Family Matters Read online

  “I don’t know what to say, Mark. You’ve worked so hard.”

  “I can get by without new water wings for the kids. The kickboards are disintegrating but those will have to be a second priority, too. I’m going to try to keep the bathing suit fund ready in case I get more kids who can’t afford a bathing suit.”

  “I wish I could do something to help,” Andy said, her words heartfelt. The swim team meant everything to Mark. “Maybe I could take up a collection at the hospital. Or maybe someone would like to donate bathing suits….”

  Just as the waitress brought their burgers to the table the TV blared out: “In Major League Soccer action last night, the Dallas Burn lost to the L.A. Galaxy. Even though striker Marshall Townsend found several openings and left forward Chuck Kirkland…”

  Someone switched it off.

  Great, Mark thought. Just great. Talk about perfect timing.

  Andy stared at the dark screen, acting as if she hadn’t heard the soccer score. But Mark knew she had.

  “So,” he said, knowing he had to mention Buddy now. “Do you ever hear from him, Andy?”

  “No.” She turned away from the television to stare down at her hamburger. “He doesn’t call.”

  “The man’s a fool.”

  “No, he isn’t. Buddy has his own problems to work through.”

  “Ahh…and even now you defend him.”

  She still stared at her hamburger. “Yes. I guess I do.”

  “Does he deserve that, Andy?”

  “I was pretty hard on him, Mark.” She met her brother’s gaze at last. “It’s tough reasoning with a therapy patient when you’re emotionally involved. A lot of it was my fault.”

  “What did you say to him?” Mark asked.

  Andy sat back in her chair and let her mind wander. What did I say to Buddy? What didn’t I say to Buddy?

  During the past year, she’d gotten used to the thought that she’d always be a part of Buddy Draper’s life. They’d met at a New Year’s Eve party, laughing and throwing confetti and cheering as the clock struck midnight.

  “You’ve got stuff in your hair,” he’d told her as he picked a swirl of paper off the top of her head. Everyone around them was kissing and singing “Auld Lang Syne.” It was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on him. Yet, still, he seemed vaguely familiar.

  “Everybody has stuff in their hair,” she’d said, trying unsuccessfully to come up with something witty to say. “It’s midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

  She extended her hand gracefully. “Happy New Year, Mr.—”

  “Draper. Buddy Draper.”

  A slight pause. She’d figured out later he’d been waiting for her to recognize his name. But she hadn’t.

  She introduced herself, too, and they’d shaken hands. Then they’d laughed and exchanged pleasantries for another half hour, he’d said several things about this “calling” that led her to believe he might be a Christian. Oh, how she’d hoped he was, as she’d gathered her belongings and had taken her keys out of her purse.

  “I’ll take you home,” he suggested.

  “No,” she said. “I just met you. That would never do.” Even so, she was pleased that he’d offered.

  Early the next morning he phoned her and asked if she wanted to go to the Cotton Bowl parade with him.

  “This is crazy,” she said, sitting straight up in bed and holding the receiver with both hands.

  “It isn’t crazy. The parade starts up Commerce Street in an hour. You could be there.”

  “It’ll be hard to find a place to stand coming that late.”

  “I bet you’ll be surprised,” he told her. “We’ll find a place.”

  “I guess we could,” she said, still clutching the receiver, with a fluttering in her stomach that made her feel like she was in high school again.

  An hour later she gasped as they climbed the steps to the grandstand and Buddy pulled out a metal chair for her beside the mayor of Dallas.

  “Why are we up here?” she whispered to him after she’d been introduced to half the public officials in Dallas.

  He crossed his arms and stretched out his feet. “We’re here because this is where I always sit.”

  It wasn’t until the J. J. Pearce High School Marching Band tromped by playing Spirit in the Sky, halfway through the parade, that he offhandedly mentioned he played soccer.

  “That’s what you do for a living?”

  “Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “At least it was last time I looked. But maybe I’d better check again. I might be an insurance salesman now.”

  That’s when it all started piecing together in her mind and making sense, the name, the vaguely familiar, handsome face, the seats of honor they occupied. “You play for the Burn,” she said in a whisper. “You’re Buddy Draper.”

  He didn’t look at her. He just took her hand. “I thought I told you that last night.”

  After the day of the parade, they did a lot of things together. They rode bumper cars and wandered around a flea market. They attended a film festival together. She invited him to visit her church one Sunday and he did so readily, promising he’d invite her to join him for services at the non-denominational worship center he attended. After that, Andy’s priorities had shifted. She loved her patients and urged them forward. But, now, with Buddy in her life, her patients weren’t the compelling force that drove her soul any longer. Buddy took over a new, special corner of her heart. The two of them spent quiet time alone together every weekend. He gave her tickets to every Dallas home game. She sat with the other players’ girlfriends or wives and cheered him on.

  She wasn’t certain she loved him until one afternoon when the Burn played in San Jose. The Earthquake defeated them in California. She drove to Dallas/Fort Worth International to meet the plane and, when she went to the charter gate, there was a crowd of people waiting to greet the team when they came in.

