Love Comes Home and A Sheltering Love: Love Comes Home / A Sheltering Love

She hoped she could make it through this without breaking down. She didn’t want Josh to witness any weakness.

Josh followed her down the hall to her old room. She pushed open the door, expecting Mom G. had already boxed most of her things and would have used the room for her own purposes, and was surprised to find it much as she’d left it. The frilly white bed coverings were neatly made, the shelves lining the walls held the various books and dolls she’d left behind.

Josh peered over her shoulder. “It’s like walking back in time.”

She closed her eyes against the sudden images of herself as a teenager. With graphic clarity, she saw herself sitting at the desk beneath the window doing her homework, her hair held high in a ponytail, her feet tucked beneath her.

She could still remember the night Mom G. had opened her door and said she had a visitor.

Josh had walked in with his easy grin and gentle manners. She’d secretly had a crush on him since the first day of high school. She hadn’t known he’d noticed her. She hadn’t known that one day he’d break her heart.

She opened her eyes and deliberately stepped forward and began pulling books and dolls from the shelves.

Without further comment, Josh dragged in several empty boxes and placed them at her feet.

“Thanks,” she muttered, grateful for his thoughtfulness.

After a moment she paused and noticed his perplexed expression. The big, strapping male looked wholly out of place in the little girl’s frilly room and clearly he didn’t know what to touch and what not to.

Rachel stifled a smile. “You could strip the bed and pile it with the Goodwill items.”

He flashed a relieved grin that hit Rachel with the shock force of a defibrillator. Quickly she turned back to her shelves. Focus, focus, she chanted inside her head.

After those first few awkward moments, they worked together like a tenured surgical team. She’d load a box, he’d tape it closed and fill out the address label.

Slowly conversation started, tentative at first. Rachel sought for neutral subjects and Josh seemed eager to keep their talk light.

As teens they’d had similar tastes in movies and books. Rachel was mildly surprised to discover that as adults they still shared many common interests.

They relaxed into a sort of rhythm, where one thread of conversation quickly led to another and another. They laughed and companionably argued over politics, choices for the Oscars and which authors should appear on the New York Times bestseller list.

In an amazingly short amount of time, they had her old room boxed up. “Thank you, Josh, for your help,” Rachel said as they finished dragging the boxes into the living room.

“Sure thing.” He held out his large hand. “Just one room left. You ready?”

She swallowed back the sudden tears that burned at the edges of her eyes. His offer of support nearly undid her. Clearly they both knew how hard this was going to be. She shored up her defenses. She couldn’t show weakness, but she took his offered hand and allowed his warm palm to give her strength as they headed down the hall.

Mom G.’s room also was as she remembered. The double bed with its fluffy pink comforter, the dresser cluttered with trinkets and jewelry. The bedside table still held the picture of Mr. Green as a young man.

Rachel headed toward the closet, then stopped as she noticed the new pictures hanging on the wall. They took her breath away.

There were pictures of herself in beautiful frames. School pictures, pictures of her with Mom G., at the prom with Josh at her side, her graduation pictures from high school, college and medical school.

“She was very proud of you.”

Josh’s softly spoken words sent shivers of fire down her spine. If only he could be proud of her. She frowned at the thought and began pulling the pictures from the wall.

Lovingly she wrapped each frame in paper and stacked them in a box Josh had carried in. This time they worked in reverent silence, occasionally sharing memories of Mom G. Rachel kept more of the items from Mom G.’s room than she had from any other.

The large armoire that graced the wall next to the closet drew her attention. She’d find a place for it in her apartment. She ran her hand over the gleaming wood.

“When I first came to live with Mom G. I was a very scared little girl,” she commented aloud. “Once again frightened by a new place, a new parent and a new set of rules to learn. One day I hid inside this chest.”

“What happened?” Josh asked as he came to stand beside her, his presence comforting.

She smiled up at him, liking the way his interest was centered on her. “Mom G. found me. Instead of the anger I had expected, she lovingly held me and told me stories until the fear went away. She was an awesome woman.”

Josh reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His touch was electrifying as his knuckles grazed her cheek. “She was.”

His gaze trapped hers. She was letting him get too close both physically and emotionally. She didn’t want that, couldn’t allow it. Only pain would result. She stepped back out of reach and gulped for air. “I’ll have the shipping company pack up the armoire.”

One corner of Josh’s mouth tipped up as if he knew how he was affecting her. Disconcerted, she turned her focus to the closet. She touched each garment and Mom G.’s scent wafted up from the clothes, tugging at Rachel, making her ache.

“What’s that?”

She wiped away a tear before facing Josh. “What?”

He tilted his head upward. “There.”

She followed his gaze. A white box on the top shelf of the closet bore her name. She glanced at him. “Would you mind?”

Josh squeezed beside her, eating up space, and Rachel stepped back, nearly falling into the clothes piled on the floor. He reached out to steady her, his huge, strong hand closing around her forearm, sending hot sparks shooting up her arm.

