“I’m not.”
She kissed him on the cheek and tried to wrap her arms around his shrunken figure. She felt his hand graze her back.
“Are you… okay?” he asked her.
“No,” she admitted, feeling the tears start to come. “I’m not okay at all.”
“I’m sorry,” he breathed.
“No, don’t say that,” she said, willing herself not to break down. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I never should have stopped talking to you. I’ve wanted so desperately to take it all back.”
He gave a ghostly smile. “Did I ever tell you that I think you’re beautiful?”
“Yeah,” she said, sniffling. “You’ve told me.”
“Well, this time I mean it.”
She laughed helplessly through her tears. “Thanks,” she said. Leaning over, she kissed his hand.
“Do you remember when you were little?” he asked, suddenly serious. “You used to watch me playing the piano for hours. One day, I found you sitting at the keyboard playing a melody you had heard me play. You were only four years old. You always had so much talent.”
“I remember,” she said.
“I want you to know something,” her dad said, gripping her hand with surprising force. “No matter how bright your star became, I never cared about the music half as much as I cared about you as a daughter… I want you to know that.”
She nodded. “I believe you. And I love you, too, Dad.”
He took a long breath, his eyes never leaving hers. “Then will you bring me home?”
The words struck her with their full weight, unavoidable and direct. She glanced at the envelope, knowing what he was asking and what he needed her to say. And in that instant, she remembered everything about the last five months. Images raced through her mind, one after the next, stopping only when she saw him sitting in the church at the keyboard, beneath the empty space where the window would eventually be installed.
And it was then that she knew what her heart had been telling her to do all along.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll bring you home. But I need you to do something for me, too.”
Her dad swallowed. It seemed to take all the strength he had to say. “I’m not sure I can anymore.”
She smiled and reached for the envelope. “Even for me?”
Pastor Harris had lent her his car, and she drove as fast as she could. Holding her cell phone, she made the call as she was changing lanes. She quickly explained what was happening and what she needed; Galadriel agreed immediately. She drove as though her father’s life depended on it, accelerating at every yellow light.
Galadriel was waiting for her at the house when she arrived. Beside her on the porch lay two crowbars, which she hefted as Ronnie approached.
“Ready?” she asked.
Ronnie merely nodded, and together they entered the house.
With Galadriel’s help, it took less than an hour to dismantle her father’s work. She didn’t care about the mess they left in the living room; the only thing she could think about was the time her father had left and what she still needed to do for him. When the last piece of plywood was ripped away, Galadriel turned to her, sweating and breathless.
“Go pick up your dad. I’ll clean up. And I’ll help you bring him in when you get back.”
She drove even faster on the way back to the hospital. Before she had left the hospital, she’d met with her dad’s doctor and explained what she planned to do. With the attending nurse’s help, she’d raced through the release forms the hospital required; when she called the hospital from the car, she paged the same nurse and asked her to have her dad waiting downstairs in a wheelchair.
The car’s tires squealed as she turned in to the hospital parking lot. She followed the lane toward the emergency room entrance and saw immediately that the nurse had been good to her word.
Ronnie and the nurse helped her dad into the car, and she was back on the road within minutes. Her dad seemed more alert than he’d been in the hospital room, but she knew that could change at any time. She needed to get him home before it was too late. As she drove the streets of a town she’d eventually come to think of as her own, she felt a rush of fear and hope. It all seemed so simple, so clear now. When she reached the house, Galadriel was waiting for her. Galadriel had moved the couch into position, and together they helped her father recline on it.
Despite his condition, it seemed to dawn on him what Ronnie had done. Ever so gradually, she saw his grimace replaced by an expression of wonder. As he stared at the piano standing exposed in the alcove, she knew she had done the right thing. Leaning over, she kissed him on the cheek.