Chapter 1 - three days before the storm
Three days earlier, Lily Hart sat at the kitchen table drawing a house she had never seen.
It had three windows, a red door, and a tree growing beside a crooked fence. She drew three people standing in front of it.
The first was a little girl with yellow hair.
The second was an old man with a gray mustache.
The third was a tall man wearing a white coat.
Samuel stood at the stove, stirring canned soup in a dented pot.
“Who’s the doctor?” he asked.
Lily quickly covered the drawing with her arms.
“No one.”
Samuel glanced over his shoulder.
“That is a very tall no one.”
“He’s just someone I dreamed about.”
Samuel stopped stirring.
Lily had been having the same dream for weeks. In it, she stood outside a large hospital while a man in a white coat called her name. She never saw his face clearly, but she always woke up certain that he knew her.
Samuel carried two bowls to the table.
“Dreams borrow faces from people we’ve seen,” he said.
“But I haven’t seen him.”
“Maybe you saw him on television.”
Lily nodded, although she did not believe him.
She pushed the drawing aside and lifted her spoon. Before she could taste the soup, a cough rose from deep in her chest.
Samuel immediately leaned closer.
“You all right?”
She nodded.
The cough came again.
This one lasted longer.
Samuel placed a hand against her forehead. Her skin was warmer than it had been that morning.
“Did you use your inhaler at school?”
“Twice.”
“Did it help?”
“A little.”
Samuel tried not to let his fear show.
Lily had suffered breathing problems since infancy, but during the past month her condition had become less predictable. The neighborhood clinic had referred her to a specialist at St. Aurelia Medical Center.
The appointment alone cost more than Samuel earned in two weeks.
The tests cost far more.
He had submitted an application to the hospital’s charitable care program, but the application had been rejected without explanation.
Samuel had called seven times.
Every time, someone promised that a financial counselor would return his call.
No one ever did.
A folded notice sat beneath the sugar bowl. Samuel had hidden it before Lily came home from school, but he could still feel its presence.
FINAL PAYMENT DEMAND.
The hospital wanted $8,430 from an earlier emergency visit.
Samuel had thirty days to pay.
He had eighteen dollars in his checking account.
“Grandpa?”
Samuel realized Lily was watching him.
“What is it?”
“You’re doing the worried face.”
“I don’t have a worried face.”
“You make your eyebrows look like two angry caterpillars.”
Samuel forced a smile.
“That is my handsome face.”
Lily giggled, then coughed again.
This time she gripped the edge of the table.
Samuel moved beside her until the coughing stopped.
“We’re going back to the clinic tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow is Friday.”
“I know.”
“We’re making lanterns at school.”
“You can make one at home.”
“It won’t be the same.”
Samuel looked at her pale face and hated that she had learned to measure illness by the things it stole from her.
School days.
Birthday parties.
Trips to the park.
Nights without fear.
“We’ll see how you feel in the morning,” he said.
Lily studied him for a moment.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
After dinner, Samuel tucked her into bed beneath the faded quilt that had once belonged to her mother.
Lily held up the silver locket around her neck.
“Did Mommy really wear this every day?”
Samuel’s hand froze above the blanket.
“Yes.”
“Who gave it to her?”
Samuel looked toward the dark window.
“A person she loved.”
“My father?”
The question was quiet.
Lily had asked it before, but never so directly.
Samuel sat on the edge of the bed.
“Your mother wanted to tell you about him herself.”
“But she can’t.”
Samuel lowered his eyes.
Lily’s mother, Evelyn, had disappeared six years earlier. The police had found her car abandoned near a river after a storm. No body had ever been recovered.
The official investigation called it a presumed drowning.
Samuel had never believed it.
“Was he a bad man?” Lily asked.
“No.”
“Then why isn’t he here?”
Samuel looked at the locket.
“Sometimes good people are kept apart by terrible lies.”
Lily seemed to consider this.
“Do you think he knows about me?”
Samuel’s throat tightened.
“I don’t know.”
When she finally fell asleep, Samuel returned to the kitchen.
The payment notice still waited beneath the sugar bowl.
He unfolded it and read the final line again.
Failure to resolve this balance may affect future noncritical services.
Samuel crushed the paper in his fist.
Then someone knocked on the front door.
It was almost midnight.
He crossed the living room and looked through the narrow window beside the door.
No one stood outside.
When he opened it, he found a blue envelope lying on the wet porch.
His name had been written across the front.
Inside was a single sentence.
Bring Lily to the north entrance of St. Aurelia Hospital on Friday at 11:40 p.m.
Beneath the message was a symbol Samuel had not seen in eight years.
May you like
A small circle crossed by three lines.
It was the symbol Michael used to draw beside his name when he was a boy.
