Oceans Apart (32 page)

“I’m good, but I’ve missed you.” He removed one arm and pointed the way into the house. “And how about those grandbabies of mine?”

“They’re not babies anymore.” Michele followed him into the house and onto a sofa in the front room. Loren sat in an adjacent recliner. “Elizabeth’s ten and Susan’s eight. They’re getting taller every day.”

“I bet they’re beautiful. Just like their mother.” 246

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There it was again, and this time Michele was certain. It wasn’t old age or her imagination. Connor’s father had a softness in his eyes that couldn’t be explained by something as simple as the passing of time.

She searched his face, looking for clues. “What’s new with you, Loren? You look different somehow.”

He cocked his head and winked at her. “Evans men age well, that’s all.”

“You’ve been keeping busy, then?”

“Actually . . . I’ve been hanging out with the church crowd.” He gave her a smile that warmed the room. “Going to service each week, reading the Bible, walking with the Lord.” The smile faded.

“Praying for Connor.”

Michele was glad she was sitting down. She had always liked Connor’s father. But even when his wife was alive, he’d only gone to church once in a while to please her. Before their fallout, Loren’s lack of faith was one of Connor’s gravest concerns.

And now—despite the season of pain and separation between father and son—God had brought Loren into a place of believing.

The reality of what had happened shot a thrill through her, one she had hardly expected from their visit.

“So how is he, Michele?” Loren settled back into his recliner and lifted the footrest. “Any closer to breaking?” Michele folded her hands and looked to the deeper places of Loren’s heart. “I think he might be further than ever.” She bit her lip, warding off the tears that already threatened her voice. “Things aren’t so good, Loren.”

He pursed his lips and gave a single nod. “I didn’t think so.

Something in your voice yesterday.”

“He and the kids are camping this week. Our annual trip to the lake.”

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“And you’re here with your sister?” A shadow fell across his expression. “Then it’s worse than I thought.”

“Yes.”

Loren returned the footrest to its normal position and slid to the edge of his chair. “Tell me about it, Michele. I want to know.” She hated telling the story, hated the way it drained her and confirmed her new reality all at the same time. Her eyes held his until she found the courage to speak. “Connor had an affair.” Loren’s reaction played across his eyes like one of those animated billboard signs. Shock, then hurt, then anger. Proof that Loren still had a tough attitude reserved for Connor. “Whatever was the boy thinking?”

“It was eight years ago, right after the two of you, well, after the two of you stopped talking.”

Connor’s father closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he looked as if he’d aged two years in as many seconds. “Has it happened since?”

“No. Connor says it hasn’t, and I believe him, crazy as that sounds.”

Loren made a fist with one hand and covered it with the other.

He exhaled hard. “So, he kept it from you all these years?”

“Yes.” Michele blinked so she could see through the wetness that had gathered in her eyes. “He wouldn’t have told me at all, but we got a phone call a few weeks ago from an attorney in Hawaii.”

“Hawaii?”

“That’s where he had the affair.” Michele rattled off the details as she knew them, up to and including Kiahna’s death in the plane crash. After a few minutes she came to the point. “Connor has a son, Loren. A boy named Max Riley. He’s seven years old, and he’s with Connor and the girls right now.”

Loren’s face grew several shades paler. “He got the girl pregnant?” 248

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“Yes.” Michele used the sleeve of her blazer to dab at her tears.

“He didn’t know until now.”

“Connor always wanted a son.” The man’s words sounded like he was in a trance, the facts not even close to settling in yet. “And now . . . is he . . . is he going to live with you?”

“Connor wants that, I know he does.” Michele felt her chin quiver. “But I don’t think I can do it, Loren. Every time I see the boy I think of his mother.”

“He looks like her?” Connor’s father was spellbound, as shocked by the news as Margie had been.

“No.” She sniffed. “He looks like Connor.” Her eyes held his.

“Actually he looks a lot like you, Loren. But his eyes are green like hers, and . . . I don’t know what to do.”

“Does Connor know how you feel?”

“Of course.” She lifted her hands and let them fall again. “Honestly . . . I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”

“Hmm.” He stood, crossed the room, and sat down beside her.

“I’m sorry, Michele. So sorry. For all of Connor’s stubborn pilot personality, I never thought he’d be unfaithful. He was never that kind of man.”

“I didn’t think so, either.”

He patted her knee. “I guess I have something else to pray about, don’t I?”

“Yes.” She peered up at him through fresh tears. “Pray for Connor to change his mind about the boy. And pray for me. That I’ll hear what God’s trying to tell me, okay, Loren?” For a long time he looked at her. Then he stroked his chin and his eyes grew thoughtful. “Sometimes the thing He’s telling us is not what we expect.”

The man’s words settled like rocks in Michele’s heart. If he meant that maybe God wanted her to keep the boy, she wanted to tell him he was wrong. But before she could answer back, Loren 249

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smiled and patted her knee again. “I didn’t even offer you something to eat.”

<

The moment Michele pulled out of the driveway, Loren knew.

Eighteen months of praying about his relationship with Connor convinced him that what had happened in the past few weeks, the revelation of his son’s affair, the reality of the little boy, were not mere random events. Rather they were part of an intricate plan God was working in Connor’s life.

Perhaps in all their lives.

His first instinct was to work on Michele, wear down her bitterness, convince her that perhaps the little boy should be part of their lives after all. But after sharing a cup of coffee with her, he recognized something about that option. It was self-serving.

Because deep in his heart he loved the picture of one day—before his own death—reconciling with Connor and meeting his grandson. The only boy to carry on the Evans name.

