A Love Like Ours Read online

  “Nope,” she replied with false innocence. “I’ve never heard that before. Not ever.”

  He gave her a half smile. “The ‘not ever’ is laying it on too thick.”

  “I never lay anything on too thick. Not ever.”

  They both watched Hank Stephens, Jake’s regular jockey, ride by on Firewheel. They’d fitted the horse with blinkers, but even so, Firewheel presented challenges. She and Jake had been discussing the colt’s strengths and weaknesses in depth before the latest round of precipitation had arrived.

  The sudden sound of Lyndie’s cell phone ringing jarred the silence. She fished it from her pocket. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey. Mollie’s cold has gotten worse.”

  The words affected Lyndie like the low and ominous tolling of a bell. They’d noticed Mollie’s cold yesterday morning and had been keeping a close eye on it since.

  “Your father and I,” her mom continued, “just finished checking her in at the hospital.” Which meant that Mollie had pneumonia. For as long as Lyndie could remember, she’d lived in fear of that word. Pneumonia. It had the power to do terrifying damage to Mollie’s poor lungs. At any time, it could steal her sister’s life.

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital in thirty minutes, Mom.”

  “See you then.”

  They disconnected. Jake had turned to face her fully. The line stitching between his brows told her he knew the news wasn’t good.

  “My parents have taken Mollie to the hospital.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She has pneumonia.” Her words hung in the air. “I need to head to the hospital.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Jake, no. You have work to do here—”

  “Nothing I can’t delegate.”

  Lyndie knew from experience that Mollie’s situation would be heavy to deal with. Too heavy for him in his current mental state. She didn’t want his kindness toward her to come at the expense of his own improvement.

  Implacability marked the line of his jaw. “I’m coming.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Jake expected Lyndie’s parents to react to his appearance in Mollie’s hospital room with polite confusion. They didn’t. Mike and Karen welcomed him as if they’d been expecting him, as if he were family.

  Lyndie sat on the side of Mollie’s bed and picked up her sister’s hand. “Hey, Mols. I’m here, sweetheart. I brought Jake with me.”

  The rest of them stood near the foot of the mattress.

  “What’s the story?” Lyndie asked her parents.

  They talked about liters of oxygen and breathing treatments and Albuterol and other things Jake didn’t understand.

  The previous times Jake had seen Mollie, there’d been a peacefulness about her. He’d seen her respond in clear ways to her family. At times, it had seemed as if she was listening.

  This evening she appeared to be completely unaware of them. Her limbs moved restlessly within her pink pajamas. She’d set her mouth in a sad, pained line, and the sound of her labored breathing rasped through the space.

  To see Mollie like this, in this impersonal hospital room, made Jake sick to his stomach. What if she died? Lyndie would be heartbroken. Panic began to close in on him—

  A hand squeezed his forearm, and he looked down into Karen’s eyes. Her short blond haircut and colorful sweatsuit were as familiar as the look of steady compassion on her face. “God is good, Jake,” she said simply.

  What? he wanted to growl. Have you taken a look at your daughter? The daughter who would have been born healthy and full of promise except for a doctor’s tragic mistake?

  “God is good all the time,” she insisted. “Amen, Mike?”

  “Amen,” her husband answered.

  “It’s the truth we’ve always hung on to,” Karen stated.

  He didn’t know how she could say such things, let alone believe them.

  Jake had never been any good at pretense. If he had been, people would have liked him better. In this room with Mollie, all pretense had been stripped back. None of them could maintain any falseness here. Instead of revealing this family’s fear, the circumstance revealed that this family—who loved the sick girl on the bed—had chosen to place their whole hearts in God’s hands.

  “Have either of you eaten lunch?” Lyndie asked her parents.

  “Not yet,” Mike answered.

  “Why don’t you head down to the cafeteria and grab something? Jake and I will stay here with Mollie.”

  “It’s not a bad idea, babe,” Mike said. “Let’s get some food in us.”

