Love Takes Time (12 page)

T
his Christmas Alfred was determined to win the Christmas nativity and decorations competition in his subdivision. He'd already invested a fortune in Christmas lights. This past fall, he made mountains of sketches of exactly what he wanted to pull off. This year his baby, Jessica, was finally old enough to appreciate the wonders of Santa Claus and Christmas presents and glowing lights.

Alyssa used to love the holidays, too. He was glad that his older daughter still made time in her busy schedule to fly to Atlanta so that they could all be one big, happy family. He'd been married a few years now and the whole family life suited him well again.

“Now you be careful up there,” Estelle warned, watching him crawl across the roof.

“I'm always careful, dear,” he said, smiling. Alfred had to admit that it felt good to have someone worry about him like this, just as it felt good to be able to love and cherish again.
Forgive me, Melissa.

Most days, Alfred had to pinch himself. His cooking show was a great success. He was in syndication in twenty-five major cities. His third cookbook was steadily climbing up the best seller's list on the
NY Times
and he now was in talks about developing his own cookware. Everything was going great, though Estelle often complained that he worked too much.

Maybe he did. But he had so much he wanted to do and accomplish. It wasn't because he regretted all those years working at the Hinton estate, because he didn't. But now was his time. And the one person that truly inspired him was his own daughter Alyssa.

“Well I'm going inside to make you some hot cider,” Estelle said. “You're going to be freezing when you get finished.”

“All right, dear.”

“Don't stay out here too long. It's supposed to freeze tonight.”

“Yes, dear.” Alfred smiled and continued on with his sketches and staple gun.

A strong gust of wind blew from the east, numbing Alfred's fingers and nose. Suddenly a strange tingling shot up his arm, and then the tingling began to hurt. He dropped the staple gun.

“Oh God.” Pain exploded in his chest and Alfred lost his footing. He fell and then rolled off the roof.

 

Alyssa hopped the first flight out of LAX to Atlanta. The entire time, her stomach was tied into a tight knot.

She felt weak.

She felt hot.

She felt panicked.

A heart attack,
her stepmother had said. How could such a thing be possible? Her father had to be one of the strongest people she knew. She couldn't imagine such a thing befalling him. It just couldn't be, she kept saying to herself, but it wasn't working.

Alyssa's heart sank like a stone.

“It's going to be all right,” Tangie whispered, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tight. “You'll see. He'll come through this.”

Alyssa tried to smile, but she couldn't.

A few people swiveled in their chairs to stare at her. There was a celebrity in their midst.

She reached into her purse and retrieved her large sunglasses, hoping to hide from the onlookers. Even that wasn't working.

C'mon. C'mon,
she mentally urged the plane to hurry. She had to get to her father. Surely once she reached his side everything would be all right.

Just hang in there, Daddy.

The five-hour flight seemed more like twenty. She felt like weeping when the plane's wheels finally
touched down. Alyssa and Tangela rushed through the terminals and hopped on the concourse to the rental car line. The aggravating part was when they had finally reached Grady Hospital and the nurses couldn't find what room her father was in. For the first time in her life, Alyssa threw a major temper tantrum, and Estelle appeared and rescued the poor medical staff.

“It's okay. She's with me.” Estelle took her by the hand and led her to her father's room.

Despite what she thought, Alyssa was totally unprepared to see a shell of her father nestled in a bed of white sheets. In fact, it took a few heartbeats before she even recognized him. There were tubes in his mouth and arms. There were bruises on his face and his dark coloring looked more gray than black.

And he looked so incredibly weak.

“Oh, Daddy.” Alyssa rushed to the bed, but was careful not to disturb the butterfly needle in his hand. “My God. What happened to you?”

A monitor beeped steadily nearby. She glanced at it and tried to make sense of the lines and numbers.

Tangie pulled a chair up to the bed for her.

“I came as fast as I could, Dad. Now you start trying to get better.”

Estelle sobbed in the corner, but Alyssa couldn't spare her a glance.

Alyssa gently laced her fingers in between her father's and tried to mentally will him to open his eyes. However, the only sound in the room was the
steady beep of the heart monitor and the soft whirl of the air conditioner.

It was sad.

It was pathetic.

But right now—it was enough for her. Now that she was here, she was certain her father would pull through. He just had to. She lifted his hand and placed it against her cheek. It was cold and almost lifeless. Tears streamed steadily down her face while her emotions continued to clog her throat.

