Topaz Heat (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) Page 8

  “Of course not. But I’m not here out of concern for you. I’m here for them. They both told me they can’t even get you out of bed. Is this really your first day back at work?”

  “You don’t even know. You can’t know. He was my daddy. He saved me and now he’s dead.”

  She’d started quivering so hard that her teeth nearly rattled. He grabbed her arm and gave her a small shake. “I’m sorry it happened, Sarah. I’m sorry. I’ve been there, remember? My mom died right before I moved to New York. I wish I could take the pain away, but I can’t. No one can.”

  He expected tears, but none came. She just trembled hard enough to worry him and blinked them back. “Have you cried yet? Have you let yourself cry?”

  They were cut off when the elevator finally arrived, and they had to wait while an orderly pushed a man in a wheelchair out before they could get in. “I’m exhausted, Derrick. Really, could we do this another time?”

  “You haven’t have you?” He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her. “Sarah, you have to let it out. Don’t hold something like that in. No wonder you’re such a wreck.”

  She jerked away from him and stepped with her back against the corner, putting as much distance between them as possible. “Stop it! Just leave me alone. Forget I even exist.”

  Derrick sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I wish I could. You have no idea how much I wish I could.”

  The elevator jerked to a stop so quickly that he lost his balance and fell against the wall as the lights went out. He retained his balance, but in the total darkness, he felt completely disoriented. “Sarah?” He panicked when she didn’t answer, worried that she’d hit her head or something. He dug around in his pocket until he found his cell phone. The lit screen almost illuminated the entire small enclosure, and he turned around.

  Sarah was crouched down with her back to the corner, sitting against her heels with her arms wrapped around her legs. She stared up at him with a pale face and eyes so inundated with fear that it wrenched his gut. He knelt next to her and started to reach for her but she shrank back and her breath started to wheeze. “Are you okay?”

  The emergency lights came on, providing a dim but constant light, so he pocketed his phone. “Sarah?”

  “Don’t touch me!” she shrieked.

  He jerked his hand back and held it up so that she could see his empty palm. “Okay. Okay, don’t worry. The power must have gone out from the storm. Looks like the generators don’t run the elevators.”

  “Get away! Stay away!” She screamed, gripping the sides of her head and burying her face against her knees.

  He decided she must be claustrophobic. “Just take deep breaths, sweetheart. I’m sure we’ll be moving soon.”

  Sarah could smell the dank mildew. It got worse the farther back into the closet they went, and her sisters always put her way in the back, blocking her with their own young bodies. Her back was against the wall, and she could hear something moving just on the other side.

  Only it wasn’t moving like a person. It was one of the monsters. One of the monsters she couldn’t see because her glasses were gone again. They hid behind the walls or stayed just out of reach, just out of sight where she couldn’t see, becoming blurry shadows that danced around her, taunting her, hitting her, pinching her.

  She could hear her mother, screaming those horrible words to him. Other voices came, men and women, laughing, taunting. She was hungry. It seemed like she was always hungry. But the last time she complained, the man made her eat the raw meat right out of the package. Her stomach gave a greasy turn remembering having to swallow the raw, red meat. When she cried, he slapped her and told her never to complain to him again. That was the last time her glasses disappeared.

  His voice stood out from the rest, and she cringed even further back, toward the monsters. They just scared her. He made her sister Robin scream in bed at night.

  Maxine would come to her then, crawl in bed with her and they would hold each other until it was over. Sarah would close her eyes and try to block out the horrible sounds coming from the other bed, and sometimes Maxine would risk attention by softly singing in Sarah’s ears. Robin wouldn’t let them touch her for a while after he left, so they would stay together and cry for her, because she never did cry.

  The lights came on and she flinched away. That wasn’t right. There wasn’t a light in the closet. It was always dark. She blinked and the world came into focus. She wasn’t in a closet – she was wrapped in Derrick’s arms on his lap, buried against his chest, sobbing so hard her throat hurt. He was rocking her, talking nonsense in a soothing voice.