  “All right.” Karen slipped her purse strap over her shoulder, then paused. “A word of prayer before we go?”

  The next thing Jake knew, he was holding hands with Karen and Mike. Him, the man who didn’t hold hands with people other than Lyndie and didn’t pray.

  “Lord God,” Karen said, “you are good. I praise you for your goodness. We place all our burdens on you.”

  Jake kept his eyes shut and focused on breathing. He grew very aware of his hands and tried not to flinch them, tighten them, or make them too loose.

  “Please watch over Mollie,” she continued. “Please comfort her and bring her peace. Work through these wonderful nurses and doctors. I pray that you’ll heal Mollie’s pneumonia as you have so many times before. But most of all, I place my faith in thy will, not my will.”

  Karen squeezed his hand when the prayer ended. Then she and Mike made their way out.

  Lyndie massaged Mollie’s forearm.

  “Do you . . .” He had a hard time finishing the sentence.

  Lyndie glanced at him inquiringly.

  “Do you think she could have caught this when she came out to Lone Star?”

  She shook her head. “She hasn’t been to the track in over a week. She just came down with this yesterday.”

  He scowled.

  “When Mollie gets sick, we try not to beat ourselves up over it or angst about how and where she came into contact with germs,” she said gently. “The fact is that we all have lives. We live them. We take Mollie places with us. We’re as careful as we can possibly be, but we can’t keep her in a bubble.”

  “When was she in the hospital last?”

  “She’s had a run of good health. It’s been six months or so since she was in the hospital. We were still in California.”

  “Did she stay in the hospital very long the last time?”

  “Five days. When she comes down with pneumonia, she can be in the hospital anywhere from a few days up to two weeks.”

  He couldn’t imagine how her family could stand to see her like this for two weeks in a row. “Will you and your parents stay here with her all day?”

  “Yes, and one of us will sleep here. Whenever she’s in the hospital, the three of us take shifts so that someone’s always here. It’s important to us that she has family close.”

  With Mollie’s illness on Lyndie’s plate, he didn’t want Lyndie having to worry about work, too. “Take tomorrow off.”

  Her face softened. “That’s really nice of you, but I still plan to come to work.”

  “No. Don’t.”

  Mollie moaned and moved her head from side to side. Lyndie bent near to her sister’s ear and soothed her with quietly spoken words.

  Didn’t Lyndie realize that she could catch pneumonia herself? The possibility sent fear into him even as he told himself that he was overreacting. He had no grounds to protect Lyndie from her own sister, who needed her.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday. So if I don’t work tomorrow, I won’t be back at work until Monday,” Lyndie said.

  “That’s fine. Just—just take care of your own health.” Next to Lyndie’s well-being, he cared not at all whether Silver Leaf ever won another race.

  “I will. Thank you for bringing me here. Really, thank you.”

  Was he supposed to say “you’re welcome” when he’d done nothing?

  “My parents will return in a mi
nute. Go back to the track, okay? I don’t want your work to pile up because you were kind enough to bring me here.” It went unsaid, the fact that they’d shared dinners for a long string of nights. They wouldn’t be eating together again tonight.

  “What can I do to help?” he asked.

  Long seconds passed, painful with the sound of Mollie’s wheezing. “Would you mind going by my parents’ house tonight around nine and checking on Grandpa Harold?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “If you could just hang out with him until he’s ready to turn in, that would be great. It shouldn’t take long, he’s not a night owl. Oh, and he likes to take a glass of ice water and a newspaper to bed with him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jake?” She extended her free hand to him. For the first time since receiving the phone call about Mollie, he could see a vulnerability in her.

  He took her hand immediately and kissed the top of it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  When Harold answered the door and found Jake standing on the porch, he gave him a long once-over. “Women,” the old man stated.

  “Sir?”

  “Did one of the women put you up to coming here to fuss over me?”

  “I’m not planning on fussing.”

