Devoted Heart Read online

“Except . . .” the clerk said.

  We both waited.

  “We don’t accept debit cards.”

  “You don’t accept. . .”

  He shrugged sympathetically. “Sorry. Do you have something else?”

  I traded looks with Mary.

  “But. . .” she said, “that’s supposed to be as good as cash.”

  “Almost.”

  “Almost?” I said.

  He nodded.

  I wracked my brain, searching for a solution. Then I had it. “But if we went to an ATM and brought you cash, you’d accept that.”

  The kid agreed. “Absolutely.”

  “Do you know where the nearest—”

  “Back over in Departures.”

  “Great.” I turned to Mary and motioned to a nearby bench. “Stay here, I’ll grab the cash and be right back.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  I took the card but only managed a couple steps before the kid called out, “Of course you’ll need a second piece of ID.”

  “Like my driver’s license,” Mary said and started digging into her billfold.

  “Actually, no. We need something with a more recent date. You know, to show proof of current residency.”

  “Current residency?” I said.

  “Like a cable bill or a utility bill or—”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  He shrugged. “It stinks, but they don’t want folks driving off and disappearing with $30,000 cars.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “I get it.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Mary said.

  I was stumped. “So now what?” I turned to Mary. “Another rose?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.” She tried resisting a yawn but failed.

  “Tired?”

  “Nothing a week’s sleep won’t cure.”

  If I was tired I knew she was exhausted. “I’ll call a shuttle to one of the hotels.” I threw a look to the clerk. “They’ll take a debit card.”

  He nodded. “Except. . .”

  “Except what?”

  “All the hotels with airport shuttles around here, they’re pretty expensive. The cheaper ones are farther in town.”

  “We’ll take what we can get.”

  “Hold on.” The kid picked up the phone. “I’ll ask our shuttle guy to take you.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He explained, “Not much business this time of night and it’s only a few miles out of his way.” Before I could ask, he answered, “No charge.”

  As he began speaking into the phone, I heard Mary give a loud sniff. I turned to see her nose in the air.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded and gave another sniff.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Do you smell something? I thought I smelled something. Like flowers. Don’t you smell that?”

  I saw her trying not to smile. Then I understood. “You mean like . . . roses?”

  “Oh, right. Roses. That’s what I smell.” She gave another sniff.

  I gave her a look.

  “I love that smell. Don’t you?”

  I’d not give her the satisfaction of an answer—though I couldn’t resist the temptation of leaning down and gently kissing her on the forehead.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  N ice thing about these older cars,” Mary said as she leaned her head on my shoulder, “they still have bench seats.”

  I motioned to the dashboard. “And the radio works. Mostly.”

  “I didn’t know so many Mexican songs used accordions.”

  “Sure you can’t get another station?”

  She punched the buttons, worked the dial. Everything was frozen.

  “You know you can turn it off,” I said.

  She smiled and leaned back in the seat. “Think of it as a cultural education.”

  “Right,” I sighed.

  We’d just turned onto the 101 and were heading southeast. Fresno was two and a half hours away—Charlie’s place an hour and some change after that. It was barely after eleven in the morning. Even with the short winter day we’d make it before nightfall.

  The clerk at the car rental had been true to his word. The shuttle driver picked us up and found us a good, cheap hotel. Well, cheap anyway. Which was okay for us. All we needed was a place to crash for a few hours.

  “As long as we’re bigger than the cockroaches,” Mary had joked.

  And she got her wish . . . for the most part.

  After waking and forcing down what the hotel lobby swore was coffee, we checked the internet for used car lots. It was Mary’s idea and it was a good one. If we couldn’t rent a car, we’d buy one.

  So, we’d hit the nearest ATM, called Uber for a ride, and ninety minutes later we were the proud owners of an ancient (Mary called it ‘vintage’), turn of the century, Chevy Impala.

  “Just right for starting a family,” the semi-toothed dealer had insisted as I signed the papers.

  It wasn’t much on gas and by the faint, blue haze I saw when starting it up in the lot, I figured it was equally bad on oil. But the tires were good and for $570 it was a deal.

  “See,” Mary said, running her hand over the sun-cracked dashboard as I helped her into the front seat. “We’re already a two-car family.”

  “I don’t think it can handle the drive home.”

  “So we’ll sell it back to the nice man when we leave.”

  “I doubt he’ll take it.”

  “There’s always the Smithsonian.” She gave a slight gasp and I saw her wince at the beginning of another contraction.

  “They’re getting worse,” I said. “And coming faster.”

  “Relax.” She breathed deeply, blowing through it. “We’ve got over a month to go.”

  “You sure?”

  “You worry too much.”

  “Everyone has a gift.”

  Once we were out of the city, we drove through gentle, rolling hills. The good news was the accordions had faded into static. The bad news was they were suddenly replaced by rap.

  I sighed wearily and Mary gave me a look.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “More culture.”

  She reached over and snapped it off.

  “What? So now you’ve got taste?”

