Part 3 (1/2)

The dismissive way they call me ”Mom” always makes me wish their real mom would walk in and smack them upside the head. No, I was not happy, but, yes, this was a step in the right direction. Even if the test showed something bad, knowing is better than not knowing. Knowing means you can do something about it.

I held Anna in my arms before and after X-rays and then a sonogram to confirm the results, and then we waited until they called Kevin and me into the little room where they take you when they have to tell you what you don't want to hear.

”I'm sorry,” the ER doctor told us. ”The intestine is one hundred percent obstructed. The surgeon is on his way. You should prepare to be here for a long while.”

Kevin and I were left standing there with the very real possibility that Anna would die that night.

STANDING IN THE COTTONWOOD grove four years later, I felt the same ringing in my ears as my head wrapped around the reality-the gravity-of what was happening.

The tree towered in front of me. Anna was somewhere inside it, close enough for me to reach out and touch her and still be utterly unreachable.

Abbie broke away from me, and before I could call her back, she was clambering back up the tree, agile as a squirrel. I sucked in a deep breath. Suddenly that branch seemed so much higher than I remembered. And the gaping grotto so much darker.

Chapter Four.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.

Revelation 22:14 DEEP IN THE HEART of the tree, Anna drifted, vaguely aware of the suffocating stillness and then... something else. Someone else. Somewhere else.

”I always thought Heaven would be like sitting on clouds,” she told me later, ”but it's like... it's like being suspended above the universe.”

She was very circ.u.mspect and said very little about the experience. This wasn't like one of her long, spun-out recaps of a funny dream or a movie she'd seen. She confided only a few details on only a few occasions, and when she told me about it, I felt her weighing her words in a way that was very Annabel. This was the girl who used to look at the ”Your Pain on a Scale of 1 to 10” chart and select the stoically moderate 6, even when all clinical indicators told us she was actually experiencing something more like a 9. She'd been through enough real drama in her short life; she had no interest in melodrama.

”Mommy, the gates of Heaven really are made of gold, and they really are big and bright.”

When she confided in me and Kevin and Gran Jan in the days that followed-and in the years since then-she chose carefully what she wanted to share and what she wanted to keep to herself. And I respect that. I have never pumped her for details. I am curious-of course, I want to know as much as you do-but as the song says, ”I can only imagine.”

I imagine the pitch darkness dissolving to light around her, the dank air suffusing with pure oxygen, that prison cell of Earth and rotted wood giving way to clear blue sky, pure freedom. I close my eyes, and I can see her getting up from the muck, stepping into the City of G.o.d.

”I have always thought G.o.d has a big heart because He has so much love, and He does,” she told me. ”Mommy, He has a big heart that glows. G.o.d's heart was so filled with joy that it s.h.i.+ned with... with gold glory. And His eyes were like the biggest and most beautiful star in the sky.”

THE FIRST OF THE evening stars were visible in the eastern sky as I ran across the open field, stumbled, caught myself, kept running, over the grated cattle gate to the gravel drive. I felt calm but fiercely focused on what needed to happen.

Find my cell phone.

Call Kevin.

Call 911.

Get Anna. Get my eyes on her. Get my arms around her.

I burst through the kitchen door, ran to my room, and thrashed through the neat piles of laundry looking for my cell. My hands were trembling as I clicked to Favorites and speed-dialed Kevin's number. In the forever-long seconds it took him to answer, I was already out the door again, running down the driveway.

I called the veterinary clinic at 5:25 p.m., trying not to sound panicked when the receptionist answered.

”It's Christy. I need Kevin right away, please.”

”He's right here. Hang on.”

Knowing what I know now, this is another moment that sends a s.h.i.+ver down my spine. Kevin was supposed to be in surgery, performing a delicate operation on a large dog, but as the procedure got under way, he was concerned about the way the dog was responding to the anesthesia, and he closed. This was a complex orthopedic surgery, and there was no one there who could have stepped in, so there's no way he would have scrubbed out once the procedure began. But the way things went, he happened to be standing right there at the front desk in his scrubs, talking to the dog's owner when I called.

”Hey, babe.” Kevin's voice was like cool water.

”Kevin, Anna's in trouble.”

I blurted out everything I knew about the situation-that she'd fallen into a hole in a tall tree, that I couldn't get to her-and even in the moment I think we were both surprised at how calm I sounded. Kevin immediately knew the tree I was talking about.

”I knew Abbie had been climbing up there, but I'm surprised Anna-”

”Please, just get here as quickly as you can. I'm calling 911.”

”Hang on, hang on. I'll be there in ten,” he said. ”In less time than it would take them to get over here, I'll have a ladder up there and get her out.”

I bit my lip, wanting to believe it would be that easy. ”Please, hurry.”

Kevin told me later that he envisioned climbing up a few branches, calming Abbie, reaching four or five feet into a depression, and helping Anna down from the tree, no blood, no foul, just another Beam sisters misadventure that went over the line.

He could be right, I thought. We were a.s.suming different answers to the same questions: Was she hurt? How deep did the chasm go? Abbie insisted that Anna had fallen all the way to the ground, but that didn't seem possible. How could a tree that large still be standing if the trunk was nothing but a hollow pipe? And if it was hollow but still solid enough to stand, could there be air inside? Regardless of how deep it was, the rotted core of a tree must be crawling with all kinds of creepy G.o.d-knows-what...

”Kevin, please, please hurry.”

I knew he was only a few minutes away, but those few minutes were agony. Adelynn was alternately clinging to my leg and gas.h.i.+ng at the ground with anything she could find. Abbie was sobbing, refusing to come down from her high perch. She kept crying out into the black hole-”Anna! Anna!”-begging Annabel to answer her.

Why didn't she answer?

”Having some trouble?” Our neighbor came through the trees, peering at Abbie in the twilit branches and me pacing below.

”Yes!” I ran to him, grateful to see another grown-up, even though we'd only met a few times in pa.s.sing. Living in the country, there's a lot of s.p.a.ce between people, but when someone needs help, the gap closes.

”Need a ladder?” he asked.

”Oh, yes, Jack, thank you. Please, hurry.”

He was back in less than a minute, but when we propped the ladder against the tree, it was a good ten or twelve feet short of the branch where Abbie had posted herself like a sentry.

”Mommy,” Abbie called to me. ”I think she's-I don't think she can breathe.”

I called Kevin again. ”Kevin, I'm really getting scared. Abbie is at the top of the tree freaking out. She says Anna is having a hard time breathing. I can't stand here. I have to call 911. I have to do something.”

”I'm here. I'm at the turnoff. Just sit tight and let me see what's going on.”

The headlights on the borrowed diesel jalopy bounced across the pasture, closing the distance between us with a comforting roar. Kevin pulled to a stop and leaped out, leaving the bright lights directed toward the tree. On his way out of the animal hospital, he'd had the presence of mind to grab a great big rope they use to restrain horses for surgical procedures, but when he took in the situation-the true height of the tree, the inadequacy of even the tall ladder propped against it-he felt a jolt of nervous adrenaline. This might not be as simple as he thought.

Sprinting the quarter mile through the trees and over the field to his workshop, he was praying, willing himself to stay calm for his girls. Moments later, he came back to us on a dead run, panting hard, lugging a twenty-four-foot extension ladder on his shoulders.

”Abbie,” he called, ”c'mon down here now. You're not safe up there.”