Even Now

by Karen Kingsbury

  “Your mom was still there, right?”

  “Right. She offered to stay. So I went home and fell asleep for ten hours — much longer than I planned. When I woke up I called the hospital and someone connected me to a nurse.” Her heart pounded at the memory. She let go of Scanlon’s hand and pressed her fingers into her temples. “The woman told me Emily was gone. That she’d been gone for a few hours.”

  “She died?”

  Lauren let her hands fall to her sides. “That’s what I thought.” She nodded toward the computer. “Until just now, that’s what I always thought. I had one baby, and I did everything wrong, so she died.”

  Scanlon groaned. He slipped his arm around her and pulled her to him. She let her head fall against his shoulder. “Thee-mail — it was from an Emily Anderson, who says she’s eighteen.” She sat up and searched her friend’s eyes. “She says she’s living with Bill and Angela Anderson in Wheaton and that she thinks I’m her — ”

  Her cell phone sprang to life, ringing and moving about as it vibrated on the table next to the medicine bottle. She felt her lungs seizing up again, but she willed them to stay calm. Scanlon handed her the phone and she flipped it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this . . . is this Lauren Gibbs?” The voice was young and tender, a voice that sounded like her own, like she’d sounded before everything had gone so terribly wrong.

  She breathed out. “Yes.” Her head was spinning. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Emily Anderson.” The girl waited a moment. “My mother’s been missing for . . . for eighteen years, and I thought maybe you might be — ”

  “Emily.” The girl’s name felt wonderful on her lips. She tried to remember to be guarded, to doubt whether the caller was really her daughter. A journalist never trusts people without checking facts. “Is . . . this really you?”

  “Yes.” Emily started to cry. “Are you — ”

  This wasn’t happening; it couldn’t be happening. Lauren gripped Scanlon’s arm. She felt a searing white-hot pain in her heart, like the pain that pierced her arm a week ago. As if she was being shot square in the middle. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the phone to her ear. “They told me you were dead.”

  “I know.” The girl was crying harder now. “Grandma told me. She thought that’s what happened.”

  Lauren leaned on Scanlon, determined to keep breathing, slow and steady. The phone call was too important to lose. “In ever would’ve left, never! Not if I’d known. I — ” Emotions choked her words. She swallowed, searching for a way to sum up a lifetime of feelings. “I thought about you every day, Emily. I still do.”

  “Me too.” Tears filled the girl’s voice, but her words rang with a joy that seemed boundless. “Mom, did you ever find him?”

  Lauren’s tears came then.

  She called me Mom . . . I have a daughter! Aching sobs welled up in her. Emily was alive! She forced herself to think about Emily’s question. “Shane?”

  “Yes. Did you ever find him?”

  The ache in her heart doubled. She had spent a lifetime missing Emily, but she had missed Shane Galanter too. He was the reason she left Chicago, after all. How long had she looked for him and waited for him, when all along her daughter had been growing up without her? If only she hadn’t been so stubborn. She could’ve gone home and made peace with her parents, and she would’ve found more than a mended relationship.

  She would’ve found her daughter.

  “No, Emily.” She pressed her finger against her upper lip and fought to keep control. “No, I never found him.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was thick again. “You loved him very much, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” A few rebel sobs escaped, but she swallowed the rest. “I always told myself I’d go home again once I found him.”

  “But you never found him, so you never came home.”

  “No.”

  They fell quiet. Next to her Scanlon rubbed her good arm, lending whatever support he could. She would’ve given anything to reach through the phone lines and hold her daughter. “I have so many questions.”

  Emily laughed. “Me too.”

  “Listen to you.” She clung to the sound of her daughter’s laughter, a sound that was like water to her barren soul. “I used to laugh like that when . . . before . . . ”

  “Before you got pregnant.” The laughter faded from her voice. “I was talking to God the other day, and I told Him I knew what had happened. You got pregnant and everything went bad from there.” There was no self-pity in her voice. “One event tore everyone apart, didn’t it?”

  Regret came upon her like a monsoon. “It did.”

  “So I asked God if one event tore everyone apart, maybe He could use me to bring everyone back together.”

  Usually, when Lauren heard someone talk about God, she was repulsed — probably because she usually heard such talk from politicians. But now . . . Emily’s sincerity — her daughter’s sincerity — rang across the phone lines. When Lauren didn’t say anything, her daughter continued.

  “The thing is, Mom, you need to come home quick.” She sounded serious. Scared and serious.

  It was the first time Lauren considered the possibility that her daughter might not be well. She stiffened, gripping the phone tighter than before. “Are you . . . is everything okay?”

  “No.” She sighed, and her voice filled with fresh tears. “Papa’s got cancer. He . . . he doesn’t have long.”

  Papa? Who was . . . ? Understanding dawned. Her father. Was that what Emily called him? Papa? She had a flashback, an image of her daddy swinging her in his arms when she was six or seven years old. Senia’s age. She swallowed another wave of sorrow. “My father?”

