Keeper of Dreams (100 page)

“Oh really?”

“I finally understood it,” she said. “You felt the burden of dealing with your mother fall onto your shoulders. And until tonight you weren’t sure you could handle it.”

Jared chuckled. “Well, actually, no,” he said. “I’ve
always
been the one who could jolly Mom out of these moods better than anybody else, which isn’t to say I was actually good at it. But what you said about my father—something
did
happen tonight.”

“What?” asked Rachel.

“When I was telling Mom that she did a good job and that Mattie Maw was wrong about her? And then when I told Sarah she was just right for Will? All my life, it was my dad who said things like that to me. Good job. You did well. I’m proud of you son. Not that Mom didn’t say those things—she said them ten times more, in fact, but I needed it from my dad, you know?”

“Mothers give milk, fathers give approval,” said Rachel.

“That’s what had me upset. I know Dad was ready to go. His body was so ravaged. But I still needed him. Who would tell me that I was doing a good job? Only tonight I realized—I don’t need that anymore. My job now is to tell
other
people they did OK. I’m the father now. I’m the patriarch. I’m the one whose job it is to bless other people. Even my own mother. That’s what happened tonight.”

Rachel held him close. “Did I do OK?” she asked.

And now, without a trace of jesting in his tone, he said, “Rachel, you are the greatest blessing in my life and in the lives of everyone you touch. When you meet the Lord face to face he will say to you, Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Tears sprang from her eyes and flowed down onto his shoulder.

“Are you crying or drooling?” he asked.

“I’m just happy,” she said. “Like you said, you really do have the power to bless now.”

It was the week before Christmas when Sarah’s baby finally came, ten days overdue. It was actually a rather leisurely process, with plenty of
time for Will to get home to take his wife to the hospital. With their mother gone, the twins got so hyper that Hazel and Rachel remarked several times that they would
much
rather be going through labor right now. Of course, they both knew that this was so false that it wasn’t even worth saying, “Just kidding.” They had just got the boys settled into bed when the phone rang and, against their own better judgment, they told Vanya and Val that they had a new baby sister.

Because Sarah had been so ambiguous about her vision of her daughter—“We’ll love her very much”—Rachel had been half afraid that the baby would be born retarded or crippled. But she was fine, a sturdy, healthy baby. Rachel wondered then if the problems would come later; she wondered what piquant burden of foreknowledge Sarah and Will silently bore. But whatever it was the Lord had shown her, it was certainly true that they loved the baby very much.

They blessed the baby in Jared’s and Rachel’s ward on the first Sunday in February. They named the baby after her great-grandmother Hazel, and in spite of all her protests, they knew the old soul was thrilled. In March Will and Sarah and the twins and little Hazy moved to Los Angeles. They didn’t come back until Hazie Maw’s funeral the next autumn, a year almost to the day after she had been widowed. Her last words were, “Alma, what kept you?” Sarah gave Rachel a copy of the four-generation picture they had taken: Hazel holding baby Hazy, with Sarah and Will, Jared and Rachel gathered around. “She won’t remember her great-grandma,” said Sarah. “But she’ll have this picture.”

“And the stories you tell her,” said Rachel.

“I have parties at the house now, you know,” said Sarah. “I pretend that I’m you and then I act it out and everything goes fine.”

“That’s awful. You don’t have to pretend to be me or anybody else.”

“Well, actually, I don’t really have the figure to be you
all
the time,” said Sarah. “I just don’t rebound to my girlish figure after pregnancy. So when I choose my wardrobe, I pretend to be Barbara Bush.”

“That’s all right then,” said Rachel. “I can handle the role-model business as long as Barbara Bush is carrying half the load.”