  Horrified, she pushed away, but he hauled her back down. As the elevator came to a stop, he gripped her tighter and pushed with his legs, sliding his back up the wall until he was standing, still cradling her.

  She took a deep breath and rested her head on his shoulder. She felt tired – so tired. “I’m okay now,” she said. She patted his chest – his rock hard chest. “I’m fine.”

  He gave a harsh laugh as he carried her through the empty central lobby of the hospital and into the parking garage. “I’m not.”

  “Derrick, really …”

  “When you can say that without sounding like a beaten puppy, maybe I’ll believe you.”

  Her energy was shot. She’d argue with him about it in a minute. For the time being, she just relished the strength of his arms as he carried her.

  CHAPTER 8

  INSTEAD of asking Sarah where she had parked her car, Derrick just took her to his. He set her down next to the car to unlock and open the door, and then gently helped her inside. It seemed like it took an eternity to get around the front hood and then to his door, to unlock it, and slide into the seat next to her. Sarah just leaned against the car door as huge tears slid down her face. He wanted to do something to help her, but he didn't know how or what. So he drove, through the light traffic downtown, darting cars and pushing limits on yellow lights, until they left the city behind them.

  In minutes, he turned into Tony’s neighborhood. As he drove up the winding driveway and cleared the last of the trees, the sight of the downstairs lights spilling out through the windows filled him with a sense of relief. He felt nearly happy when he pulled in behind Maxine’s car parked in front of the door.

  Sarah hadn’t spoken throughout the entire drive. He guessed she knew their destination without having to ask. He parked behind Maxine’s car and quickly hopped out and moved to Sarah’s door. She kind of poured herself out of the seat, very wobbly as she gained her footing. “Let’s go inside, Sweetheart,” Derrick said.

  “Don’t call me, ‘Sweetheart,’” she reflexively insisted.

  Derrick couldn’t help but grin at the rebuff, glad to hear her words spoken without any kind of slur. He didn’t know what happened to her, but she exhibited signs of shock and he wondered if he should have taken her from the hospital at all.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle, as if warding off a deep cold. As the lightning flashed around them and the wind whipped her hair free of the confines of her hairpins, Derrick thought she looked very lost, and very scared. He put a hand on her elbow to help her up the wide steps to the big double front doors.

  An eternity passed from the time he rang the door bell to the moment Maxine opened the door. She had a coat in her hand and Barry followed behind her. Her smile grew wider when she saw them, until she looked directly at Sarah.

  “What happened?” she asked, a half second before she turned her head and called for Robin.

  Sarah stepped into the house and fell against Maxine, whose arms automatically came around her. As the first sob escaped, Robin and Tony entered the foyer and ran toward them. Derrick watched helplessly, relieved that the family all came together, as Sarah sobbed out, “I remember.”

  A shudder coursed through Sarah’s body, starting somewhere in her stomach and moving in a widening radius outward, until even her toes clenched against it. She sat curled up in a
leather chair, Robin on the couch next to her, leaning forward with her hand on the arm of the chair, and Maxine sitting on the end of the table in front of her, her hands rubbing warmth into Sarah’s legs.

  “What happened?” Robin asked.

  “We were in the elevator.” Her breath hitched.

  Maxine paused then asked, “You and Derrick?”

  Sarah nodded. “He’d come to check on me, because you two were worried about me. We were fighting about something when the power went out.” She waved a hand in the air. “I guess the storm.” Her hand fell limply to her side. She felt disconnected from the material world. Another shudder made her jaw clench.

  Derrick spoke from somewhere in the room. “The elevator jerked to a stop and the lights went out. I don’t know how long they were out. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but it felt like longer.”

  Sarah rubbed her eyes. “As soon as the lights went out, it was like I was transported back in time.” She looked at her sisters. Her vision blurred as her eyes filled with fresh tears. “I remember we were in a closet. We were hiding. And he … he …” With both hands, she slapped her palms over her mouth. Both of her sisters moved toward her at once, sitting on the arms of her chair and wrapping their arms around her, around each other.

