“We all have to shoulder that load about not coming around often enough. I didn’t do my duty there, either, but we’re here now, and she needs us more right now than she ever did before,” Noah said. He sure couldn’t throw stones—not with his past. “Give it some thought,” he continued. “According to her will, this house is mine, but it’s never to be sold because she wants you girls to always have a home to come back to. You’ve got time to talk about your idea and figure things out—at least I hope you do.” He picked up another cookie and went back inside the house. He opened Miss Janie’s door just a crack and found her wide awake, sitting up in the bed and staring out the window. He pulled the rocking chair over closer to her and sat down.
“Did you have a good nap?” he asked.
“No. I only slept a few minutes, and I dreamed that y’all were at my funeral. I feel like I’m dying a little more every day. I stay in a state of confusion. Noah, I don’t have much time left,” she sighed. “Pretty soon my mind is going to be gone completely, and I’ll always live somewhere in the past.”
“Something you want me to do?” he asked.
“No. Everything has been signed over to you, and I’ve told you how I want things done. You can make the decisions. While I’m clear, though, I want to say thank you again,” she said. “I know this isn’t easy for any of you, but I want to die at home.”
“And you will,” he said.
“I think that dream was an omen for me to talk to you about my funeral. I want it to be graveside only, with only close friends and family. Did I already tell you that?”
He took her frail hand in his. “No, ma’am, but if that’s what you want, I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t want a preacher to go on and on. I want each of you kids to have a little word. No church songs, but you can play that song ‘Angel.’ It tells my story in music. I wasn’t in a dark hotel room, but I was in a stark maternity ward, and when it was time for me to give birth, no one was there with me. The song talks of glorious sadness. That’s the way I felt when they took my precious babies away from me, and the way I feel now about leaving y’all.”
Noah had cried several times since the morning that he’d hit rock bottom and staggered into his first AA meeting, but the hot tears that rolled down his unshaven cheeks that morning had come straight from his soul. “I’ll write it all down so I don’t forget anything. You want to talk to the girls while you’re . . . ?” He paused. “Well, you know.”
She began to hum the tune to the song she’d mentioned. “I spent years and years waiting for a second chance, like the song says, and God gave it to me with Kayla and Teresa. I should’ve insisted that they stay with me, but what was there for them in an old ghost town with a few scattered houses? Lord, I missed them. Now, get on out of here. I want to be alone and think about how lucky I am while I’ve got my right mind. Please know that I love you, Kayla, and Teresa like you were my own.”
“I love you, too,” Noah whispered as he left her side.
He went straight to his office, found the song on his phone, and cried through all three times he listened to it. He’d thought he’d had a rough path to walk, but it was nothing compared to what she’d endured.
He wondered how things would have been different if Miss Janie had been born twenty or thirty years later. Would she have kept her twins, or would she have realized that at sixteen, she’d have a tough time raising them as a single mother?
“Whatever, it would have been her choice,” he said out loud.
Give back to the community to honor her kept running through his mind.
His phone rang and startled him. “Hi, Daniel,” he answered. “What’s going on?”
“I was checkin’ in to see if you changed your mind,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a case in your neighborhood that we could use some help with. It’s not a tough one. Client says his