A knot settled in Rebekah’s throat and threatened to strangle her.
Consternation had furrowed Fogarty’s brows and his eyes were red and wide. “Thomas, Rebekah, Joseph. Oh, Joseph, praise God that you are up and around.” He did not pause to breathe. “I need you to come with me now to your parents’ house.”
“I thought you were my fater,” Rebekah said cautiously.
“Actually, we all thought you were Samuel…” Joseph’s voice was equally cautious.
Fogarty huffed and patted his brow with a hanky he produced from his front pocket. His rotund face was cherry red in the early morning light and beads of sweat the size of peas pockmarked his forehead. “Thomas, Rebekah. I have disturbing news. Samuel became deathly ill in the night. As of this morning, he has passed from this earth.”
Rebekah felt as though she fairly floated to her childhood home, in a way that her soul was just outside of her body. For a brief moment, she may have wished it was, just to be with her father one more brief moment, but she shook the thought all the way off. Oh, Fater.
“What did it?” Joseph asked matter-of-factly.
That was one thing about Joseph. When the times grew hard, he grew stoic, no matter what. Answers and pragmaticism. That was Joseph under pressure.
“What took Samuel’s life?”
Fogarty dabbed his face with the hankey as they walked. “It was as I expected. What I said before, about his blood clotting in the wrong places. Do you recall, I said before that it would happen again? And perhaps again and again, until it ultimately won?”
“I remember,” Rebekah whispered. Still, his words chilled the very air around them. Her fater had been fighting an invisible battle within himself for quite some time. Tears burned in the back of her throat. If I had known, I would have been able to help. Maybe. Or maybe not. It mattered not now. A surge of helpless emotion tightened her throat. She grasped Joseph’s hand.
“I remember, too,” Joseph said.
Fogarty dabbed his face again. He seemed to be just as shaken up over this turn of events as they were. “It happened. He passed just this morning, according to your mother. He was getting up to come see you for…”
“Hot coffee and good company,” Rebekah and Joseph said in unison before looking strangely at each other.
“Yes, that is it exactly.” Fogarty shook his head. “I will never forget those words.”
Neither will I.
“Your mother,” Fogarty said, “walked out to get his hat and coat, which was apparently nothing out of the ordinary. While she was out of the room, she could hear him talking. To someone named Abram, apparently.”
Rebekah’s blood turned to ice.
His brother. His dead brother.
“When she returned,” Fogarty said, “she found him. He had passed in her absence. I happened to be stopping by to check his progress before heading to your place to check on Joseph.” He sniffled. “So, I offered to fetch you.”
Something in her heart went out to the strange old barber. Rebekah loosened her hand from Joseph’s and laid it on Fogarty’s shoulder. “Are you all right, Mr. Fogarty?”
She was not sure why she called him mister; it just came out.
“You seem to know an awful lot about this.” Rebekah normally stemmed her tongue, but not today. Emboldened, she continued. “More so than any normal barber would.”
He studied the ground. Rebekah thought she saw his lower lip tremble. “That is because I have not always been a barber. And I have seen this exact malady before.”
Rebekah said nothing as they closed the gap between them and her childhood home. Thomas, having heard everything and taken it all in, had run ahead to be with their mother.
After a moment of hush, Fogarty continued. “I was a physician before.”
Before what? Rebekah bit her tongue.
“I was good at what I did. It was my life’s work. My calling from God Almighty. My attempt at being His light in this world, one patient at a time.”
Rebekah, Joseph, and Dawson remained silent.
“But I failed. I failed in the worst way a man can fail.” He sniffled. “My wife, she gave me the two children I spoke of before. My beautiful children, beautiful like their mother. She had the clotting problem, too.”
Rebekah sucked in a breath. Now everything began to come into focus. “I see,” she whispered.
“The clots plagued her like a, well, like a plague. She would fall ill like Samuel, then recover. At least for a while. Then, she would fall ill again. Each time was worse than the one before.” Fogarty looked up at her. “I should not be telling you this during your time of grief. Forgive me.”
Joseph spoke before Rebekah could. “We all grieve, Fogarty. We are here to listen to you, who gave so much to our family.”
“Thank you.” He dabbed his eyes again. “One episode was so terrible it left her crippled and disfigured. Paralyzed half of her body so that she could not walk. She could not talk. She could not feed herself, dress herself…” His sentence trailed off into the early morning dawn. “Then, not long after, another attack came. It took her life much in the same manner as it took your father’s.”
“Oh, Fogarty. I see now why you knew so much.”
He nodded. “I lived it for many, many years. Both as a physician and as a husband.” He thought for a moment. “So, I quit. I quit doctoring and became a barber. After all, barbers do some doctoring from time to time, but nobody expects them to be experts in their field. Which I was not. What kind of expert would let his wife die?”
“That is not your fault. We do not understand why these things happen,” Rebekah said.
They had reached the Stoll homestead without realizing it. The lot of them stood at the bottom of the stairs. Even the house itself looked sad.
Fogarty reached into his pocket and produced a brownish piece of fabric. “Elnora said this was gripped in his hand. She remembered that he had been looking for it to bring to you.”
Joseph looked closely. “What is it?”
