“You’ve been handling everything alone for ten years,” he said. “I want to be there.”
“All right,” I said. “I’d better get back to the room. Call me when you know what time you’re getting in.”
I hung up the phone and walked back to Haley’s room, a small smile on my lips. He was coming home.
53
Tara
I must have dialed Grace’s number ten times from the car before she finally picked up.
“Stay on the phone with me!” I said to her. “Please. Just stay on until I get there.”
“I don’t have that many minutes, Mom. It’s one of those prepaid phones. As soon as you get here, I need you to give them permission to get a test to see if I’m a match for this girl who’s my sister. Do you…do you know about her? Haley? She has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant and they need to see if I’m a match.”
I was horror-stricken. What were they doing to my daughter? I had never thought of her as so vulnerable, so in need of me, as I did at that moment.
“Grace.” I kept my voice far calmer than I’d thought possible. We needed a lawyer. I wished Ian would check his damn voice mail. “Slow down, honey, please. I need to get there and talk to…the medical staff and everyone. You may feel as though you know these people but you don’t.
Emerson took her eyes from the road to glance at me. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“She could die,” Grace said, but I knew that voice. She was afraid. She wanted me to say no. To protect her. I knew my daughter better than I’d realized.
“I’ll be there in… How close are we?” I asked Emerson.
“Very close,” Emerson said. “Depending on this damn traffic.”
“Minutes,” I said to Grace. “I’ll be there in minutes, honey.”
“Mom? I don’t know what to do.”
My eyes brimmed with tears. “I’ll take care of it, Grace. We’ll work this out together.”
I didn’t want to let her off the phone but she was gone before I could say another word. I turned off my phone and looked at Emerson.
“My God,” I said.
“What’s happening?” Jenny leaned forward from the backseat.
“It sounds like Anna Knightly’s daughter needs a bone marrow transplant and they want to test Grace to see if she’s a match.”
“You’re kidding!” Emerson said. “These people sound heartless.”
“You mean, Grace walks in and they see her as a bunch of cells instead of a person?” Jenny asked. “Oh, Mom, drive faster.”
“No one’s going to touch her without my permission, so don’t worry about that,” I said.
My phone rang and I saw Ian’s cell number on the caller ID. “Ian!” I nearly shouted into the phone.
“Tara, I’m so sorry you found—”
“Look, I’m mad at you, but right now just help me, all right?”
“This Knightly woman,” he said. “Don’t talk to her, Tara. Just get Grace and go. Have Knightly’s attorney contact me and we’ll deal with it from there. I’m going to call some people I know at the police department in Wilmington. But for right now, you just want to make sure Grace is safe.”
“I’m sorry. I know you must be—”
“I don’t want to tie up the line in case Grace calls me back,” I said.
“Okay, we’ll talk later.”
I hung up the phone and wiped my hand across my forehead. I was perspiring. “He said just to get Grace and go,” I said, as if that hadn’t been my plan all along. I thought back to how Grace had sounded on the phone. “She has to be so scared,” I said, then turned to Jenny. “What did I do wrong with her, Jenny?” My own vulnerability bubbled to the surface. “Why can’t I ever seem to reach her?”
“It’s just typical kids-not-getting-along-with-their-parents stuff,” Jenny said kindly.
“No, it’s not,” I argued.
“Oh, it is!” Emerson insisted.
I kept my gaze on Jenny. “You and your mom have a better relationship than Grace and I do,” I said. “I know that. I feel like I screwed it up somehow.”
“I don’t think you screwed anything up,” Jenny said. “Grace is just deep. She just feels everything more than most people and it makes it hard to get close to her sometimes.”
I still thought she was being kind. Sam had never had a problem getting close to her. I remembered Noelle’s eulogy at Sam’s memorial service. “Sam was a champion listener,” Noelle had said. “That’s what made him such a good lawyer. Such a good husband and father.” Her voice had broken in the hushed church. “And such a good friend.”
