in a long while, she saw a touch of mirth in his eyes. “A church bell, of course. God knows I’m hard of hearing these days.”
“What are you going to do?”
He sat up straighter in his chair. “I’m going to install the window in the church,” he said. “A benefactor showed up out of the blue last week, and not only offered to cover the rest of the repairs in full, but already had all the work crews lined up. They start work again tomorrow morning.”
Over the next couple of days, Ronnie listened for church bells, but all she heard were seagulls. When listening for whispers, she heard nothing at all. It didn’t necessarily surprise her—the answer hadn’t come to Pastor Harris right away, either—but she hoped the answer would come before it was too late.
Instead, she simply continued on as she had before. She helped her dad when he needed help, let him be when he didn’t, and tried to make the most of the remaining time they had together. That weekend, because her dad was feeling stronger, they made an outing to Orton Plantation Gardens, near Southport. It wasn’t far from Wilmington and Ronnie had never been before, but as they pulled onto the graveled road that led to the original mansion, built in 1735, she already knew it was going to be a memorable day. It was the kind of place that seemed lost in time. The flowers were no longer in bloom, but as they walked among the giant oaks with their low-slung branches draped in Spanish moss, Ronnie thought that she’d never been anywhere more beautiful.
Strolling under the trees, her arm looped through her father’s, they talked about the summer. For the first time, Ronnie told her dad about her relationship with Will; she told him about the first time they went fishing and the times they went mudding, she described his fancy dive from the cabana roof, and she told him all about the fiasco at the wedding. She didn’t, however, tell him what happened on the day before he left for Vanderbilt or the things she’d said to him. She wasn’t ready for that; the wound was still too raw. And as always when she talked, her dad listened quietly, rarely interjecting, even when she trailed off. She liked that about him. No, change that, she thought. She loved that about him, and she found herself wondering who she would have become had she never come down for the summer.
Afterward, they drove into Southport and had dinner at one of the small restaurants overlooking the harbor. She knew her dad was getting tired, but the food was good and they split a hot-fudge brownie at the end of the meal.
It was a good day, a day she knew she’d always remember. But as she sat alone in the living room after her dad had gone to bed, she once again found herself thinking that there was something more she could do for him.
The following week, the third week of September, she began to notice that her dad was getting worse. He now slept until midmorning and took another nap in the afternoon. Though he’d been taking naps regularly, the naps began to lengthen, and he went to bed earlier in the evenings. As she cleaned the kitchen for want of anything better to do, she realized after adding it all up that he was now sleeping more than half the day.
It only got worse after that. With every passing day, he slept a little longer. He also wasn’t eating enough. Instead, he moved his food around the plate and made a show of eating; when she scraped the remains into the garbage, she realized he’d only been nibbling. He was losing weight steadily now, and every time she blinked, she had the sense that her dad was getting smaller. Sometimes she was frightened by the thought that one day there would be nothing left of him at all.
September came to an end. In the mornings, the salty smell of the ocean was kept at bay by the winds from the mountains in the eastern part of the state. It was still hot, high season for hurricanes, but as yet the coast of North Carolina had been spared.