The long hours turned into troubling days. The numbers and constant news from the doctors became more grave.

On the third day, Alfred's heartbeat flatlined.

 

Sterling was shocked when he got the news. And he wasn't the only one. Roger Hinton was more than a little choked up when he delivered the news. Alfred Jansen had been more than a great employee to the Hintons. He was a great man…and friend. After his father relayed the time and date for the funeral, Sterling promised that he would be there despite his lingering cold.

When Sterling ended the call, his thoughts instantly traveled to Alyssa. How was she handling the news? Something told him not too well. His heart went out to her.

Two days later, Sterling sat in a crowded pew of the Atlanta Baptist Church. Despite the singing and the moving sermon from the reverend, the mood
remained somber. One by one, people stood and shared stories of a man as big as a lion but with the heart of a kitten.

In the front, Alyssa, dressed in black, listened to the stories with a soft smile but with tears sliding down her face. Even then she was a remarkable beauty that drew everyone's eye.

Estelle, however, was a wreck.

When the reverend asked if anyone else wanted to speak, Sterling stood and walked solemnly down the aisle. At the podium, he looked out among the large crowd and felt his throat tighten with emotion. Luckily, he'd written down everything he'd wanted to say because at that moment his mind was a blank.

Standing there with an escalating fever, Sterling struggled to keep his voice level. He recalled how he knew Alfred and shared a few personal stories. Many were humorous and some downright touching. “Alfred was a great man,” he proclaimed and then looked at Alyssa, “and a great friend. I will miss him dearly.”

He stepped down from the podium and headed back to his seat. As he started past Alyssa's pew, she reached out for his hand and stopped him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Sterling met her watery gaze and his heart tugged again. He gave her a slight nod and then returned to his seat in time to hear his father.

An hour later, everyone had gathered at the fresh grave site to say their goodbyes. Light snow flurries
whipped around the crowd, while the blustering wind turned arctic. The mourners huddled together and watched as the black casket descended into the earth.

Estelle slumped against Alyssa, who looked no better prepared for the added weight than a pile of toothpicks.

Sterling walked over to them and took Estelle by the hand. She looked up at him and then transferred her weight to his strong shoulders.

Alyssa's grateful gaze landed on him. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

Again, he just nodded and continued listening to the burial rites.

As the family walked to the waiting limos, Sterling continued offering Estelle his shoulder while Alyssa carried her younger sister on her hip.

“Thank you again,” Alyssa said, once her small family settled into their seat. She stood outside by her open door, looking as frail as she had that night in the solarium.

“Anytime,” he said. “How are
you
holding up?”

“I'm not sure. I'm still hoping my alarm clock is going to go off, and all of this is just some horrible dream.”

His shoulders deflated. “I'm sorry.” He opened his arms and without hesitating, she slid into them. As he folded his arms around her, he swore there was something like a click inside his head and the world suddenly faded away. He kissed the top of her head. “Is there anything I can do?”

She shook her head and then slowly eased out of his arms. “No. I think I'll be all right.”

Sterling reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a card. “If you change your mind, give me a call. Anytime.”

“Thanks. I just might take you up on that.”

F
or the next two days, Alyssa and Estelle did their best to console each other. But after going through a record number of Kleenex boxes, they began to question whether they were comforting each other or prolonging their grief. They moved like ghosts around each other with long faces and puffy red eyes.

The hardest part for both of them was to listen to little Jessica constantly ask when her daddy was going to be finished with his nap. There was a sad irony that didn't escape Alyssa. She'd lost her mother when she was only four and here Jessica had lost her father at almost the same age.

Life could be cruel.

It broke her heart to know that there was the pos
sibility that Jessica would only remember her father through pictures and stories from her older sister. More tears welled in Alyssa's eyes as she reached for another tissue.

The box was empty.

“Would you like for me to fix you something else to eat?” Estelle asked, leaning against the living room archway. “Ms. Loretta brought over enough food to feed a whole army.”

“No.” She said, shaking her head and pulling out yet another family photo album. “I'm fine.”

Estelle simply nodded and drifted off to another part of the house.

Alyssa sighed. Even though her stepmother had done everything she could to make her feel welcome, there was a part of her that believed Estelle wanted time alone so that she could truly grieve. But Alyssa struggled to give her that time because she needed the opposite.

She needed to be around anything and everything that reminded her of her father. Now more than ever, she regretted telling Tangie to go back home. She needed a firm shoulder to lean on. Estelle was too fragile.

