She'd been gone almost ten minutes, and Aaron was bound to wonder about her. Holding tight to the direction God had given her, she rounded the corner and found a smile. Aaron was watching for her as she walked up.
“Long line?”
Lying would be the easy way out. She shook her head. “Not really.” One of the drinks in her hands was his, and she handed it to him. Then she took the spot beside him on the bleachers and looked for Sierra.
“She's over there.” Aaron pointed to the shallow end where a group of girls Sierra's age were playing a game.
“Thanks.” She glanced at Sierra and saw her stand on the side of the pool, her legs long and skinny. One of the girls in the pool motioned for her to jump, but she looked for Jamie first. Their eyes met, and Jamie waved, just as Sierra did a cannonball into the water and came up laughing.
Jamie set her drink down. “Aaron …”
“Uh-oh.” His smile didn't hide the regret in his voice. “Here it comes. The part where you tell me you've thought it over and you only want to be friends, right?”
She was about to explain herself but he kept on.
“Look, Jamie.” As a fire captain for the FDNY, Aaron had to be one of the toughest leaders in the department. And, from everything Jake had ever said about him, he was. But now his eyes were kinder than she'd ever seen them. “I never meant to pressure you. It's just …” He lifted his hands and let them fall again. “I guess I never would've known if I hadn't said something.”
The awkwardness from earlier that morning seemed ridiculous now. Her sudden fear of him was a slip back to the old Jamie—who was so often motivated by a paralyzing fear. The new Jamie, who believed in God's plan for her life, hadn't had to deal with fear in nearly three years.
Until Aaron told her he had feelings for her.
“You're not saying anything.” Aaron cocked his head. “I can take a lot, Jamie. But I can't take losing your friendship.” He reached for her hand, squeezed it once, and let go. “Okay, say something.”
“I will.” Her heart swelled with feelings—care or concern or friendship. Or something more, Jamie wasn't sure. “You're right, I have thought it over. But I'm not sure I want only a friendship, Aaron. I don't know what I want. I feel crazy saying it's too soon.” She allowed a sad laugh. “Three years is a long time, I know that. But in here—” her hand rested on the place above her heart—“I'm not ready to love someone else. At least, I don't think I am.”
Aaron sucked in his cheek and narrowed his eyes. He watched Sierra for a minute, splashing near one of the pool's smaller slides. “So … you haven't completely written off the idea?”
“No.” This time Jamie gave him a sideways hug. The sensation wasn't strange or awkward. In fact, it felt nice. Safe and warm, if not quite electric. She kept her fingers cupped around his shoulder and waited until he looked at her before letting go. “I care a lot about you, Aaron. I love having you there, talking with you—” she gestured toward the pool—“being together on days like this. It feels right, it feels like it could be more serious one day.”
Aaron slid closer to her so that their arms were touching. “That's more than enough for me.” He looked at Sierra again, and the hint of a smile played in his voice.
Now that the awkward feeling was gone, Jamie realized something. She wasn't only enjoying his company, she was enjoying the feel of his body against her arm.
A handful of emotions raced around in Jamie's heart. How terrible she was to enjoy the physical contact of a man who had been Jake's boss, his mentor; how awful that she could ever find another man's company, his presence, enjoyable. And the most dominant emotion—how good she felt, now that they'd talked things out, with him at her side.
She ignored the pangs of guilt and leaned into him for a few seconds. “Thanks for understanding.”
“I know you, Jamie.” He glanced at her and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. Then, just as quickly, he straightened and shot another look at Sierra. “I knew you'd need time. I just wanted you to know how I felt.”
She remembered Sue's warning, that Aaron could never be right for her as long as he didn't share her faith. Never mind his age or the fact that he'd been Jake's boss. If he didn't believe in Christ the way she did, what depth could they ever share together?
