The Wreck Emerged

by Joseph Webers

  34

  Matt looked in the direction Maggie was pointing. “Oh, not to worry!”

  “What?!”

  “Those are dolphins. They have just one dorsal fin and their tails are flat in the water.”

  There were two of them. They watched as the dolphins reached their craft and chattered, showing off. When they started playing around their boat, Matt remembered the banner. “I’ll tell you the words, but there’s something else to tell you first.” He looked at the water beside their little raft and pointed. “What do you see?”

  “Um, it looks like a jellyfish. Just floating there, not trying to swim. But it’s moving past us, like the current is pulling it.”

  “Yeah, do you feel the breeze?”

  “Oh, I see. Maybe the breeze is blowing it.”

  “Then why isn’t the breeze blowing us too? No, something is pulling us, against the breeze, and against the current. And, I might add, away from the fire and whatever those planes were shooting at.”

  As if on cue, the US Air Force returned. The pair of jets circled the area at different altitudes. One flew directly overhead.

  “They’re looking for survivors!” Maggie and Matt shouted simultaneously, and they both began waving their arms, trying to signal their existence. The two planes circled once more, however, then took off together. Soon they were lost to sight. Their arms dropped, their shoulders sagged, and there was disappointment written across both faces.

  “They didn’t see us any more than the first planes. If they had, they would have acknowledged us somehow.” Matt was getting this from old war movies. “One of them would have flown as low and slow as he could, circle us, and dip his wings or something. If he could get close enough, we might have seen him waving!”

  “Well, that was quite a let-down! I hope they send a salvage ship to get the plane off the bottom. They came straight back to us, so they must have GPS’d the location of the fire.” Then she added, “I wonder where we are.”

  Matt could see that Maggie, in spite of the pain of losing her daughter, was in survival mode and was moving on from the lost rescue opportunity.

  She was actually trying to process the breeze and the jellyfish. “It seems that everything but us is standing still and we are being pulled into the breeze instead of being pushed by it. Like we had a trolling motor attached.”

  Matt was astonished. “Maggie knows trolling motors?”

  “Of course! Eight letters for ‘trolling motor manufacturer.’ I had no idea what a trolling motor was, so I had to look it up. Then I knew what that was, but I had to get all the crossing words to find out that it was Minnkota that made them. An American crossword, of course. But I’m dying to know what the words are!”

  “I can still see them. Maggie, I still don’t understand their particular meaning, but I get the distinct impression that the words are for you and that you will know. But I know who they’re from. God has spoken to me before this way, and his words never come unless there is also a deep-down conviction that they are from him and they are trustworthy. It’s just four words, and here they are: ‘Rachel will suckle Jennimoore.’ ”

  Her expression changed abruptly and Matt found it impossible to decipher it. But all she said was, “What do you think it could mean?”

  “Well, I started thinking perhaps Jenny could be short for Jennimoore, but I’ve never heard of that name. I thought it would be just Jenny, or maybe Jennifer or even Jenalyn. Then I thought maybe my Rachel was in heaven taking care of your Jenny, but that wouldn’t work. It should have been ‘is suckling’ rather than ‘will suckle.’ And Jenny shouldn’t need suckling in heaven. I’m totally at sea about this, so to speak. Let me know what it means to you.”

  “You can still see the words?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is Jennimoore spelled?”

  “J-e-n-n-i-m-o-o-r-e.”

  For a moment, Maggie couldn’t move. Tears were streaming down her face, and she made no attempt to stop them. Her lips quivered; she was trying to speak but no words were coming. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out two passports held together by two thick green rubber bands. She looked at one and handed the other one to Matt. “Look inside,” she whispered hoarsely.

  Matt opened it to the page with her picture and read, “TRILLBEY, RACHEL MARGARET.”

  “I am Rachel! My parents felt obliged to name me that in memory of his grandmother, who died two days before I was born. But they never called me that. I’ve been Maggie ever since I could remember. You couldn’t have known, because I only called myself Maggie. And I know you couldn’t have figured that out by looking at the passports, because Jenny’s passport proves you haven’t seen them.” She handed the other passport to Matt.

  He opened it. “TRILLBEY, JENNIMORE LOUISA. I don’t understand—I didn’t spell it right.”

  “No! You did spell it right. That’s just it! As soon as I got her passport, I took it right down to the passport office and explained they misspelled her name. She needed to have a corrected passport. They told me no one I showed it to would know the difference, and if I wanted it corrected, I should wait until I get back. They could send in the correction, but I wouldn’t get it back before we were due to leave. Those idiots! If you had seen the passports, you would have misspelled Jenny’s name just now.”

  Matt had a different take on the idiots. Oh, how God makes all things work for good.

  35

  As soon as the VTC was over, Penny brought JC his cleared electronics and showed him around the office, introducing him to everyone there. She was not able to add anything to what Phil Henry had briefed the group. After a quick meal at the cafeteria, she brought him to a small suite where his luggage was waiting. “I’ll be back in a half hour. There’s a secure phone here, but if you want to make personal calls you’ll have to use your cell. There’s one more area here I want to show you, then it seems like there will be plenty for you to do on this case. I’ll be around if you need help, but I’ll be pretty busy myself.”