Toward the end of his visit with his daughter-in-law, he silently asked God about it.
Tell me, Lord, what do I say to make her change
her mind?

Son . . . be still and know that I am God. My ways are not your ways.

Often since that amazing Christmas, Loren had sensed God putting a knowing in his spirit, his soul. Not audible words or even a direct voice, really, but an understanding that the thought currently on the stage of his mind had been sent straight from heaven.

But this time . . . this time the words were so clear, Loren couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder. At almost the same time he realized what had happened. No one behind him had spoken, but rather God was determined to make His point.

Be still and know that I am God . . . My ways are not your ways . . .

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Both Bible verses had come up in his reading over the past two months, but now, put together, they formed a message that stopped Loren in his tracks. No question what God wanted him to glean from the words. Though with all his being he wanted to be in control here, help Michele accept Connor’s son and find a way to make everyone come together, God wanted him to let that idea go and instead to consider what was best.

For heaven’s sake, not his own.

And so for the rest of Michele’s visit, up to and including the moment when she pulled out of the driveway, Loren thought through the scenario. Michele wasn’t being selfish, not really. On a practical note, she and Connor had decided long ago that two children were enough. She ran her own business and would hardly have time for one more set of homework papers, one more load of laundry.

And this wasn’t any other child. It was—as Michele had said—

a boy with his mother’s eyes, one who would be a constant reminder of Connor’s unfaithfulness. Maybe it was Connor who was being selfish in wanting to keep the child. Maybe the greatest way he could show his love for Michele and the girls would be to give the boy up.

Then there was the boy.

At first Loren thought that having him stay with Connor and Michele was the best situation for him. But was it?

The child had spent all his life in Hawaii. He had friends there, and—in the attorney and his wife, and the older baby-sitter—the boy had adults who cared a great deal for him. The sum of it made up his home, the place where he would best remember his mother and feel connected to his past.

These thoughts, all of them, came as Loren allowed God to bring them. Not as some sort of wishful thinking or attempt to 251

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manipulate the outcome, but quiet and slow and true. The way God often brought His ways into focus.

As Michele left that afternoon, Loren’s understanding of what God wanted from them was not only clear, it was urgent. Urgent enough that as he caught his reflection in the entryway mirror, he felt a sureness well up inside him, a prodding of what he had to do next.

It was something drastic, something he wouldn’t have considered doing earlier that day or any other time in the past eight years.

He would have to wait until Monday, of course, until the camping trip was over and his son was back home with his three children.

But then he would do it, because if God wanted him to, then even a pilot’s pride couldn’t stop him.

Come Monday afternoon he would do the one thing that—in light of the recent events—truly could change all their lives forever.

He would call his son.

252

TWENTY-SEVEN

Max liked fishing, but he liked sitting beside Mr. Evans even better.

It was the last day of their camping trip, and he and Mommy’s friend had an idea that they wouldn’t fish in their chairs. ’Lizabeth and Susan found some friends and so they were swimming. Susan said it was ’cause sometimes even tomboy girls got tired of putting worms on a hook.

But Max wasn’t tired at all. His mommy always said she would teach him to fish. She said it when he was five and when he was six and later when it turned to summer. But she didn’t. Mr. Evans said because she ran out of time, that’s why. And now that the camping trip was almost up, Max and Mr. Evans were running out of time, too.

So that morning Mr. Evans smiled at him and roughed up his hair. “What about something different today, Max?” Max wasn’t sure what that meant, but he shrugged his shoulders very big and said, “Sure.” Because he trusted Mommy’s friend about everything.

The different thing was that today he and Mr. Evans took their fishing stuff down the beach to the big rock, the one he’d found a few days ago when he wanted to talk to God about his mommy.

The rock was tall and warm and just enough bumpy so that they could sit on it side by side and do their fishing.

Catching fish was really cool, cooler than he ever thought it would be. But sitting beside Mr. Evans was better because they could talk about lots of things. Things like Ramey and Buddy and the stuff he would miss most about his mommy. Mr. Evans didn’t treat him like a kid, because guess what? He really listened! His 253

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eyes and face told Max that he wanted to know the things Max was saying.

And that felt better than catching fish.

Another thing was that his arm was up against Mr. Evans’s arm ever since they climbed up and sat on the rock. Mommy’s friend had big arms with strong muscles in them. Next to him, Max felt safe.

Sometimes he even pretended Mr. Evans was his daddy.

That’s the thing he was thinking about right now. Because maybe he would never find his own daddy, but if Mr. Evans would let him get Buddy and come back to Florida, maybe he could stay there and pretend forever that Mr. Evans was his daddy. ’Lizabeth and Susan liked him better now, and maybe Mrs. Evans wouldn’t be mad at him when they got back from the trip. So maybe it could work out.

At breakfast that morning he made a secret plan about that idea.

A secret plan was when you had a thing in your head but didn’t tell anyone else, not even grown-ups.

His secret plan was to talk to Mr. Evans that day and ask him if he was really good and if Buddy didn’t bark very much, could they come and live there forever.

Now, sitting on the rock with their arms touching, Max swallowed hard. It was time. The secret plan had to happen now, because there might not be another chance.

“Mr. Evans?” Max had on one of the man’s baseball caps so he didn’t have to use his hand as a shield. He squinted up at his mommy’s friend. “I have a question.”

“Okay, Max.” Mr. Evans moved his fishing rod to his other hand, and then Max felt the man’s strong arm come around his shoulders. He hoped his question wouldn’t make Mr. Evans mad because he didn’t want him to take his arm away. Not for a long 254