Chapter 30
30
A ugust
I ’m standing outside Gabby’s bedroom, waiting as she wipes the stage makeup from her face and transforms back into the girl I know best—the one who rarely remembers to wear her retainer without a reminder and prefers to stay in her pjs till noon. But when she opens the door wearing sleep pants with big strawberries printed all over them, I feel a physical ache in the center of my chest.
Sophie wore those pants the night she stayed over. She was up half the night eating chocolate and talking to me in those pants. She made me her famous scramble in those pants. And she’d finished narrating the last hours of Mistletoe Matrimony in those pants.
Gabby touches my arm, pulling me out of one memory and asking me to follow her into another. “You ready for this?”
The rush of nerves her question scatters throughout my body screams a resounding no , but I nod anyway. Because the persistent nudge I’ve felt since her performance overpowers this temporary discomfort. If Sophie could fight against her fear of the stage and G abby could fight against the ignorance of her brother ... then isn’t it time I fought against my fears, too?
Gabby stops at the end of the hall, and though I know she’s entered this bedroom a hundred times before now, she steps aside for me to lead the way tonight. The doorknob is cold against my palm, and I feel every millimeter of its rotation.
We’re a few steps inside when I realize I’ve been holding my breath. My first intake of air confirms every reason I’ve done my best to keep out of this space. I don’t understand the chemistry behind a scent lingering for two and a half years, but it’s here. The earthy aroma of two people who worked outdoors—Mom in the soil, Dad with fresh lumber.
As if it’s the most comfortable place for her to be, Gabby climbs onto their king-size bed and wraps the worn quilt folded at the end of the footboard around her shoulders.
“I love this quilt. It still smells like Mom,” she says, snuggling her face into the well-loved blanket. The colors and floral prints have faded with time, and there’s a finger-length tear in one of the corners where a puff of cotton pokes out of the seam, but Gabby has never cared about the blemishes on this old blanket. She cares about what’s been sewn into the layers: a blessing of unconditional love. The quilt is an heirloom that’s been passed down from bride to bride in my father’s family. From my grandmother to Aunt Judy and then to my mother on her wedding day to my father. My throat thickens as I imagine Gabby as the next recipient one day, as a bride. And then as I imagine my role in giving her away to a man I hope will possess the same depth of unconditional love we were shown in the example of our parents.
She looks up at me then, her expression soft and yielding. “Did you want me to get the box for you?” She slips off the bed and crosses to the closet, but I grip her elbow to stop her. When she grants me her full attention, I say the words that have taken me far too long to admit.
“I should have talked to you about the surgery. I should have asked you what you wanted ... and what you didn’t want. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes shimmer. “I’m sorry, too. I know I shouldn’t have run away to Aunt Judy’s without talking to you first. I was angry—not only for the surgery stuff but also for what happened between you and Sophie.”
Guilt charges through me like an electrical current, and I drop my hand. “What happened between Sophie and me is not your fault in any way.”
“It felt like it was. Everything changed for the worse after that night.”
I don’t have to wonder which night she refers to. It’s seared into my frontal lobe. “The blame lies solely on me, Gabs. No one else.”
“But Sophie loves you, and I know you love her,” she pleads. “There’s still some time, you know? You can still fix this before—”
“No, Gabs. Stop.” I shake my head. “I need you to let this go, okay? This is not your problem to solve. Promise me?”
“Fine,” she huffs, “I promise, even though I think you made a big mistake.”
“I’ve made a lot of big mistakes.”
She gives me a resigned sigh. “Anyway ... that’s why I left without telling you and went to Aunt Judy’s.”
“I get it,” I say. “Aunt Judy is a lot more nurturing than I am.”
Gabby cocks her head to the side in a way that tells me she’s missed a word or a meaning.
“Nurturing,” I repeat as I attempt to finger spell the word in ASL. Halfway through, she swipes a hand through the air.
“Nurturing?” she clarifies.
I nod but her expression remains puzzled. “What are you not saying?”
