Cynda and the City Doctor: 50 Loving States, Missouri

But then suddenly a memory flashes into my head, clear as a bell in a sea of forgotten things.

My mother singing, “I Told the Storm” when we went to church with my grandparents in St. Louis.

She wasn’t part of the choir at the Lutheran Church we went to in Guadalajara. But once when we visited my grandparents in “Beverly Hills,” we went to the church she grew up in for Sunday Service. The old pastor said, “Why is that Lil’ Marilee Smith in the back of the church? Come up here, girl, and join the choir for a song.”

My mom, a proper doctor’s wife, had, of course, demurred. But the pastor, who apparently didn’t care that the service had already clocked two hours, insisted until the whole church was in a tizzy. The pastor, my grandparents, people who knew my mom as Marilee Smith, even folks who didn’t know my mother from Adam were insisting she get up and sing.

I’d never heard my mother sing and I just stared up at her wide-eyed, wondering what all the fuss was about.

I soon found out when she finally agreed and joined the choir on stage in her yellow Jackie O dress and white church hat.

My mother couldn’t just sing, she could “sang” as Black people from Missouri with thicker accents than us liked to say.

She started out slowly but by the end of the song, she was a wild thing on stage. Jumping and hollering, waving her hat and sweating as she sang about how she told the storm that it was time to pass.

Dad had shouted and clapped along. But I had stood there wide-eyed and stunned. I’d never seen my mother sing gospel like that. And I never would again.

That pastor died less than a year later and he was replaced by a young reverend who’d actually gone to a formal divinity school and didn’t carry any fond memories of when my mom used to sing in the church choir.

It would be years and after both my grandparents’ deaths before I heard the original Joyful Noize version of the song. And yeah, that choir did a fine, soul-stirring job. But I’ll go to my grave thinking my mother sang it better.

And it’s her voice, not the ones from the Joyful Noize choir that keeps me from immediately shoving everything back into that box.

My hand goes to pick up the second letter, the one I refused to read. And instead of hiding it out of sight, if not mind again, I sit crossed legged on the floor to read it.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The thunderstorm is still raging and I’m soaked to the bone by the time I make it across the yard in bare feet. It’s a good thing I cut all my hair off because my old horse of a ponytail would not have made the journey.

I’m not wearing any make-up and my eyes are red from crying, so I can only imagine what I look like when Rhys opens the door.

“Cynda,” he says, his eyes as angry as mine are sad. “Why are you knocking on my door at two in the morning?”

His face then suddenly morphs from hard to concerned. “Is there an emergency? Is everything okay with the twins?”

My heart melts at his questions. How had I forgotten that about him? Some of the other doctors advised their residents to care less about our patients. Years of working in a St. Louis City emergency department had hardened their hearts. But not Rhys.

He’d been the kind of guy I’d call to share a Weiss Fox beer after losing a patient bad and quick. He’d cared, truly cared about people. Even when he didn’t want to.

I thought this would be hard, but actually it’s quite easy.

“No, I’m knocking on your door because I’m sorry,” I yell over the pouring rain. “I’m sorry for breaking up with you by text. I’m sorry for not explaining myself. I’m sorry about not telling you how I really feel.”

He shakes his head and opens his mouth—probably to say something else about how he’s still not ready to forgive my trifling ass.

But I push on before he can. “I didn’t break up with you because I didn’t care about you. I broke up with you because I cared about you too much. That’s the last thing I talked about with my father. How I liked you enough to bring you home to meet him. But then he died, and I was scared. So I clung to what I still had. The twins, this town, because I was afraid. But I kept something.”

I raise up the glittery purple Dansko that I grabbed before running over here. “I kept this shoe even though I knew I’d never get the other one back. I couldn’t throw it away. And I don’t regret staying here for the twins after their mom left. But I do regret ending things the way I did with you. The thing is losing my mom really messed me up and losing my dad made it even worse. I didn’t want to put myself out there because I really didn’t think I could take losing anyone else. But the twins don’t want me to move with them to Pittsburgh. And I just read the second letter from my biological mom. As it turns out, she’s a lot like me. She had to fight herself and a lot of demons to finally find some peace, and now she’s happy, but she has so many regrets. About the things she did and the things she didn’t do. She’s upset she was too scared to come to her parents’ and sister’s funerals and that she didn’t get up the courage to write me until now. I don’t want to live my whole life being scared. Or regretting the things I didn’t say or do.”