  “Yes.” She waited a beat. “I don’t know what happened between the three of you, but Grandma and Papa, they’re wonderful. They have such a strong faith.” She took a quick breath. “I need you, Mom. I’ve waited all my life for this. But now you have to come fast.”

  Her new reality was taking shape quicker than she could make sense of it. Her parents were wonderful? That wasn’t such a surprise, was it? They’d been wonderful all her life until they forced her to separate from Shane. And something else consumed her. Emily wasn’t only alive, but she wanted Shane and her to connect. What had she said? That she’d waited all her life for this? It was more than Lauren could take in. She shielded her eyes and leaned her head against her hand. How much had she missed over the years? She’d never planned to leave her parents forever, had she? Not even after what they’d done to keep her and Shane apart.

  It was just that one year blended into the next, and pretty soon the road home was so overgrown with blame and hurt she couldn’t find her way back. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to. But now her daddy was dying. “Do they want me there? With my dad so sick?”

  Emily laughed again, and it sounded like a release. As if she’d been holding her breath waiting for the answer. “Yes, they want you to come home. Please, Mom. Come as fast as you can, okay?”

  Lauren straightened. She had vacation time, but she needed a medical release before she could fly home. That, and the debriefing day at the magazine office. “I can be there a week from Saturday. Will that work?”

  “Yes! Oh yes!” Again her daughter’s voice sang with hope and promise. “Here, write this down.”

  Lauren motioned to Scanlon that she needed him to take a note. He grabbed the pad of paper and pen on the nightstand and waited, ready. Lauren held the receiver tight. “Okay, go ahead.”

  Emily rattled off several phone numbers, one for home and one for her cell. Lauren repeated every digit, watching to make sure Scanlon wrote it correctly. She’d lost Emily once; she wouldn’t lose her again.

  When she’d given all her contact information, Emily giggled. “Mom . . . I might call you between now and then, if that’s okay.”

  “Emily.” She felt her heart bursting within her. “Please do.”

  “I love you, Mom.”
>
  There it was again. The name she’d never been called before. Mom. I love you, Mom.

  It was still impossible to believe any of it was true, but there was no denying that the caller was her daughter. She swallowed hard. “I love you too, sweet heart. I’ve loved you and missed you every day of your life.” She drew her first full breath in an hour. “I still can’t believe you found me.”

  “I didn’t.” Certainty filled her tone. “God did.” She paused. “But we can talk about that later.”

  When the call ended, Lauren snapped her cell phone shut. She turned to her friend, so full she thought she might burst. “Oh, Scanlon.” She searched his eyes. Whatever happened from here, her life would never be the same. “My daughter is alive!”

  “I gathered.” He smiled at her. “You’re going back to the States?”

  “Yes.” She pulled away and looked around her room. “As soon as they’ll let me go. My father’s sick. He . . . he doesn’t have long.”

  “Will you get there in time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Amazing, huh? You go eighteen years without seeing him, and your daughter finds you just in time?”

  Lauren felt herself being drawn back to the conversation she’d just had with her daughter. Emily said God had found her. She blinked and looked at her friend again. “Definitely amazing.”

  A hint of sadness flashed in his eyes, but he smiled. “I’m glad for you, Lauren. Really.”

  Though it meant she was leaving, and though there was now a sudden possibility that she might never come back, she believed Scanlon really was glad. That was the sort of friend he was. Even so, the uppermost thought in her mind right now wasn’t leaving him or the Middle East or the job she so loved. Not even close.

  All that was on her mind was the miracle. She had a daughter. A living, breathing young woman with a voice like sunshine. And in just over a week, she was going to meet her. See her face. Hold her in her arms.

  And her parents. She would see them again. Feel her mother’s arms around her, see her father’s face glow with love — a love that had been misguided for a season when she was a teenager — but a love fiercely strong all the same. Yes, she had a daughter to meet and parents to reunite with.

  And eighteen lonely years to make up for.

  Emily hung up the phone. She was shaking, trembling from her fingertips to her feet. Finding her mother’s picture, her identity, had been one thing. But actually talking with her? It was more than Emily could’ve dreamed. Her mom sounded shocked and fearful, disbelieving and overjoyed. But there was something else in her voice. A deep, abiding sorrow. For all the years they’d lost.

  Emily stood and stared at the picture next to her bed, the one of her parents when they were teenagers. “God — ” she lifted her eyes to the window, the blue sky beyond — “a miracle is underway, and already it’s more than I can take in.”

  She remembered the pain in her mother’s voice when she talked about Shane. Emily still needed to find him, find a way to connect him with her mother. She sucked on the inside of her cheek and remembered something else. The hurt in her mom’s voice when she realized Papa was sick. They still had so much healing to work through, so much forgiveness to find if they were going to have peace.

  A long sigh eased from her lips. She needed to get downstairs and tell her grandparents about her phone call with her mother. But first she needed more time to talk to God. Because yes, the miracle they all needed was finally underway, but it was hardly finished.

  Rather, it was only just beginning.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Shane wasn’t sure how to break it to her.

