She’d never planned to cut this moment so close. A deathbed appeal, a few final minutes, could be all the time she had to make things right. Mara raised her chin and squared her shoulders. Her heels echoed down the long, antiseptic smelling hall where Jacob waited, dying. She’d always intended that one day she would gather the courage to face him before one of them stood before God, telling Him their own side of the matter. Now time had run out, and Jacob would get there first. Sometime soon, probably today, he’d be gone. Was she already too late? The door to his hospital room stood closed. She laid her hand upon it and let out a shallow breath against the nerves tightening like bands around her chest, pressing her to turn back. She pushed through, and soft weeping met her ears.
Then a gasp.
Then silence.
The faces of the two women staring at her from the other side of Jacob’s bed – it was Jacob lying there, wasn’t it? – resembled her daughters, in the expressions around their eyes if not in form. They weren’t as young as she thought they’d stay. Emma was what, thirty-one now? And darling Jenna wasn’t a fresh college graduate anymore. She was twenty-six, with children of her own growing fast. Mara hadn’t seen her grandbabies in several years.
She opened her mouth but couldn’t find the words. Her glance fell to Jacob instead.
“He’s gone,” Emma said stiffly.
Oh no. Mara stepped forward. She looked at the shell of the man upon whom she’d spent her twenty best years. Her hands shook, and an overcoming grief welled up inside that she didn’t expect and couldn’t have prepared for anyway. She stumbled back and reached for a chair, then covered her mouth and sat.
“Why are you here?” Emma’s voice was brittle, scored by sorrow and anger. Mara knew that sound. It was like her own voice coming back over the years, filling her head.
“I wanted…” She swallowed. “I wanted to say…”
“Dad told us you’d come.” Jenna’s voice was softer, a little more in awe, or so it seemed.
“He did?”
A tear rolled down Jenna’s cheek, and for the scrap of an instant Mara wanted to catch it, to cradle those cheeks in the palms of her hands like when Jenna was little. It was too late for that too, she supposed.
“He believed you would come,” Jenna said.
Emma turned away and stared out the hospital window. “He waited.” The rigid set of her shoulders slumped in fresh defeat.
Mara looked at Jacob again. He was old. Illness had changed him, but his face appeared restful. More restful than it had fifteen years ago when she’d walked out. “Did he suffer?” She could see Emma’s face reflected in the window glass. It too looked peaceful or at least stoic.
“Not long. He accepted it. He had faith.”
Mara nodded and noticed that Jenna watched her. “He always did,” Mara said.
Jenna sniffed. She reached for her father’s hand and touched the papery skin. “I miss him already.”
Mara’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”
Emma turned and regarded her. Both women’s gazes held question, and Mara realized that maybe they didn’t know whether she was sorry they missed their father or sorry for what she’d done, how she’d left them all and gone away to live a new life. Mara had tried to remain a part of the girls’ lives, or at least she thought she’d tried. The reality was something she figured out later. She had never tried hard enough.
“I wish you’d gotten here in time,” Jenna said. She wiped her eyes. “If only–”
Emma sighed. “It doesn’t matter.” She left her place by the window and stood beside her sister, giving her arm the slightest touch. “He knows.”
“Do you think so?” Mara couldn’t help asking. Both women seemed surprised by her uncertainty. After what she’d done, how could she expect them to understand her desperate need to be forgiven? “I should have come sooner.”
“Years sooner.” Emma’s eyes narrowed at Mara, shaming her.
“I deserve that,” she said. “You’re right.”
“Did you come to make penance? Is that it?” She was beautiful, this daughter of hers. She had Jacob’s intense, blue-gray eyes and shapely brows. Her full lips were Mara’s own. It felt as though she were speaking to a reflection of herself, one that demanded honesty.
“I came for forgiveness.”
“Whose?” Jenna whispered. “Daddy’s or God’s?”
Mara nodded. “Both. And yours.” She wondered if Jenna would accept that. She doubted Emma would.
Emma reached across the bed and smoothed back her father’s hair. Mara hoped she would answer, offer forgiveness or deny it, but Emma held her silence.
“Have you asked him, God I mean?” Jenna said.
Passion filled Mara’s soul. “Hundreds of times.”
“Then He has forgiven.”
“But—”
“Daddy forgave you long ago. Didn’t you know?”
Mara shook her head. Whether or not they’d forgive her too, she hadn’t the heart left to ask. That part of her body felt too heavy to lift up in question again. She looked at them both and rose from the chair. Fumbling with her purse strings, she peered once more at Jacob and turned to go. “I’m so, so sorry. For everything, for all I’ve done, for your father—”
Words choked away, and Mara had to leave before she couldn’t control them anymore. She couldn’t cry here, not with them, not yet. She walked toward the door.
“Mother?” Jenna’s voice halted her. Mara froze. Waited. “Can I buy you coffee? We could talk.”
Mara’s sharp intake of breath steeled her spine. She turned and nodded, her voice struggling. “I’d like that.”
Jenna glanced at Emma who straightened from a kiss to her father’s brow.
“I guess I’ll come too,” she said.
Mara pushed out the door with the two women behind her. A tremulous smile tugged on her lips.