“He’s doing very poorly. He had a massive heart attack and has been in surgery for hours. Are you satisfied?”
Silvano said nothing.
“Don’t you get it, Silvano? Everything you are trying to do is about getting more, more, more. And Ev MacAllister is about less—giving away what he doesn’t need, choosing to live on less, sacrificing for people he loves and for people in need, refusing all the glitzy things the world offers.” She took a breath. “And all because that old man is so convinced that there is a God and He is in control and that nothing,
nothing
in life is a coincidence. He believes it’s all planned and allowed, and if we let Him, this God will take all the horrible things and use them for good.”
Lissa looked more shocked by her outburst than Silvano. “You see, I’ve gotten to know Mr. MacAllister,” she continued. “He and Annie live what they believe. They’re different, Silvano. A really good kind of different. Keeping their anonymity is a part of that difference.
“So please, please don’t publish the story. Just leave him alone. I’m sorry for your family, but surely exposing a kind old man to something he detests isn’t worth it. He has good reasons to want to remain anonymous. Let it go.” She stood up. “I don’t know why all these things are happening right now. All I know is that I believe what Mr. MacAllister says is true. He says that life isn’t random and that I shouldn’t ignore coincidence in my life. It all means something, Silvano. Something important.”
Silvano watched Lissa leave the cafeteria, her arm bandaged but a gutsy determination in her voice. He waited for five minutes, then walked out of the cafeteria, down the steps, and out the door to his car.
________
Janelle expected at any minute for the doctor to step into the waiting room, shattering the night with bad news, just as it had happened two years ago. She turned her eyes back down to the manuscript in her lap. She had felt compelled to take it when the young girl Lissa had offered it to her to help her pass the time.
She was a teenager, sitting in the car with her father. He was throwing in another one of his analogies. “Life is like driving a car, Nelli. You think you have everything figured out. You know how the car works, you are paying attention to the road, minding your own business, when from out of nowhere another car slams into you and you go reeling… .”
Yes! Yes, exactly! Life was like that.
Janelle and Brian had followed all the directions from the mission agency. They had gone through every detail of schooling and raising support and studying the culture and learning the language. They had given up so much and were ready, eager for the adventure of their life— reaching out to Muslims in France.
And then, out of nowhere, tragedy! At a church retreat with the Mediterranean gleaming in the background, while the adults sang and worshiped God, while the baby-sitters watched the children, Josh toddled off toward the hotel pool. Teenaged girls laughing and giggling together, chasing the kids in the field and then realizing that one was missing. Rushing frantically to search inside, then behind the hotel, until they found him, a three-year-old floating facedown in a sparkling blue pool.
No time to pray, no time to petition Almighty God. One minute Josh was laughing that cherubic laugh, the next minute Brian was pulling him out of the pool, leaning over that tiny lifeless body, pressing his lips to the little face.
Janelle threw down the manuscript, hurried out of the waiting room, and took the steps down to the ground floor. She ran out into the parking lot, anger seething in her mind.
You let him die, God! You didn’t even give me a chance to save him through my prayers. You didn’t give me a chance!
She turned her head up to the black sky and stared at the stars.
If only you had given me the chance to choose! I would have given up anything, Lord, to keep Josh here.
In a flash, the oh-so-familiar Bible verse sprang into her mind.
For God so loved the world that He gave …
The thought struck Janelle like the force of the mistral slapping her face on a windy fall afternoon in Montpellier. God
did
have a choice. He didn’t have to let his Son die, yet He chose to. He made the most horrible choice a parent could ever conceive of and allowed His Son to die. That old familiar truth suddenly seemed to Janelle like a revelation as fresh as sheets drying in the breeze. God made His choice out of love for humankind … out of love for
her
.
She sank to her knees right there in the parking lot. “That is a love I know nothing about, Lord. My love will cover and protect and save, but your love will give up and sacrifice for something so much bigger. I cannot understand it.” She stayed on her knees for a long time, until at last she whispered, “I don’t understand. I never will. But I accept. I accept it, Lord.”
