Taylor’s tone was anguished. “You’re embarrassing me.”
His face flushed, and he gave Darcy a look that might have passed for apologetic. “I’ve tried to tell Taylor it’s a father’s job to embarrass his child, but she doesn’t agree.” He took out his wallet and handed her a card. “If you should need to get in touch with me.”
She took it. Michael Carter, M.D. Pediatric Specialist. He wasn’t just any doctor—he was a children’s doctor. Was he so cautious with Taylor because he spent his days seeing everything that could go wrong with children? “Thanks,” she said, and started to add the card to the pile of papers on the table just inside the door.
“Wait a minute.” He stopped her. “Just in case.” He took the card back and scribbled on it. “My cell number.” He returned it to her. “Nice meeting you,” he said, and took Taylor’s hand.
“Goodbye, Darcy,” Taylor called. “See you next week.”
“Goodbye, Taylor. Dr. Carter.” When they were gone, Darcy studied his business card again. Had Taylor’s father been coming on to her? Why else would he give her his number? After all, it wasn’t as if Taylor wouldn’t know her father’s phone number.
Still puzzling over the doctor’s strange behavior, she pulled a coat on over her costume and left the studio, which had once been a detached garage. Though the sun was shining in a Colorado blue sky, the forecast called for more snow by nightfall. She made a mental note to check that the snowblower had plenty of gas.
She walked out to the end of the driveway and collected her mail from the box, then climbed back up to the house. Painted in two shades of green, with a stone patio across the front, it had started life as a weekend getaway for some well-to-do Denverite. In the days before air-conditioning, city folks fled in the summer heat to rustic mountain cabins like this one in Woodbine.
Now they built second homes in Vail and Aspen, leaving the old cabins for people like Darcy to renovate and call home.
She pushed open the front door and shed her coat, pausing, as always, in front of the shelf tucked into an alcove by the door. A swath of bright green Indian silk covered the shelf, on which sat a statue of the Hindu goddess Kali. Cradled in the goddess’s many arms was a framed photo of a handsome man with bright red hair and a goatee, and a sandy-haired boy of six, who smiled out of the photo with all the joy and innocence of an angel.
Darcy kissed her finger, then touched the boy’s face, her heart tightening as always. The raw grief of missing these two—her husband and son—had lessened in the time since they’d both died in a car accident, but she still felt their absence keenly.
With one last look at the photo, she moved into the living room to sit on the sofa and sort the mail: junk, bill, magazine, junk, junk, bill, ju—She froze in the act of tossing the last letter onto the junk pile. She read the return address on the meter-stamped envelope: Colorado Donor Alliance, Denver.
She stared at it a long time, her insides liquid. Nightmare images filled her head—harsh hospital lighting, beeping monitors, the concern of a woman explaining about organ donation, a pile of paperwork … Darcy struggled to push the ugly memories away. Why were these people contacting her now, after two years?
“They probably just want a donation,” she muttered as she tore open the envelope with shaking hands.
Dear Mrs. O’Connor,
Your decision to give the ultimate gift of life by donating your son’s, Riley’s, organs, has saved the lives of several children. I hope you will take comfort in knowing that some small part of Riley lives on.
Your information and information about organ recipients is always kept in strictest confidence unless both parties give their permission for it to be released. Though some donor families wish to remain forever anonymous, others find closure in meeting the recipients of their gift.
We have recently been contacted by the family of the child who received your son’s heart. They would like to meet you, to personally thank you and to allow you to see the results of your decision.
We will be happy to facilitate such a meeting, if you so desire. If you prefer to maintain your anonymity, we will respect that also.
Sincerely,
Mavis Shehadi
Donor Coordinator
Darcy sank back on the sofa and stared, not at the letter in her hand, but at the framed eight-by-ten photo on the wall opposite. Riley, dressed in his green-and-yellow Little League uniform, a bat posed on one shoulder, his hat sitting at a jaunty angle over his blond curls, was frozen in a moment of six-year-old bravado. This was the image of a child who had never known prolonged pain or a moment’s real unhappiness.
Darcy had been assured he’d died without suffering. A head injury had damaged his brain, but his other organs had functioned long enough that they could be given to others. The Donor Alliance counselor had assured her that donating Riley’s heart, kidneys and liver might spare some other mother the agony Darcy had endured. Overwhelmed by grief and guilt, Darcy had signed the papers, numb to anything but the pain of losing her son. She was convinced she should have done more to save him. Saving his organs for others had seemed such a small thing at the time.
Only later, as some of the blackness receded, had she wondered about those children and their families. But she quickly decided she didn’t want to know.
The idea that part of Riley lived on somewhere was comforting in the abstract, but she was afraid hearing about the lives of those children would hurt too much. They got to live …. No amount of heartfelt thanks from other parents could ever make up for the fact that they had their children and she’d lost hers forever.
She’d received a couple of moving letters from grateful parents, their identities carefully blacked out. She’d put them away with other mementos that were too painful to look at—the funeral program, Riley’s last report card, his baseball cap.
So she’d never contacted the donor registry and hadn’t considered the possibility that they might contact her after all this time.
She reread the letter and waited for the familiar pain to overwhelm her. The guilt was still there, and the ache of longing, but the resentment had faded. That Riley had been taken from her was tremendously unfair, but she would never wish the loss she’d endured on another.
And to think that Riley’s heart lived on filled her with a flood of good memories. She had called Riley her sweetheart. When he did something kind for someone, she told him he had a good heart. Before he was born, she had listened to the beating of his heart in her doctor’s office and begun to know and love him as someone precious who was part of her, yet his own person.
Did Riley’s heart, beating in this other child, sound the same? Would Darcy recognize its rhythm?
What would she do if she did recognize something of Riley in this other child? The idea stopped her short.
If she met this child, she wouldn’t be anything like Riley, Darcy reassured herself. She had a vague recollection of the donor coordinator telling her Riley’s heart was going to a girl. And she would belong to other parents.
Grief was a kind of insanity she only recently felt she’d emerged from. Would meeting this child plunge her back into that darkness, making the loss of Riley fresh again?
She shook her head, and replaced the letter in the envelope. That wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She’d write to the Donor Alliance and refuse. Maybe one day she’d be strong enough to meet one of the transplant children, but she wasn’t there yet.
“WHAT DID YOU THINK of Darcy, Dad?”
Mike glanced in the rearview mirror at his daughter. Taylor leaned forward in the backseat of the car, straining against the seat belt. Only recently had she been able to abandon the booster seat that had been a source of shame for her. Her health problems had left her undersized for her age. Strangers often mistook her for a much younger child. “Isn’t