  Robin spoke. “Shh. Shush, now. It’s okay, now.” Her voice soothed, as it had twenty years ago.

  Sarah’s stomach hurt as more and more memories assailed her, flooding her mind and her senses until she could almost smell the burn of the cheap drugs, feel the harsh hands that slapped at her, and hear the terrible sound of her mother’s voice. “How have you lived? How have you functioned with this in your heads?”

  Maxine leaned back and lifted Sarah’s face, wiping the tears off her cheeks. “Well, Robin worked. And I shopped. And we did those things mindlessly and soullessly until we found God.”

  Tony appeared at Robin’s side, a glass of water in his hand. Robin took it from him and held it up to Sarah. “Drink.”

  Despite the fact that the last thing she wanted was a sip of water, the cool liquid felt wonderful in her parched mouth and soothingly slid down her aching throat. She accepted the glass from her sister and took another sip, then handed it back as fresh tears welled up in her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks. She ripped the glasses off her face and handed them to Maxine.

  “I remember that night. Hiding. And gunshots.” She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and pushed. “Up until now, my earliest memory was waking up in my parents’ house. I couldn’t see anything because I didn’t have my glasses. I realized, even at nine, that for the first time in my life I was really safe.”

  Her stomach clenched painfully when she realized that her sisters had never really told her a lot. “But you two –”

  Robin shushed her again, using a soothing voice. “We weren’t little. I was fifteen, Maxine twelve. There was little hope for adoption. We were put into series of foster homes.”

  Maxine continued. “It was bad at one of them. The man –” She pressed her lips together, obviously struggling to speak.

  Robin interrupted her. “There is evil in this world. The man there was attacking Maxi and I stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife. He wasn’t badly hurt but within a few days, Maxi ended up in another foster home and I landed in a girls’ home.”

  “When she turned 18, she was released. Hank gave her a job at the restaurant and he helped her get custody of me.”

  “And a year later, we started appealing for you, but your parents had already adopted you.”

  Sarah nodded. “I didn’t know about you, but I dreamed about you. When I saw you the morning of my fifteenth birthday, I recognized you from my dreams.”

  Maxine’s eyes shifted to a distant and very private memory and she confirmed, “God speaks to us in dreams.”

  Robin pursed her lips and swallowed hard, but her expression was more angry than sad. “Your mom was just protecting you,” she finally said, as if telling herself.

  Knowing now, knowing the bond that held the three of them together, remembering the love she had for her sisters that surpassed anything she could have imagined, her heart gave a painful, tight beat. “It wasn’t fair,” she whispered. “Maybe if we had been together, I could have coped with all of it instead of just forgetting.”

  “Hey,” Maxine said, gripping her hand. “Take it as a gift. Take it as a gift from God. You were able to live a normal life, all things considered. You found a family, with uncles and aunts and cousins. You had parents who tucked you in at night and read you bedtime stories. You went to church and had Christ in your life early when you were still young. God gave you that for a reason – either for them or for you, we can’t know. But Robin and I don’t begrudge any of that for you.”

  “You were probably the only person in the world praying for us,” Robin said. “And look at us now. We are together, a family.” She held her hand out, and Tony stepped forward to take it. Derrick stood next to him, and Barry put his hand on Maxine’s shoulder. “We beat the system, and the odds, and God made us into a family. Our children will never have to worry about any of the things that we faced as children, as long as there is breath in our bodies.”

  Sarah leaned down until her head rested in Robin’s lap. Her sister ran her fingers through her hair.

  Tony spoke above her. “We should pray.”

  Barry affirmed, “Good idea.”

  Derrick cleared his throat. “I’ll do it.” Sarah felt her neck muscles automatically tense up, but she closed her eyes and did not object. In a circle, they held hands, closed their eyes, and bowed their heads in prayer.

