Danielle Steel: The Gift

He had been gone for about an hour, when Annie let out a little soft moan, and then her eyelashes seemed to flutter. For a minute it looked as though she might open her eyes, and then she didn't. Instead, she moaned again, but this time she gently squeezed her mother's hand, and then as though she'd simply been asleep all day, she opened her eyes and looked at her mommy.

“Annie?” Liz said in a whisper, totally stunned by what she was seeing. She signaled John to come closer to them. He had come back into the room and was standing near the door. “Hi, baby …Daddy and I are right here, and we love you so much.” Her father had reached her bedside by then, and each of them stood on one side of her pillow. She couldn't move her head toward either of them, but it was obvious that she could see them clearly. She looked sleepy, and she closed her eyes for an instant again, and then opened them slowly, and smiled.

“I love you,” she said so softly they could hardly hear her. “Tommy? …”

“He's here too.” There were rivers of tears pouring down Liz's face as she answered her, and she gently kissed her forehead as John cried too, no longer even embarrassed for her to see it. They loved her so much. He would do anything to get her to come through this.

“Love Tommy …” she said softly again. “…love you …” and then she smiled clearly, looking more beautiful and more perfect than ever. She looked like the perfect child, lying there, so blond with big blue eyes, and the little round cheeks they all loved to kiss. She was smiling at them, as though she knew a secret they didn't. Tommy came into the room then, and he saw her too. She looked toward the foot of her bed and smiled right at him. He thought it meant that she was better again, and he began to cry with relief that they wouldn't lose her. And then, seeming to take them all in with her words, she said simply, “…thank you …” in the smallest of whispers. She closed her eyes then, with a smile, and a moment later she was sleeping, exhausted by her efforts. Tommy was rejoicing at what he'd seen as he left the room again, but Liz knew different. She sensed that something was wrong, that this didn't mean what it appeared to. And as she watched her, she could sense her drift away. The gift that she had been was gone again. It was being taken from them. They had had her for so brief a time, it seemed like barely more than moments. Liz sat holding her hand, and watching her, as John came and went. Tommy was asleep in a chair in the hallway by then. And it was almost midnight when she finally left them. She never opened her eyes again. She never woke. She had said what she had needed to tell them …she had told each of them how much she'd loved them …she had even thanked them …thank you … for five beautiful years …five tiny short years …thank you for this golden little life given to us so briefly. Liz and John were with her when she died, each one holding a hand, not so much to hold her back, but to thank her too for all she gave them. They knew by then that there would be no keeping her from leaving them, they simply wanted to be there when she left them.

“I love you,” Liz whispered for a last time, as she breathed the smallest of last breaths…. “I love you….” It was only an echo. She had left them on angel wings. The gift had been taken from them. Annie Whittaker was a spirit. And her brother slept on in the hall remembering her …thinking of her …loving her …just as they all had. A remembering only days before when they had pretended to be angels in the snow, and now, she truly was one.

Chapter Two

The funeral was an agony of pain and tenderness, the kind of stuff of which mothers' nightmares are made. It was two days before New Year's Eve, and all their friends came, children, parents, her teachers from kindergarten and nursery school, John's associates and employees, and the teachers Liz had taught with. Walter Stone was there too. He told them in a quiet aside that he reproached himself for not having come out the night Liz called. He had assumed it was only a flu or a cold, and he shouldn't have made that assumption. He admitted too, that even if he had come, he wouldn't have been able to change anything. The statistics on meningitis were in almost every instance devastating in young children. Liz and John kindly urged him not to blame himself, and yet Liz blamed herself for not asking him to come out to the house that night, and John blamed himself equally for telling Liz it was nothing. Both hated themselves for having made love while she slipped into a coma in her bed. And Tommy was unsure why he felt that way, but he blamed himself for her death too. He should have been able to make a difference. But none of them had.

Annie had been, as the priest said that day, a gift to them for a brief time, a little angel on loan to them from God—a little friend come to teach them love and bring them closer together. And she had. Each person who sat there remembered the impish smile, the big blue eyes, the shining little face that made everyone laugh or smile, or love her. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that she had come to them as a gift of love. The question was how they would live on now, without her. It seemed to all of them as though the death of a child stands as a reproach for all one's sins, and a reminder of all one stands to lose in life at any moment. It is the loss of everything, of hope, of life, of the future. It is a loss of warmth, and all things cherished. And there were never three lonelier people than Liz and John and Tommy Whittaker on that bitter cold December morning. They stood freezing at her graveside, among their friends, unable to tear themselves away from her, unable to bear leaving her there in the tiny white, flowered coffin.

“I can't,” Liz said in a strangled voice to John after the service was over, and he knew immediately what she meant and clutched her arm, afraid she might slip into hysterics. They had been close to that for days, and Liz looked even worse now. “I can't leave her here … I can't …” She was choking on sobs, and in spite of her resistance, he pulled her closer.

“She's not here, Liz, she's gone …she's all right now.”

“She's not all right. She's mine … I want her back … I want her back,” she said, sobbing, as their friends drifted awkwardly away, not knowing how to help her. There was nothing one could do or say, nothing to ease the pain, or make it better. And Tommy stood there watching them, aching inside, pining for Annie.

“You all right, son?” his hockey coach asked him, as he drifted by, wiping tears from his cheeks without even trying to conceal them. Tommy started to nod yes, and then shook his head no, and collapsed into the burly man's arms, crying. “I know … I know … I lost my sister when I was twenty-one, and she was fifteen … it stinks … it really stinks. Just hang on to the memories …she was a cute little thing,” he said, crying along with Tommy. “You hang on to all of it, son. She'll come back to you in little blessings all your life. Angels give us gifts like that …sometimes you don't even notice. But they're there. She's here. Talk to her sometimes when you're alone …she'll hear you …you'll hear her …you'll never lose her.” Tommy looked at him strangely for a minute, wondering if he was crazy, and then nodded. And his father had finally gotten his mother away from the grave by then, though barely. She could hardly walk by the time they got back to their car, and his father looked almost gray as he drove their car home, and none of them said a word to each other.

People dropped in all afternoon, and brought them food. Some only left food or flowers on the front steps, afraid to bother them or face them. But there seemed to be a steady stream of people around constantly nonetheless, and there were others who stayed away, as though they felt that if they even touched the Whittakers, it could happen to them too. As though tragedy might be contagious.