  Just before the plane landed, a security guard came up behind her and took her by the arm. “You Andy Kendall? We’re bringing the plane into a hangar away from the terminal. Those players are exhausted and Harv Siskell doesn’t want them to have to face this crowd right now. We’ve got all the wives boarding a shuttle. Liza Townsend saw you standing here and thought I should let you know.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, following him. The shuttle bounced across the tarmac and they disembarked inside the cavernous hangar, huddling in a group as the jet pulled inside, too.

  Liza Townsend’s husband, Marshall, was a striker on the team like Buddy. She held their little boy in her arms while he squirmed. He was ready for bed, dressed in a fuzzy blue blanket sleeper. And, as the steps went up and the players started to climb down, Marshall Townsend was one of the first off the plane. Liza set the little boy on the floor and he ran to his father, squealing with delight, arms outstretched.

  No defeat would be that bad if you had a child to greet you, Andy thought. So here was the real portrait of life for these players. It had nothing to do with what happened on the soccer field. It had everything to do with reunions and families and belonging to each other. As Andy saw Buddy starting down the metal stairs, looking disheveled and exhausted, she felt a strong sense that God meant her to spend her life with Buddy, that this man could be ‘the one.’

  She met him at the bottom of the steps and he wrapped his arms around her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Boy, am I glad to see you,” he said, right before he kissed her.

  “Interesting spot to meet an incoming flight,” she commented, teasing him.

  “Was there a crowd in the terminal?”

  “Yes. A big one.”

  “Thanks for dealing with all this.”

  She gazed up at him. “Buddy. I…” But she stopped, shy. This wasn’t the place or the time to tell him how he made everything worth it, how she felt like the Lord might be leading them to something more.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. Tell me.
What?”

  “I missed you, is all.”

  “Good,” he said. “I wanted you to miss me. That’s the only way I survived the end of that game, knowing I was going to get on a plane and fly back here to you.”

  “It was a good game, Buddy. You didn’t embarrass yourselves.”

  “We didn’t win, either.”

  “In my eyes, you won.”

  “You’re prejudiced.”

  “Isn’t everybody?”

  “No. Just you.”

  She laughed, a light tinkling sound that seemed to waft up and hang in the air above them. She pulled her keys out of her purse. “Here. I’m the chauffeur for the evening.”

  “Good,” he said, grinning, but his eyes showed how exhausted he was. When they arrived at his house, they lay on the floor listening to Mendelssohn, Andy’s chin propped on her palm, while Buddy talked about the game. He fell asleep on the floor and, before she left, she covered him with an afghan he usually kept spread across an armchair. She kissed him once on the forehead then gazed down at his sleeping face, figuring that the next time she saw him she’d tell him how much she loved him.

  It was the last time she saw him before the accident.

  She drove home to her apartment and went to bed. The next afternoon, when she finished with her patients in the gym and went to check her messages, the call from Harv Siskell had come in. She’d driven like a maniac all the way to the hospital. When she got there, they told her he was in intensive care and no one could see him except immediate family. Four days and four sleepless nights later, he moved to a private room and she finally got to see him.

  “I wrecked my car,” he told her as she stooped beside his bed.

  “I know that.”

  “I wrecked my legs, too.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Oh, Andy,” he whispered to her. “What am I going to do? I’ve got to play soccer again. It’s my calling. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do.”

  “You’ll play again,” she promised, taking it to heart. “I know just what to do.”

  For months he went to physical therapy as an outpatient at Parkland Hospital. For months Andy pushed him even further. They worked in the gym at Children’s for what seemed like an eternity. As Andy expected, it paid off. Buddy walked again. He ran again. Just not as fast as he’d run before. And he couldn’t run as far. When the Burn assessed him for the next season, he wasn’t nearly as certain of himself anymore.

  “Well,” he said as he sat down on Andy’s sofa one evening. “I made a decision today.”

  “About what?” She came around the arm and handed him her favorite healthy concoction, a drink blended from cantaloupes and bananas.

  “I told Harv this morning I’m going to retire.”

  She’d stopped in mid-sip of her own drink and eyed him as if she were eying a stranger. “Buddy. No. You can’t.”

  “I have to, Andy. It’s the only choice I could make.”

  “It isn’t.” Then fiercely. “It isn’t at all.”

  She couldn’t believe it. As she watched him sitting not quite so complacently now beside her, all she could think of were his desperate words from not so very long before.

  It’s my calling.

  “You can’t do this,” she said softly, hoping the low volume of her voice would cover the frustration she was feeling, only it didn’t. “Why would you stop like this if soccer is something you’re so passionate about?” She had seen so many children fight so much harder to get their lives back. “You haven’t even tried yet.”

  He stood and glared at her. “Why do you say that? What do you know about what I’m feeling? You don’t want me this way, is that it?” She knew what he was thinking, but it made no difference. “You don’t want me. I’m not a professional soccer player, is that it?” This must have happened to him all too often before; women agreed to go out with him because he was a celebrity. And now he was obviously thinking she was no different from the others.

