“Buddy!” Rudy gripped Dylan’s shoulder. His glasses were askew. His chin quivered. “We were so frightened when we heard. Are you all right?”
Dylan nodded.
Rudy carefully hugged him.
Tess straightened Dylan’s blankets and hair, her lips tight. That subtle sign was a giveaway. It informed Leah that seeing Dylan, injured and lying in a hospital bed, was supremely difficult for Tess.
“What do you need?” Rudy asked. “I’ll go get it for you. Pizza? Cheez-Its? Gatorade? One of those really big cups of Coke?” He held his hands about a yard apart to indicate the Coke’s size. “You name it.”
“Rudy.” Tess heaved an exasperated sigh. “We don’t yet know how Dylan is receiving his nutrition, since he has a tube in his throat. Nor can we offer food and drinks his doctors might have forbidden him to have.”
Rudy winked at Dylan. “If you want a giant Coke, I’ll get you one.”
“Rudy!”
A nurse had left paper and a pen on Dylan’s bed tray. He pulled the tray closer and wrote, Thanks, but I’m good right now. I’m glad you’re here.
“Leah?” Tess asked. “May I have a word?”
Leah followed her into the sterile-smelling hallway.
“Thank you for contacting us,” Tess said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Rudy and I will stay here with him if you need to take a break. Or go home and get some of his things.”
“I don’t plan to go anywhere for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m wearing work-out clothes, so I’ll just sleep here on the futon.”
“When will you be making a trip home?”
“In the morning?”
“We’ll come back then to relieve you.” Tess captured a renegade strand of gray hair and forced it behind her ear. “Today must have been awful for you.”
“It was. I watched him struggle to breathe. I . . . thought he might die.”
Today, Leah had glimpsed what the world might have been like if death had stolen her brother. Now she could understand a glimmer of what Tess must have felt when death had stolen her son and what Sebastian must have felt when death had stolen his mother.
Tess took hold of Leah’s hand, and the comfort only grandmothers can provide flowed from Tess to Leah.
Because of what Leah had been through with her parents, the brand of love she valued most was the brand of love that stayed. That showed up over and over, year after year.
That was the kind of love Tess and Rudy had given to her and her brother.
It was no longer possible for Leah to view Tess with the same wholehearted trust that she had before. But even if she could not forget what Tess had done, she could forgive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It was Dylan’s closet that precipitated Leah’s breakdown.
The morning after his accident, Tess and Rudy arrived at the hospital just as they’d said they would. Leah returned home to shower, change, and gather the items Dylan had requested.
To her astonishment, she’d slept well last night on the hard futon. She and Dylan had shared a room when he’d been small, so sharing a room with him last night had wrapped her in a blanket of nostalgia. Even the middle-of-the-night visits from the nurses had soothed her because it had been reassuring to know she wasn’t the only one in charge of Dylan’s well-being. Trained professionals were watching over him!
It wasn’t until she opened his closet in order to pack some of his clothes and smelled the familiar scent of his soap that a wave of emotion swelled up and enveloped her.
Every article was so him. So familiar.
Her brother was going to live.
Thank God, her brother was going to live. Her gratitude was too enormous to contain.
Knowing everything she knew now . . . if she could go back to the hospital nursery on the day of her birth and change the course of events . . . would she choose life with the Brooksides over life with Dylan?
She would not.
It wasn’t even a close call. No set of circumstances could tempt her to give her brother up.
Tears slid down her cheeks.
Tess’s action had impacted Leah’s life in drastic ways. It was easy to think that Tess had entered in and mucked up what God had ordained. But could Tess’s error in judgment actually have been used by God?
Could something happen in a way that was so strange and amazing that it could only have been Him?
In recent days, she’d been disappointed by what she’d perceived as God’s inattention. Dylan’s accident revealed that God had not been inattentive. He’d simply been working in ways she hadn’t understood.
Yesterday, when Dylan raced off in his truck, her false sense of control had been stripped from her. She’d been powerless.
Yet God had not been.
He’d brought Sebastian to her months ago. When Dylan overheard her switched-at-birth secret, God had placed Sebastian there. When Dylan collided with that tree, God ensured that Sebastian possessed the skills needed to preserve her brother’s life.
Despite her quibbles over some of the twists and turns her life had taken, everything was, ultimately, exactly as it should be.
Praise you, God. Thank you.
She cried and praised Him, praised Him and cried.
The woman who delighted in tidy math quotients enjoyed feeling as though she understood God’s plan. She liked clear guidance and guarantees. It made her comfortable to believe she had a degree of power over her brother and her relationship with Sebastian.
But God was bigger than her wishes. His methods didn’t always suit her. Often, He didn’t make her privy to His ways. Sometimes, she couldn’t fathom His plan. And in the end, she had no power to wield.
He was the only guarantee she was going to receive.
Fortunately, He was the only guarantee she needed.
Her task: to surrender.
If God could accomplish His will for Dylan so beautifully, then He could accomplish His will for her and Sebastian, too.
Still sniffling, she texted Sebastian.
Meet me at the garden next to the hospital in an hour?
Years ago, the industrial building adjacent to the hospital had been demolished. A husband had purchased the lot in order to show his appreciation to the doctors and nurses who’d saved his wife’s life. He’d turned the rubble into a lavish garden for hospital staff, patients, and community members.
Sebastian responded immediately.
See you then.
Sebastian had been trying not to sink into depression over Leah.
Her brother was recovering, and so, of course, Dylan was her priority. The fact that she hadn’t asked to speak with him until now didn’t necessarily mean that she was fine with their breakup. He’d been telling himself that she might still be willing to take him back.
He hadn’t convinced himself.
Fighting down stress, he sat on a wooden bench in the garden, elbows planted on his knees.
It scared him to want something as much as he wanted Leah. Especially because he wasn’t sure what to do to convince her to give him another chance.
If you want to express how you feel about me, I recommend that you tell me, she’d said to him once.
So he’d decided to do just that. To tell her. That’s what he’d shown up at her house the other morning to do. But then Dylan had injured himself, and the time hadn’t been right since for an honest conversation between them.