Nothing like ripping the Band-Aid right off. I stuff my hands in my pockets and rock back on my heels. If she’d asked me a month ago, I’d have blown off such a question and told her everything was fine. But standing here now, in our parents’ bedroom, I won’t smudge the truth. And the truth is something I’ve never admitted to anyone.
“Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong decision for you.”
Gabby’s eyes go wide. “About what?”
“After the attorney told me that Mom and Dad named me your legal guardian...” I release a hard breath. “Aunt Judy offered to take you.”
Her eyebrows dip low. “You didn’t want me?”
I’m quick to shake my head. “Of course I did, but I worried that I wouldn’t be able to care for you the same way she could. She’s motherly and kind, and I’m stubborn and shortsighted.” I tug on her pigtail. “And she loves you.”
“So do you.” Gabby says this with enough conviction to pierce the gap between my ribs and stab straight into my heart. “You love me, too, August.”
“I do.” It takes a monumental effort to swallow. “I love you very much. But I want you to be able to make that choice for yourself now. You’re mature enough to decide who you want to live with—”
“I choose you.” Gabby throws her quilt-laden arms around me, and I hug her back, in the very space my mom once asked for my thoughts on being a summer host home for Gabby. But in my eighteen-year-old head, hosting her didn’t make near the sense that adopting her did. The spunky little girl with the gap-toothed grin needed a family, and we had one to give her. Somehow even then I knew she was meant to be my sister, and I was meant to be her big brother.
I peek over her head, remembering how I sat at the foot of my parents’ bed while my mom wrote her prayers for Gabby on pink three-by-five cards and stuffed them into the folds of her Bible, believing for the day they’d fly back and bring my sister home.
The recall of those days feels like someone else’s life, from someone else’s memory.
Little had I known then just how much our world would shift. I hold my sister a little tighter, thankful our mother’s prayers were answered despite the unforeseen plot twists in her future. If nothing else, I could be grateful for that. And, of course, for whatever supernatural experience had kept my sister alive.
When we break apart, Gabby moves to the closet once again and lifts a box about the size of a shoebox from under our mother’s garde ning boots. I recognize it immediately; it had come without warning six months after our parents’ death.
____
Gabby’s recovery was finally on the upswing. Her recently fitted hearing aids were in, and she was watching a YouTube tutorial on ASL for beginners while Chip reclined on the sofa after dropping by with our favorite pizza cookies and suggesting some new action-adventure movie for after dinner. It was his every other Saturday afternoon routine, one I’d begun to look forward to at a time when there was little to feel that way about.
When the doorbell rang, I thought nothing of it. Aunt Judy’s affinity for Amazon Prime equaled new girly knickknacks for Gabby every few days. There’d been stuffed animals and fancy nail polish kits and young adult book series and gobs and gobs of hair products. I expected to drop this shoebox-sized package at Gabby’s feet like I had with all the others, but this one was addressed to me. So while Chip scrolled on his phone and Gabby practiced basic signs in ASL, I took the package to the kitchen table and used my pocket knife to cut through the thick tape.
The instant the first flap was free, blood rushed to my ears.
It was my parents’ scent that hit me first—hard and fast like a punch to the jaw. I should have stopped there, should have closed it up then and waited for some inevitable day in the future when my self-loathing was high enough for such a punishment as this. But the card scrawled with my name was lying face up, and I couldn’t leave the mystery untouched.
My fingers shook when I cracked the envelope open and pulled out a handwritten card by a pastor I’d never heard of—Pastor Bedi.
Dear August Tate,
My church family has been praying for you and your sister in this difficult time of grief. We are saddened by the loss of your wonderful parents, but we rejoice in the truth of where they are today.
Please forgive the delay in getting this package sent to you. Our mail service is unreliable, and we prefer to send our correspondence and c are packages to the USA through our partner families and missionary friends. I pray this box finds you well and arrives without incident.
