Montana Hearts

“Oh.” His answer wasn’t very helpful. She guessed he was referring to a barbecue grill she’d spotted on the back porch.

It took a couple of tries to light the propane but finally Sarah dropped the steaks on the grill.

Back in the kitchen, she set the table and poured milk for Toby and Beth and water for herself. She wasn’t sure what Kurt would want to drink with his dinner, so she held off on that.

Beth came stalking into the kitchen, a cell phone in her hand. “Isn’t dinner ready yet? I’m starved.” She plucked a cookie out of a rooster-shaped cookie jar with one hand while the thumb of her other hand nimbly sent a text to someone.

“The steaks should be ready any minute.”

Beth glanced at the stove, then toward the back door.

“Something’s on fire!”

Sarah’s head snapped around. “The steaks!” She grabbed a plate, a long-handled fork and raced out the door.

Flames leaped up around the steaks. Grease sizzled and sputtered. The rank air smelled of burned meat.

Sarah stabbed a blackened steak and dragged it onto the plate. She speared the next steak, singeing her wrist in the process. She jerked back and the steak slid off the fork onto the porch.

“Turn off the propane!” Beth screamed. “You’re gonna catch the whole house on fire.”

Sarah ceased her efforts to rescue the steaks. Burning down the house was a real possibility. She turned the knob on the propane bottle, but that didn’t immediately extinguish the flames.

Beth’s shouting had rousted Toby away from the TV.

“Hey, a bonfire on our porch. That’s cool.”

Kurt shoved past his son. “I’ll get it.” He twisted the propane knob again, starving the flames of fuel. They sputtered one more time before vanishing.

In the silence that followed, Sarah took a deep breath. Her heart was rata-tat-tatting so fast she thought it might leap out of her chest.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

Kurt took the plate from her and piled the rest of the steaks on it. “No real harm done except to these steaks.”

The poor things looked like lumps of charcoal. “I’ve never barbecued before. I didn’t know how long—”

“Talk about being stupid,” Beth complained.

Kurt nailed her with a look that would have terrified anyone else. It didn’t seem to faze Beth.

“One more word out of you, young lady, and you’ll do without dinner altogether.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Nobody can eat that stuff anyway.” Head held high, ponytail swinging, she stomped back into the house.

Sarah suspected Beth’s attitude was more self-defense than rebellion.

Dear Lord, show me a way to help this child, who is so desperately crying out for love and understanding.

They’d all survived dinner, barely, by scraping off the charred layer on the steaks. Even so, Sarah thought eating the meat was like chewing hardtack.

With Kurt’s help, she’d cleaned up the kitchen. Then he’d vanished back into his office to work on the accounts. Beth was still upstairs, pouting. Toby had resumed his place in front of the big-screen TV. From her perspective, the show he was watching looked too violent for a nine-year-old. Or an adult, for that matter.

The family ought to be doing things together, she thought. That’s the only way they’d heal their grief.

She went to her room to retrieve her oversize tote that contained her ventriloquist’s dummy. Dr. Zoom came fully equipped with a white lab coat, stethoscope, wire glasses and a Pinocchio nose.

For the past several years, when she was able, she had volunteered one morning a week at the University of Washington Medical Center. She donned a costume and became Suzy-Q, clown extraordinaire, visiting the pediatric oncology ward. Dr. Zoom told silly jokes and listened to his own heart instead of the patient’s. She’d spent hours in front of a mirror making sure her lips didn’t move when she spoke in Dr. Zoom’s voice.

As Suzy-Q, Sarah also did face painting. All of this in an effort to pay forward some of the kindness that she had experienced as a child.

The best medicine she could give a sick child was a chance to smile and laugh, a few minutes of simply being a normal kid.

Maybe she could give the same gift to Kurt’s children.

Returning to the living room, she sat on the couch and adjusted Dr. Zoom on her lap, his legs dangling over her thigh.

“Vhat’s dat kid doing?” Dr. Zoom asked in a fake German accent.

“He’s watching TV,” she responded.

“Vaste of time, I say.”

Toby remained glued to the TV show, not so much as looking over his shoulder to find out who was in the room.

“Well, what should we do?”

Dr. Zoom looked up at her, his long nose quivering. “Ve could drop a bomb on the boy?”

“No. That wouldn’t be very nice.” Sarah wasn’t at all sure Toby would even react to a ton of TNT going off.

“Hee hee hee. KABOOM!”

Very slowly, Toby turned his head and frowned.

“What’a’ya doing?”

“Is the boy alive? Let me listen to his heart.”

Sarah manipulated Zoom’s stethoscope to the middle of his own chest.

“Oh, no. I hear nothing. Nothing! The boy is—”

“You’re trying to listen to your own heart and you don’t have one,” Sarah pointed out.

She definitely had Toby’s attention now. His glassy, hypnotized look had been replaced by a note of interest.

“Vhat? No heart? Vhy don’t I have a heart?”