Sue's voice slipped to a whisper. “That Eric Michaels wasn't Jake. That you didn't lose Jake the day Eric left on an airplane back to California. You lost him in the terrorist attacks, same as the rest of us.”
Jamie felt her breath catch. She couldn't breathe, couldn't inhale for the emotions strangling her. She wanted to tell Sue she already knew that about the timing, that she'd lost Jake when the Twin Towers collapsed, same as the other firefighter widows. But she couldn't. Because what Sue had just said made her feel raw and hurt and aching inside.
“Jamie …” Sue's voice was a little louder now, filled with compassion. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”
Her head was spinning, her heart bleeding from wounds that still weren't healed. “Not really.”
“So
what
if Eric and Clay are brothers? What does it matter?”
Jamie's heart rate doubled. Panic seized her by the neck and threatened to strangle her. “What does it matter? If Clay and I got close, I'd have to see Eric again.” Tears blurred her vision, spilling from a well so deep Jamie barely acknowledged its presence. “I can't do that, Sue, I can't.”
Sue wouldn't let up. “Why?”
“Because every time I saw him, I'd feel like I was with Jake.”
This time Sue waited, and when she spoke her words were slow, measured. “Eric isn't Jake; he never was.” She drew her feet up beside her on the sofa. “I wonder, Jamie. Have you ever worked through the memories you made with that man and told yourself that every single one of them was with a stranger? Have you allowed yourself to take Jake's name off each of those days you and Eric had together?”
Jamie felt the nausea rise inside her, felt her head swimming. She'd done that, hadn't she? Her head knew Jake hadn't come home, that he'd died right beside his best friend when the South Tower collapsed.
But did her heart know? Or had she, by suppressing details of that time, by never taking it out and spreading the memories on a table and examining them, allowed her heart to believe that Jake
had
come home. That she'd been given some sort of reprieve, a mulligan, a time with Jake, that none of the other survivors got to have with their loved ones.
Was that why she never talked about Eric? Maybe a part of her wanted to believe the man in her house hadn't been Eric at all, but Jake. At least until he'd taken the blood test and they'd known he was someone else.
Jamie stood and realized she was shaking. She needed to be alone, needed to think through this, to shine a light on the darkest corners of her heart. “Can you watch Sierra for a while? I need to go to the beach.”
“It's winter, Jamie. It'll be freezing.”
“That's okay. I have a coat in the car.” The place where she and Jake liked to go was just a few miles from Sue's house. Cold weather wouldn't matter, not when she had so much to work through. “Can you watch her?”
“Yes.” Sue stood and came to her. “Can I say something before you go?”
“Go ahead.” Jamie's teeth were clattering, not because she was feeling the effects of winter, but because she was about to go places she hadn't gone in three years.
Their eyes locked, and Sue looked as serious as Jamie could remember seeing her. “Maybe God brought Eric into your life so he could become the man
he
needed to be. He was different when he went home, right? Isn't that what you told me?”
Jamie looked at the floor near her feet. “Yes.”
“He wasn't supposed to replace Jake.” Sue put her hand on Jamie's shoulder. “He was supposed to learn from him. Learn the value of faith and family and friendship.”
“Then what about Clay?” Jamie lifted her eyes. “Why would God let me have feelings for Eric's brother?”
“Because.” Sue gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Maybe Eric's brother was the man you needed. Not because of Jake or Eric or anyone else. Just because of Clay.” She hesitated. “Maybe that was part of God's plan too.”
T
WENTY
-T
WO
It was almost dusk when Jamie walked across the sand to the spot where she and Jake had set out their chairs and towels so many times before. This time she brought nothing with her, just pulled her long coat tight around her and eased down to the sand. Her eyes found a pale blue section of sky. “God … what is this feeling in my heart?”
When she remembered the three months after the terrorist attacks, one day stood out as changing everything. The day they went to the hospital and discovered the man living with her didn't have Jake's blood type. From that point on, Jamie had grieved. No longer could she spend every moment teaching the man in the downstairs bedroom how to be Jake, how to think like him and pray like him and father like him. How to love like him.
From that point on she knew a stranger was living with her, and it was up to her to care enough to help him find his way home. She had understood, hadn't she? When she said good-bye at LaGuardia she was saying good-bye to a nice man, a stranger named Eric Michaels. Jake was already dead.
But what about those twelve weeks when he'd
been
Jake to her in every way but one? When she longed for him and took him to church and held his hand?
A breeze rolled off the water and brushed against her cheeks. Could it be that she still savored memories of that time as if he wasn't a stranger at all but Jake?
She pulled her knees up to her chin and stared at the harbor. Had she done the thing Sue asked? Had she consciously told herself the truth about those weeks? That Jake hadn't been with them, hadn't sat beside her at the breakfast table, or cooked up blueberry pancakes for Sierra?
A deep ache began within her, and with it came a realization: if she could admit the truth about Eric, her fears about seeing him again were unfounded. If she could admit he'd never been Jake. Not for the first few days after the terrorist attacks. Not for the first few weeks or months.
Not at all.
“God,” her voice took wind. “I was mad at You … but it wasn't Your fault, was it?”
She looked up. If only God would give her a sign, something to tell her He was still on her side. A single seagull soared into view and dipped toward the ocean. For a moment, Jamie felt sorry for the bird, making his way through a late winter afternoon alone, without a friend or a mate.
But almost at the same time, she saw another seagull swoop down and join the first. Jamie blinked against the cold air and felt the burn of moisture in the corner of her eyes. The bird wasn't alone, after all.