  After a week of praying and searching his Bible and hitting the gym twice as long as usual, he had the answer he’d been looking for. It jumped out at him just that morning, shouted at him from the book of Proverbs, the third chapter. There inverses five and six it said, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

  He read the words three more times through, and suddenly the answer was clear. His own understanding had led him into a relationship with Ellen Randolph. His own understanding had allowed Ellen to design a plan for his life, a winding path that would take him where she wanted him to go. And yes, he’d gone along with it, because by his own understanding the plan made sense.

  But it wasn’t God’s understanding.

  Shane clenched his fists and looked at his watch. He moved onto the patio, restless. Ellen would be there in ten minutes, and the two of them were supposed to go to dinner. He’d thought all day about whether he should cancel and talk to her before the meal, or wait until afterward. He decided to wait. The least he could do was share one last meal with her before telling her it was over.

  He sat down on a chaise lounge and stared up into the palm trees that lined his backyard. Long ago he had put his trust in God. Though his parents moved him to California, and he had felt his heart rip out a little more with every mile that came between him and Lauren, he gave everything over in faith. He trusted the Lord to lead him through the rest of his days. Of course, his parents had their own plans. Plans they’d made clear before the first month of his senior year in high school.

  His father came into his room before bedtime one school night that year. “About time to apply for colleges, hey, son? I’ve talked to my friends at Harvard and Yale, even a few at USC.” He winked. “Looks like you’re a shoo-in for any of the three.”

  Not until that moment did Shane fully understand what his parents had done. The move wasn’t about investments in California. It was about investing in him, about protecting the plans they had for him, the plans to have him finish high school as an all-American football player with a future as golden as the sun.

  That night he told his dad news that shocked him. “I don’t want to go to business school, Dad. I don’t want an MBA or ownership in a bank or the chance to run a mortgage company. I want to fly a fighter jet.”

  It took most of the next six months for his wishes to sink in. Even then it was clear his parents were frustrated. They moved him away from Lauren, but nothing they could do would move him away from the plans God had for him. That spring, a few months before he graduated, her an into a navy recruiter with a booth set up in the lunch area. Shane could almost feel God directing him over, making him pick up a brochure and ask questions.

  From there, the pieces fell into place. He went to college at UCLA and then enlisted for officer’s training school and naval flight training. By the time the Gulf War came around, he was one of the top fighter pilots in the navy.

  His parents learned to accept his decision. In time, they were proud of him for flying jets for the U.S. military, bragging to their friends about his awards and medals. Shane was glad, but it wasn’t what motivated him. He was born to fly; that’s what the Lord had shown him.

  Every time he flew he felt God leading him home at the end of a mission. He was serving his country, serving his fellow man, and following the life God had given him all at the same time. His only sorrow was missing Lauren. For more than a decade that void hit him at the end of every day and between shifts and in noncombat situations when he was forty thousand feet up behind the controls of a jet.

  He would gaze into the endless blue and remember the note she’d scribbled for him back when they were kids: You’re gonna fly one day. When you go, take me with you. Only he never found her, so she never knew. Never knew that he’d done what he wanted to do, what God had created him to do. He breathed in the cool Reno air. And now . . . here he was. On the wrong path again.

  How did it happen? How did he let Ellen convince him that a position in politics would be better than working at Top Gun, better than driving out to the naval training base every day and living his dream? There was something else too. Since he’d been seeing Ellen, he’d come to believe that he didn’t want children, that with all the plans ahead of him, there wasn�
��t time for raising a family. All because for a short while, his own understanding seemed better than God’s.

  But not anymore.

  The doorbell rang, and then he heard the sound of her in the entryway. “Hello?”

  “Ellen. I’m back here.” He stood and met her. “You look pretty.” He kissed her cheek and led her back into the house. “I’ll get my keys.”

  “Shane.” Her tone was a mix of no-nonsense strength with a hint of vulnerability.

  He turned around. “Yes?”

  She exhaled slow and tired. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  For an instant, he almost denied it. How could she have known? All he’d told her was that he wanted to talk. Nothing more. He slipped his hands in his pockets and took a few steps closer. Her eyes told him that she wasn’t guessing. She knew. Somehow she’d figured it out.

  He stopped and looked to the deepest places of her heart. “How did you know?”

  “This.” She pulled something that looked like a small photograph from her purse and handed it to him. “I found this on the front seat of my car this morning. It must’ve fallen out of your pocket.”

  Only when it was in his hands did he look at it. As he did, his heart sank. It was his picture of Lauren. She was right. He’d been looking at it the night before, when she pulled up to take him to dinner. In the rush of the moment, he slid it into his pocket and hurried out to meet her.

  Ellen lifted her chin, her pride clearly intact. “I thought you’d let her go, Shane.”

  “I have — ” No. He stopped himself. Anything he said about letting go of Lauren Anderson was a lie. He promised Lauren long ago that he would love her until the day he died. Wasn’t that what he’d engraved in the ring he bought her? Even now. Even now, when it made no sense to hang onto her memory, his promise was good. He put the photo on the closest bookshelf and took Ellen’s hands in his. “I’m sorry.” He worked the muscles in his jaw. “I thought I had.”