Miracle in the Mist (26 page)

Before she could voice her concerns, Emanuel patted her hand. "All in good time, my child, all in good time." He turned to Clara. "My dear, I think some of your excellent coffee is in order now."

"I don't want coffee!" Carrie exclaimed, jumping to her feet, her voice unnaturally strident and demanding. "I want answers."

Emanuel looked at her. He said nothing, just looked. Instantly, her impatience and anger drained away. Instinctively, she knew she would get nothing from this wise old man by making demands. She resumed her seat and folded her hands on the table.

Clara left the table and assembled the coffeepot for brewing. Carrie watched her methodical movements. Pour water in the pot. Measure coffee into a basket. Place the pot on the stove.

In her mind a picture began taking form. She was in a pristine kitchen. Not Clara's. It was too modern. A woman was making coffee. She had her back to Carrie so she couldn't see her face, but her hair was the same color as the woman's from the forest. Carrie could hear her sniffling as though she was crying. She bustled about, but not haphazardly. Her movements were efficient and quick, as though she was driven not to waste time. When she'd placed the glass carafe beneath the basket in the coffeemaker, she turned and stared back at Carrie with red-rimmed eyes peering from a tear-stained face. Carrie caught her breath. The woman's face was the same face that Carrie saw in her own mirror each morning, except now a dark, ugly bruise rimmed one eye.

Instantly the image faded, and she was back in Clara's keeping room, sitting across from Emanuel.

"I don't understand," she said, still in shock from seeing the same woman again, and her battered face.

"Don't you?" Emanuel asked gently.

***

Frank scrubbed his arms while a nurse held up the chart of the patient he was to perform heart surgery on. He scanned the chart again. He'd read it over the night before when he'd been told that Dr. Jensen was ill and he'd have to operate for him, but he always liked to refresh his memory by reviewing any patient's chart just before he went into surgery.

It was an operation he was very familiar with and had performed many times. When the child had gone for his pre-school physical, they'd detected a very faint heart murmur. On further investigation, they found a very small hole in the area of his heart between the right and left chamber wall. A fairly simple surgical procedure would close it, and the boy would be out playing with his friends in no time.

When he'd finished reading the chart and scrubbing up, he used his behind to push open the doors into the operating room. The patient was already on the table; the sight of an outline of a small body beneath the sheet always made Frank swallow hard. That such a young person should have to undergo surgery just didn't seem right to him.

He stepped to the side of the table and looked down into the child's face. His heart stopped. He made it a habit to read nothing more on the chart than the child's symptoms and the recommendation of Dr. Jensen. It made no sense to get attached in any way to a child that wasn't even his patient. He had enough small lives to worry about, enough names to put to the faces of children who needed his skills to live normal lives.

"What's this child's name?" he asked of no one in particular.

"William Gray," a nurse said after consulting the chart.

He glanced down at the outline of the boy's legs beneath the sheet. One was badly twisted, and no doubt would require the use of crutches for the boy to be mobile.

Frank hesitated before asking the next question. He wasn't at all sure he wanted to know what the answer was. Besides, he might be mistaken. It had been dark that night, and he'd been preoccupied. "Does it indicate where he goes to school?"

"Yes, Doctor. He attends the Westchester Handicapped Children's Rehabilitation Center."

The side of a white van with bright green lettering and the boy who hobbled out on crutches and into his mother's arms flashed before Frank. He took a deep breath. Inexplicably compelled to lift his gaze to the observation gallery that ringed the ceiling of the operating room, he noted a man with a white beard and a long white robe tied at the waist with a rope, looking down at him.

You have other tasks waiting for you
. Emanuel's words rang through Frank's head as if he were whispering in his ear.

He smiled up at Emanuel.
This is it, isn't it
?
This is the task I had waiting for me
. The Elder smiled back, then gave a succinct nod.
It's one of them, but there's more you'll still need to do before your destiny is completely fulfilled, Frank.

What
?