This would be the time to say something about it, to ask if he would ever be interested in learning more about God, maybe going to church with her. But somehow the subject didn't seem to fit. Besides, Jake had never pushed her toward God. He'd lived out his faith every day of his life. Maybe it was her turn to do that where Aaron was concerned.
She remembered the holy whispers in her heart a few minutes earlier. God wanted her to be still and wait. Didn't that mean waiting before making faith an issue with Aaron? Besides, she didn't want to upset him, didn't want him to slide back down the bench from her.
“I like this. Sitting with you like this.”
“Me too.” He gave her an understanding smile. “As long as we don't think about getting serious just yet, right?”
“Right.”
In the distance, Sierra climbed out of the pool and grabbed her towel. It was clear by her actions she was about to run toward them—probably needing something to eat or drink. Panic shot through Jamie. It was one thing to sit this way when Sierra wasn't looking, when she was too far away to make out exactly how close Jamie was sitting next to Aaron. But to have her daughter run up and see them … that was more than Jamie was ready for.
She nodded in Sierra's direction. “I think I'll get her a drink. Want anything else?”
“I'm fine.” The look in Aaron's eyes told her he understood, and better still, he was at peace with her actions.
Before she turned and went to meet Sierra, she smiled once more at him. “Thanks, Aaron. I … I feel so much better about things.”
“Me too.”
The awkwardness and angst and even the guilt lifted as Jamie walked away. Her steps were lighter than they'd been in a long time. And throughout lunch, only one thought about Aaron remained.
How kind and understanding he'd been through this new phase in their friendship, and how maybe—one day not too far off—his kindness might open doors to a place she would never before have considered.
EIGHT
The angry butterflies were back. Sierra was dressed for bed and heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth, but all she could think about was the talk. This was the night she was going to talk to Mommy about the thing Katy said, the thing about their daddies and the helmets.
“Sierra, are you in your nightgown?” Mommy was in her room folding some towels.
“Yes.” Sierra did a gulp.
“Did you brush your teeth?”
“That's what I'm doing right now.”
“Okay, sweetie, I'll be there in a minute to pray with you.” Mommy's voice was happy, the way it sounded ever since the swimming at Chelsea Piers.
Why was she so happy? Was it because of a fun day out with Sierra? Or was it Captain Hisel? Captain Hisel was nice, but Sierra wasn't sure. He wasn't like her daddy at all, and that's another reason why the angry butterflies were in her tummy.
A boy named James in her class at school lost his firefighter daddy. And last summer his mommy got married again, so now James had a new daddy. No, not a new daddy, but a second daddy.
Sierra walked into the bathroom and made a face at the mirror. She didn't want a new daddy. But sometimes she looked at James and thought how lucky he was because now he had a second daddy. And that wouldn't be so bad, but not Captain Hisel. He was old and he didn't talk to her or play with her the way a second daddy should.
“Ready, honey?” More happy voice.
Sierra jumped. “Almost.” She took the cap off the toothpaste and set it careful on the counter. Sometimes if she wasn't careful the cap rolled onto the floor and once when that happened she couldn't find it again. Then she squeezed out a pea-sized spot on her pink Barbie toothbrush, because before she used t
o put a whole caterpillar size on but then it would grow inside her mouth and come out the sides. When that happened it usually got on her nightgown, so Mommy said use a pea size.
Thinking about her teeth made her tummy feel a little better. Her toothbrush was the best kind. It had a little motor on it. She put the bristly end in her mouth and pushed the white button. The toothbrush wiggled and jiggled and cleaned every tooth sparkly clean. Sierra spit out the old toothpaste and rinsed out her brush.
She was just looking for one of her dinosaur flossers when Mommy walked in and leaned by the door. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Sierra didn't look up. She found a new flosser, opened it up, and pushed it between her teeth. That way she didn't have to start having the talk with Mommy just yet.
When she was finished, she put everything away, and dried the wet spots off her face. “Okay. I'm ready.”
“Well.” Her mommy lifted her eyebrows high and looked at the sink area. “That's the neatest teeth-brushing job I've ever seen.”