  “Was it Lyndie or Karen?”

  “Lyndie.”

  Shaking his head, Harold led Jake into the living room where he had the Golf Channel playing. Harold sat in his recliner and gestured for Jake to take Mike’s recliner. “How’s Mollie doing?”

  Jake didn’t think “terrible” would put Mollie’s grandpa at ease. “They’ve gotten her settled.”

  “They’re all there with her?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They watched TV side-by-side for thirty minutes straight without exchanging a syllable.

  “A few good men,” Harold said during a commercial break. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Do you mean the Marine Corps slogan?”

  “Yes. There was a captain who was looking for, in other words, trying to enlist a few good men back in 17 . . .”

  “1779.”

  “That’s right. What was the captain’s name?”

  “William Jones.”

  Harold nodded with satisfaction. “The Marines. They are good men.”

  “Yes.” The faces of the many Marines he’d known flashed through Jake’s memory, ending and slowing on the faces of Rob Panzetti, Justin Scott, and Dan Barnes. The remembrance brought the same twist of regret and guilt it always did.

  “I like you, Jake.” Harold stared at him, spinning the gold wedding band that he wore on his bony finger.

  “I like you, too, sir.”

  “I believe you understand me better than anyone I’ve met in the past twenty years.”

  Jake’s mouth hitched up in amusement. They were both former Marines, and they were both set in their ways. They had plenty in common.

  “I enjoyed watching your gray Thoroughbred race out there at Lone Star. Good, strong win. Do you think he has what it takes to contend in stakes races?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Actually, with Lyndie as his jockey, Jake did believe that Silver Leaf had the potential to compete in stakes. The problem? Lyndie jockeying Silver Leaf would likely kill him before any of them made it that far. Jake had been procrastinating even thinking about another race for Silver Leaf. Bo had not. His brother had come to him a few days ago to strategize Silver’s next outing. Bo and Meg had already chosen a race that looked ideal on paper and had every intention of entering Silver Leaf in it. During the meeting, Jake had mostly sat in silence. Because no matter how the race looked on paper, every time he thought about Lyndie riding in it, dread settled over him.

  Lyndie was an incredibly talented rider. And she loved riding. Really loved it. The chance to jockey Silver Leaf fulfilled a dream she’d had since childhood.

  If she’d had any other dream, he’d have moved heaven and earth to make it come true for her. But this dream . . . This dream endangered her, and he couldn’t reconcile himself to that.

  “Well, I’m done for the night.” Harold’s first attempt to push himself out of his recliner failed.

  Jake gripped Harold’s forearm and helped him up. The older man went into the kitchen and filled a glass with ice and water. “You’re welcome to stay and watch more golf.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll head home.” Jake used the remote to click off the TV. “Good night.”

  “Night, son.” Harold padded down the hallway.

  “Sir?” Jake lifted a newspaper off the kitchen table and handed it to him.

  A rusty laugh escaped Harold. “They don’t think I can get my own newspaper?” He made his way to his bedroom, shaking his head. “Women.”

  “There’s a very cool event coming up,” Uncle Danny told Amber on Monday at Cream or Sugar. “Very cool. It’s called the Color the World Happy 5K. Great place to meet singles.”

  Amber paused with a fork full of brown butter cake halfway to her mouth. “A 5K? Are you telling me that I’m going to have to run in order to meet single men?” What was the world coming to? Asking a non-running woman to run seemed like too high a price. She might prefer spinsterhood.

  “I’ve seen the 5K on quite a few of the dating sites. All the meet-up groups are getting teams together. It’s for a sweet cause, Amber.”

  “What cause?”

  “Color the World Happy is raising money in support of wildflowers.”

  “Huh?” She hadn’t been aware that wildflowers needed support.

  “Each team adopts a color, then all the team members dress in that color. You with me?”

  No. No, she was not.

