London Tides

by Carla Laureano

  But she wouldn’t know if she stood here all day. Please, she prayed, unable to put together words with any more eloquence. She took a deep breath and climbed the stairs, where she stood with her finger over the intercom button.

  “Just do it,” she whispered. She pressed the button.

  Silence.

  She pushed the button again, even though her hopes had already crashed somewhere around her feet. Still no answer.

  The front door of the building opened, and a gray-haired woman stepped out, covered in a faded raincoat and holding an umbrella.

  “Sorry, ma’am. Do you know the man who lives on the first floor? In number six?”

  The woman stopped and looked her up and down. Grace must have looked at least somewhat trustworthy, because she finally gave a nod. “The Scottish lad, you mean?”

  Grace’s heart thumped against her ribs. “Yes, that’s the one. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Haven’t seen him in weeks now.” She frowned. “Come to think of it, I saw him put a fair bit of luggage and some boxes into the boot of that flashy car of his.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “A month, maybe? I didn’t pay it much mind.”

  “Thank you,” Grace said faintly. A chill started at the top of her head and crept downward to her toes. She sank down onto the steps. Gone, with what sounded like a good portion of his possessions. What could that possibly mean? Had he moved? Taken a long vacation?

  She dug for her mobile in her pocket with trembling hands and dialed his office number. A woman’s voice answered. She racked her brain for his assistant’s name. “Ms. Grey?”

  “May I say who is calling?”

  “Grace Brennan. I’m actually calling for Ian MacDonald.”

  “Just a moment, please. I’ll connect you with Ms. Grey.”

  The line went quiet for a moment; then a professional, Scottish-accented voice answered. “Ms. Brennan? This is Abigail Grey.”

  “Um, hi, Ms. Grey. I was looking for Ian.”

  Another long pause. Her stomach took another dip.

  “Mr. MacDonald resigned his position a month ago. I’m the new COO. Is there something I might help you with?”

  Grace felt as if she’d been slugged. All the air rushed out of her lungs in a whoosh.

  “Ms. Brennan? Grace?”

  “Thank you, Ms. Grey,” she whispered. She ended the call and clutched her mobile like it was her last connection with Ian.

  Whatever had happened after Ian let her go, he didn’t seem to want to be found. For the first time since she had left her parents’ house, she sat on the front steps of a place she’d thought of as home and cried.

  Grace was halfway down to the Underground platform before she remembered Asha was already in India. She stood there, unable to move from her sudden paralysis, while she watched train after train stop and then speed on, crowds of travelers moving about her like water around a rock.

  London had begun to seem like home, but she now knew that had more to do with the people who lived there than the city itself.

  She managed to break free of her indecision and boarded the eastbound train with the next wave of passengers. Almost without thinking, she disembarked at Westminster and found herself at the same spot along the Thames where she had come to the conclusion that she should marry Ian.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. In all the romantic books and films, the girl would be standing out in the rain, thinking that nothing would ever work out again, and here came the hero, ready to take her back with open arms. They’d run to each other and kiss and vow to never be apart again.

  She’d been deluding herself to think that kind of thing happened to people like her.

  Or maybe it had, and she’d been too scared and blind to see it. She’d hurt the one person she had always loved completely, hurt him so badly that he felt the need to drastically alter his life. God had given her a second chance for a new life in London with Ian, and she’d wasted it.

  Why would either of them give her a third?

  She climbed atop the stone platform and sank into one of the wet benches, her arm curving over the wrought-iron curlicue support. The cold of the metal bit into her skin, but she didn’t take her hand away. That required some feeling, some reaction. And right now, she wasn’t sure there was anything left inside but emptiness. She slumped against the backrest, watching the colors trace across the London sky.

  Elsewhere in the city, where the shadows fell early between buildings, streetlights winked on in clusters, little bright spots in the steadily darkening evening. The river churned around a handful of sightseeing boats and pleasure vessels, the tide about to ebb again. She imagined the vessels that were floating leisurely with the tide now having to rev their engines, put more power into just staying at the same speed. It was a fine metaphor for her life. Just when she thought things were flowing in her direction, the tide changed, and she had to work harder and harder just to stay still.

  She might be able to bear the knowledge that she had ruined her chance with Ian if there were anything else left for her. Her career hadn’t simply been a job to her; it had been a calling. Shining light into the dark places of the world that had been forgotten, illuminating the people whose tragedies were somehow deemed less important, simply because of a quirk of birth and geography. Even when it seemed like the world didn’t care, she cared. She bore witness to their lives through her photographs, commemorated their place in the world through the marks on her skin. It might not have made her happy, but it had given her a purpose, a reason for her existence.

  Grace stood and stumbled off the bench, made her way to the stone railing. All that was conceit, anyway, something to make her feel better about how she’d spent her last decade. She’d been gone from the field for almost four months, and the world hadn’t stopped turning. In fact, were she to jump from the Westminster Bridge, but for the momentary horror of passersby, no one would know or care. Her eyes lifted to the structure that arched over the swift-moving river, and for a brief moment, she let herself fantasize about what it would be like to hit the water, wondered how long it would take before she stopped struggling against the current.

