Visited your dad, charming as ever. It would bolster his spirits to see your face.
By the time I clicked send, Bruce had fallen asleep. Pulling the chair closer, I took his outstretched hand and rested my forehead against the back of his palm.
If this were my father in the hospital and I approached his bedside, would he hold out his hand to welcome back his outcast child? Or did the parable of the Prodigal Son not apply to daughters?
“Please,” I whispered my first prayer in years. “Please don’t let me lose him too.”
As he slept, I thought Bruce’s hand squeezed mine. I dozed off remembering a quiet Sunday afternoon with my grandma: the first time I shared my truth, before I understood the repercussions, dreaming of a time when praying felt as natural as breathing.
“Nanna,“ I said, inspecting her jewelry to avoid eye contact and running my sweaty palms over my thighs. “Does God make mistakes?”
Her eyes snapped up from her romance novel, Lord of Scoundrels. Daddy says she shouldn’t read those ‘filthy bodice rippers,’ but her stash under the bed was our little secret. “Why do you ask?”
“Daddy read this Scripture on Sunday about being knit together as babies.”
“Psalm 139.” She identified it easily, reciting with the confidence of a woman whose son was an Evangelical minister: “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“Yeah, that one." My voice shook as my fingertips traced a pearl brooch of a butterfly. “Is it true?”
“As far as I know,” she said, popping her recliner lever to sit up. “Why?”
“Well, at school this week, we had to write about what we want to be when we grow up, and I wrote about wanting to be a mom.” My eyes jolted up at Nanna's sharp inhale to her reflection in the mirror. Her alarmed eyes softened as they took in my panic. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. And the kids, they told me I’d be a dad, but I —“
My face scrunched up to fight back tears. Daddy said I couldn’t cry anymore since I’m seven. Mama didn’t give him the girls he wanted, so he wanted no more tears under his roof. If he saw my puffy face, I knew which Scripture he'd choose: ‘When I was a child, I behaved like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.’ Last time he’d recited it, I pointed out that Jesus also said, ‘Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ He reprimanded me for talking back.
“Come here,” Nanna prompted sternly.
I trudged over with heavy feet and shared my theory: “Maybe since Elijah and I were in Mama’s belly together, God didn’t notice I’m not supposed to be a boy. He wasn’t trying to forget me, but … like when Mary and Joseph got home from vacation and realized they forgot Jesus because they both thought the other one had him?”
“You know what I think?” Nanna scruffed my short hair. Her eyes flickered around, landing on her dresser. “I think grown-ups are like butterflies, each uniquely beautiful. But butterflies aren’t born that way, are they?”
I shook my head, remembering the tank in my second grade class. “No, they start as caterpillars before they metamorf—um, go into cocoons.”
“Right, metamorphosis. Some butterflies don’t change much, they start and finish blue.”Her gentle hand cupped my cheek. “But some caterpillars are different when they grow up.”
“Like the monarch,” I murmured, thinking of the yellow and black striped caterpillars. After the green shells — crystal somethings — they emerge bright orange and black.
“Like the monarch. Do you know what happens when they’re in their chrysalises?” Nanna leaned closer like she was telling a secret. “They turn into goo. Their entire body, all of their cells …” She made a farting sound and I laughed out loud. “Scientists have studied it, but can’t explain exactly what happens in that chrysalis. Even their best microscopes can’t look inside. Do you know the only one who knows?”
“God?”
“He decides who each caterpillar will grow up to be. We can’t predict it, we have to rely on His grace for the faith that each will turn out the way they’re meant to,. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Remember what the Lord said to your namesake, the prophet Jeremiah,” Nanna pressed her forehead to mine. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; For I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Chapter 3Grace
Drool caked on my cheek, my mouth tasted like butt, and my throat ached from the drier hospital air. Dazed, I looked around: Bruce’s hospital room, 1:42am. He slept, his cheeks rosier and the monitors showing strong vital signs. But if he was sleeping, what woke me?
“Sir, visiting hours are over,” Carla’s stern voice carried from the hallway.
“You don’t understand,” came an agitated grumble that sounded oddly familiar in my half-awake state. “I got here as soon as I could.”
“No, sir, you don’t understand,” Carla said in her ready-to-call-security voice. “Visiting hours ended five hours ago.”
As a social worker, I’ve trained in crisis de-escalation. On the other hand, I’d had a heck of a day, and if I hid out here, security would escort him out. But on the other-other hand, Carla was out there alone with this jerk.
Summoning the patience of generations of women dealing with men who didn’t think the rules applied to them, I stepped into the hallway, where my gaze landed on the hottest man I’d ever seen.
Maybe I was dreaming next to Bruce’s bed, and when I blinked, I’d see a balding septuagenarian with a beer gut and neck goiter. I rubbed my eyes, squinting into the bright hallway light. Nope, with his raven strands pressed away from an angular face, the man looked like a fallen angel caught between realms.
“His name is Bruce Clarke,” he said, pressing his fingertip emphatically into the countertop. “I’m his son, and I need to see him right away.”
Holy heck, that tall drink of water was Alexander Clarke.
His tiny picture on his company website, sporting that perfect haircut and cocky grin, hadn’t done justice to how devastating he looked in the flesh. A charcoal suit jacket stretched over his broad shoulders, crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He’d run his hands through his hair enough that a disheveled cluster fell over his forehead. A scruffy five o’clock shadow haunted his angular jaw, and his full lips pulled down into a scowl.
My fingers trembled as I ran my sweaty palms over my legs. The movement must have caught Carla’s peripheral vision and she broke their staredown. When she turned to face me, his forehead fell into the cradle of his index finger and thumb in exasperation.
No, not quite. When we’d spoken nine hours ago, he’d been in California. That wasn’t exasperation on his face, that was exhaustion.
You and me both, Big Guy.
