of his usual Sunday costume of a dark suit, he was dressed in jeans and a beige polo shirt that offset his tan.
“Call me Andrew, Mrs. Jacobs. ‘Mr.’ makes me feel old.”
He gripped her hand with a firm shake that was just shy of painful. At five foot eight, Serena wasn’t accustomed to having to look up to anyone, but Andrew’s height of well over six feet forced her to lift her head to meet his gaze. He smiled down at her, though, and she found it easy to smile back.
It was the first time she’d seen Andrew up close, instead of across the church sanctuary where he and the Reverend Bob Woods sat, so she was surprised at how quickly he put her at ease. He probably had to take a whole class on that in his training for the ministry.
He sat in his upholstered executive chair, motioning for her to take the chair opposite the desk. Funny, he didn’t much fit the picture she had of a member of the pastoral staff, even if he wasn’t the church’s head minister. His sandy brown hair was a tad too long, threatening to curl at his nape. And his dress was too casual for a game of golf, let alone for what she’d come to expect of a church leader.
She lowered herself into the armless visitor’s chair. “Call me Serena. Mrs. Jacobs doesn’t…fit anymore.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware you were…divorced?” The way he stressed the last word made it a question. The sadness in his gold-colored eyes appeared genuine.
She nodded. “It was final just last week.” With nervous tension weighing on her and making it difficult for her to sit still, she looked about the room, conscious how plain it was. There were no pictures on the wall, short of Andrew’s Master of Divinity degree. The dark paneling shone with a recent waxing, but still it held no warmth. Even his desk was surprisingly clear of clutter, personal or work-related. No pictures of the girlfriend back home, of parents, a kid brother or even a Labrador retriever. It was odd to be opening her personal life to someone who didn’t seem to possess one himself.
“And that’s the reason for your visit?”
Another statement-question. She would get really annoyed if he kept that up. “No, I’m handling that fairly well—as well as anybody can handle failure.”
He didn’t respond immediately, but must have swallowed hard because his Adam’s apple jerked. She wondered if he had choked back a retort about her divorce.
“Then, what brings you here today?” Andrew leaned forward on his desk and steepled his fingers in a thoughtful pose. “I’m guessing from the way you always slip out the back door so quickly on Sunday mornings that it’s not to get to know your pastoral staff better.” One side of his mouth tipped up in a smirk, but his eyes twinkled to soften it.
A chuckle was out before she realized it was building. How long had it been since she’d laughed about anything aside from some of Tessa’s antics? It felt good, really good. “You guessed right.”
“Why don’t you give me a break and tell me what I can do to help you. I’m trained as a counselor and a youth minister, but I’m terribly under-qualified as a mind reader.”
Serena nodded and gathered all of her courage into a tight ball before tossing out, “I can’t seem to shake this depression.”
“Divorce will do that.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head so hard her neck ached. “The divorce isn’t what’s causing it, at least not all of it. My daughter’s condition is just getting to me. She has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.” There. She’d said it. Strange how even admitting her depression aloud felt better than the guilt of keeping what she considered her selfish little problem bottled inside.
“I don’t recognize that one. Can you tell me a little about it?”
“JRA is a chronic illness where the patient’s body attacks her joints. There are three types of JRA. Only systemic-onset JRA—the rarest one and the type that Tessa has—can also affect internal organs.”
“What would that mean for her future?”
Serena leaped off into the rote speech that she used whenever anyone asked for details. If she kept it exactly the same—didn’t change a single word in her dialogue—she promised herself, it would feel no more personal than a memorized poem. Rather than a description of agony.
“In extremely rare cases, JRA can cause severe crippling and blindness, but we try not to think about those things.” She took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart. “With proper medication, most kids do very well. In fact, seventy percent go into permanent remission by the time they’re adults.”
“That must give you so much hope. How did you recognize that something was wrong?”
“It started about a year and a half ago when she began to have fevers every day—really high fevers that never turned to the flu or colds.” She folded her hands in her lap, trying hard not to wring them. “Whenever Tessa had them, she’d also get this rash on her hands. Fevers and rash are symptoms only seen with systemic JRA. It wasn’t until months later that she started having hot, swollen joints—the true arthritis.”
Andrew nodded. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”
“Not me. My little girl.” This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have come here. Talking about it wasn’t helping at all. It was only making her feel worse. “The illness itself is not the half of it. There were six months where the doctors didn’t know for sure what was wrong with her.”
She waited for Andrew to speak, to ask questions, but he only nodded for her to continue.
“They tossed around words like tumor, leukemia, tuberculosis and lupus.” With each word, the memories flashed through her mind more clearly. The screams from so many needle pokes. The fear in her child’s eyes that Serena couldn’t soothe. “She went through all kinds of tests—chest X rays, a ton of blood work, ultrasounds. They even tested her bone marrow for leukemia. We didn’t know for a long time if she would…live or die.”
The last was too much for her. A sob escaped her, though she tried with all her strength to hold it in. It wasn’t like her to lose control. She was usually better at keeping it all boxed in. But this time she couldn’t stop the tears from raining down her cheeks.
Andrew pushed a box of tissues to within her reach. When she looked up at him, he shook his head slowly. “And you wonder why you’re depressed? Look at all you’ve been through—not just your daughter, but you. The fear, the pain, the frustration. Not to mention a divorce, no matter how well you’re handling it. All of that adds up to some very explainable blues.”
She crossed her arms to hug away a chill, despite the July heat pouring through Andrew’s open window. “But it doesn’t make any sense. She was diagnosed a year ago. She’s even doing a little better lately. So why am I depressed now? Why not when she was going through all of the tests, when we had no idea what was wrong? Why not right after the diagnosis?”
Andrew shrugged. “Some people operate in crisis mode. During the most difficult times of their lives they simply handle whatever is happening without really sitting back to analyze it.” He leaned his elbows on the desk and rested his chin in the cradle of his palms. “It’s only when things are better that they can allow themselves to collapse under the weight.”
As if a lock suddenly had