As you likely know, your parents, like many others who travel with our organization, signed a waiver to donate the majority of their packed personal belongings before the start of their trip. We are grateful to inform you that your parents’ items (clothing, shoes, belts, toiletries, tools, books, suitcases) have recently been gifted to families in need. Hallelujah!
The contents we sent back are what we believe your parents would have taken home with them at the end of their visit. We hope they are a blessing to you and your sister, and a reminder of the faithful parents God gave you.
Blessings, Pastor Bedi
I didn’t know when Gabby joined me at the table, or what she said when she pulled the box toward her that day, but I do remember ripping it from her hands and stuffing the card back inside with a fury that scared us both. How dare this pastor reference a waiver and donate our parents’ possessions without the permission of their children. They’d already donated their lives to his cause—was that not enough?
“Don’t touch this,” I scolded my sister.
“Why, what is it?” Gabby asked, scrutinizing my lips because once again she’d taken out her hearing aids.
“Where are your aids?” I tapped my ear, but she ignored me and swiped for the pastor’s card. She got it on the first try and twisted away.
Chip’s hand clapped me on the back before I could get it back. “Dude, what’s up?”
“They donated their personal belongings is what’s up,” I growled as Gabby silently mouthed every word of the letter.
“Who did?” Chip asked.
“The church organization that killed my parents.”
My fr iend’s horrified expression at my bluntness was telling. “It was an accident that killed your parents, August. Not a church.”
But I was in no mood to debate semantics. I knew exactly who and what had killed my parents. And regrettably, I knew the why,as well.
“This is all true.” Gabby lowered the letter in her hands. “I donated my stuff, too. We all did. The people there have so many needs.”
“And you don’t?”
“Hey,” Chip said quietly. “I think you should probably take a walk—”
“I don’t need a walk. What I need is everybody to stop pretending that they chose this—that they willingly chose to become martyrs of the faith and leave their daughter as an orphan again. They never would have left Gabby behind.”
If Gabby caught all that, she didn’t react to it. Instead, she touched the box and looked up at me again. “You don’t want to see what’s in here?”
The lone tear that tracked her cheek was what cooled the fire in my lungs long enough for me to see this through her eyes. I didn’t want to see the contents—because I couldn’t. But I also couldn’t deny Gabby what she needed.
Our grief was different. Hers wasn’t stained by my shame.
I slid the box her way. “It’s all yours.”
She didn’t move.
I took an unsteady breath and tried again as soon as her eyes found mine. “You can open it and keep whatever’s inside, okay? It’s fine.”
She swiped a tear and nodded. But when she touched the box, it was to set the card inside and fold the two flaps into themselves. “I don’t want to open it without you. I’ll wait until you’re ready.”
I shook my head, trying to convince her otherwise. But even at fourteen years old, Gabby’s faith was a hundred times what mine had ever been.
____
And two and a half years later, my opinion of her hasn’t changed.
Gabby pushes the box toward me on our parents’ rug, and my fingers twitch as I release the flaps. I lift the card out and set it aside. Strangely, the surge of anger I experienced the first time doesn’t accompany it now.
Our parents’ scent is faint but still there. I reach into the box. There are only a few items in total. Our father’s slim-line New Testament he never traveled without, and the watch I bought him with my first big paycheck at the recording studio. It wasn’t a high-end brand, but it caught my eye due to its claims of being “the timepiece for every tradesman.” The ads had shown it being run over by a forklift, dropped from a high-rise, and even submerged in motor oil overnight. And still, it kept on ticking.
It’s ticking even now.
“I remember when he opened that from you on video chat,” Gabby says, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “I almost never saw him without it.”
I touch the simple titanium frame around the analog clock face and examine all the nicks and dings on the band. He wasn’t a smartwatch guy; he was too practical for the ever-changing technology. Something I’d ragged on him about for years.
I offer the watch to Gabby, but she shakes her head. “He’d want you to have it.”
I push down my instinct to argue and slip the cool metal over my wrist, clasping the magnetic closure with ease.
