(Author's Note: Thanks so much for the latest FB! For anyone that's confused about the time jumping and back history, I beg you to hang in there. I don't like to reveal everything at once, so this might feel more like a puzzle at first. But I promise to make it all come together! P.S. The italics in this document didn't come through in the transfer. So just note that the text between the *** in this chapter should be italicized – which means that this is a flashback memory. I've tried to remain consistent with this, so sorry about the italics. ~Rilla)
Chapter 3: Unfair Terms
This was not the scenario Ephram had worked out in his head during the sleepless nights he allowed his mind to drift westward. In his imagined reality, Amy was supposed to be married – though he had heard through the Everwood grapevine that she was not. She was supposed to be happy – though of this, too, he had heard rumors; suggestions that Amy Abbott's life had not gone as the town would have expected. But this came through unreliable and uncharitable sources and so Ephram ignored them. She was supposed to be a hundred different things, all of them good and promising and full of life. It was what both comforted and tormented him.
She was not supposed to be sick. And in a hospital.
***
There hadn't been time to get Andy Brown to a hospital. "Dad…DAD!" Ephram screamed, hours too late. The fire he'd built for them the night before, the jokes they'd told over hot cider and rum, and the kinship they'd felt – so hard fought for – dissipated like so much thin smoke. Ephram cried over the body with the kind of choking agony that should be experienced only a few times in a person's life. At 21, it was his second time.
He looked into his father's face, pale in the dawn light, and searched for life. What he found was a breathless smile.
Everyone who heard the story, retold in fable-format by the town mortician, said that Andy Brown had died happy. Because he had had love in his life, even death couldn't erase his smile.
For Ephram, that knowledge did little to change his reality.
***
With every step on the gray linoleum, Ephram's mind spun as he ran over the millions of scenarios that might have led him to this place. To Amy. In a hospital. Calling him out of their self-imposed silence.
Two years since the closure he hadn't known he needed.
Five years since that deadening kiss after the funeral.
Ten years since that awakening touch on Prom Night.
Thirteen years since he'd entered her world.
And each and every scenario ended with him cursing lost and wasted time. He followed Bright and Delia with a weight heavy on his shoulders, and fear in his heart.
Delia tried to make small talk with Bright when she realized he was clearly under strict orders to tell Ephram nothing and to give no clues. Walking ahead of her brother and matching Bright's stride, she asked questions she felt confident Bright would answer, "How're Edna and Irv?" They were fine. "Where do you live now?" Just moved back to Everwood, from Boulder. No, it's only temporary. "Are you married?" He laughed at her frankness and shook his head. "How're your parents?" But they reached the elevator just as it opened to let a mother and daughter out, and questions stopped.
Ephram stepped in and Bright held his forearm in front of the door to ensure it would not shut on Delia before following behind her. A man in a wheelchair rolled in as well, and a nurse jumped aboard just as the doors were about to close. "Can you press 5?" Bright asked Ephram, who stood closest to the panel. Written above the number, etched on a brass plate, read "J. Heniman Cancer Center." The new addition in the name of a wealthy benefactor, and the cause of all that extra parking. His heart stuck in his throat.
When the other two riders got off at floors two and three, Ephram turned to look at Bright with stricken eyes, "Bright, please. Why am I here?" Delia leaned into her brother's side and watched Bright weigh his options.
"I wish I could tell ya, man. I really do. I know this sucks." And he seemed to mean it. "But it's not mine to tell. She…" And the door dinged open to reveal a spacious, gleaming nurses' station. Ephram started to step off, his stomach churning, when he felt Bright's hand on his shoulder. "Just please don't be too mad at her," Bright asked, quiet and serious.
