His Brother's Gift

Grabbing a pen and slip of paper, he listened as the old machine whirred and clicked.

Beeep. “Hello. I have an urgent message for Will Rubens. This is Savanna Stowe, S-t-o-w-e, of Honduras. I hope I’ve reached the right residence. I’m staying here in town at the Shepherd Lodge. The phone number is…” The machine dated the message: Wednesday, 6:12 p.m.

First of all, why was she in Starlight? Why hadn’t she simply called from whatever mud hut she’d set up housekeeping in down there?

Will wrote her name: Savanna Stowe.

She had an incredible voice. A hint of the South, slow and husky.

Beeep. “Mr. Rubens, I know you’ve returned from your flying trip today. I met a fellow at the airport who said you’d gone home to sleep because you were exhausted. I really need to talk to you. It’s about your brother Dennis in Honduras. Please call me at the Shepherd Lodge anytime. Better yet, if at all possible, please come to the lodge and ask the desk clerk to ring my room. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” She repeated the number. The machine noted date and time: Wednesday, 7:05 p.m.

Beeep. “Mr. Rubens. I’m not sure why you’re ignoring me. Maybe you aren’t home, or maybe you don’t care about your brother.” Will snorted. Presumptuous of her. “Whatever the case, I’ll try and explain why I’m here, though I’d wanted to do this in person. Your brother Dennis and his wife were killed in a plane crash in the mountains south of the Rio Catacamas on Sunday. Please, come to the Shepherd Lodge. It’s urgent I speak with you.” Wednesday, 8:23. The machine clicked off.

Will frowned. Dennis and Elke were dead. Okay, he’d got that the first time. But in his shock he’d missed one important fact. Savanna from Honduras had not mentioned the son.

Dennis’s son.

The one conceived with Will’s sperm in an Anchorage clinic eleven years ago.

Savanna set the receiver back in its cradle. Shane the desk clerk had called and informed her that Mr. Will Rubens was waiting in the lobby. Cautious as she’d become over the past seventeen years, she had asked Shane if he knew Rubens. He did. Very well. They’d fished together off and on over the years. Should he send Mr. Rubens up?

Give her ten minutes, she had told the man.

That was thirty seconds ago.

She looked through the bedroom door where ten-year-old Christopher sat crossed-legged in his pajamas on the flower-printed bed covers, flapping his left hand while inserting his right index finger into the tiny hole worn on the left heel of his sock. She could barely make out his low monotone murmur, “Thread can repair this fracture.”

She let him mutter. The last two days had been Everests to climb for them both. Journeying across Honduras from Cedros to Tegucigalpa by car, then flying to LAX and on to Anchorage and finally, the short jaunt east to Starlight in a six-seater plane.

Through the sedative she’d had to administer to keep Christopher calm during the last forty-eight hours, she saw exhaustion in his down-turned mouth, the droop of his blue eyes. Elke’s eyes. She hated dispensing medication, unless it was necessary. Traveling across a continent and a half made it a necessity. But tonight, thank God, he would sleep. He was worn-out, she knew.

She walked into the bedroom. “Christopher,” she said softly.

He continued flapping and murmuring.

She moved into his line of vision.

Flap, flap.

On the night table lay the laminated agenda. She set it beside him on the bed where he could see the day’s check-marks.

“You’ve brushed your teeth, I see.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s my boy. It’s time for bed now. See…” She pointed to “Bedtime,” which he had checked off earlier.

“Okay.” He unwound his legs and crawled under the covers. Relieved, she returned the agenda to the table. Later she would slip onto the cot near the door. Strange places and beds upset him. Waking to them in the middle of the night traumatized him.

Leaning down, she kissed his youthful forehead. “Good night, buddy.”

She didn’t expect a response. Already he had zeroed in on a linear stain crossing the room’s wall. Linear like his trains.

Quietly she turned out the night lamp, walked to the door. There she waited a few moments until she heard the tiny snore and knew he’d allowed sleep to usurp his mind.

Sweet dreams, honey-child. Slipping from the room, she pulled the door partially closed.

In the bathroom she checked her face. She did not want Will Rubens seeing her fatigue and assuming the child in her care received less than her best. Except the lines between her eyes and the dark circles beneath them were hard to extinguish. Well, she couldn’t worry about these tokens she had earned, ensuring people had food on their tables and clean water to drink, an education to enlighten their minds.

Stifling a yawn, she tow-boated a brush through the shamble of her hair. Once, long ago, she would have wailed over its hectic red color, but living in Third-World countries had accented the difference between a bad hair day and a major crisis. Tangled, unwashed curls was not one.

Sleep, that’s what she needed. About a month’s worth.

But first Mr. Rubens. And Christopher.

What if this brother of Dennis’s won’t agree?

You’ll stay the twelve weeks stipulated in the will to give the man his chance.

And if he still reneged after three months, she’d take Christopher back to Tennessee, as Dennis also stipulated, though that option was a last resort.

Inside her overnight case on the sink’s scratched counter, she found her lipstick.

What was she doing? This was not a date. She was meeting Will Rubens about Christopher—and because of the last request left by two of the people she loved and respected most in the world next to Christopher.

A soft knock sounded on the suite’s door.

Showtime. If not for Christopher needing a good night’s sleep, she would have insisted on meeting Rubens in the lodge’s lobby.

Or better yet, not at all.

Through the peephole, she glimpsed a tall man several feet back, hands in hip pockets, staring at something left of the door. Skewed as his face was through the magnifier, she felt a small shock at that ragged dark-blond hair, the same as Dennis’s.

Then he turned his head, looked straight at her. In the obscure corridor lighting, she could not determine the color of his eyes, but it was their fierceness that stunned her. And suddenly he looked nothing like his brother.

Swallowing a knot of apprehension, she threw back the bolt and chain and opened the door.

“Mr. Rubens?”

Azure eyes. Slowly they widened. “Ms. Stowe?”

She stuck out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

He nodded. His grip was firm, warm. She drew back quickly, and stepped aside. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you below.”

She gestured for him to enter the tiny suite, then closed the door. When she turned, he stood next to the coffee table, eliminating air and space by his tall, honed body.

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked, keeping her gaze on the furniture rather than on him.