Mom Over Miami Part 17

Not since Daddy's last stunt had anyone responded with such unreasoned childishness.

At least once a day, maybe more, Hannah secretly wished her aunt would fly back to China or India or even just drive to the drugstore long enough to give Hannah a breather. But hearing her announce her plans to leave, the truth hit Hannah. For once in her life, someone had come running to her first, not to her sisters. If Aunt Phiz ran off to Sadie's aid at this first bit of small trouble, where would that leave Hannah?

Talking to herself. That's where. And it had already been pointed out to her that she was no good at that kind of thing.

Suddenly she felt like the lost, lonely child she had once been. She wished her aunt could pack her up in a suitcase and fly her away.

"Give me the phone, honey." Phiz stuck out her open palm.

"No, wait!" Sadie, who for someone who had the patience of a gnat had gotten pretty good at telling other people to wait, lowered her voice and spoke in a quick, panicked tone. "Tell Aunt Phiz I have things under control. We've finally got the MRI scheduled at a time that I can take him."

Hannah relayed the message word for word.

"I'm hanging up now before she gets a chance to argue. Give her my love." And Sadie was gone.

"Thanks a lot," Hannah muttered. She depressed the end call b.u.t.ton with one thumb, then showed the turned-off phone to her aunt with a shrug. "Guess Sadie had to run."

"I'll bet." Aunt Phiz shook her head.

Hannah slid the phone into her purse. She paused to listen for the sisters in the next room. "That's certainly an eerie silence."

"Maybe they've made their peace."

"Maybe they're resting in peace. If you know what I mean." She stuck her tongue out and made a slash across her throat with one finger.

Tessa grabbed her hand in motion and promptly began to gnaw on one knuckle.

"I'd like to go in there and put Tessa in one of the cribs while we finish up in here."

"Stealth, my dear." The older woman raised a penciled-in eyebrow. "Get in, get out, don't get involved."

Hannah nodded. "Good idea."

She took a breath, laid her hand on the door and waited. For what, she didn't know, but that's what they always told you to do in those Safety First filmstrips at school.

Feel the door to prevent walking into a fiery death trap.

No heat.

No sound.

She glanced back at her aunt.

"Go!" Phiz urged.

"Please excuse me for one moment, ladies, but I need to put Tessa..." She had the baby halfway into the crib before she realized she'd been talking to an empty room.

"Where'd they go?" Aunt Phiz asked.

"I don't know and I don't care." Hannah put the baby down and hurried back through to the toddler room. "Let's just finish our work here and run before they get back."

"Yes. Good. When in doubt work fast and get out." Aunt Phiz held up her index finger. "That shall be the new Shelnutt family motto."

Hannah liked it. She liked it a little too much.

In fact, she wished she could have put it into action moments later when she and her aunt stood elbow-deep in dirty work and the older woman turned the subject to Hannah's daddy again.

"MRI, you said?"

"Yes. It's a magnetic resonance imagining machine." Hannah made a motion in the air with her free hand to try to indicate the big tube that they would be sliding Moonie into.

"I know what it is, honey. You might recall I hold multiple advanced degrees in history and science."

"Oh, yeah." Clod! You did it again. Thought only in terms of yourself and your experience with someone, and ended up missing out on the bigger picture Clod! You did it again. Thought only in terms of yourself and your experience with someone, and ended up missing out on the bigger picture. "I guess when you see someone everyday in curlers and house slippers, you tend to forget she's a well-educated world traveler. Dopey me."

"You are not dopey. You are darling. And dedicated. And more than a little distracted." Soft folds framed Aunt Phiz's sparkling eyes and kind smile. "But never dopey. Don't tell yourself different."

"Thanks."

"Not only do I know what an MRI is, my dear, I had reason to see one in action a few years back when one of my cla.s.ses got to observe a mummy being sent through the device."

"Wow." Hannah blinked. "That must have been fascinating."

"Yes, indeed."

"Maybe you can use that story to convince Daddy to give it a try."

"The test of choice for three-thousand-year-old pharaohs?" She tapped her finger to her cheek. "It might just be the thing to appeal to his vanity to know he was in the company of kings."

"If nothing else, it would give him a terrific lead-in for the epic tale of Moonie's Medical Miracle." Hannah dropped to her knees to better roll up the heavy old carpet. "Way better than that taking-the-cat-to-the-vet story."

"I don't think so. After that experience?" Phiz did her bit by nudging the musty cylinder along with her foot. "Not even for the sake of telling a great story will your daddy get inside of one of those closed MRI machines."

"I don't know about that. You've never gone up against Sadie once she's made her mind up."

"She's a stubborn one, I'll give you that. But where do you think all that mule-headedness comes from?"