You'll know them when the time comes
. Emanuel smiled again, and then vanished, leaving Frank to wonder if his imagination had conjured the Elder or if he had, indeed, actually been there.

Chapter 22

Frank stepped back from the operating table and nodded to the doctor assisting him. "Close for me, please, Harrison."

The young physician, one whom Frank knew would one day make a superb cardiac surgeon, nodded and began the procedure.

Frank left the operating room and peeled off his surgical gloves and mask. Tossing them into the receptacles beside the door, he stepped into the hall and strode toward the waiting room. Inside the large, sunny room, he found a pasty-faced woman wringing her hands and pacing the floor. Her eyes betrayed the tears she'd been shedding while she waited.

When she saw him, she stopped dead in her tracks, her gaze searching his. "Billy? Is he alright?"

Frank smiled. "He's fine." She exhaled a long breath, then sank onto one of the leather sofas lining the walls. Frank sat next to her. "He made it through the operation with flying colors. He'll be out and running around with his friends in no time."

The woman looked at him, and although her lips smiled in delight that her son's prognosis was so favorable, Frank could see the sadness that lurked there, a sadness that had made its home there long ago. "I'm afraid he'll never run around with his friends, Dr. Donovan."

At that moment Frank realized his offhanded remark, which was meant to give her hope, must have cut this woman deeply. He recalled the twisted leg beneath the sheet. He knew a doctor who had worked miracles in the past on other kids in worse shape than Billy. Did he dare give her hope when there might not be any?

…
there's more you'll still need to do before your destiny is completely fulfilled… You'll know them when the time comes
.

Taking a deep breath, Frank smiled, knowing with a certainty that this was what Emanuel had been trying to tell him. "I'm going to give you the name and phone number of a doctor I know. I'll make an appointment for Billy to see him as soon as he's recovered sufficiently. I think he may be able to see to it that Billy
will
run around with his friends."

Her face transformed before his eyes. The sadness, while still there, was illuminated by the faint sunrise of hope. "Really? Billy may be able to walk without his crutches?"

"Not right away, but I believe there's a strong possibility." Frank had no idea how he knew that. Certainly it wasn't because of any extensive knowledge he had in that department, since it wasn't his field of expertise. He just knew, gut deep.

Faith and trust, my boy. Faith and trust make miracles
, came Emanuel's disembodied voice in his head.

Without warning, Mrs. Gray threw herself into Frank's arms and sobbed on his shoulder. "How can we ever repay you?"

As he held her and patted her back, he thought about the accident and its repercussions: if Frank had died in it, if Billy might not have lived, and even if he had, he would have had a half life. But if Frank hadn't swerved, he'd have hit the van and this poor woman might have had to face her life alone without her son. For the first time, Frank could clearly see what Sandy had been trying to tell him.

Frank set Mrs. Gray away from him, but held her at arm's length. "Love him. Love is the miracle we all seek. You have yours in that little boy."

Someday soon I'll have mine, too
. And his thoughts veered to a beautiful, auburn-haired woman with a smile that lit up his world.

***

Carrie lay on her bed, her gaze fixed on the rough-hewn beams in the ceiling.

Try as she might, she could not understand Emanuel's odd behavior. After she'd had the vision of the crying woman making coffee, she'd told him she didn't understand, and all he had to say to her was,
Don't you
? Then he'd just gotten up and left without explaining.

She'd been so sure that he of all people would put definition to these crazy visions she'd been having, but he hadn't. He'd just added to her quandary.

If it wasn't her, then who was that woman she kept seeing?

The click of Clara's loom told her the old woman had gone back to work and probably would not add anything to the brief conversation Carrie had just had with the Elder. Obviously, she was totally on her own to put definition to this tangle of events.

Lord, but she missed Frank. If he'd been here to hold her and help her sort through all this, she knew it would have been so much easier. One thing that had come from her conversation with Emanuel was that she now knew she wasn't married. Relief was a mild description for the wild rush of emotion and freedom that had ebbed over her with that affirmation.

