A Sister's Forgiveness (17 page)

Jeannie shook her head. “I need to…” she mumbled without finishing the statement as she stumbled from the room and out onto the lanai.

Sadie was under arrest, charged with the ominous-sounding vehicular homicide. Her mother-in-law followed her. “You may as well know the whole story,” she said.

“Yes, please,” Jeannie agreed and nodded to her mother who had come to her rescue. “It’s all right. I need to hear this,” she said.

“According to reports in the paper and on television, the attorney for the state hopes to use the case to send a message about the rising fatality count among teenage drivers and their passengers,” her mother-in-law said. “On Wednesday morning, Sadie will go before the judge for the first time. Until then she is being held in the juvenile detention center in Bradenton.”

Jeannie could not begin to imagine how scared Sadie must be nor how worried Emma and Lars were. “But…”

Her mother-in-law patted her arm. “It will all work out, Jeannie. You needn’t worry about it, especially not now. The courts will find the right way to handle this matter.”

But Emma and Lars did not believe in the courts of the outside world. They did not vote or take part in the systems that governed the world they considered separate from their conservative faith. And yet she had nothing to offer them. It was everything she could do just to get out of bed in the mornings once she realized anew that this was day two—or three or five in this case—since Tessa had died.

“You should get dressed, Jeannie,” her mother said. “We need to leave for the church in an hour.”

So on that Monday afternoon—a day that by two o’clock had already seemed twice as long as any normal day—she and Geoff arrived at their church to receive mourners before the service. There was Sadie. She was dressed in a gray cotton skirt and a shapeless black sweater. She looked gaunt and hollow-eyed as she stood to one side of the room reserved for family to receive mourners before the service. Standing with her was a uniformed woman and, of course, Emma. Lars was there as well, standing with Matt, who looked lost in his too-big suit jacket bought larger so that it might last more than one season.

“He’s growing so fast,” Emma had sighed when the sisters had gone shopping for the suit at the Pinecraft thrift store.

Jeannie fastened her attention on Sadie—examining the rush of feelings that swept through her upon seeing her niece for the first time since that horrible day. Her lively and vivacious niece, who could work a room full of people like any politician, now stood pressed against the wall, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed. In spite of her family around her, she looked so very alone. She looked the way Jeannie felt—as if the world had gone mad and she didn’t know how to cope with that. Instinctively Jeannie’s heart went out to her. She started toward her, but at that very moment, Geoff appeared at Jeannie’s side and restrained her with a gentle touch. He took hold of her hand. “Honey, it’s time.”

Time. There was no time. Time had run out—for Tessa and now for Jeannie to cling to the hope that there had been some cruel mistake. The events of the last five days raced through her mind in fast-forward: breakfast… missing keys… the search… keys found… Tessa out the door with a blown kiss to meet Sadie… Jeannie more nervous about this first day of high school than her daughter was… Geoff out the door with a similar blown kiss and an umbrella for Tessa… Emma on the phone… a shout… the scream of car brakes… a dull thud… silence…

It occurred to Jeannie now that she had observed everything that happened after that in silence as if she were underwater. There were noises around her but none of them clear. Ambulance sirens, strangers huddled around Tessa, the ride to the hospital, the ER, the race to surgery, the interminable wait…

And here’s where her recall of that day went from fast-forward to slow motion. Jeannie would never forget the way the doctor walked toward her. She relived every detail of his appearance in that moment. His surgical mask pulled down around his neck, his surgical cap and scrubs sweat-stained, his eyes refusing to meet hers or Geoff’s, his long strides covering the distance. And the worst part was that she had known the minute he came through the door what he had come to tell them.

Leaning heavily now on Geoff as he led her into the sanctuary, she started to shake as she relived that moment that had changed their lives forever. Geoff wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. So close that she could feel his warmth seeping into her suddenly cold limbs. His lips were so close to her temple that she could actually feel his breath.

She glanced up at him and saw that his jaw was set in that forward thrust that was so familiar to her. His eyes were blazing with the glitter of tears held at bay for far too long now. She grasped his free hand, offering him her warmth and strength in return. He looked down at her, and just as they took their seats in the front pew, his lower lip began to quiver.

The service seemed to go on for an eternity, but Jeannie did not want it to end, knowing what was yet to come. She tried to focus on the words of the minister—words about how death was no more than a passage to the other side, to heaven where Tessa, who had just a year earlier been baptized into the faith and accepted Christ as her Savior, would spend eternity. Words about how those present had best prepare themselves for the day when they would be called. Words about God’s plan and how this was just a piece of that grander plan.

This?
Jeannie felt like shouting.
This is my child, my only child, my baby, snatched from us before we had a chance to truly know her, before she had a chance to realize all that she could become, before…

She knit her fingers together and then felt every fiber of her being tighten in unspoken protest to the outrage that her daughter was lying there before them in a wooden box. Try as she might, she could not open her heart to the idea that taking her child was something God needed to do for the greater good. She closed her eyes against the bile of anger that threatened to overcome her.

And then behind her, a throng of people rose as one and sang the words that had been a comfort to her all of her life.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see
.

Only Jeannie didn’t see. She didn’t understand this at all.

