by Jan Thompson
“Transients.” He shrugged. “They move around.”
Emmeline stayed quiet, but she appreciated the fact that Earl hadn’t called her brother homeless. Then again, that was what Claude was: homeless.
She wondered what really happened in his mind five years ago when he had snapped.
Helen Hu had recommended that their family physician and a mental health expert to be on standby because Claude would need all the help he could get.
Emmeline knew that her brother needed God, most of all.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was warm and assuring.
She looked up.
Sebastian said nothing. In fact, he had said very little since they had boarded the RV some two hours ago after Hugo had called, announcing they had arrived at this soup kitchen near the city square.
Saturday was a busy time in Marietta, but tonight’s soup kitchen crowd was thinner than usual, according to sources working for Hu Knows, Inc.
“So why don’t ya’ll go home, and we’ll text you when we have something?” Earl asked.
It sounded like a good idea.
Helen looked at Sebastian and Emmeline. “Hugo and Earl will handle the situation, all right? I have to go to a meeting with my cousin. I’ll be staying overnight at his house, going to church with him and my other cousin, and then he’s taking me to the airport. I’m flying out to San Antonio again. Duty calls.”
Emmeline nodded. “You’ve done so much, Helen. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” Helen pointed to Sebastian. “Thank him over there.”
“Thank God,” Sebastian replied. “He never fails us.”
Don’t forget God.
Emmeline’s own advice to Sebastian about the other matter now came back to her own heart.
“I’ve got to go. Cayson’s waiting for me.” Helen peeled herself off her seat, and patted Sebastian’s arm on her way out of the RV. “Love my new car.”
Emmeline heard her. “What’s that about?”
“Nothing,” Sebastian said.
They made it home in time to find Emmeline’s parents napping in the living room. Only Claude’s cat greeted them.
“No, Chase, he’s not home yet.” Emmeline picked him up.
Sebastian stood by the closed front door, near the coat tree in the hallway, watching Emmeline cooed to the cat, and him purring back at her.
In the living room, Emmeline’s mom stirred in her rocker. She suddenly announced it was time to cook dinner.
When Emmeline’s mom disappeared into the kitchen, Emmeline let the cat go and stepped close to Sebastian. She reached for his face.
He wondered what she was up to.
A kiss was too much to ask.
“She only makes one kind of meatloaf,” Emmeline whispered.
Ah, no kiss.
Sebastian chuckled. “Is that a warning?”
“Just a caution. I hope you have a strong stomach for questionable ingredients.”
Sebastian burst out laughing.
Emmeline’s palm flew to cup his mouth. “Shhh!”
She was standing so close to him that he thought her eyeballs looked as huge as those giant gulab jamun sweet dessert balls in Indian restaurants.
Slowly, Sebastian reached for her hand. He lifted it away from his mouth, and gently kissed her palm.
Emmeline’s eyes remained wide, and then she began to smile.
“Are we sneaking around?” she asked.
“Yes, you are!” Mom’s voice came up behind them.
Startled, Sebastian dropped Emmeline’s hand.
Her mom laughed.
And now Sebastian knew where Emmeline got her laughter from. He wondered if Mrs. O’Hanlon was how Emmeline was going to look like at sixty-something. Tall and beautiful, with smiling eyes…
And trailing a smoky smell of something—
“Burning?” Sebastian marched past the two women, straight into the old kitchen.
Smoke wasn’t coming out the oven, but the intense smell of something charred was. Sebastian wondered whether to open the oven door to find out. He glanced at the old dial, and it was set to five-hundred degrees.
Five hundred!
What is this woman cooking?
Eleanor O’Hanlon waved her hands and laughed again. “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’ll thaw, and then it’ll cook.”
“Thaw?” Sebastian asked.
“It’s leftover meatloaf, but I forgot to take it out of the freezer.”
“You can’t thaw frozen meatloaf in an oven at five-hundred degrees,” Sebastian said as calmly as he could.
“Well, I might have forgotten to clean the oven from the last time I burnt the lasagna. The cheese sort of overflowed out of the pan.”
“Sort of? So, the high heat is now charring the bits of once-cheese at the bottom of the oven, you’re saying?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions?” Emmeline’s mom placed her fists on her hips. “Who are you, a cook?”
Chapter Forty-Two
Sunday came and went without any sign of Emmeline’s brother in any of the metro Atlanta soup kitchens that Helen Hu’s men had been monitoring.
As far as Emmeline knew, they had sent out more email blasts to the area missions, homeless shelters, ministries, and churches in the hope that the two-hundred-thousand dollar reward money would invoke alertness and trigger memories.
All they needed was a sighting.
A verifiable sighting.
Claude O’Hanlon had weaved in and out of visibility, and that was frustrating to Emmeline. Yet, in front of her parents, the last thing she needed to do was show her impatience.
Besides, the fact that Claude had been spotted on Thursday meant he was still lurking in the Atlanta area.
But it was Sunday now. In three days, he could have walked out of Atlanta—or walked all over the city. The weather was hot, yes, but if he walked in the cool of night…
Emmeline shut another drawer in the peninsula the end of her parents’ kitchen. She was sure she had put Sebastian’s SUV key in one of these drawers, but it wasn’t there now.