  The buzz in her pocket made her jump guiltily back from the rail. She dug for her mobile and pressed it to her ear in a daze. “Hello?”

  “May I speak with Grace Brennan?”

  “Speaking,” she said, her thoughts slowly catching up to the present.

  “This is Henry Symon. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve been traveling. I just got back to London.”

  “Oh, you’ve already heard, then?”

  Grace squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make sense of the conversation. “Heard what?”

  “We hired our second-choice candidate for the creative director position, and quite honestly, it was a disaster. The board is willing to give you a chance. That is, if you’re still interested?”

  “I—” She swallowed and gathered her wits together. “Yes, I’m still interested.”

  “Wonderful, Grace. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that this will work out after all. If you can come by the office tomorrow, there’s some hiring paperwork to be completed. You can start officially next week.”

  “Thank you, Henry. You have no idea—”

  “You will be fantastic. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Grace stared at the phone in her hand, still in disbelief. What had just happened? Moments before, she’d been toying with the unthinkable, feeling as if she had nothing left to offer the world. And Henry had called at that exact moment?

  “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

  The words from a long-ago sermon in Ireland came into her mind, as clear as the first time she’d heard them aloud. And in that moment, she saw it all plainly. Yes, she had been called to be a witness. But there was a greater witness beyond her and the rest of humanity, stan
ding beyond the constraints of time and borders and self-interest. God saw the pain of the world, even when no one else did. The lives of all those to whom Grace felt an obligation did not go unseen. Just as the life of one insignificant woman standing on the bank of the Thames, doubting her worth, did not go unnoticed.

  Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She may have known God was with her, in the vaguest sense of the word, but this felt like His very hand pulling her back from the precipice. He was saving her life just as he’d done before on the streets of Damascus. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, a new, unfamiliar feeling growing in her chest amid the cold.

  Hope.

  The grief was still there, a constant ache that might never fade completely, but hope left no room for despair. She shoved away from the railing and strode back down the pavement just as the lights of the Houses of Parliament clicked on.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport—Mumbai Airport for short—thirty-six minutes ahead of schedule and amid a brown cloud that surpassed anything Grace had seen in the time she’d lived in Los Angeles. Her stomach fluttered—not in fear, but in anticipation. It had been two years since she’d been in India, and she’d purposely planned Mumbai as the final stop in her monthlong journey visiting CAF’s Asian offices.

  To say she was coming back to India a changed person would have been overstating the facts, but the last two months had brought her a measure of peace she hadn’t felt in years—maybe decades. Ian was always on her mind, but after her second week in London, she’d stopped trying to locate him. Perhaps God was telling her that they really weren’t meant to be. Perhaps they had been given those few months together to teach each of them a lesson. She hoped if that were the case, Ian’s had not been nearly as painful as hers.

  Lord, give me peace, she prayed as she stood in the aisle and retrieved her bag from the overhead compartment. She was getting better at arresting and cataloging her intrusive thoughts, and she had to admit prayer was much better than the alternatives.

  Her new London therapist believed the combination of Aidan’s death, the trauma of her job, and losing two friends in close succession through violence had left her with a complex presentation of post-traumatic stress disorder. Once, Grace would have resisted the diagnosis, but it was comforting to have a plan, to know she could start mending those broken pieces, even if she wasn’t there yet. Connecting with her faith in a personal way was an important part of that plan.

  She managed her bags on her own from the carousel: just one duffel and a small case containing her most necessary camera equipment. Still, she was pleased to see a uniformed driver standing at the exit of the airport, holding a sign in English and Marathi that read Brennan. That probably meant she was to go directly to the office without getting distracted by all the sightseeing and photo opportunities.

  The driver gave her a little bow as she approached. “Namaste.”

  “Namaste,” she repeated with a smile.

  “May I help you with your bags?”

  Grace stepped aside and let him take her cart, then followed him out the doors to the car park and a waiting Toyota sedan that was significantly bigger than the tiny Indian cars to which Grace was accustomed.

  “You have been to Mumbai before?” the driver asked as he navigated the roads onto the airport return.

  “A couple of years ago.” She settled back against the seat to take in the sights as they left the airport property. Even after all her years in Asia and Africa, the contrast between the modern and the traditional, the wealth and the poverty, struck her. And the traffic! She had forgotten the congestion: lorries, tiny passenger cars, motorbikes, scooters that looked barely big enough for one holding two or even three passengers. She smiled as they passed one of the bright-yellow-painted rickshaws—a cross between a car and a three-wheeled motorcycle—that acted as taxis throughout Mumbai.

  It was good to be back.

  She rethought that feeling when the driver slammed on his brakes and swerved to avoid a family that darted into the road, horns blaring around them. She’d often thought one needed to be mad to drive in London, but five minutes on the road in Mumbai made her remember how orderly the English drivers were in comparison. No wonder Ian had been suspicious of her driving skills.