She looked sideways at Geoff. His lips were now so tightly pressed together that they had all but disappeared. His cheeks burned a bright red. He was sitting tall and straight, and his gaze was fixed on the wooden coffin that Lars had built especially for Tessa.

For Tessa. A box for Tessa.

Suddenly she imagined the coffin being placed in the ground, covered over with dirt, planted with grass and flowers. Tessa was in that box.

No. That was only the shell of her child. Tessa was in heaven. Tessa was with God. Tessa was not in pain or afraid or sick or frail. Tessa was safe and could never, ever be harmed again.

Jeannie clenched her fists and fought off the wave of nausea that threatened to send her stumbling up the aisle of the church to find a restroom.

The singing went on and on.

Please let this end
, she prayed. But she knew in her heart that it was not going to end for them anytime soon. This was only the beginning. Tessa was gone. Sadie was under arrest. She heard a little cry of despair and realized it had come from her.

She felt Emma place a comforting hand on her shoulder. Emma and her family were seated in the pew immediately behind Geoff and Jeannie. Jeannie wondered why they weren’t there beside them in the front pew. Tessa had been like another daughter to Emma, as Sadie was to Jeannie. But the grandparents were sitting with them in that front pew—three gray-haired people who had adored this child as Jeannie had. Her parents next to her and Geoff’s mother next to him.

She glanced at Geoff. He returned her look with unseeing eyes then turned back to stare at the coffin. He would keep his vigil over Tessa until they lowered her into the ground. The night before, Jeannie had wakened to find Geoff gone. A note on the kitchen table read,
Someone should be with her
.

The words had hit her as an accusation. And as she had failed to keep her daughter safe, she had failed to be there to comfort her husband as he sat alone with their child—their only child.

Chapter 19

Geoff

A
t the cemetery, Geoff found himself fixated on Sadie. She looked different—more like Emma. Odd, when she had always reminded everyone so much of Jeannie. Tessa was the one who favored Emma. That was Tessa’s role—not Sadie’s. The thought irritated him, as did the way Sadie was dressed.

She wore the traditional garb of a conservative Mennonite—her skirt down to her ankles, her sleeves to her wrists, her hair wound into a tight, smooth bun under her prayer covering. Sadie had never worn the traditional white prayer cap before that Geoff could recall. She always opted for the black lace doilylike covering because it was less obvious, especially against her dark hair.

He shifted slightly, determined to see Sadie’s shoes. Shoes were Sadie’s passion—as they were Jeannie’s. How many times had they laughed about Sadie in her somber Mennonite garb parading around in Jeannie’s high heels? But not today. Today she wore plain black shoes.

Geoff looked at his niece again. From head to toe she was the picture of a devout conservative Mennonite. Was this contrition? Atonement? A ploy to fool others into having sympathy for her? Had Emma and Lars insisted? Or maybe the lawyer they’d hired? And to what end?

Sadie reverting to the traditions of her conservative faith would not bring Tessa back—would not undo what Sadie in her reckless, carefree way had caused. Suddenly Geoff saw the future clearly. He and Jeannie alone—their beloved child ripped from them without any chance to know her potential, to give to the world the gifts she had given them from the day she was born. And Emma and Lars shepherding Sadie through this, sharing the pain and agony of whatever sentence the court might impose, until one day they could wake up and think of Tessa only in passing while they went on with their lives.

He saw his nephew Matt watching him, his puppy-dog eyes large and soulful. Matt had always turned to Geoff whenever life became too much of a challenge. The boy loved his parents but he had built a bond with Geoff that went beyond games won and lost. More than once Geoff had taken Matt’s side when Emma worried that playing team sports was too much of a physical danger for the boy. More than once he had listened as the boy agonized over his slim build and small size. “You’ll grow,” Geoff had assured him. “Just take a look at your mom and dad—both tall and athletic in build. Genes don’t lie.”

“And then there’s Auntie Jeannie,” Matt had said with a roll of his eyes. “What if I got those genes?”

It was true. Jeannie was petite and small-boned, almost fragile-looking. It was another of the things that had attracted Geoff to her when they first met. She looked like a porcelain doll with her fair complexion and unreal crown of curly red hair. But he had soon learned that she was anything but petite in personality and anything but fragile in the way she took on the challenges that came her way.

Until now…

He had never seen Jeannie so lost. For the last five days while they waited for family and friends from out of town to gather, while they endured day after day of people occupying their house and filling it with their whispered conversations and too much food, she had wandered through her days in a kind of stupor, her facial expression either one of permanent disbelief or unrelenting grief. In spite of the fact that his mom and hers showed up every morning ready to take over the day’s mundane chores, Jeannie went through the motions of her routine at home—making beds, preparing meals from the endless parade of covered dishes. She’d even done the laundry. He had found her slumped to the floor of their room next to the bed, her fingers clutching a red sweater of Tessa’s that had gotten mixed in with the whites and turned everything pink. He’d known she wasn’t crying over the stained laundry, but it had shocked him when she had looked up at him, tears running down both cheeks, as she held up the sweater and said, “It shrunk. It’s ruined, and it’s her favorite.”