A small panic rose in her chest.
She went back to the first drawer—
There it is.
Thank You, God.
She must’ve been thinking too much and not paying attention. She spun around to return to the living room, but didn’t go far.
Sebastian was standing there, hands in his jeans pockets, his green collared shirt nicely buttoned. It was the same shirt he had worn to church this morning.
“I was going to bring the key to you.” She held the key in the air. “Are you packed and ready to go?”
Sebastian nodded. He took the SUV key from her.
“I still think you should wait until morning,” Emmeline said.
“You want me to stay.”
“To stay alive. Are you sure you’ll be awake, driving through the night?”
“I checked the weather forecast. Clear night all the way to the coast.” Sebastian pointed to the clock on the wall. “I should be home by five-ish in the morning if I start driving in half an hour.”
He was taking the SUV back to St. Simon’s Island, back to his work, back to his life.
Emmeline held back a tear.
I have to let him go.
“If I stay here, I won’t be able to sleep much, anyway.” Sebastian touched Emmeline’s elbow. “I want us to be together, but this seems the wrong time.”
“You want us to be together?” Emmeline felt a bit confused.
Had their ruse morphed into something more now?
Sebastian nodded. He stepped closer.
“We need time to think through this,” Emmeline said. “I’m sorry our plan failed, Seb. Talia moved on with Jared.”
“Moved in with Jared.” Sebastian expelled a breath, as if in relief. “I did find out she wasn’t mine to begin with. She was never mine.”
And he isn’t ever mine to begin with either. “Let God work it o
ut, right?”
Sebastian nodded again.
“Neither of us got what we wanted,” Emmeline added. “You don’t have your ex back. I don’t have my brother. But we still have God.”
“God is all we need,” Sebastian added softly. His thumb rubbed Emmeline’s elbow.
“Maybe what we wanted isn’t what God has planned for us. I want my brother back.” Emmeline blinked a couple of times. “What if… What if he’s dead?”
“Hush.” Sebastian wrapped his arms around her.
Emmeline wanted to rest her head on his shoulder forever, but she could not. She peeled back. “You’d better get going. It’s a five-hour drive, remember?”
“I could use some coffee to go, if you have any.”
“I’ll make some.” She stepped toward the stove to check if the kettle had water in it. She filled it with filtered water. Then she went to get Dad’s French press from the dish rack.
“Tell me where the coffee is,” Sebastian said.
“The coffee beans are in the freezer. I think there’s a grinder on the bottom shelf in the cabinet over there.” She pointed. “Unless Dad moved it.”
It was still there.
“Glad we don’t have to go looking for it this late at night,” Sebastian said.
Minutes later, freshly ground arabica filled the kitchen.
Chapter Forty-Three
He couldn’t let Emmeline go.
He simply couldn’t.
Lord, please don’t make me let her go.
A travel mug in one hand, and his shoulder bag in the other hand, Sebastian found his feet stuck to the polished oak floor of the O’Hanlon family home in Roswell, Georgia, unable to take another step toward the front door that led to the driveway, where his SUV waited to whisk him back to a faraway coast.
Away from the siren song…
Emmeline was at the door, unlocking it, looking outside.
“Isn’t it kind of late to be checking once you have the door opened?” Sebastian asked.
“Well, I forgot to look through the peephole, not that I could see anything much through it, anyway.” Emmeline stepped aside to let Sebastian through.
The night air, a mix of warm and cool, floated into the dim hallway.
Sebastian still stood there.
“Are we letting mosquitoes in?” Emmeline waved for him to move. “Need any help with your luggage?”
“No.” Sebastian hung the shoulder strap over his left shoulder, and forced himself to walk.
The coffee in the stainless steel travel mug sloshed bit.
“Oops. Sorry.” Sebastian thought he saw drops of coffee splash out and fall to the floor.
“I’ll clean it up later. It’s the West Nile virus I’m afraid of right now.”
Sebastian nodded. His heavy feet moved past Emmeline. As soon as he was outside the threshold, Emmeline shut the door.
There they were, standing in the porch light. The trees rustled a little bit, and the sky was partly cloudy.
“Looks like you’ll have a nice drive back to St. Simon’s,” Emmeline said as she walked with Sebastian to his SUV.
He remotely unlocked his doors, and put his coffee mug into the cup holder between the two front seats.
“I’ll mail the travel mug back to you,” Sebastian said.
“No need. The next time I see Skye, she can give it to me.”
“Skye? What about me?” Sebastian went around the back of the SUV to put his bag in the cargo compartment.
“Well, you too, if we ever see each other again.” Emmeline folded her arms across her chest. “We’re still friends, after all.”
“Friends.” Sebastian closed the cargo door.
He lowered his voice. “If circumstances had been different… If I had accepted that Talia had left me for good, would you have gone out with me?”
“I don’t know.” Emmeline’s voice gave away nothing.
Sebastian waited.
“We saw each other all the time at church, but nothing happened until this project of ours,” Emmeline explained. “Otherwise, we both have very busy and different lives.”