  Danny nodded as if she was. “The girls and the dudes all wear costumes and paint their faces or use those fake tattoos on their arms. They run or walk the 5K, then there’s a big concert at the finish line.”

  Amber chewed her cake, her ego cramping at the idea of wearing green face paint while running a 5K with several other team members dressed in green. God, is this your plan for me? Face paint and stick-on tattoos? More likely, this is your way of telling me to stop. You’re letting me know that I’m wrong in thinking that you’re ready for me to date, right?

  What sort of men could she possibly hope to meet at the Color the World Happy race? They’d be sporty. Willing to dress in brightly colored costumes. Enthusiastic about the plight of the bluebonnet. “Danny, I have to go on one more date in order to fulfill my three dates in three months agreement with Lyndie.”

  He nodded at her, commiserating, his skin the color of a walnut.

  She would not be discouraged by the fact that Lyndie had found herself a boyfriend. Come hell or high water, she was determined to keep her end of the deal. “Do you think this 5K thing is my best bet?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Well.” She set down her fork, resignation stealing over her. “Then I suppose I’m game.”

  The elevator binged. Jake exited it and walked down the hospital corridor, his chest tightening the same way it always did when he neared Mollie’s hospital room. He hated Mollie’s hospital room. He hated it just as much—more—than he’d hated the hospital rooms he’d been trapped in once, long ago. He’d rather be the one suffering than the one watching Lyndie’s sister suffer.

  Mollie had not improved. Since she’d been admitted five days before, she’d only worsened. For the past three mornings Lyndie had come to work. She’d spent the rest of her time at Mollie’s bedside, and some of her nights here, too.

  He and Lyndie had shared a couple of rushed dinners, but for the most part, he’d gone back to take-out meals and hours of insomnia inside his loft. And though Lyndie did a good job of covering it, Jake could see the strain on her face.

  Whenever he could get away from work, he drove to this suffocating building where fears sank their teeth into him, so he could be near her. She always thanked him for coming and always encouraged him not to stay too long. He didn’t know if
she wanted him gone because she worried for his sanity or because she needed a break from him or what. He only knew that if Lyndie was here, he wanted to be here, too.

  He pushed open Mollie’s door, pausing when he saw Karen sitting on one of the two crummy little sofas.

  She looked up from the pile of scrapbooking stuff on the coffee table, her face lighting up at the sight of him. “Come on in.”

  He approached, his attention sweeping the space. No offense to Karen, but if Lyndie wasn’t here, which she wasn’t, he didn’t want to spend any extra time in this room.

  Karen lifted her glasses onto the top of her head. “Lyndie should be here any minute. Will you sit down with me until she gets here?”

  He hesitated.

  “I could use the company,” she added.

  He let out his breath slowly and sat on the sofa next to the one Karen occupied.

  “Your sweet mom visited earlier. She brought all this.” Karen motioned to the side table. Snacks, plus a mini coffeemaker and all kinds of coffees and teas covered the surface.

  Jake nodded. His mother had never been the type of Christian who sat around expecting others to meet needs. She took care of the needs she saw. “How’s Mollie?”

  “About the same.” Lyndie and her parents talked about Mollie’s condition to each other and to the doctors like experts. They talked to him about it in simple terms. “She’s sleeping quietly at the moment. I’m relieved about that.”

  Mollie had an IV going and monitoring machines strapped to her. Her family had tucked her favorite pillow beneath her head and her favorite blanket over her. Mollie’s devotional book and two novels rested on her bedside table. Karen had brought in her scrapbooking stuff, Lyndie had brought sketch pads, colored pencils, ink pens. Mike had brought nothing, since all he needed was a remote control and one came with the room. The James family had moved in.

  “How are you?” Jake asked, focusing on Karen.

  “Doing okay.”

  Dark circles marked the skin beneath her eyes. She wore no makeup except for shiny pink lip gloss. Her hair looked as wrinkled as her purple shirt. Even so, she seemed at peace. Still. After days of listening to her daughter fighting for breath.