She felt her Savior’s eyes looking down on her, promising to care for her, even in her anger and all that did not make sense in this life.
She thought of something her father used to say:
In God’s economy, even those who mourn are blessed.
________
It was eleven o’clock when Lissa left the hospital with Janelle and Gina. Katy Lynn and Annie had agreed to take the first night watch at the hospital. In silence, with Janelle driving the Buick, the three women rode back to the MacAllister house. As they turned into the driveway, Lissa saw her father’s BMW parked there. She braced herself for the onslaught of anger and humiliation.
He was sitting on the porch swing, his face partly turned so that the car’s headlights illuminated it. She wondered how long he had been sitting there, waiting to drag her home against her will. She got out of the car and forced her legs to move forward.
He was at her side before she had taken two steps.
“Lissa. Oh, Liss, I was so worried.”
But instead of anger, his voice sounded broken. Then she saw his face. There were tears sliding down her dad’s pudgy face. He didn’t try to hug her, but reached out in a pitiful gesture and brushed her arm.
“I’m sorry.” He choked it out. “I never blamed you, Lissa. Of course it was an accident, a horrible accident. And I was afraid. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too. I thought if I took the horse away, if I convinced you to do something safe and, and normal, then I could protect you.”
He hesitated, then said it again. “I wanted to protect you, Lissa. I just didn’t know how.”
In the silence Lissa remembered the accident she’d had with Caleb years before.
Caleb stumbling before the jump, crashing into the fence, the bright poles splintering and dispersing around them. Caleb’s hooves barely missing her face as she was thrown in front of the horse. Staring up into her father’s horrified face as he knelt over her, crying, “Lissa! Lissa!” and “Get an ambulance! Somebody get an ambulance!”
She stood facing him now, but what she heard was her mother’s voice.
“Lissa, I know you are disappointed that your father isn’t here to see you, but you know how nervous he gets. He can’t watch his little girl jumping those high fences. He’s so proud of you … but it’s hard for him to watch… .”
“The only way I could think to protect you was to forbid you to ride. Lissa, I couldn’t bear to lose you and your mother both.”
Lissa reached out and placed her hand on her father’s shoulder to steady herself. His words came from another dream.
“You’re all I have, Liss. You’re all I have.”
She did not know how he got his wooden arms around her, but when he embraced her, she let her good arm close around his broad back. Over his shoulder, Lissa saw Gina and Janelle standing back by the car.
After a moment she said, “Daddy, this is Mr. and Mrs. MacAllister’s daughter Janelle and their granddaughter, Gina.”
He nodded with a grim smile, and they exchanged brief greetings. Janelle unlocked the door and went inside, with Gina following her and calling out, “Bye, Lissa.”
“Please call me in the morning,” Lissa said. “Annie has our number. Let me know how he’s doing.”
To her father she quickly explained where she’d been.
He seemed dazed. Then her words registered, and he mumbled, “I’m so sorry.” He hugged her again. “I thought you had run the car off the mountain. And it would have been all my fault.”
All my fault.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean it. Those things I said.”
They got in the BMW and drove back to Lookout Mountain in silence.
________
Silvano was driving over eighty on I-75. He wanted to get back to Decatur fast. What a day! What a long day. The old man might die in the night. What would that do to his story? Lessen the impact? Perhaps not, if he wrote the article immediately.
Beloved Anonymous Author Dies. Newest novel published posthumously with a surprising twist—the man behind S. A. Green.
Yes, that could work. He started writing the article in his mind.
But all he could hear was Lissa’s voice.
Don’t publish that article. Please. Please.
Man, he was tired. He needed more caffeine. He turned off the expressway at a truck stop, went into the little station, and bought himself a cup of coffee.
“I don’t suppose you have any espresso?”
The heavy-set man at the cash register laughed. “No, we don’t do Italian, mister. That’s Rome,
Georgia
, just up the road a piece.”
Several truckers laughed with him.
