Whatever it takes, p.24
Whatever It Takes,
p.24
“It seems like you’re doing really good, CC. I can’t tell you how glad I am for that.”
I smile my thanks. He squeezes my hand, and his expression falls into regret.
“I’ve wanted to tell you, CC, how sorry I am for everything. I’ve always wanted to do right by you, and I . . .” He pauses and takes a shaky breath. “You have been the greatest gift of my life.”
I breathe his words in and let them settle in my lungs and heart and mind.
Commitment.
Sacrifice.
Good.
Bad.
Wrong.
Right.
Struggle.
Fear.
Love.
What would life have been like with a father like David Vandersteen? Tristin and I have sketched out some things she’s never fully understood before. Tristin’s parents were together and apart and together and apart for years. The separations when they went to live with Tristin’s grandmother started with Mae, Tristin thought, but there were other women too. And drugs. And fights. Her parents finally divorced when Tristin was ten—five years after Mae had been found in the Grand River. Tristin’s mom overdosed six months later, and Tristin and her sisters moved in with their dad again. Tristin got pregnant at fifteen and went to prison for drug charges when she was twenty. She’s been clean for six years now but can’t make things work on her own even though David is verbally abusive and goes on binges a few times a year. One of Tristin’s sisters moved to Alberta and is keeping herself together. The other sister died in a car accident three years ago; she’d been using since she was fourteen and had lost two children to social services. Tristin would like to get her sister’s kids back, but she knows she can’t take care of them. They’re currently in an adoptive placement that could be final by the end of the year. Cancer isn’t the disease that caught my biological family in its barbed fingers. Addiction and violence and emotional disconnection have proved more deadly.
“I’ve got something for you,” Dad says, and pushes himself up from the couch. He goes to the kitchen table, and I recognize the plastic tub of my leatherwork stuff. Next to it is a banker’s box—the kind with finger holds on the sides and a fitted lid. He picks it up, and I notice that the print label is faded as he brings it my way. Have I seen it before? I would have assumed it was old tax forms if I had.
He sets the box down on the couch between us, and I know that my mother is in this box. My long-form birth certificate must be in there. Maybe there are more photos. Maybe other things that Dad hasn’t shared with me because it would interfere with the picture he and Grandma Dee had decided to paint instead.
“I wasn’t sure whether to throw out the twenty-fifth birthday letter,” he says with regret as he stares at the box. “I didn’t give it to you because, I don’t know, it didn’t seem like a good time. There’s also one in there for the day you become a mother, but. . . they’re still yours and . . .” He trails off, swallows, take a breath. “I’m so . . . sorry.” His voice catches, and I blink back tears. He takes another breath and waves at the box. “I’ll let you decide what to do with all this stuff. It should have been yours a long time ago.” He finally looks up to meet my eyes, layers of heartache and apology within his gaze.
Who would I have become if there had been no Mark Chadwick?
What kind of life would I have had with Maebelle Gérard?
How would I have understood who my mother really was when I was young? When I was a teenager?
The anger and the hurt didn’t go away when I started asking myself these questions a few weeks ago, but it moved aside on the bench, leaving room for something else. Something different. I wasn’t sure what that space was for but maybe I do now. We will rebuild. We will come together. The knowing is as steady as a fence line disappearing into the horizon. I take a breath, let it out, and let it be. Picking out the old stitching of my life story has been hard. Now I’ll need to sew in new, not so pretty panels. Dad can help me with that when the time comes, but too much pressure before I’m ready to open my heart as wide as it needs to be would shatter this. This that is left between us. This that can be a place to build from.
I pick up the box and set it at my feet—I’m going to look through it when I’m alone. I take Dad’s hand and give it a squeeze. “I love you, Dad, and we’re going to be okay.”
“Promise?” he says, his eyes eager. Begging.
“Cross my heart,” I say, making an X over my chest forever scared by the removal of the tumor that really was a one-in-a-million case. My cancer could have killed me, and yet it may have saved me too. Like growing up on the ranch. Like falling off a porch. Like having a father and grandmother who did whatever it took to keep me. Someday I’ll ask Dad what their choices cost them.
Dad leans forward, and I duck my chin so he can kiss the top of my head. I feel the blessing of it as though he’s poured cool water over me. “Cross your heart and hope for pie. I love you, CC.”
I lift my head and look him in the eye. “I love you too.”
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
39
Mark
November 1996
Mark didn’t think he’d breathed a full breath until he drove under the sign at the border crossing that said UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Mom had gone home two weeks ago, he’d stayed until all the paperwork was finished and the immigration attorney he’d hired—he’d pay Mom back somehow—assured him he could legally take Sienna with him to the U.S.
Two days after crossing the border, Mark pulled to a stop in front of the ranch house and nearly cried. Acres of land and purpose. He would forget he’d ever wanted something more than this and raise his daughter to value all the things he now valued so much more than he once had: work, family, reaping, and sowing. Truth? He took a breath and let it out. Would the truth be a burden Sienna would carry for the rest of her life? Mark knew what it was like to have a parent you didn’t know and couldn’t trust. He knew was it was like to hear that parents disparaged and feel like those adults were accusing you of the same failings because you were a part of them. He wanted better for Sienna.
Mark turned to look into the backseat, then stretched his hand back to brush the feathery brown hair from the side of his daughter’s sleeping face, letting his hand stay against her little girl skin an extra heartbeat.
“I love you, CC,” he whispered, taking encouragement that she was clean and safe and smelling like baby shampoo. “And I promise to do everything possible to give you the life you deserve.”
He let himself out of the car and took a deep breath of the country air. Rhythm and purpose and seasons and life pulsed from the ranch, grounding him and welcoming him home. He would never leave again. Everything that mattered to him was here now.
He opened the back door to a blinking Sienna, her light blue eyes looking wider and bluer in the afternoon light. Not his eyes—he’d realized that after the night he first met David Vandersteen. But she was his. Would always be his. He couldn’t save Mae from the course her life had taken due to the failures of the people who should have done better by her, but he would do everything he could to save Sienna from a similar course.
“We’re home, CC,” he said as he unfastened the straps of her car seat. “Everything is going to be okay. Whatever it takes.”
A READING GROUP GUIDE
WHATEVER
IT
TAKES
Jessica Pack
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included to enhance
your group’s reading of Jessica Pack’s
Whatever It Takes.
Discussion Questions
1. Have you ever had a secret in your family that came to light? How were members of the family affected?
2. Have you ever received a letter or note from someone who had already passed on? How did it make you feel?
3. Do you see a difference between the way Sienna “protected” her dad from learning about her cancer and the way he “protected” her from information about her mother?
4. How do you think Mark and Grandma Dee were affected by the lies they propagated in this story?
5. Does it feel reasonable to you that Sienna could forgive her dad?
6. Have you ever seen a relationship come together as strong or stronger after a betrayal?
7. Was there a particular scene in this story that stood out to you?
8. Sienna’s portion of this story is written in first-person present tense, somewhat unusual for an adult novel like this. Did you like that perspective or did you find it difficult to get into?
9. Was there any part of this story or the relationships presented here that you thought should have been more developed?
Photo: Erin Summerill Photography
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josi S. Kilpack has been writing for twenty years and adopted the nom de plume of Jessica Pack to identify her first novel of women’s fiction. She and her husband, Lee, live in northern Utah and are the parents of four children. In addition to her writing, Josi enjoys reading, baking, cooking, and traveling.
Jessica Pack, Whatever It Takes