“Thanks.” She extracted herself from his grip and moved a safe distance way. Josh’s proximity and his touch did funny things to her insides and she didn’t want funny things going on inside. It made staying focused difficult.

He easily retrieved the box. “The living room?”

“Please.” She headed down the hall. Josh set the box on the coffee table. She opened the lid and widened her eyes in pleasure. A tattered teddy bear lay on top of a scrapbook.

“Yours?”

“Yes.” She picked up the bear and ran a hand over it. “My mother gave him to me before she died. I’d thought I’d lost him. Mom G. must have packed him up to preserve him.” A lump rose in her throat. She held the bear close to ease the tightness in her chest.

Setting the bear aside, she picked up the scrapbook and laid it on the table. She sat on the sofa and flipped through the pages. Josh took the seat beside her, distracting her.

“Mrs. G. put effort into this,” he remarked.

“It’s wonderful.” She couldn’t believe how much she enjoyed looking at the pictures and the little anecdotes written beside the frames. The book chronicled her life with Mom G., starting with the first day she’d arrived to the last picture Rachel had sent. On the last line in the book Mom G. had written, “The rest of the book is for you to fill with pictures of your family.”

Rachel stared at the words. Mom G. was her family. Without her, Rachel was alone.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Josh asked softly, “Are those pages going to be filled, Rachel? Do you have someone waiting for you in Chicago?”

She slanted him a glance, aware of the anger stirring in her chest. Anger because he had no right to ask her that, anger because the answer was no.

“What do you think? No, wait.” She held up a hand before he could respond. “What was it you said? ‘No man would want to marry a woman whose priority in life was her career.’ My priority is my career.”

His words still haunted her. Every time a man had shown interest in her, she’d remember those words, remembered the pain of loving only to have to make a choice between the man and her God-given path. And her choice would always be the same.

Her life was about making a difference, about being a doctor.

“Rachel, I’m—”

“You’re what? Sorry?” Rachel scoffed, her strength rapidly depleting. “Don’t be. You were right. I wouldn’t have accomplished what I have if I’d married or stayed in this town.” She couldn’t stand the pity in his eyes but hated even more that she’d validated his position on her career.

She closed the book.

Josh tipped the box forward. “There’s something else in here.”

She watched as he pulled a large manila envelope from the box and handed it to her. Anxious to get through this, she broke the seal and grabbed an official-looking file. Her name stared at her from the tab.

Ignoring the prickling awareness of Josh’s gaze, she flipped open the file. The contents marked her progress through the Department of Child Services, starting with the day she became a ward of the state and continued on, noting every foster home with comments by the foster parents. She quickly read and absorbed the words. For out of the five homes she’d lived in, the comments were nearly the same: “The child cooperates well, is very quiet and insecure.”

Rachel’s mouth twisted. More like scared to death.

Mom G.’s name appeared as the last foster home. The remarks made by Mom G. touched Rachel deeply. To Mom G. she wasn’t “the child,” she was Rachel. A little girl who needed love and affection.

With a snap, she closed the file. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, but a grown woman who just lost the last bit of family she’d ever known.

The hospital. The people there would be her family now. Her focus would be entirely on the patients, and their care, with no distractions.

Impatiently she dumped out the rest of the manila envelope. A hospital bracelet with her mother’s name and the blue and white insignia of Sonora Community Hospital, a birth certificate and a small grouping of photos fell out.

Her breath caught in her throat. With shaky hands, she reached for the top snapshot. The woman in the picture had curly hair, which framed her face, and blue eyes sparkling with intelligence.

“Is this your mother?”

She nodded, afraid that if she spoke he’d hear her anguish. She had one picture of her mother that the social worker had given to her. It sat on her bedside table in a crystal frame.

“You look like her.”

The compliment nearly shattered her composure.

Gathering every vestige of her control, she spread the rest of the photos out on the table. Five in all. “I’ve never seen these. I wonder why Mom G. never gave them to me.”

“Maybe she thought they’d make you sad.”

In one frame, her mother stood on a beach staring out at the waves, her expression pensive. In another, her mother held a tiny baby wrapped in a pink blanket. The next was a park setting. A two-year-old Rachel sat on a swing, her mother behind her, joyous smiles on both of their faces. The last photo was of her mother, dressed up and looking like a princess.

“I wonder if my father took these?” Everything hurt inside and she willed the pain away.

Josh took her hand. His fingers wrapped around hers, anchoring her as the tide of grief began to rise within her.

“I don’t even know who he was, Josh. What he’d been like. Why he’d left.”

“I didn’t know,” he responded softly. “You’d said he was gone. I’d assumed he was dead.”

“He was gone before I was born.” She picked up the birth certificate. Her own. She pointed to the line where her father’s name should have been. “’Unknown’?” Her voice rose, betraying the anguish building in her chest.

At sixteen she’d needed her birth certificate for her driver’s license. Any hopes or plans she had of seeking her father out died when she’d seen that one word. “I can’t accept he was some stranger my mother hadn’t loved. Some one-night-stand type of deal.”

“Maybe he hadn’t known she was pregnant when they broke up.”

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