  JC called Nicki first. He had explained what Phil had meant when he told him to give her a hug, then had given her the obligatory hug. Then a real hug. He missed her already, but kept that to himself. They chatted briefly; he would miss their lunch date tomorrow and probably wouldn’t be home for the service on Sunday.

  “I’ll miss you, but this gives me some time to spend shopping with Cassie.” Cassie was her adult daughter from her previous marriage, JC’s step-daughter. They professed their undying love for each other and hung up.

  36

  “So, Maggie, what is your conclusion about the message?” Matt asked.

  “That you couldn’t be making it up. It would be impossible for you to make it up. My first thought was that you were just trying to make me feel better. It would have been cruel when I found out it was made up and not real. Then I realized I had already trusted you, twice, with my very life, and you haven’t let me down yet. I believe you wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t. So, where do you think the message came from?”

  Maggie trembled inside. Who was she that God would have regard for her humble state? How could she ever think she deserved to have such a good thing happen to her? Jenny was gone…

  “I dare not hope,” was all she could muster. “Besides, I wouldn’t be able to suckle Jenny.”

  “Do dare! God can do anything! Things we think are impossible, are possible with God. Can’t you see how he has been working on your behalf? Oh, and I owe you an apology. What I whispered in your ear earlier wasn’t the complete quote. I left out the word ‘all’ by accident. It should have been, ‘God will prove himself strong on your behalf all during the next twenty-four hours.’ ”

  “I don’t understand how that is different.”

  “Well, without the ‘all’, God could have done just one thing for you. With the ‘all’, it will be continuous.”

  They were sitting on top of the exposed bottom coffin and l
eaning against the one on top. It was not very comfortable and they kept shifting their weight. Maggie thought it must be easier for her because she could cross her legs, but it didn’t look like Matt was quite so flexible.

  It was warm. Matt checked his watch again. It was still broken. The breeze had stopped, and the sea was like glass, except where the surface was broken by the dolphins frolicking nearby. The haze was still hanging in the sky above them; had it not been for that, they both would have been as red as the proverbial beet.

  “Well, Matt, I hope he starts soon.”

  “Huh? … Let me review things that have happened to you since I said that in your ear and you tell me if you think it qualifies as God watching out for you and caring for you.”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  Maggie suddenly realized she was about to lose this game big-time.

  “You weren’t wearing your seat belt when the plane bounced, and therefore didn’t have your head snap forward, breaking your neck or at least knocking you out.”

  She thought briefly. “Yes.”

  “You got thrown out of the plane alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were conscious the whole time.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t get caught on anything in the plane or come in the slightest contact with any of the jagged, twisted metal on your way out, so that you aren’t bleeding, and have no broken bones or other injuries.”

  “Yes.”

  “Our plane was shot down and destroyed.”

  “No!”

  “Right. That was a trick question. That happened, but it’s hard to see how that was God watching out for you. However, I’m going to ask you again tomorrow, to see if you change your answer. How about, that all those same things happened to me?”

  “Yes. Without you, I’d be dead right now. I’m starting to feel miserable about not answering your question.”

  “But there’s more! We weren’t even detected when those planes came and shot up everything floating on the water.”

  “Yes.”

  “God moved us away from the center of action so we wouldn’t be hit by mistake. Then he gave us a breeze and jellyfish, to show he was the one pulling us.”

  She was beginning to marvel. “Yes.”

  “He gave me a message for you, and proved to you he was the author of the message.”

  “Yes!”

  “What question?”

  “That one. ‘Where did the message come from?’ How could it not be God? But it is completely beyond my comprehension, why he would do this for just me. So I will say it, Matt. Yes, I believe God was the author of that message. You said you understood it in general, even though you didn’t know who the Rachel and Jennimoore were. What did you mean?”

  “Well, I knew instantly those were God’s words. Just as instantly, I knew I would be all right, otherwise, why the message? Somehow, the word ‘suckle’ told me that I wasn’t by myself, since he had already given me one message for you, and the petunia dream. Therefore, we would both be safe.

  “By the way, Maggie, now that Jenny is gone, I think perhaps you are the big woman in that dream, bringing me the baby. And do you know, if they hadn’t misspelled Jenny’s name, you would have no reason to believe it was God’s message? Anyway, as soon as I hit the water, I started looking for you.”

  “Two seconds delay, and you wouldn’t have found me. I’d have been completely under and going down.”

  They watched the dolphins at play for a few minutes. Matt was about to remind Maggie of something she had said, but she spoke first.

  “Matt,” she started, somewhat bashfully, somewhat contritely, “you apologized just now for leaving out a single word. I feel I need to apologize to you for something a whole lot worse, something I said to you. It was a complete lie, an utter fabrication.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Jenny’s father. It didn’t happen that way at all. I thought at the time that you didn’t really believe me, and you were right. Did God tell you?”