  “I’ve got something better.” She pulled out her phone. “I’ve got i-Tunes.” She turned it on. Or at least tried.

  “What’s up?” I asked

  “It’s dead.”

  “You charged it,” I said. “Last night. You plugged it into the same bathroom outlet I did.”

  She tried again with similar results.

  “Here.” I pulled out my phone and handed it to her.

  She took it, then looked up. “4%.”

  “4%?”

  “Guess that particular outlet took the day off.”

  I gave another sigh. “We get what we paid for.”

  The two and a half hour drive turned to three, then three and a quarter. I’d obviously forgotten the number of rest stops we’d have to make. Like so many times before, we talked about the future . . . where we’d live, the type of apartment, how Dad would get me a job back at the mill. But most of all we talked about the baby. Where he’d go to school, how we’d save for college. And, yes, how exactly do you raise God’s Son?

  We also talked about the angel’s message: “God will give him the throne of his father David.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “How can we have a king when we live in a democracy?”

  “How do you have a baby when you’ve never had sex?

  “Touché,” I said.

  “Of course, if he’s a king with a throne and a palace and everything, maybe we won’t have to look for a place.”

  “You think he’ll let us live with him?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  “I’ll be a mom. I’ll know how to guilt him.”

  “Not exactly
your style.”

  “It’s genetic. I’ll get the hang of it.”

  About the time we hit Fresno, the rain had started to fall. We pulled into a Denny’s for an early dinner. I felt bad putting down the Swiss steak, fries and cherry cobbler. But not bad enough to join Mary with her Cheerios and Rice Chex—her staple the last few weeks thanks to the acid reflux.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said, as they brought out a second helping of cobbler.

  I nodded, then added, “Sure, you don’t want to share?”

  She cut me a look.

  I chuckled as I dug in. “There’s an old proverb,” I said. “When God created woman, he created the fairest, most beautiful, most lovely of all creation . . . thank God I’m a man.”

  That earned me a pretty good punch to the shoulder.

  Since neither of our phones had juice, I found an old pay phone across the street at a gas station. There, in the driving rain, I gave Charlie’s mom a call, letting her know we’d be there soon.

  “Oh, thank God, thank God,” she said.

  I could hear it in her voice but asked anyway. “Is he getting worse?”

  “It’ll just be getting dark when you get here. I’ll fix up the guest room so you can spend the night.”

  “No, that’s okay, we don’t want to be a—”

  “No, no it’s not a bother. He’d want that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Let me give you directions. Do you have a pen?”

  “Got one. Go ahead.”

  “It’s kind of complicated.”

  “Go ahead, I’ve got a pretty good memory.”

  “Well, okay, then.”

  And that’s when things started to go sideways . . .

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Babe!”

  “I know, I know,” I said as we inched through another deserted crossroad. I leaned on the dash, squinting passed the wipers into the dark. “There should be signs. Why aren’t there signs?” We’d been traveling, going on two and a half hours, now. Mary’s water had broken a little earlier. We didn’t panic, but knew it best to retrace our steps back to Fresno. But things looked different in the dark, not to mention the pounding rain. I wasn’t lost, but not exactly sure where we were, either.

  “Joey. I need out!”

  “What?”

  “Now! Stop the car, let me out.”

  “It’s pitch black out there. And the rain—”

  “Now. Now!” There was an urgency in her voice, a panic I’d never heard before.

  “Alright, alright.” I pulled to the edge of the road, a steep gravel embankment. I hadn’t even stopped before she had the door open and was scrambling out.

  “Mary!” I shoved the car into Park and threw open my door. “Mary!” I raced around the headlights and down the embankment. She was where I found her in the grass . . . on all fours.

  I kneeled to join her. “What’s going on?”

  “No!” she shouted, deep and guttural. “Stay away!”

  “But—”

  “Don’t touch me!” It was part-cry, part-growl as she tossed her head like a wild animal.

  “Are you, is it time?”

  She let go a stifled cry. Tried swallowing it back, but couldn’t.

  “Mary!”

  Another cry. So eerie, it gave me chills.

  “We’ve got to get back to Fresno!” I reached for her. “A hospital!”

  “No!”

  “What do you mean, no? Here, let me help—”

  She slapped my hands away, arms flying, landing punches wherever she could.

  “Mary!”

  “No! No!

  “Don’t be crazy. Get back in the car. Get back in the—”

  “NOOO . . .” The shout took everything she had, left her panting for breath.

  “Alright, alright.”

  “Don’t make me sit, I can’t sit!”

  “It’s raining. You can’t stay out here in the rain.”

  “No!” She began crawling away.”

  “Alright, alright. Tell me what to do. What am I supposed—”

  “I don’t—” She swallowed back the pain, forced it out in breaths. I wanted to hold her, to somehow absorb it, but she would have none of it.

  “Six weeks,” I said, repeating what I’d said when her water first broke. “He’s not supposed to come for another six weeks.”

  She answered between pants. “You . . . tell him . . . that . . .”

  “You can’t do it here, not on the side of the road.”