Silvano didn’t smile. He got his coffee, grabbed a pack of gum, and paid the cashier. Beside the cash register, a metal rack was filled with paperback novels. Front and middle was
Eastern Crossings
.
What is a book published in 1960 doing on a paperback rack at a truck stop?
Silvano glared at the novel.
Enough already! Leave me alone, will you?
Had he said that out loud?
Non ne posso piu!
Was he cracking up? Couldn’t he get away from S. A. Green?
He’s told me I shouldn’t ignore coincidence in my life. It means something.
He
was
cracking up.
What did it mean? What in the whole wide world did all of this mean?
________
The news came somewhere around midnight when the doctor met Katy Lynn and Annie in the waiting room. His face was grim as he said, “He’s beginning to wake up, but he is very weak. The surgery didn’t go as well as we had hoped. I have to tell you it doesn’t look good. I think you should come in and see him. But you may only stay a few minutes.”
Katy Lynn’s fresh tears were completely unplanned. She went to her father’s side and took his hand. “Please don’t die, Dad, before I get to talk to you. There are so many things we need to say to each other.
Please, Daddy.”
He did not open his eyes, but acknowledged her hand in his with a squeeze.
Katy Lynn bent down low and whispered, “I love you, Daddy. I love you and forgive you. And I want you to know that I will always be your princess.”
Later she slipped into the little chapel, got on her knees as she had seen her father do when she was a child, and prayed, “God. I haven’t talked to you in a long, long time. Daddy always used to say that things happen for a reason. Make sense of this, God, and if you could spare us our crazy old father for a few more years, we’d appreciate it.”
________
Ev came in and out of consciousness, hearing the whispered voice of his daughter. He tried to answer, but he could not. Instead, he could only listen. Katy Lynn’s confession settled on him softly, peacefully. She forgave him. That was enough. He could go now.
When Annie bent down, he smelled the scent of the woman he had loved for forty-four years, the scent of hard work and flowers. She was struggling not to cry, but he could always tell by the way her voice rose a notch and she sniffed too often.
“Please hold on. You can be so stubborn. Won’t you be stubborn about staying here, boyfriend? I know you’re ready, but I sure would like to have you beside me for a few more years. And the girls would too. Don’t worry about anything. Just rest and hold on.”
He answered her in his mind.
You always say that, Annie. Are you planning on keeping me around forever? Girlfriend, don’t you worry anymore either. Let that young reporter have his story. If we’re found out, what does it matter? We had all these good years, girlfriend. All these good years.
He had always heard there was a bright light before death, but he didn’t see one.
He was young and proud, surrounded by eager people, friends, fans, reporters, all toasting his success—with literature, with ladies, with life. Adrenaline filled him up and bubbled over and delighted him, like champagne.
Then the room started spinning, spinning away from him, out of reach.
He was a grown man, an old man. But he was so small, sitting in the lap of the Creator, holding on to Him as Katy Lynn had held to Ev when she was a little girl. They were having a conversation; Almighty God was listening to him as he admitted the truth.
“You know how much I loved the spotlight! I loved it! I’m glad I left it, but you know that deep down I still missed that other life. It’s taken me a lifetime to get over myself, hasn’t it? I’m so sorry.”
And the Father was consoling him, whispering, “You used your gift; you kept your promise; you did a good job. A very good job. Well done. Well done, my child.”
Ev felt warm and reassured. He was still crying, but it turned into a deep, burning laughter, a laughter that he felt might go on forever, uncontrollable, spontaneous, sparkling and pure. “Oh, Lord, it was such a small, small sacrifice. It was worth it, worth it, worth it …”
There was Tate as a little girl, laughing, giggling. Then Katy Lynn toddled over and then Janelle … children, happy children with the sound of laughter singing into his subconscious. And Annie was laughing too. She was spinning around in her blue jeans, her silver hair shining with sunbeams. She could not stop laughing, and as she laughed she kept saying, “Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend …”
Words from his own pen drifted into his memory:
When the time comes, you will be ready. You’ll be ready to drive off into a whole new world.