He stroked her back. She could feel his heart pounding against her shoulder. “I'll call you as soon as I'm done today.”
The walls were up. His words no longer penetrated her heart the way they had before. She drew back and nodded. There was wetness on her cheeks, and for the first time she noticed. She was crying. He used his knuckle to wipe the tears from her cheeks. Then he stood and backed out of the pew, his eyes on her the entire time. “I'll call.”
She didn't argue. She wanted to be alone, to gather her feelings and stop the dizziness in her head. To look in the mirror and convince herself that the impossible had happened. Eric Michaels's brother really had come to town, saved her life, and made her feel things she hadn't felt since Jake.
;“Don't, Jamie, please.” He stopped. “This doesn't have to mean anything. Nothing's changed.” His eyes told her he was desperate for her to see things his way, that even though this was a twist, a strange coincidence, it didn't need to mean the end of what they'd started.
“Go.” She held up her hand, her eyes locked on his until he walked through the doors.
When he was gone, she knew it was too late. What they'd found was gone. If they'd figured it out that first morning, they could've spared themselves all of this. Because while she might be ready to start living again, ready to face a future without Jake, she couldn't start a relationship with Eric's brother.
Not if it meant seeing Eric again.
After all they'd been through, Jamie knew the only way she'd ever move on was to let him go. Bid him good-bye and never look back, not for anything.
Not even his brother, Clay.
TWENTY-ONE
Sue Henning would know what to do.
Jamie picked up Sierra at school and headed straight for her friend's house. She had barely survived the day, convinced it all had to be some sort of bad joke. As long as she'd lived she'd never believed in love at first sight. Until she met Clay.
Their first meeting was like some sort of cosmic metaphor. She, alone and vulnerable, unaware of the dangers that surrounded her. Him, looking out for her, rushing to her rescue, protecting her the way she still needed protecting. He loved God and his country and The Lion King. What more could she ask?
Crazy girl, she'd told herself a hundred times that day. She didn't even know him, didn't know his faults other than one: he was impulsive.
The thing was, she'd never been quick with her decision-making. But she'd been drawn to him in a way that kicked common sense out the door. So much so that this morning when he'd asked her about Thanksgiving in California, the idea had seemed practical. Logical, even.
But that was before she knew about Eric.
She gritted her teeth as she rounded the corner to Sue's house. Why would God allow it? Why let them meet, why light the fire in her long-cold heart only to snuff it out this way? God … You promised You'd see me through this.
The thought hung in the stale air of her car. A few feet away, Sierra turned and looked at her. “Did you cry today, Mommy?”
Jamie sniffed and shot her daughter a quick glance. “Of course not,” she lied.
“Then how come your eyes are puffy?” Sierra's knobby knees stuck out from her woolen jumper, the uniform she wore to school. Poor Sierra. She was still a little girl, her feet not quite touching the floor. She deserved a man like Clay in her life.
“Mommy, how come? How come your eyes are puffy?”
“Mrs. Henning says Katy's looking forward to seeing you.”
Sierra stared out the car window. “What about Clay? Will we see him today?”
Her words hit her like so many rocks. “I don't think so.”
The conversation stalled. Jamie turned into Sue's driveway. Anger welled up in her, anger at God for letting this insane thing happen. She cared about Clay, could easily love him. But being around Eric Michaels would be like being around Jake. Maybe she hadn't heard God about choosing life. Maybe He wanted her to choose her old life, with Jake's memory, her obsession with helping the victims of September 11, her work at St. Paul's.
Maybe she was never supposed to do anything more than thank Clay Michaels.
Sue was waiting out front, arms crossed, leaning against the door frame. Even from fifteen feet away Jamie could read her; she was worried.
Sierra jumped out, waved hello to Sue, and ran inside calling Katy's name. Jamie felt tired and old, battered by the turn of events. She dragged herself up the walkway and met Sue's gaze. Jamie hadn't told her anything except the basics. She'd met someone on the ferryboat, a police officer from California. He was the reason she hadn't called in a few weeks.
But now things had gone terribly wrong.
“I still can't believe you didn't call sooner.” Sue's words were quiet, muffled by the icy breeze outside. They entered the house and went into the living room. Sue had two cups of tea already poured, waiting.
Jamie sat down across from Sue and clasped her hands. “I wanted to tell you.” She barely lifted her shoulders. “I guess I didn't know how. I still can't believe it myself.”
“Do you … do you have feelings for him?”
“I did.” Jamie felt tears in her eyes. She swallowed hard and found her voice again. “I've seen him every day since I met him. Whenever he isn't training or sleeping, he's been with Sierra and me.” Jamie told Sue how he'd taken them to The Lion King and shared a number of dinners with them. “It was all happening so fast, but it felt real. For the first time since Jake, it felt real.”
