My Foolish Heart by Susan May Warren Page B

not?”
    The why not hung in Issy’s mind even as the conversation continued. She winced at the tremble in her voice.
    She was tired of the why not s. Tired of sitting here every Sunday, listening to her church family worship from afar, knowing her father was probably listening too.
    She reached up to touch his picture on the fridge, the one with him and his championship team her senior year. He was being carried off the field, dripping wet from the water bucket, on the shoulders of his team. And beside him, also carried, Seb Brewster. They were looking at each other, their hands locked above their heads. In a way, Seb had been the son Coach Presley never had.
    â€œDaddy, I miss you,” Issy whispered.
    The worst part was, he lived only a mile away.
    Past the highway, over the hill, in a room facing the lake. But the care center where he lived on a breathing machine might as well be across the Pacific in Bangkok.
    Or in Napa Valley.
    At least they had the telephone. Their daily phone call kept their prisons from strangling them.
    She pushed open her cardboarded door, padded out to the porch. Night bathed the yard, the air cool, scented with pine and the heady fragrances of her hydrangea, her daylilies, the Pilgrim and tea roses.
    â€œCome . . . see me, Isadora. I miss . . . you.”
    His voice in her head, the memory of their conversation this afternoon, could turn her inside out. It wasn’t enough that he could only talk when his ventilator expired the air from his lungs, but the short bursts of speech, dying at the end, always sounded like the end of his life. Every sentence, every phone call, every day could be his last.
    â€œI want to, Daddy. I’m getting better. I am running around the block now and even to the coffee shop.” Okay, she’d only run there once and hadn’t gone in, but technically, she’d touched down in the parking lot.
    â€œDon’t let it rule . . . you . . .”
    It had taken all of thirty-seven seconds for Coach Presley to kick in, for her father’s go-get-’em tone to color his speech. She could almost see him pacing the sideline, yelling encouragement, his body more muscle than fat even at fifty, his dark hair containing just a touch of silver at the temples.
    â€œTry to understand, Daddy. It’s like, when I think about leaving the house, going into town, I can see what could happen. Every possibility. And then I start to feel this unraveling deep inside. After that, it’s not about what could happen, but rather me making a fool out of myself. Sweating and crying and losing my mind in front of the entire town. I did it once—”
    â€œFuneral. Everyone understood.”
    â€œI locked myself in the bathroom of the funeral parlor and they had to call the police to get me out.” Her voice pitched low, even as she sat on the sofa in the privacy of her parlor. “They had to sedate me. And hospitalize me for three days.”
    He knew this, of course, but he’d been fighting for his life in Duluth’s trauma ward at the time. Besides, how could he possibly know how it felt to hold her mother’s hand as she bled out, trapped in a burning car? How it felt to watch the EMTs haul her father away, gray and unmoving? How her world had dismantled right before her eyes?
    Her hand went to the scar on her forehead, raised but hidden by her hair. Just a scalp laceration. She’d been back home, walking into her empty house, by six the next morning.
    â€œI am praying for you. . . .”
    She flinched at that. “Please don’t talk to me about God. I know, I know—just ‘cast my cares on God.’ Believe me, I have—”
    â€œHoney . . .”
    â€œThe thing is, I can’t figure out if I abandoned God, or if . . . well, if He abandoned me. But I’m broken, ashamed, and it feels like God is doing nothing to fix me. So,