  “You’ve got it wrong, Buddy. I’m against this because of how much you wanted it, because of how hard you worked to come back. Because of how hard we worked…”

  “Tell me something.” His eyes were cold. “Did we spend all those evenings in that gym for me or for you?”

  “You tell me something,” she shot right back at him. “You told me that soccer is your calling. Does your calling come from yourself, or does it come from God?”

  “Now, that’s between me and God, isn’t it?”

  “You were happy, weren’t you, Buddy? You were happy as long as the goals and the fame came easy for you. But now that you won’t be the star player anymore, now that you won’t make so many goals, now that you’re going to have to work for it, you give up. I think you’ve decided to take the easy way…”

  She faded out. She didn’t know what else she could say to him. It was impossible for her to watch him surrendering and not be angry about it. So maybe he wouldn’t be the best-loved player on the team anymore. But at least he’d be doing what he wanted to do. After all the work she’d done with children who might not ever be able to walk again, she couldn’t believe he was standing before her now, a whole man, telling her he was backing away. “Anything I ever did for you—” she told him now in a quavering voice “—was because I loved you.”

  There. She’d said it, after so many months. But she’d said it much, much too late for both of them. “All the kids I’ve watched fighting for their dreams, Buddy. I never thought that you would be the coward.”

  “Andy,” he said, his voice pleading now as he draped his jacket over his arm. “Don’t judge me by this. Unless you’ve played the game, you don’t realize when you’re running out of options.”

  “I’ve played plenty of games,” she said, tears streaming down her face as he stepped past her toward the door. “And I’m tired of them. It just isn’t in me to let somebody give up.”

  That had been almost six months ago. Andy hadn’t seen or heard from Buddy since. Her life was empty again except for her brother, Mark, and the caseload of children that kept her busy at Children’s Medical Center.

  “All right!” Andy urged the little girl on. “Let’s see turtle legs kicking…kicking…” She clapped her hands for the little girl who played beside her on the pallet. “That’s what I like to see.” She turned to the two parents sitting beside her, watching. “I can tell you’ve been working with her at home.”

  “We have been,” the proud father told her. “Every day. All the time.”

  Andy motioned for the candy striper to bring her a towel from the cabinet. “Let’s try something new. Challenge time, kiddo.” Andy rolled the towel and placed it beneath the eighteen-month-old’s stomach. She showed Kara how to place her arms to balance herself. Then she dug around in the toy bin.

  “Let’s see what we can find that’s interesting in here.”

  Andy pulled out a tin funnel, its rim lined with holes and metal rings and six different sizes of measuring spoons.

  Kara squealed and reached for them as they jangled.

  The little girl flopped over against the towel and rolled off it.

  “Oops.” The therapist caught Kara and laid her on the rolled towel again. “Let’s try again.”

  Kara reached over and over again for the jangling spoons. And over and over again, she toppled off the mount Andy had made for her.

  “She’s right where she needs to be.” Andy reassured the parents every time she reached out to catch the child. “This will start to get easier. She’s a fast learner.”

  Andy stared out the window for a moment, her fingers cupping her chin, trying to remember her schedule. “When’s your next appointment with Kara’s doctor?”

  “Two weeks from Friday,” they said together.

  “I’d like to see her before then.” But she caught the worry on Kara’s mother’s face immediately.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “We won’t have enough for the train fare that soon,�
� Kara’s father admitted.

  “I’ll make an appointment for the same day she’ll see the doctor, then. You can bring her for therapy when you’re already here.”

  “That would be better. Maybe next month we can bring her in more often.”

  It was the most painful thing Andy could think of, a child who needed therapy but who couldn’t get it as often as needed. She understood her brother’s financial frustrations so well. In many ways, they were her own.

  Children’s Medical Center charged its patients based on their ability to pay. But what about the children like Kara whose parents couldn’t afford the train fare to bring her in? It was for that very reason that Mark had established his bathing suit fund. For some of Mark’s water therapy patients, a new bathing suit was as unattainable as a new house.

  The other kids didn’t know how lucky they were. Kids like Cody Stratton whose parents would be able and willing to give him anything…everything…to make him well again.

  Others, like Buddy Draper, could buy the moon and it still wouldn’t be enough.

  Father, Buddy is out of my life, she prayed. I thought I knew Your will. I thought it was safe to give my heart.

  Chapter Five

  Buddy Draper plopped his loafer-clad feet atop his desk and leaned back to watch the game video for the third time. He groaned as he watched Townsend struggle to catch up with the ball. He shook his head as he noted the point where the man gave up and began falling back.

  I never would have played it that way, he thought. If I had been playing full throttle I never would have given up.

  Andy’s long-ago words echoed in his head. You were happy being the celebrity soccer player as long as the goals and the fame came easy for you. But now that you won’t be the star player anymore…now that you won’t make so many goals…now that you’re going to have to work for it, you give up. How dare she compare him with those kids she worked with. This was his career. This was different. She’d told him, I never thought that you would be the coward.

  As Buddy watched his friend and former colleague pull up behind the ball, he heard the roar of the crowd in his ears again, remembering what it felt like to run across the indoor field in pursuit of a ball rolling so fast it was only a blur sometimes, while his fans roared.