The woman puts her hand on Joan’s arm. “Belief has to start somewhere. Your beginning is cancer. My beginning was my college fiancé dumping me our senior year. One of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Joan’s eyes fill with fear and she fights the urge to cry. “How can cancer be the best thing? What if…”
The woman nods, looking at her son. “I’ve gone through all the what-ifs. I know what could happen. My husband and I have talked about all of them. But what if the what-ifs don’t happen?” Her eyes are sincere as she looks at Joan. “What if there is something greater than all of our what-ifs? What if God heals Bruce? What if He heals you? What if today is the day?”
The woman smiles and Joan feels tears in her eyes again. What if?
October 2012
Gloria, Miriam, and Lauren carry sections of a baby crib up the stairs and into the first bedroom on the right. Travis and Andrea follow, carrying a small white chest of drawers. Gloria spotted the crib, complete with mattress, pads, sheets, and chest of drawers at a garage sale and called Lauren right away. She insisted that she and Marshall buy the items for the baby’s room. “You’re going to have a baby shower anyway, so consider these your first and probably best gifts!” Gloria said.
Travis works at putting the crib together as the women place the chest of drawers against the wall, next to the door. Miriam looks around the small room. “You’re going to need a chair or rocking chair of some sort there in the corner.”
Lauren looks at the empty space. “You think?”
“If you breast-feed in the middle of the night,” Andrea says, “a chair is nice in the baby’s room.” She looks around the room. “I remember Bill and I doing this like it was yesterday.”
“Me, too,” Gloria says. “The days were long, but the years were short.” Miriam and Andrea nod in agreement, smiling at Lauren.
“That just means there will be days that will feel like they’ll never end, but they do,” Andrea says. “And it feels like the years fly by, and they do.”
“Oh, to be a young mother again,” Miriam says, pulling the crib sheets from the bag to be washed.
“Would you do it again, Miriam?” Lauren asks.
“She’s too old to do it again,” Gloria says.
“Says Grandma Moses,” Miriam replies. “I’d do some things differently, and I can leave all those things in the hands of you and Travis, to do right what I got wrong.”
“We’re just thrilled to be grandmas again,” Gloria says.
“She will be Grandma,” Miriam says. “I will be Noni M.”
Gloria scoffs. “How is it that even your grandma name annoys me?”
Lauren waves her hand at them to stop and positions Andrea next to them, in the middle of the room. “Say cheese,” she says, holding up her phone to take a picture.
“Noni M!” Gloria says, making all of them laugh. She claps her hands together and says, “There are some miscellaneous pictures for the wall and a few baby toys I found at the sale in my car.”
“Gloria, you didn’t say—” Lauren begins.
“I couldn’t resist,” Gloria says. “They were inexpensive and cute and if you don’t want them, there are plenty of parents at Glory’s Place who can use them.” Miriam and Andrea go with her to the car as Travis’s cell phone rings. He notices it is Robert Layton’s number.
“Hi, Robert!”
“Please tell Lauren that farmer Bud lives thirty miles from here.”
Travis looks at Lauren and smiles.
TWENTY
October 1972
John uses a table saw to cut a new table leg to replace the one he miscut a couple of weeks ago. Although he has moved his finish date, at this rate, he worries that he will not have the table completed for Christmas. Fear pushes against his heart, and he wonders if Joan will be here at Christmas. He presses his fingers into his eyes in an effort to drive away the thought. “Today’s the day,” he says, his voice catching. Joan is getting thinner, and fatigue grips her many more times a day. “You’re doing things I can’t see,” he whispers. He finishes the cut and stops the saw, putting his head down, too tired or too distracted to continue. “You’re doing things I can’t see,” he whispers again, his lip beginning to quiver. He grips the workbench. “I believe.” He closes his eyes against the tears. “But there’s part of me that doesn’t. Help me believe.”
The door to his shop opens and John straightens, wiping his face before he turns around, and when he does, he laughs out loud. Christopher is wearing an adorable fluffy lion costume, and Gigi is smiling ear to ear in what looks like a hooded, velvety yellow rug with two eyes and a yellow cone nose pointing straight out.
“Grandma and Mommy finished my costume!” Gigi says. Joan smiles, looking at the kids.
“Where’s Gigi?” John asks Joan.
“Daddy! Here!” Gigi says, laughing.
John looks shocked. “Here? I thought you were Big Bird!” He stands back. “Let me take a better look.” He nods. “Yep, now I see that you are my Gigi, but when you came in…”
“I tricked you,” Gigi says, pleased.
“Not just me. Every house you go to will be tricked!” He looks at Joan. “Great job!”
She picks up Christopher and says, “Roar for Daddy.” The little boy opens his mouth and makes a noise that sounds more like a duck than a lion.
John laughs, poking Christopher in the belly. “So, tomorrow night, right?” he says, looking at Gigi.
She bounces her head up and down. “What will you and Mommy be?” Gigi asks.
“I’m going to go as a heat and A/C repairman,” John says.
Gigi shakes her head. “That’s your job! Your costume has to be pretend.”
“If you ask any of my customers, many of them will say that I pretend