  “Father God,” Derrick began, “I’m not sure what to say. There is so much pain in new memories, and it’s on top of fresh grieving. I’m afraid that it’s a little overwhelming right now. I would like to start off by thanking You for placing me in the elevator tonight when the power went out. Thank you for letting me be with Sarah when she experienced the return of her past.”

  His voice, once grating to her very nerves, now soothed her, caressed her, until she felt the fist that clinched her heart loose its grip, until she felt a sense of calm slowly overtake her. Her sister’s hands felt warm against her cool skin.

  “Mighty God, you are a healing God. Your word tells us that You can do all things and we have faith that it is so. We know that if it is Your will, You can erase the scars of the past and heal the pain of past wrongs as if they never even happened. God, we have faith that it is so. We petition You to touch Sarah, tonight. Even now, God, we pray that You hold her up in the very palm of Your mighty hand and comfort her through the Holy Spirit.”

  As he prayed for healing and forgiveness, Sarah just relaxed and felt his voice flow over her body. Her heart felt lighter and she knew that they were in the very presence of the Holy Spirit.

  “God, we pray for all those who persecuted us in our past. We pray that we can be living witnesses to them of Your glory and Your promise. We pray that we can testify to the truth of Your word and Your enduring love. Father, let Sarah feel that love tonight and let that love fill her to overflowing. Let her see Your love shining in her sisters and her brothers in law. You know how long I have loved Sarah, Lord, and just how much.” As Derrick suddenly quit speaking, Sarah’s breath caught and she sat up quickly, turning to look at him. Without her glasses on, she couldn’t see a lot of detail on his face, but she could see that he stood frozen.

  She watched him take a step back. “I’m sorry,” Derrick said. “I …” His face looked into the eyes opening around him and he proclaimed. “Amen. Amen.” Then he rushed from the room. Tony followed him at a more sedate pace. Sarah heard their deep, masculine voices, but could not make out what they said. She felt a burning flush cover her face and reached forward to retrieve the glasses Maxine had set on the table next to her hip.

  “Well,” Robin said, standing and rubbing her hands on the sides of her thighs.

  She didn’t say anything else, an
d Sarah felt her face burn hotter when Maxine smiled and said, “Well, indeed.”

  The older sisters said nothing else, as if sharing a long kept secret or a private joke. Sarah put her hands against her cheeks which felt hot and damp with tears. “Goodness.”

  Tony came back into the room and cleared his throat. “Derrick had to go.”

  Barry’s bark of laughter made Sarah flinch. “I bet,” he said. He immediately sobered up and looked at Sarah, “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” she whispered as she stood, shakily, to her feet. Maxine stood with her, reaching an arm out to steady her. “Can you drive me home?”

  “Stay here, tonight,” Robin said.

  “I don’t want to.” She had discovered that Maxine and Barry had dropped the kids off with Robin so that they could go to New York for Maxine’s show. “I don’t think I can face the kids in the morning.”

  “This house is big enough that you wouldn’t have to,” Tony observed dryly, by way of teasing Robin.

  Sarah gave a curt shake of her head. “I need to go home.”

  “We can drive you home,” Barry said.

  “I left my purse in my locker at work,” Sarah said.

  “We’ll go there first.”

  She hugged Robin then Tony. “I love you,” she said to them.

  Robin stepped forward and hugged her again. “I love you. Call me if you need me.”

  Sarah knew Robin meant it. Robin had taken care of Sarah from birth. When she was six-years-old, Robin was the one to wake up in the middle of the night to feed the infant Sarah. She was her mother more than the woman who died at the hands of a drug dealer, or the woman who fostered Sarah for the last nine years of her childhood. “I will.”

  CHAPTER 9

  THE rain from a few days before ended any false hope that the mild autumn weather gave of a perpetual summer. Now a wind howled, blowing the remaining leaves from trees and sending people scurrying indoors. Several miles outside Boston, a cold, foggy mist settled around the mountains, making the world gray and dark.