four and then sat down at one end. “Want to talk about your la-la land?”
“I was thinking about this idea that we’ve got for the senior place.” She wasn’t lying—she had thought about it for a split second before she’d begun to relive the experience she’d had with Will.
Teresa usually set an alarm on her phone, but after getting up at three a.m. to listen to Kayla’s reunion stories, she’d turned it off. She awoke with a start, ending a dream about trying to get to the other side of a muddy river. With a shiver, she sat straight up in bed and glanced over at Miss Janie, still sleeping soundly. She couldn’t shake the vision of that raging chocolate-brown water in her dream. Miss Janie had told her many times that dreaming about muddy water of any kind meant there would be a death in the family.
Teresa kicked off the sheet and slung her legs over the side of the bed. Miss Janie was still sleeping, so she made a quick trip through the bathroom and then pulled on a pair of shorts. She tiptoed across the room and made the bed she’d slept in the night before—wrinkle-free and tight enough to bounce a quarter on. That’s what Miss Janie taught her about making up a bed.
As she rounded the end of the bed, she stopped in her tracks when she noticed Miss Janie’s lips were a pale shade of blue. Teresa sucked in air and gently laid her hand on her foster mother’s chest. She wasn’t breathing and her body was stone cold, even through her nightgown and the sheet.
“No!” Teresa’s whisper came out in a ragged gasp as she dropped to her knees beside the bed. “Wake me up, God,” she sobbed. “Let this be a dream and not real. Kayla!” She moaned in a guttural voice so full of pain that she didn’t even recognize it as being her own.
Kayla eased the door open and peeked inside. “Do you need me to bring the babies? Holy crap! Did you fall? Are you hurt?” She rushed to her side.
“She’s gone.” Teresa put her head in her hands. “Miss Janie is . . .” She couldn’t force another word from her aching chest.
“No!” Kayla screeched and fell on the floor beside Teresa. “I’m not ready . . .” She grabbed Teresa around the shoulders and rocked back and forth with her as their tears mingled.
Noah poked his head in the door. “I heard weeping. Does Miss Janie want the babies? Are y’all all right?”
“No, we’re not,” Kayla said between sobs.
“What’s wrong?” His voice sounded concerned.
Teresa looked up at him and tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth for several seconds. She felt as if they were all three frozen in a macabre scenario that would never end. Finally, she whispered, “She’s gone, Noah. She died in her sleep.”
His eyes had been locked on hers, but now they shifted to the hospital bed, and tears flooded his unshaven cheeks. He sat down with a thud, wrapped his arms around both women, and cried with them. “I thought we had more time,” he whispered. “I wanted her to be lucid a few more times. I wanted . . .” He buried his head in Teresa’s shoulder and wept so hard that her heart broke for him even more than for herself.
Chapter Sixteen
Noah thought he had prepared himself for this day. All the legal work was in order. Miss Janie had told him what she wanted done concerning her funeral. Somehow, during taking care of her, he’d forgotten to think about the hole in his heart that would appear when she was gone. He wanted to scream at God for creating diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, but down deep he knew that her last breath had nothing to do with God or the doctors.
“Shhh . . . We’ll get through this together.” Teresa patted him on the back.
His dad had been right all along. Noah’s heart was too soft. He should be comforting the two women, not blubbering like a baby.
“She was fine when I went back to bed at three,” Teresa said, “but when I got up and checked her a few minutes ago”—she covered her face with her hands—“she was cold and she wasn’t breathing. Maybe if I’d gotten up earlier, I could have—”
“Don’t blame yourself.” Kayla reached around Noah to pat Teresa on the shoulder. “If I hadn’t gone to the reunion, it