Sue frowned. “So where's the problem? Jamie, it's been three years. You're allowed to care about someone else.”
“You haven't.”
“But I would.” Sue's voice grew soft. “If God brought someone into my life, I would. I've thought about it lately.”
Jamie still hadn't gotten to the most important part, but now she had this to consider. Sue would care about someone else? Date someone else? She'd been thinking about it lately? Maybe they'd both been thinking about it, too afraid to tell the other that they couldn't imagine being alone for the rest of their lives. Even if the idea was unthinkable in light of the men they'd lost.
Sue took a sip of her tea. “What's so bad, Jamie? If it's guilt that's stopping you, let it go. Jake would want you to let it go.”
Jake's words filled her heart: Choose life, Jamie. Whenever you can, choose life. She closed her eyes. “You don't know the whole story.” She blinked and searched her friend's face. “It's the worst thing, Sue. You won't believe it.”
Worry colored the fine lines on Sue's forehead. “If he hurt you, he's not the guy you made him out to be.”
Jamie shook her head. “No, nothing like that.” She slid to the edge of the sofa, her heart beat fast and hard against the wall of her chest. “You remember Eric Michaels?”
Sue squinted. “Eric Michaels?”
“Yes.” Jamie exhaled hard. What did she expect? She'd seldom talked about Eric, just telling everyone—even Sue—the straight facts. The man she'd thought was Jake was really a businessman from Los Angeles, a man suffering from amnesia, one who looked enough like Jake to pass for him. She kept her answers short, and Sue had always known better than to ask. Now she had to revisit that time again—something she'd never wanted to do.
Sue shook her head. “The name's familiar, but I can't figure out why.”
“He's the man who lived with me, the one I thought was Jake.”
A knowing look filled her face. “Oh, right. Okay.” The frown was back. “Why bring him up?”
Jamie felt the blood leaving her face, felt herself reacting to the news as if she were hearing it for the first time again. Her tone was pinched, scratchy. “Clay's his brother.”
Seconds passed while Sue processed the news. “Clay, the police officer you met on the ferry, is Eric Michaels's brother?” Her eyebrows lifted and she lowered her chin. “That's impossible.”
“That's what I thought.” She stood and walked to the window, her back to her friend. The girls were upstairs, playin
g in Katy's room. Outside the trees were bare, a light snow had fallen the night before, and everything was the color of winter. “It's true, Sue. Clay's his brother. We found out this morning.” She looked over her shoulder at Sue. “He saw Jake's picture. A few minutes before he had to leave for his shift.”
“Oh, Jamie.” Sue's expression relaxed, but her face was taut, pale. “I can't believe it.”
“I told him I couldn't see him tonight.” She faced the window again. “I can't see him ever again.”
Sue was quiet. After a while, Jamie returned to the sofa and drank down half her tea. “I already miss him. I can't believe this is happening.” She set her cup down. “There's nothing you can do to help, but I had to tell you.”
A minute passed, and then Sue stood and crossed the room to the fireplace. Next to it was a bookshelf, and from a place in the back she pulled out a small urn. Jamie had one like it—given to them by the city. The urn held a few cups of debris and ash from the collapsed Twin Towers.
With slower steps, Sue carried it back to the coffee table and set it down on a spot between them both. She leveled her gaze at Jamie. “You know why they gave us those urns?”
Where on earth was her friend going with this? She didn't want to look at the urn or think about what might've been inside. The ashy remains of any of the two thousand victims. Jamie had kept hers out of respect for the lives lost that day. But it was hardly a reminder of Larry or Jake. “No.” She shook her head. “Mine's tucked away somewhere; I don't look at it.”
“I keep mine out.” She angled her head and looked at the detail on the small container. “It's a reminder of something that might be easy to forget otherwise.”
“What?” Jamie still didn't know what the urn had to do with her situation, the one she was battling that day.
“That Larry's not coming home.” Sue's voice cracked. “It reminds me that every terrible thing about September 11 really happened. That my husband and your husband were two of the heroes, two of the men who ran up the stairs when everyone else was running down.” She sniffed and pressed her finger to her lip. Sue rarely broke down, and this would be no exception. “Larry's gone. When his name is on my lips, when I jump up to ask his advice about something or wonder what he might want for dinner, I remember the urn and it's all real again. He's gone and he's not coming home.”
Jamie leaned closer. “I already know that about Jake.” She pressed her fingers against her chest. “I'm the one who's been dating these past two weeks. I don't need an urn to remember the truth about Jake. He's gone; I get that.”
“Yes.” Sue's voice was even, her eyes unwavering. “But there is something you have trouble remembering.”
“What?” She didn't come here for a lecture from Sue. “What do I have trouble remembering?”
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.”
TWENTY-TWO
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.
The Tuesday Morning Collection Page 60