She could leave here and find Frank with a clear conscience. She could tell him about her love for him and about their child. Then maybe, just maybe, they could have a future—if he hadn't already forgotten who she was. Her heart sank at the thought. She rolled over and buried her face in her arms. What would she do if Frank didn't want her or their baby? Where would she go?

She sat up abruptly. She was being stupid. She had no reason at all to believe that Frank wouldn't remember her or that he wouldn't want her and their child. The best thing she could do for herself right now was decipher that vision of the woman in the kitchen. Perhaps that would be the final piece to her puzzle and the key to her leaving Renaissance and getting on with her life.

Who was the woman with the auburn hair, and what did she have to do with Carrie Henderson?

The questions had no sooner passed through her mind than her bed felt like it had been sucked up in a giant whirlpool. Round and round it spun at breakneck speed. The room blurred and passed before her eyes in long streaks of indistinct light. Her head began to throb, and her stomach heaved. Her fingers ached from clutching the edge of the bed to keep from falling off.

Just as suddenly, the bed halted, throwing Carrie sideways. She reached out to catch herself and found her fingers wrapped around the edge of a kitchen table set for dinner. She blinked and the room came into focus.

Standing on the other side of the table, chopping a variety of salad vegetables, was the woman from before. This time Carrie could see her face quite clearly. Although she was still stunned by how much they looked alike, Carrie could now see a small brown mole just below the right nostril of the woman's nose. Carrie had no such mark. Nor did she have a thin scar over her right eyebrow.

So who was this woman?

"I can't leave him, Carrie. I love him. I know he hates what he does." She raised green, pleading eyes the same color as Carrie's to look at her. "He always says he's sorry."

She'd called Carrie by name. She knew her. However, even though she knew her well enough to call her by name, Carrie noted that she never quite met her gaze, as if she didn't want Carrie to see what was reflected in her eyes.

The eyes are the windows of the soul
, her grandmother always said.

If that were true, then this woman was going to do whatever she could to ensure that the secrets she carried in her soul remained hers and hers alone. Why? Carrie believed that it had something to do with whomever she was talking about.

"Don't look at me like that," the woman said, turning her back.

She busied herself sorting aimlessly through a shelf in the refrigerator. When she'd rearranged the orange juice container and a milk carton for the third time, she closed the door. For a moment she remained facing the appliance, then she turned back to Carrie.

"You may be my sister, but that doesn't give you the right to come in here and tell me what to do and how to run my life. Now, I think you should leave. Dan will be home for dinner soon, and he doesn't like it when you're here or when his dinner isn't ready when he comes in."

Before Carrie could say anything, the room began to spin again, and moments later she found herself back on the bed in Clara's cottage. When everything calmed down and she had her balance, Carrie sat upright.

Her sister? She was this woman's sister?

A piercing, knifelike pain sliced through Carrie's temple. She groaned and collapsed against her pillow, clutching her throbbing head. The pain went on and on, pounding unmercifully at her skull until she thought she was dying. She tried to call out to Clara, but her vocal cords didn't want to work. Then she tried to get up, but each time she moved, the pain grew worse, to the point of being unbearable. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that if she shut out the light streaming through the window, it would help. But the pain persisted and increased.

Suddenly, as unexpectedly as it had come on, the throbbing agony was gone. Carrie took a deep shuddering breath and eased her eyes open. Not sure what to expect, she looked around the room. She was still at Clara's, so what had the pain been all about?

Then it came to her as clear as any picture she'd ever seen. The woman was, indeed, her sister, her twin sister. That's why they looked alike, except for that tiny mole that their mother had used to tell them apart. Her name was Cathy, and she was married to a brutal, self-centered, controlling jerk named Dan Carrington.

With that one memory slipping through the gates she'd erected to shut it all out, all the memories of the night, the time before she'd found herself wandering the streets of Tarrytown in a blizzard, rushed through on its heels.