“I see.” Jamie studied the man.
Lord, let this be the day he changes his mind
.
The man worked his fingers into the rim of his gray flannel hat. “Lately I've started wondering.” He glanced around the chapel. “Look at all the good that's come from people since that terrible day. Look at the beauty of life itself.” He looked at her. “One of my partners at work lost a niece in the Twin Towers. His family pulled together and prayed that her death wouldn't be in vain.”
Jamie listened, praying.
“That man's a new person today.” Wilbur George worked his mouth sideways, the way men sometimes did when they didn't want to cry. “All he talks about is God this and God that, and whether the Lord would be happy with his dealings at work and how he can live some way that would please his Creator.” He hesitated. “At first I thought he was wacky. But now …”
“It's starting to make sense?”
“Yes.” His eyes widened at Jamie's answer. “That's it exactly.” His shoulders drooped a notch. “At least for me. For my wife, she says if there was a God, He'd be her enemy after what happened to our boy.”
A heaviness weighed on Jamie. It was the same story again and again and again. Different faces, different names, different floors of the Twin Towers, but so often when the walking wounded found their way here it was with one question. How could God let it happen?
“I guess the question, Mr. George, is whether
you
believe.” She studied him.
Father, open his heart. Please.
“Do you believe in God and His Son, Jesus?”
“I do.” His eyes shone for the first time since he'd walked into the chapel. “I really do.”
She wanted to tread lightly, but if she didn't get to the crux of faith she was wasting her time. The real hope was found in the rest of the story. “Do you want Jesus as your Savior?”
The man frowned. “That's where I'm a little confused. I thought …” He looked around the chapel. “I thought someone here might be able to help me. That way I could help my wife.”
He looked at the wall of artifacts and letters again. “I've done some reading, talked to a few people including my partner at work. All good things are from God—” his eyes found hers again—“right?”
For the next ten minutes Jamie talked with the man about the basics of faith in Christ. All the things she'd learned from Jake's Bible and his journal, from a hundred or so church services since the terrorist attacks and from her training at St. Paul's. At the end of their conversation, the man was nodding, practically desperate to have Jesus as his Savior.
They prayed together, and when they were finished, Jamie gave him ideas that might help his wife find faith in God. When they were done talking, he looked like a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Thank you, Jamie. I want to take a look around.” He patted her hand. “I haven't been here before.” He stood and slipped his coat on. Then he stopped and looked at her. “All good things are from God, right?”
“Right. That's what the Bible says.”
“Then God didn't make those towers fall. Something evil did, because evil exists in our world.”
Jamie gave him a sad smile. “Yes, Mr. George. That's right.”
As he walked away, she looked at her watch. Her shift was over; she and Clay could head out for lunch. She stood, grateful for her time with the man. Without that, she would have been consumed by one thought.
Counting down the minutes until she could go someplace and talk to Clay without interrupting the grieving going on all around her.
She found him not quite finished with the exit wall. “Clay?”
He stepped back, his focus still on a child's letter posted near a photo of a police officer. “It's so sad, Jamie. The pictures and letters, even from people who weren't touched by the attacks, at least not personally.” He looked at her, his eyes glistening. “The loss was so enormous.”
“I know.” She resisted the urge to glance across the room at the first display table, the one where Jake's picture was. “Even after working here all this time, it's bigger than I can really grasp.”
“I didn't get halfway through.” He drew back from the wall and came up alongside her. “Maybe I can finish it another day.”
Jamie thought about Jake. “You could.” She cast him a sad smile. “It's really just more of the same.”
“I guess.” He drew in a sharp breath and peered through the closest stained-glass window. “You have an umbrella?”
“You mean you don't?” She was teasing him and it felt better than she could've dreamed. “What, it doesn't rain in California?”
He tossed her a sheepish look. “Not much.”
“Don't worry.” She held up her finger. “Wait here, I'll get my coat and be right back. And yes—” she started up the stairs toward the break room—“I have an umbrella.”
They caught a cab and found a quiet café fifteen blocks north on Broadway. It was busy, but Clay spotted a table near the front window, overlooking the bustling sidewalk. “Good?”
Jamie nodded. “I like people watching.”
“Me too.” He stared at the parade passing by, businesspeople mostly, some obvious tourists, a random group of kids decked out in black T-shirts and dog collars. Together they carried enough umbrellas to form an overhang along the sidewalk. Clay rested his forearms on the table. “Doesn't it ever slow down?”
“Not much.” She smiled. “I can only take Manhattan in small doses.”
He looked at the crowds outside. “I can see why.” His heart was racing, even faster than it had that morning on the ferry. What was he doing here? He'd been in town a few hours and he was having lunch with a beautiful widow? Clay Michaels, the guy who didn't rush anything?
The whole scene couldn't have been more out of character for him than if he spiked his hair and dyed it pink. At his soft laugh, Jamie looked at him.
“What's so funny?” She lowered her chin.
“Me.” He drew invisible circles on the table with his finger. “Joe told me New York would be exciting, but I wasn't sure.”
“And then I enter the picture.” She eased off her coat and slid it over the back of the chair.
“That's for sure.” He laughed out loud this time, a laugh that was brief and full of amazement. “I had no idea anyplace, not even New York, could be that exciting.”
The waiter brought them ice water and took their order, chicken sandwiches with tea for her and black coffee for him. When he was gone, Jamie put her elbows on the table, linked her fingers, and rested her chin. “Do you think he would've shot me?”