Curling up in her father's favorite La-Z-Boy, she pored through the pages of the photo album. This one had a lot of pictures of the Hinton family. There were several pictures of her father and Roger Hinton bent over a chessboard.

Suddenly old memories filled her head. The men
would spend weeks playing the same game. One had even gone as long as a year. She didn't remember who won most of them, but she suspected that it was something like fifty-fifty.

Her father always said that you could tell a lot about a man by the way he played chess. The one thing he'd learned from Roger was that he was a man who never said
die.

Alyssa chuckled to herself and flipped the page. She blinked, surprised to see images of her father on a large boat. She leaned in close and tried to make out the name on the side.
“Lady?”

She frowned. Her father didn't own a boat. Maybe it belonged to Roger. She shrugged and flipped the page again only to learn that the boat apparently belonged to Sterling Hinton.

As she flipped through the pages, Sterling smiled back at her from nearly every corner—an almost silent guardian angel. Toward the back, more pictures of Quentin popped up and her smile vanished. She had so many mixed emotions when it came to him.

Still.

“I think I'm going to bed now,” Estelle announced. “Do you need anything?”

“No, Estelle. Please don't worry about me. I'm doing fine.”

Her stepmother nodded. “All right. Then I'll see you in the morning.”

“Okay.” Alyssa watched her turn and head off to bed. After hearing the click of the bedroom door, she
sighed and then closed the photo album. For a long time, she just sat there, not really thinking of anything.

After a while, her ears picked up the solo ticking sound of the clock above the fireplace. In that moment, she felt like the loneliest woman in the world. For no reason at all, she uncurled from the chair and marched down to the guest room, but as she passed the master bedroom, she caught the sound of Estelle's soft sobs drifting through her door. She stopped and placed her hand on the door, but then continued on her way to the guest bedroom.

She quickly found her purse and searched through it until she saw what she was looking for: Sterling's business card.

 

Sterling was thrilled that he could be there for the Jansens this past week.

Truly he was.

But standing out in twenty-degree weather was probably
not
what the doctor would order. And as a result, he was suffering a relapse. A bad one. And there was no chicken noodle soup or half-spilled orange juice to get him through. This left him with only one option—to stay in his favorite spot in the bed and wait for his fever to break.

The phone rang.

“No. No. No. No,” he groaned.

Maybe there's some soup involved?
His hand shot out from under the cover. “Toni?”

There was a pause and then, “Um. No. It's Alyssa.”

Sterling's eyes popped open. “Alyssa?” He climbed from under the blankets. “Is there something wrong?”

Another pause. “No. I, um…you know this is silly.”

“No. No. It's fine.” He removed the phone from his mouth, coughed and then returned it as though nothing had happened. “How are you holding up?”

“Not so good,” she admitted. “My alarm clock never rang. I guess that means all of this is not a dream.”

“No. I'm so sorry.” A long silence stretched across the line, and Sterling strained to hear her soft breathing.

“I don't know what I'm going to do without him here,” she said. “He was my rock, my anchor. Do you know that there wasn't a day that we didn't talk? No matter where I was in the world, he was my last call before going to bed.” Alyssa sniffed. “Who am I going to call now?”

It was just on the tip of Sterling's tongue to suggest that she could call him, but it didn't sound appropriate even in his own head. “You can still talk to him. He'll always be watching over you.”

“Yeah. Him and my mom.”

Sterling closed his eyes and swore that he could hear her heart tearing into pieces. It wasn't too often he'd been thrown into this type of situation, and he prayed that his inadequacies weren't showing.

As it turned out, Alyssa did most of the talking. Sterling nestled down in his blankets and just enjoyed the soft cadence of her voice. It was really soothing. “When are you going to return home?” he asked.

“I don't know. Maybe in the next couple of days. Maybe tomorrow. I haven't decided. A part of me feels like just getting in the car and driving. Clear my head.”

“I don't know. It's a long way to California. You meet a lot of weirdos on a trip like that.”

She giggled.

“Haven't you ever seen that one movie
The Hitchhiker?
”

“I won't pick up just anyone.”

“What about all those scary roadside motel movies?”

“I'm sensing a pattern. Are you going to warn me about the perils of driving on Friday the thirteenth or how not to do any babysitting on Halloween?”

“I'm not now.”

She laughed and he couldn't help but join in. Of course, he had to hit the mute button to cover his subsequent coughing frenzy. But for the next few hours, they just talked and talked.

It was a good night.