"Let me guess, from Moonie, the Mule King?"

"Moonie the Miracle Boy."

"Is this the story about how he got lost in a cave and lived on his own for days and everyone gave him up for dead, then miraculously he came wandering out without a scratch on him?"

"Is that how he tells it now?"

"He hasn't talked about it in years and years. I've probably got it all wrong."

"It's worth hearing to get it right. Might help you look at your dad in a new light." The tight coils of bright red hair bounced slightly as she c.o.c.ked her head. "I'll make it quick if you promise to listen-to really listen."

"Okay." What was it with everyone suddenly picking on her listening skills? "But quick, right? We don't know when the sisterhood of the splattered paint might up and return."

Phiz made a seat of the lump of carpet and patted the spot beside herself for Hannah to join her.

"He couldn't have been more than three. Darling child. Charming. Well, you know how he musters up that spark in his eyes to get himself out of trouble now?"

Know it? Hannah sometimes wondered if it was the reason her mother had run off in the night leaving only a note. How could anyone look into those eyes and still have the strength to walk away?

"Imagine all that charming power in the hands of a rosy-cheeked imp."

Hannah held up her hand. "I've seen the photo of him when he won the beautiful baby contest at the county fair."

Phiz tipped her head back and laughed. "Beautiful baby? Is that what he told you that ribbon was for?"

"Wasn't it?"

"One day I'll tell you about your daddy, a daring escape from a droopy diaper, a mud field and the greased pig contest."

"I'll remind you." And she would. It sounded like something she could definitely use against her father the next time he acted out. "But you wanted to tell me about the Miracle Boy?"

"Yes. Yes. He did not come by that name undeserved."

"He performed a miracle?"

"Darling, he was was a miracle." a miracle."

"Beg your pardon?"

"Like I said, he couldn't have been more than three when he wandered off. It was an unusually warm spring day, and our parents were having one of their regular knock-down-drag-out rows."

Hannah crossed her legs at the ankle. She knew her aunt Phiz and her father's childhood was less than idyllic. In fact, she'd often wondered if who they had become-Phiz someone who never stayed put, and Moonie, a man who would do anything in the world to lighten a loved one's day-had sprung from the roots of their dark youth.

"Now, on this particular day, I was supposed to be keeping an eye on Moonie. While, in fact, I was keeping both eyes on Judd Harkner."

Hannah raised her eyebrows.

"Another story for another day," Aunt Phiz demurred. "But on this day, the day I was supposed to be watching Moonie, I took my eyes off him, and the next thing I know-whoosh."

"Whoosh?"

"Moonie vanished!"

"Vanished?"

"I was near frantic. Judd rounded up the boys, and everyone searched and searched. Afternoon turned into evening. No Moonie."

Hannah's thoughts went to Tessa and Sam. Just the suggestion of them lost and her not able to get to them, to comfort them. A cold, hard lump clenched tight in her chest.

"Got too dark to keep on looking. And cool. Not cold, but too cool for a little child like that left out without any cover. And there was the threat of wild animals." Even all these years later, her old aunt's face went pale. A little s.h.i.+ver worked through her broad body.

"But you found him."

"Honey, of course we found him. You wouldn't be here today to hear this story if we hadn't found him."

"Oh. Of course." Hannah blinked and probably blushed. "Of course."

"It was the prayer vigil that did it."

"Prayer is a powerful thing."

"We have no idea how powerful, girl. We humans are so prideful and shortsighted. We think we can fix every little thing, when we should turn it all over to the Lord."

Hannah nodded. "So you held a prayer vigil."

"We lit candles. Sheltered them in our hands against the evening wind." She cupped a hand around the remembered candle. "And prayed."

She wanted to hurry her aunt along, not out of a need to rush the story but to hear the end, to try to understand what had compelled the woman to tell her this now and what it meant to getting her father the medical tests he needed.

"And then we heard it."

"What?"

"Moonie's voice."

She sighed. "Where was he?"

"Didn't know at first, but we followed the sound. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once."

"Wow."

"It was something to experience, I tell you that right now. We couldn't get a handle on where he was until, quite by accident, someone stepped in a hole and tripped."

"He was in the hole."

"He was in a dry well that someone had only partly covered, and when he'd tried to climb out, he'd pulled more dirt and rock down on him until he was all but buried except one arm and his head."

"Poor Daddy."

"Your grandpa dug him out with his bare hands."

"Did it take long?"

"Longer than you might think, because they didn't dare risk the dirt falling back and smothering him."

"I can't imagine it."

"I sat at his side the whole time, holding up a candle and telling him he'd be all right. Telling him not to be afraid. Telling him to have faith."

"Do you think he understood you?"