“Go ahead.” I gesture to the box, indicating it’s her turn, even though there’s only one more item to remove: our mother’s thick, leather-bound Bible jam-packed with all sorts of bookmarks and sermon notes. Unlike our father’s pocket-size New Testament, Mom could never be convinced to find a more suitable version for their travels. Gabby’s lips tremble as she pulls it out and hugs it to her chest as if it were my mother herself.
The affectionate display clogs my airway for a moment, and I have to look away in order to regain my composure.
From my periphery, I see her open it on the floor. Gingerly, she flips through each marked section, until she stops.
“August. Look.”
At the awe in her voice, I turn my head and peer down into the pages of my mother’s worn Bible. Only it’s not the Psalms I see, but a blue three-by-five card dated several months before the accident.
Fathe r,
I thank you for my son and for how you’re working in his heart even now. I believe you are trustworthy in all your promises and faithful in all you do. I believe your promises are for August and for his future. (Psalm 145:13)
Amen
Gabby flips to the next passage with a blue card, this one in the book of Luke.
Father,
I thank you for my son and for how you’re working in his heart even now. I thank you that it’s your kindness that leads us to repentance. I thank you that you’ve shown us how to run toward our son with open arms like the father in this parable, like you’ve always run toward us. (Luke 15:20–24)
Amen
My chest burns hot, not with the shame I usually feel, but with something much stronger. Even when I chose a life far from the one my mother had imagined for me, she didn’t give up. She didn’t let me go.
There are more than a dozen blue prayer cards tucked inside the folds of my mother’s Bible, and with each one, the hard outer shell of my heart continues to crack. She prayed for me. As much for where I was in the moment as to where she hoped I’d be one day.
The last card we find is located in Romans. I pick it up, noting the familiar reference.
I read it out loud.
“‘Father, I thank you for my son and for how you’re working in his heart even now. I thank you that there is nothing that will ever separate August from your love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow. Thank you that your love for him is eternal. Romans 8:38. Amen.’
“It’s the same verse you read tonight,” I say to Gabby. And it’s the same verse her rescuer had spoken over her as he carried her to safety. But what’s even more significant is the tiny date inked in the far right corner of the blue index card. The fault line that started at the base of my heart while Gabby performed on stage has now been cracked wide open. I can only stare in bewilderment as the card shakes in my outstretched hand.
“Look” is all I can manage.
I know the instant she sees it because her gasp sounds like the breath my lungs are still so desperate to take.
On the very day my mother met her Savior face to face, she prayed this benediction of love for me, her prodigal son.
My mother died believing that nothing could ever separate me from God’s love, and yet I’ve spent more than two years living as if her death did just that. As if by refusing to accept my parents’ invitation to go to India, I somehow disqualified myself from every other invitation offered to me by God. That the only way to lessen the pain was to try and fix all the brokenness around me without truly examining the point of my shame. Not because I didn’t believe God could forgive me, but because I didn’t believe I could ever forgive myself.
Much less love myself.
Or let anyone else try, for that matter.
As soon as Gabby rises from the carpet and excuses herself from the bedroom, I fall back against the bedpost, drop my head in my hands, and finally surrender the burdens God never asked me to carry.
When I come out of the bedroom, I find my sister reading our mom’s Bible on the sofa. I can tell her eyes are glossy from tears, and I’m sure she can see the same in mine.
I sit on top of her feet, and she squirms and kicks the way she always does.
“Thank you for doing that with me,” I say.
She smiles as if that’s all I came out here to say, but it’s not. Far from it. I jostle her leg until she’s made eye contact with me again.
“What did you mean earlier when you said there was still some time to fix things with Sophie?”
Her eyes widen. “Because of her flight.”
At my confusion, she says, “August, she leaves in the morning—for her audition in LA.”
“ Tomorrow morning?” I balk, and then promptly check the time on my dad’s watch— my watch. It’s just past ten.
Gabby shakes me. “Don’t be stupid again, August. Don’t think. Just go. Go now!”
And with those poetic words, I do just that.
In less than two minutes, I’m driving to Wilder Winery.