  “You . . . tell . . .” She dropped her head, fell to her forearms, shouted and groaned.

  I rose to my feet, searched for any signs of civilization—homes, barns, anything. Nothing except an old shed, forty, fifty yards off to the side, barely visible in the edge of my headlights.

  “Can you stand?”

  “I’m not getting back in the car. I . . . can’t.”

  “No, no, I get that.” I dropped back down into her line of vision. Her hair was soaked, face dripping. Her mouth hung open as if in a drugged stupor. “Mary look at me.”

  She turned away.

  “No, me. Look at me.” I scrambled around until I was back in her sight. “I’m here, focus on me.” She tried looking away again. “No, me. Me. I’m here for you. Just look at me. Mary. . .”

  Her eyes shifted to mine, dazed, barely comprehending. I spoke slow and clear. “There’s a shed, just over there. It’s not good to be outside like this. We have to get out of the rain.”

  If she understood, she didn’t show it.

  “Can you stand?”

  She continued to stare.

  “I’m going to help you stand. We’ll stand and I’ll help you walk to the shed. Okay?”

  She closed her eyes, gave the faintest nod.

  “Great.” I reached for her hands and she panicked again, slapping them away.

  “It’s okay, it’s alright. We’re not getting back into the car. I promise. We’re just going to walk over to that shed, get you out of the rain.”

  I reached out again. This time she let me take her hands. They were cold and wet. And they were trembling.

  “Alright now, I’m going to help you to your feet, okay? Just keep your eyes on me and I’ll help you stand.”

  Together, we got her back onto her feet—weak but standing.

  “Good, good. Now we’re going to walk over to the shed.”

  She nodded.

  I remembered the moments after Charlie got hit—me on my knees, reciting our training. I did it with Mary. “Let it wash over you. Don’t fight the pain, let it pass through. Focus on me. Let it pass through.”

  She swallowed, nodded.

  “Good girl. Alright, then. Just walk with me. I’ll take a step and you take it with me. Okay?”

  Another nod.

  “Here we go.” I took a half step backwards toward the shed, gently pulling on her to follow. She did. I took another step and she followed. And another. She started to look down. “No, no, no. Keep your eyes on me. I’ll get you there, but you got to trust me. Okay? Trust me.”

  She nodded and we started again. “That’s it, good, good.”

  We were half way there when another contraction hit. She pulled away, doubling over. I tried hanging on but she fought me. “No . . . No!

  I let go, gently easing her back to her hands and knees.

  She groaned, swallowed another cry.

  “Let it go,” I said, “let it go.”

  But she wouldn’t. Too stubborn, too modest, or both.

  I waited, nearly a minute.

  Then, shaking, but with raw determination, she willed herself to rise. Once up, we resumed walking, eyes locked onto one another, step after step, like some slow, primeval dance.

  We arrived at the wooden shed. I pushed against the door with my back, grateful that after a slight catch, it creaked opened. There was no missing the scurry of what had to be rats. I caught the sweet smell of rotting hay and a sickly
trace of old urine—again, probably the rats. The unpainted planks that made up the walls were weathered with just enough cracks between them to let in the faint glow of my headlights. The shed would do nothing to keep out the cold, but it would definitely keep us dry and safe from any wild animals in the area.

  I found a corner with relatively clean hay. After stomping around it to scare off any vermin, I tried easing Mary down onto her back.

  “No,” she groaned, “not my back.”

  Before I could stop her, she rolled onto all fours and then began rocking back and forth.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let me go back and grab you some dry clothes.”

  She gave no answer. When I was sure she was safe, I ran back through the rain to the car. I stepped over the growing trickle of muddy water at the base of the embankment and scrambled up to the car. I opened the door and reached over the front seat to grab our backpacks. Hers weighed a ton. Mine, half that. I dragged them to the front, climbed out, threw one over each shoulder, and kicked the door shut. I’d barely slid down the embankment before, and I know this sounds crazy, but I swore I heard voices. Almost like singing. I turned, looked around, but figured it was a trick of the wind and rain.

  I waded back through the wet grass and entered the shed. Mary was still on her

  hands and knees.

  “Alright,” I said, dropping the backpacks to the floor. “Let’s see what we have.” I dug through hers until I found a couple sweaters and a pair of jeans. “Here we go.”

  But when I brought them to her and kneeled down she pulled away. “No . . .”

  “You’ve got to stay warm,” I said. “Your dress is soaked and—”

  “No . . .” she growled.

  I watched, helpless and unnerved. As a soldier I was trained to evaluate, take charge, rectify. But this . . . watching the love of my life crawl on her hands and knees, suffering like some wounded animal.

  Another thirty seconds passed. When the contraction ended she was shivering harder.

  An idea struck me. If she wouldn’t change clothes, I could at least build a fire. There was plenty of straw for kindling. I could punch a hole in the roof for ventilation. But start it with what? I had no matches, no lighter, nothing that could— Yes, I did have a lighter, in the car. I grabbed a handful of hay and after more stomping to scare away the rats, I raced back into the rain.