  “No. I don’t know any of your secrets, other than what you tell me yourself. I did think it a bit odd, though. I had just met you, and I thought you were a little too willing to tell that story.”

  “I’ve never been married. I’ve been a real wreck for the last couple of years. I was disappointed with life. I made bad choices. Sometimes I hated myself. I wasn’t happy being single, but I thought I’d be much more miserable married. I’m fairly gregarious, but sometimes I wonder if that’s just learned behavior, rather than being naturally me. I get along well with my fellow teachers, and I love all my little year fives. They’re the perfect age!

  “Anyway, I met a fellow at our fifth college reunion. He worked near London and was visiting Bristol for a few weeks. He decided to come to the reunion. He was charming. I had too much to drink, and we had a one-night stand. I guess I was looking for something. Eight weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. He told me it wasn’t his. I told him it couldn’t be anyone else’s. All this over the phone.”

  She paused, anxiously searching Matt’s face for support or acceptance, she didn’t know which. His eyes gave her both.

  She went on, “He called back about a week later, and told me he had thought it over and decided he should do the right thing. Could I come to London? The alarm bells should have been going off, but weren’t. I told him I would be busy for two or three weeks and I’d come after that. I wanted to show him Jenny’s first ultrasound, but I didn’t know about her foot yet.

  “I brought the pictures with me to London and showed him right off when I got to his place. Looking back, I think he was just going to use me, then dump me when I got too pregnant. Jenny’s foot took him by surprise, and it didn’t take him three minutes to tell me he didn’t think he could ever be her father. Or words to that effect. I cried all the way back to Bristol that evening.”

  “Maggie, is that really the way it happened? What about everything else you told me?”

  He believed she was telling the truth, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  She passed up the opportunity to feel wounded at his questions, knowing she brought it on herself, and not denying his right to express it. “Oh, Matt, it is. I’m sorry, and I promise I will never lie to you again.”

  Matt was curious. “Why did you lie to me, anyhow?”

  Maggie was coming face-to-face with her carefully constructed persona and she was finding it rather distasteful. Maybe Matt … “I wanted it to look like I had it together,” she started. “Also, it would keep people from judging me for getting pregnant.” Then, with tears, “And it would keep people from judging me for not aborting Jenny. That would have been the worst. It would be a complete rejection of me as a person.”

  “Maggie, I appreciate how willingly you have bared your soul to me, how you have owned up to the truth. And I don’t judge you at all.”

  He noted her bewildered look, so he said, “I was about to ask you about something you said in the water, when you started telling me about Jenny’s dad.”

  “Wait, before you do, let me say one last thing about that. Even though he was out of my life forever, he is, in fact, Jenny’s biological father. I wanted to give her something to remember him by, if she wanted to. His name was Louis Moore. She is half him, so her name is half his. Jennimoore Louisa Trillbey.”

  “It’s a beautiful name! My compliments on making lemons into lemonade, as they say.”

  “Thanks! What were you going to tell me?”

  “You had just landed in the water. You were hysterical, and you called out to God, saying, ‘It should have been me, and not her.’ Or words like that. While we were watching the dolphins, that was playing over and over in my mind. Then I believe I heard two questions God has for you.”

  “Yes, I was frantic, beside myself, hysterical. I couldn’t find Jenny. She trusted me and I let her down.” The thought of her daughter brought fresh tears. “I wasn’t thinking about it, I just said those words to God, the
first thing that came into my mind, without even thinking. I don’t even know anything about God. Jenny was part of me. It was like losing an arm, but much, much worse.”

  She got a little nervous. “What are the questions?”

  “When God asks the questions, sometimes he already knows the answers. So when you hear the questions, think about them and answer them as truthfully as you know how, both from your mind and from your emotions. You can ask me about it, and I’ll help if I can, but the answers will be entirely yours. Are you ready for the first question?”

  “You’re scaring me a little, but yes.”

  Matt held her hands in his and looked her straight in the eye. “Are you really willing to die, so that Jenny might live?”

  Maggie withdrew her hands from Matt’s and pulled them firmly to her chest. She squinched her face and squirmed.

  It looked to Matt like she had just bitten into a lemon. He knew this would be a very painful question for her to answer honestly, but so much was riding on her answer. He also knew that God’s response to her answer would, when she heard it, reveal whether her answer was the truth.

  He wondered how he would have answered, if he had had that choice for his wife, for his son, for his daughter.

  She closed her eyes tightly. Jenny flowed into her consciousness. The near-tragedy of the breech delivery, the first sight of her truncated leg, the memory of her first real smile. An overwhelming ache was forming in the pit of her being, along with an insatiable longing. But Jenny was dead …

  Something within her was shouting, “No, this can’t be.” Her mind knew better, however. She opened her eyes.

  She saw Matt, staring, concentrating on something a thousand miles away. Although the rest of his face was calm, even peaceful, his eyes exhibited a pain she felt she might never be privy to. He caught the slight movement of her eyes opening. She saw him turn toward her, his eyes now filled with comfort and understanding.

  “What does this mean, Matt? I’m in agony about this,” she finally asked. “Is this what you meant about my baring my soul?”