In the end, the choice will be Sophie’s to make, but I at least need to be honest about the options she’s choosing from.
By the time I arrive at the winery, the only lights around the property are security lights, which makes it feel like the set for a psychological thriller. That image provides little comfort as I cross the empty driveway and slip through the entrance gate.
I’m aware of every rustle of the wind and crunch underfoot as I tense in anticipation for someone to shout at me, but the property remains eerily quiet.
The mid-December chill is enough for me to zip my fleece to my chin.
The swoop in my chest drops even lower at the sight of Sophie’s pool house. It’s the kind of dark that says uninhabited, not asleep. If she has a flight in the morning, then where is she now? And what exactly is my plan if she is asleep? It’s not like I had time to write her a song to serenade her with.
Regardless of the darkened windows, I approach the pool house, hoping I’m wrong. I knock several times before trying the doorknob. It’s unlocked. I’m noticing a theme around here I don’t much care for. Why are there security lights if we aren’t locking doors?
I crack it open. “Sophie? Are you in here?”
A rustling sound greets my ears.
I push the door open wider. “Sophie?”
A furry black streak bolts over the top of my sneaker. Dang it . How did I forget about Phantom?
Of all the confessions I need to make to Sophie tonight, explaining how I lost her cat isn’t one I’m counting on. Scanning the darkness with my phone light, I watch the shameless cat slide its hefty self through the—no surprise here—open pool gate. At least he’s given me a way to contain him.
Careful not to spook the feline unnecessarily, I enter a backyard paradise suited for a celebrity mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The whole thing feels more like a status symbol than a refreshing escape. I know it well, seeing as Vanessa had a similar over-the-top setup at her place. Cascading waterfalls, cabanas, palm trees, a swim-up bar, and heated surround tile. I bend and touch the patterned tile under my feet to confirm.
At least it explains why Phantom is sprawled out on his belly without a care in the world.
“Hey, bud,” I say, approaching the chaise he lies near with caution as he glares at me through his good eye. I raise my hands. “I’m just gonna take a seat right here. No tricks. That goes for you, too, okay?” I recline in the chaise as if I’m completely unbothered by the frosty air or the fact that I’m talking to a one-eyed cat.
I slip out my phone and tap out approximately ten messages I don’t send before finally deciding on the one I do send.
Hey, you were incredible tonight. I was hoping we could talk before you leave tomorrow. I’m actually here, at the winery. Chillin’ with your cat, if you can believe that. If for some reason you’ve already left for LA, then I think Phantom’s gonna be pretty disappointed you didn’t take his favorite backpack along. But he certainly won’t be the only one here who’s disappointed.
I watch the screen for nearly five minutes, but the message stays on unread. So I do the next best thing and turn to Sophie’s geriatric cat. “You know, I never much cared for the talking-animal movies as a kid, but I can definitely see how that particular brand of magic would come in handy right about now.” Phantom looks at me with such indifference I try not to take it personally. “I bet you know a lot more than you let on around here.”
I eye him curiously. “You don’t happen to know where Sophie is, do you, bud?”
Phantom licks his paw.
“Blink twice if you think Sophie has already left for the airport.”
But he doesn’t blink at all. In fact, he glares at me for so long without blinking, I’m afraid he might be having some sort of old cat stroke.
He stands, stretches for an eternity, and then hops up into my lap. Purring .
I lift my hands like I’m in a hold-up situation. The only cat I’ve ever held prior to this one turned out to be a double agent for Satan, so this is all brand-new. He kneads my thighs like he’s considering how much pressure it will take to put a claw through my femur before he finally plops down. On my lap .
“This is a little too personal for a second-chance meeting, chap. I mean, yes, we do love the same woman and all, but I do have boundaries.”
The purring continues, and soon the outside air doesn’t feel quite so cold. This chubby guy is a living heater. In what might be the most unnatural gesture of goodwill yet, I stroke a hand through the soft fur on his back. He seems to relax into me all the more. I imagine Sophie doing this very thing, and I do my best not to give in to the fear that I’m too late.