“You don’t think Skye would’ve set us up?”
“No.” Her voice was curt.
Sebastian’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t think so either. I’m not your type.”
“It’s not that. I wasn’t thinking of dating anyone. I wanted to go back to grad school. Get my master’s degree. Maybe get into a better financial state so that I wasn’t juggling four jobs, you know.”
“I hear you.”
“And I want to help Dad keep his harp quintet going—quartet at the moment because he can’t play for a while. I’ll have to fill in now, sooner than I’d expected.”
“You have plans.” Sebastian understood what Emmeline was trying to tell him. Or at least, he thought he understood. Thing was, he had his own plans too. They had backfired.
“We both have our own plans,” Emmeline said.”
“As opposed to God’s plans?”
“Opposed? I don’t think our plans are necessarily in opposition to God’s plans, particularly if we’ve prayed over them.” Emmeline dropped her arms to her side. “Speaking for myself, I’m always evaluating my plans, knowing I have to be flexible enough to adjust my plans to match God’s best for my life.”
“Your life and mine.”
“If God hadn’t brought you into my life, Seb, my family wouldn’t be closer to finding Claude.”
“God does work out all things for our good.” It was all Sebastian could think of to say.
“If not for you and Helen, we wouldn’t have known that Claude is still alive.”
“That’s all God’s doing, Em. I credit Him.”
“He worked in my life through you, Seb.”
Sebastian played with his SUV key. “I like your parents, so I’m sure I’ll like Claude when I meet him. But I like you most of all.”
“When you meet Claude? You’re very optimistic.”
“Yeah. I’m confident Helen and her men will find him. He was in the area Thursday, and very much alive.” Sebastian realized then that Emmeline’s mind was elsewhere, not on him or what he just said. Hadn’t she heard him?
I like you most of all.
“Any day now,” Sebastian reminded her. “You call me, okay? Let me know when Claude comes home.”
Emmeline nodded, tears in her eyes.
“No, no. Come here. It’s going to be all right.” Sebastian moved quickly, but gently. He wiped streaming tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.
“We’ve waited so long for Claude to come home,” Emmeline barely whispered.
“Just a little longer.” Sebastian wrapped her in his arms.
She was soft and huggable, even as she was heaving and weeping.
Sebastian held her for a while as she let it all out.
“Let’s pray, Em.” And so he did.
Sebastian prayed for Emmeline, Claude, their parents, Helen and her search team, the halfway houses, the homeless shelters, the soup kitchen, the entire city of Atlanta and beyond…
“And help us not to forget You, Lord,” he concluded. “In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.”
“Amen,” Emmeline whispered into his shoulder.
Quietly, Sebastian let her go.
He did not kiss her forehead. Did not hug her any further.
It wasn’t time.
And they both knew it.
Chapter Forty-Four
Insects chirped around his head and ocean waves pounded his ears at the break of day as Sebastian stood outside his SUV staring at the fluorescent green BMW i8 parked in his garage.
The last time he checked, his i8 was silver.
And he had sold it to Helen Hu to turn into cash as part of the reward money for the safe return of Claude O’Hanlon.
The Atlantic sun was slowly rising, casting more daylight on that green sports car taking up space where it didn’t belong.
He glanced at his watch. It was 7:14 a.
m.
He had left Emmeline’s house around one o’clock in the morning. They had chatted a bit more sitting on the front steps of the house, Sebastian drinking coffee and listening to Emmeline talk about her brother.
When he reached St. Simon’s Island, he had stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner to have some breakfast. He hadn’t planned on sitting there for more than half an hour, but checking his email, he had lost track of time.
He had been thinking about sleeping all day until he opened the automatic garage door and saw the car.
Maybe he should have driven away, but something made him get out of the vehicle.
The front door of his house swung open.
“Hi handsome!” Talia waltzed out in a sheer nightgown, with nothing underneath.
Help me, God.
For the first time in Sebastian’s life, he felt uncomfortable with Talia, as if he was betraying Emmeline.
Wait a minute.
This is my house.
“How did you get into my house?” Sebastian asked.
“Celeste let me in.”
“Celeste?” Sebastian’s part-time housekeeper only worked on Fridays. Today was Monday. “She came here to let you in?”
“I’ve been here since Friday.” Talia pouted. “I waited for your all weekend. Where have you been?”
“Out of town. Why are you here, Talia?” Sebastian didn’t move from his SUV, but Talia was coming closer. “Stop right there.”
Her nightgown fluttered in the morning breeze, and threatened to slide off her shoulders.
“What are you doing here, Talia? I didn’t invite you.”
“Invite? I’ve been coming and going whenever I want for years.” Talia looked hurt. “I was shocked—so shoked!—last Friday when you changed the locks. Why did you? How could you?”
“We broke up six or seven months ago now. You moved on with Jared. You’re no longer welcomed here.”
“I’m back, Seb.” She moved. “I slept in your bed for the last three nights.”
What does that mean?
“What about Jared?” Sebastian asked.
“I dumped him. Or he dumped me. Whatever. It’s over between us.” Talia started to look sad. “He didn’t want the liability.”