But she was, and all because she had believed in some dark hallway of her heart that Eric really was Jake; that she hadn't lost her husband in the collapse of the Twin Towers, but three months later. And yet, Eric wasn't Jake. No matter how much he looked like him or learned to act like him, he never could be.
Her heart splintered, and she bowed her head. “I'm sorry, God. I'm so sorry.”
Remorse filled her. Remorse and guilt and understanding.
Remorse, because she'd never had Jake a minute past the time when he told her good-bye and headed off for work September 11; guilt, because how dare she believe another man to be Jake—even under the strangest circumstances; and understanding, because Sue was right. Jamie realized that now.
She'd never gone through the memories of those twelve weeks one at a time and painted in Eric's name, his face and likeness. She'd been okay with keeping that time locked up in her heart, protected from scrutiny so she didn't have to admit to herself that Jake had never been a part of any of it.
The sky was getting darker, colder. If she was going to unlock that time in her life and give it a proper burial, she needed to move quickly.
She started with the afternoon of September 11, the moment she got the call from Sergeant Riker. Jake was alive, he told her. Alive and hurt and at Mount Sinai Medical Center. After a day of desperate fear and worry, the news gave Jamie permission to breathe again.
The memory filled in, and she pictured herself responding to the amazing news. The telephone receiver fell slowly to her lap as she screamed her husband's name. He was alive! Relief, like a gust of air, filled a room where she'd been suffocating. Jake hadn't been in the South Tower after all. He was alive! Just like he'd promised!
Jamie held her breath and looked out to sea.
She exhaled, shaking. Sergeant Riker went on to tell her that Captain Hisel was searching the rubble at Ground Zero when he found Jake beneath a fire truck.
Awe filled Jamie's mind now as she realized the truth. She'd never quite convinced herself that Aaron hadn't found Jake there that day. But now she didn't want to miss a moment, had to remove Jake from every one of the places where he didn't belong.
Eric Michaels had been coming down the stairs, escaping the building when the tower collapsed. The force had sent him—not Jake—underneath the fire truck. Which meant that the man Aaron Hisel saw and helped and sent to the hospital wasn't Jake, either.
The hurt was so bad. Jamie remembered, years ago, when Jake broke his arm playing football in high school. He hadn't wanted to wear a cast because it might limit his playing time. So he continued on with the pain, not telling his parents or anyone else how bad it was.
But then he began to notice a bend in his forearm, a bend and a bump that finally his family doctor spotted. By then only one thing could be done to fix the arm. Rebreak it and let it heal correctly.
That's exactly how she felt now.
She'd let her heart heal in the wrong position, believing at least on some level that those memories of late September, October, and November still involved Jake. Now—with a pain that knew no bounds, she was letting God break her heart again so that it might heal correctly.
Jamie wasn't sure she could continue. But she had no choice. She dug to another level, the moment she rushed into the hospital room, certain Jake had survived, the hours she'd held vigil at his bedside, the days of stroking his hand, whispering to him, and begging him to wake up.
Jake hadn't been there for any of it.
Not when Sierra saw him for the first time, and he remembered her name. Eric had merely run into Jake in the stairwell and by some bizarre series of events, he'd seen the inside of Jake's helmet. The place where he'd kept a photo of Sierra and her name written below it.
Eric saw it and remembered it that day in the hospital.
Jamie no longer felt the cold air around her. Her battered heart took up all her energy, her determination to remove Jake from those moments after September 11 wore on her, leaving gaping wounds at her very core.
She kept on, working through the homecoming from the hospital. The man who rode the ferry with her and sang with Sierra, the man who stared at their wedding portrait and gasped, convinced he was in the picture. All of it took place with Eric Michaels.
One at a time Jamie continued, dissecting memories, painstakingly removing Jake and placing Eric there instead. Halfway through the process, she felt drops of water on her arms. She was crying and she hadn't even known it. She'd been too absorbed in the matter at hand to acknowledge how much it all hurt.
When she finished—when she staggered to her feet, dusted off the sand, and peered through the dusky evening toward the water one last time—the hole in her heart was so big she felt hollow, as if people could see straight through her. She walked closer to the shore, close enough so she could bend down and get her fingers wet.
“Jake …” Her voice was hoarse, raspy. This was where she liked to come to connect with him, to touch the water where the two of them had played so often together.
But everything was different, maybe because she had a firm grasp on the truth. The water wasn't warm and inviting, it was freezing cold, the same way her empty heart felt. She stood and slipped her wet fingers deep into the pocket of her coat.
Now came the hardest part.
She took herself back further than before, back to the week and days and hours before September 11. Back to her life with her husband. The jet skiing with Sue and Larry and the little girls, the small ceramic figurine of an angel she'd painted for him the Sunday before the attacks, the hugging and laughing and lovemaking.
Though her head knew the truth since Eric's blood test, her heart needed to understand once and for all.
Those
were her final days with Jake. That Tuesday morning, waking up beside him, wanting him to stay and go to the zoo with her and Sierra, wishing he'd play hooky and skip work for the day.
And then watching him consider the idea and decide instead to go to work. Tomorrow, he'd told her. They could play together tomorrow. Then her promising to get Chinese food for dinner and one last kiss, a final quick good-bye. Hearing him head down the hall to Sierra's room, enjoying his laughter as Sierra asked him for butterfly kisses and Jake promised to play horsie with her when he got home.
That was the end, his final moments with them.
She straightened and let her coat ease open, let the wind off the water blow over her, taking with it the remaining shards of her denial. This should have been the hardest part, the time when she would turn away and head for the car, so hollow and empty she could barely support herself.