Over the Waters by Deborah Raney

facilities--if you could call them that--were appalling. Cracks in the uneven walls let in a menagerie of insects and rodents, and the filth that permeated the very air made it impossible to disinfect anything. The gates couldn't keep out the acrid smoke from a garbage heap smoldering in the ditch beyond. The stench seeped in through every window. Max had a fleeting glimpse of his days as a young resident serving an Indian reservation in Arizona. Only this made that tumbledown clinic look state-of-the-art.
    He'd forgotten how influential those brief and horrid months in the desert had been. Janie and Josh had remained in Chicago, and after three miserable months, Max had fled the west and returned to civilization. On the long bus ride to Phoenix to catch a flight home, he'd sworn to himself that he would never work or live in such dire circumstances again. It was one of the few promises he'd kept in his life.
    Or had he? Could he really make that claim when his only son, the heir to the small kingdom Maximilian Jordan had established, had died here in the heart of the world's most impoverished country?
    "What makes you so sure Joshua was happy here?" The words tumbled out before he realized he'd spoken them aloud.
    "Oh, Dr. Jordan..." The girl's expression took on that dreamy quality it always did when she spoke of Joshua. "I wish you could have seen him here. You wouldn't have had to ask me that. Josh loved his work, loved the children. As Madame Duval told you last night, he was the best thing that ever happened to this place. Aside from the lives he literally saved, he just added such joy and fun to life. The kids adored him. Kids all over the village knew him because he helped at the other two orphanages here."
    She stopped abruptly at the edge of a sparse lawn where some children were kicking a soccer ball around. She bowed her head briefly before looking back up at him. "I have something I need to tell you. A confession, I guess you'd have to call it."
    "Oh?"
    She led him to the cement slab where the older girls did the laundry. They each took a corner and sat. The sun was warm on his back.
    She hesitated, then started with a sigh. "The first night in the hospital, Josh asked me to get a paper and pencil...He wanted me to write a letter to you. I--I put him off. I hated the way he was talking...as though he knew he was going to die. I told him he could tell you all those things in person. But he insisted. I did write down the things he told me...later. I think I got everything. But I should have gotten it word for word...in his own words."
    Max wondered why she was telling him this now. Were the things Joshua told her so terrible that it had taken her four days to get up the nerve to repeat them?
    "I'm so sorry, Dr. Jordan. I should have listened to him. Josh's last thoughts were of you. He felt responsible that you two didn't have...the best relationship and he wanted you to know that he loved you." A faraway look came to her eyes, as though she were remembering that last conversation with Josh. "He wanted you to know that he was sorry."
    Regret washed over Max. He felt jealous that this girl, this stranger, had been the one to hear his son's last words. Yet, he was touched--and a little surprised--that Josh's last thoughts had been for him. Something about Samantha Courtney made him feel uncharacteristically open, and eager to talk about Joshua.
    "I think...I think you knew Joshua differently than I did. Tell me about my son."
    She nodded. "Josh said that once. That you two didn't exactly see eye to eye, that you never really understood each other. He wanted you to know that he was sorry for that. He never told me what happened between you, really, but he regretted the way he acted. He said he wasn't very Christlike in his responses to you."
    "That was pretty important to him, huh? Being...a Christian?"
    "It was the most important thing in Josh's life." Her eyes met his and she held his gaze until he turned away,