Clay wanted to drown in her eyes. She was making his head spin and he barely knew her. “I've asked myself that a dozen times today. Usually punky kids like that won't shoot someone in broad daylight. A move like that could wind them up on death row.” He brought his knuckles together and took a drink of his water. “But you believed them, otherwise you would've screamed.”
“I tried to catch your attention, but I didn't think you saw me.”
He felt his eyebrows lift a notch. “Oh, I saw you.”
Her shy smile as she pulled her glass closer was pure sweetness. “Is that a good thing?”
“Yes. Very good.” He studied her. The conversation was easy, comfortable. The same way it had been in the ferry captain's office and at St. Paul's. It wasn't the rush of the moment with the criminals or the emotion of the chapel. It was Jamie. She was as transparent as a summer breeze.
“So you really think they would've killed me if I got off the ferry with them?”
A chill ran down his spine, and he felt his smile fade. “I don't want to think about what would've happened if you'd done that.”
She looked out the window. “At first I was going to scream anyway. I figured, let them shoot me. Someone would save me or I'd wind up in heaven. I'd win either way.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because of Sierra.”
“Your little girl.” Clay leaned against the window and watched her. Emotions played out on her face. “You just started telling me about her when Joe came back. She's seven?”
“Yes.” She looked at him again. “Long golden hair and a heart as big as the ocean. She's very special.”
She must be, if she's anything like you
. “What does she like to do?”
“She likes cats and horses and movie nights with me. Right now her favorite is
The Lion King
, but for at least two years it was
The Little Mermaid.”
Jamie laughed and poked her straw at the ice in her water. “I enjoy her so much.”
“I can see that.” Clay hesitated. “What was your husband like?” Clay already knew the answer; he must've been a great guy. The haunting look in her eyes at the chapel earlier told him that the loss had all but killed her. Still, he wanted to hear it from her, wanted to give her a chance to talk about him if she wanted to.
For the first time that day, a wall went up in Jamie's eyes. “We were very close.” She bit the inside of her lip. “I fell in love with him when I was twelve. We … we grew up down the street from each other. His dad was a firefighter.” She pressed the corners of her lips up, but it was hardly a smile. “That's all Jake ever wanted to be.”
Clay didn't want to push, but he needed to know her, to find out what made her cry when she was alone at night, what memories kept her going when she didn't want to take another step. “Did he share your faith?”
A knowing look crossed her face, as if the answer wasn't an easy one. But she only nodded and took a sip of her water. “Yes. He loved the Lord very much.”
He must've loved Jamie very much too. After all, she still wore his ring. The feeling was clearly mutual.
“Jake and I shared something rare. There's never been anyone else.” Jamie hugged herself and looked straight at him. “It hasn't been easy.”
The sense that he should go to her, pull her into his arms, and soothe away the hurt, was so strong this time he almost gave in. Instead, he willed himself to stay seated. “Is that why you help out at St. Paul's?”
“I think so. It's complicated, really. I go for a lot of reasons, but yes.” She looked out the window again. “It's what Jake would've done; I guess I do it as a way of remembering him.”
Clay studied the woman across from him. The connection he felt to her was something he couldn't explain. The fact that she was still in love with her dead husband didn't bother him. This woman was loyal to the core, and after loving someone since she was twelve? Of course she still had feelings for him. She always would.
The waiter came with their sandwiches and hot drinks. When he left, Clay met her eyes. “Pray?”
She nodded and bowed her head.
“Lord, we thank You for this food, but more than that, we thank You for bringing us together this morning. You answered both our prayers. Mine that I would make a difference, and Jamie's. It's all You, Father, and for that we thank You. Amen.”
“Amen.” She was smiling when she looked up, and he sensed she didn't want to talk about her dead husband anymore; not now, anyway. She used her knife to cut her sandwich into smaller pieces. “Okay, Clay. What about you? Isn't three weeks a long time to be away from work?”
“Actually it's four.” He took the top slices of bread off his sandwich and shook salt over the meat inside. His body was a priority, one he took care of, but salt was one of his few vices. He used it liberally.
“You're here four weeks?” She looked surprised. “I thought Joe said it was three weeks of training.”
“It is.” He put the top pieces of bread back on his sandwich, then looked at her for a few seconds. If he told her the reason, would she think differently of him? He took a slow breath. It didn't matter; he couldn't be anything less than honest with her. “I had one week off before I left.”
“Vacation?” She held her sandwich, but she held it in midair waiting for his answer.
“I was in a gunfight. A man was coming at me, firing an AK-47.” Clay searched her eyes looking for her reaction. “I had to kill him.”
Jamie's eyes widened. “So they fired you?”
“No.” He smiled. She wasn't repulsed at the shooting so much as worried that he'd lost his job. “No, it's standard procedure when a suspect is shot and killed by an officer during a crime. It's a paid leave; they hold an investigation and make a report. As long as everything was on the level, the officer reports back in three or four weeks.”
“Oh. I didn't know that.” She took a bite of her sandwich.
“My captain told me not to worry about it. There was nothing else I could do.” He thought about telling her how close he'd come to getting killed himself, but it didn't seem like the right time. “When I get back they're promoting me to detective.” He grinned. “That's the long answer to your question. I'm here because I need the training, and Joe picked New York City.”
“Oh.” Understanding filled her eyes. She put her hands around her cup of tea and held it to her lips. “Because of Wanda.”
“Right.”
The conversation moved to what the training would include and how long he'd been an officer, then went back to the men on the ferry.
“Did you really see a gun?” She tilted her head, her eyes doubtful. “You were all the way across the deck.”