  Her enjoyment faded a little bit as the small, squat—and poor-looking, by Western standards—shops transitioned into high-rises and then into one of Mumbai’s major slums, homes constructed of scrap metal and wood, covered in bright-blue plastic tarps. All the time she had spent feeling sorry for herself, and there were people who lived on less money each year than she had in her wallet, while she transported thousands of quid worth of camera equipment in the boot of the sedan.

  After several more minutes, the driver let her off in front of a grimy-windowed building in an older business district and unloaded her baggage from the back of the car. She declined his offer of assistance and tipped him for his help before he pulled back onto the busy street.

  Before she could even hoist a bag, however, the door opened, and a tall, athletic-looking man stood in the doorway. He took one look at her camera hanging around her neck and said, “You must be Grace Brennan. You have some timing.”

  “And you must be Mitchell.”

  He shook her hand enthusiastically. “I am. Come on up and I’ll introduce you to the Mumbai staff.”

  Grace slung her rucksack over her shoulder and lifted her camera case while Mitchell took her duffel. As she followed him up the narrow staircase, he detailed the status on the projects and outreaches Grace was here to shoot. “We’ve arranged a driver to take you and some other support staff to the various locations this week.”

  “Do you think three days in Mumbai will be enough time? I’d planned on going to the TB clinic in Pune on Friday.” It was the clinic in which Asha was spending her three-month sabbatical, and she secretly couldn’t wait to see her friend. She had purposely held back the fact she would be visiting.

  “It should be. But you’ll be the best judge of that.”

  He stopped in front of a door with a crisscrossed 1970s safety glass insert and pushed it open for her. “Welcome to CAF’s Mumbai office.”

  It was tiny and just as outdated as she expected from the building’s exterior, with metal desks and chipped linoleum tiles. A young Indian woman smiled and stood at her approach.

  “Grace, this is our office manager, Kalyani. Kalyani, this is Grace Brennan, our creative director at headquarters.”

  “A pleasure, Ms. Brennan.” Kalyani shook her hand with enthusiasm. “Welcome to India.”

  Mitchell nudged her toward the back office. “Come meet the program coordinator you’ll be going around with. He’s here meeting with the Maharashtra program director.”

  “Oh, I met Bakul before I left London. Nice man.”

  “Bakul left CAF nearly a month ago,” Mitchell said with a frown. “This is his replacement. No one told you?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard. It must have happened right after I left London. I’m surprised they found someone to fill the position so quickly.”

  “It was an internal hire, as I understand it.”

  Grace sucked in a breath when Mitchell opened the office door. Surely she had to be hallucinating. This couldn’t be possible. But she didn’t need the man to turn around to know it was Ian standing by the window, his mobile pressed to his ear. Every molecule of her body seemed to recognize his presence even from a dozen feet away.

  Then Mitchell was smiling and making introductions, saying something about administrative positions and donations and project timelines. She couldn’t keep any of it straight in her head, her eyes fixed on Ian, looking as devastating draped in tropical linen as he ever had in his Western suit and tie. More devastating because she knew now that he didn’t belong to her.

  “Grace.” The one word rippled through her from head to toe, making her momentarily forget how to b
reathe.

  “Ian.”

  Mitchell looked between them. “So you do know each other.”

  Ian tossed a wry smile in the man’s direction. “We’re acquainted, yes.”

  Grace wanted to sink into the floor.

  Apparently, Mitchell sensed there was far more going on beneath the surface and made a hasty exit. Ian gestured to the chair across the desk. “Sit. You look like you’re about to faint.”

  “I feel like I’m about to faint.” She’d never been the type of woman to be overcome, but now her mind whirled far too fast to make any sense of what was going on. “What are you doing here?”

  “Besides the obvious, you mean?” He regarded her with a cool expression. She recognized that look. It was the same one he had used on her when they had bumped into each other at the benefit at the Savoy. Polished. In control. And just a hint of bitter.

  “I mean, what are you doing in India with CAF? What—why—?” She sucked in a shaky breath. “I finished the job in Montreal, and when I came back, you were gone. I thought you’d taken a long holiday.”

  The cool facade never budged. “I did. But I really should thank you, Grace. You made me reevaluate my life. I realized that I’d been living for everyone but myself and consulting everyone but God. I’d done all I said I never would, just to please my mother, who will never be pleased with anything. Seems international law and operational experience made me a good candidate for a regional program coordinator.”

  “In India.”

  “Well, technically, it’s in London, but it’s hard to coordinate resources for something you’ve never seen.” He softened. “That’s something else I should thank you for. You’ve always loved India, always talked about the needs here. When CAF needed someone to fill the position quickly, it was an easy choice.”

  “And James’s company? All the zeros?”

  The corner of his mouth twisted up. “You seem to forget that money isn’t a necessary component of my career choices.”

  “You said you would never touch your trust fund.”