“Thank you.” Sierra stood perfectly still, feet together, and waited. “Can we go to my room now?”
“Sure.” A strange look was in her mommy's eyes. “Everything okay, honey?”
“Yes.” Her tummy did a drop. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. She followed her mommy across the hall and into her own pink bedroom. Then she flopped up on her ruffly bed and let her feet hang over the edge. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Her mommy still sounded happy, even though she looked curious. She sat on the bed too, up near the pillows. She pulled her feet up and hugged her legs. “What's up?”
Sierra turned so she could see her mommy better. “Katy said something weird when we were at her house.”
Right away Mommy got a funny look on her face. “Something weird?”
“Mmhmm.” She nodded. “She told me how come my daddy didn't die in the Twin Towers if he was with her daddy.”
Her mommy's mouth opened, but no words came out. Also her face looked a little whitish. Finally she said, “Well, Sierra, that's a good question.”
Good question was what Mommy said when she didn't want to give an answer. At least not a quick answer. Sierra made sure her tone was nice. “So what's the answer?”
“That was a very hard time for everyone, honey. Nothing that happened was easy to understand.” Her mommy leaned her head back for a minute. When she looked at Sierra again, her eyes were wet. “God knows exactly when each person will come home to heaven. I guess that's my best answer.”
Sierra tapped her fingers on her leg. Her mommy's words still didn't feel like an answer, really. “So that's why he didn't die when Katy's daddy died?”
“Sierra, why did Katy start talking about that? What brought it up?”
“The helmets.”
This time Mommy looked sickish around her eyes. Her voice got quiet and shocked. “The helmets?”
Her daddy's fire helmet sat on her dresser. It was cleaned off because it got dirty in the fire where Daddy died. It sat right next to the picture of her and Daddy from one of the days after he came home from the hospital. He had bandages on his head, and crutches. The picture was special, just like every picture Sierra had of her daddy. But the helmet was the most specialest thing Sierra owned. Katy had one too.
“That.” Sierra pointed to the helmet. “Katy has one on her dresser too.”
“Yes.” Her mommy made a coughing sound. “That's because Katy's mommy felt the same way I do. That you girls should have the helmets that belonged to your daddies.”
“That's not what I mean.” Sierra shook her head. Her stomach still hurt a little but she was getting frustration inside her. “Katy says they found their helmets at the same time. When they were cleaning up the Twin Towers.”
Her mother looked at her and blinked. Then she leaned close and hugged her for a very long time. When she pulled back, her eyes said very certain that their talk was over. “Sierra, it's too late for this tonight.” She kissed her and gave her butterfly kisses, the way Daddy used to do it. “Let's talk about it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow's Halloween. And it's Sunday. I'll see Katy at Sunday school and then what if she says that thing again? What am I supposed to say?”
Her mommy looked down and said the quiet words, “Help me, God,” which Sierra did not understand. Why did her mother need God's help to answer one easy question? Next her mommy looked up and said, “Let's have church at the beach tomorrow, Sierra.”
“At the beach?”
“Yes.” Her mommy's chin was shaking a little bit. “You and me by ourselves. We'll go to the same beach where Daddy and I used to take you jet skiing, okay?”
“Won't it be too cold?”
“Probably.” Mommy did a sort-of smile. “We'll wear our sweaters and bring chairs to sit in. Then we can read from the Bible and pray and have a little talk.”
“About the helmets?” Sierra wasn't sure she could wait that long, plus she wanted to tell Katy she was wrong. It wasn't weird at all. But the part about the helmets still didn't make sense.
“Yes, about the helmets.”
“And then go to Katy's dress-up party for dinner?”
“Yes, that too.”
A good feeling came into Sierra's tummy, then. Because even though she had to wait, at least she would know the answer. She wouldn't have any more questions about her daddy or why he didn't die in the Twin Towers or how come Katy said they found his helmet next to her daddy's helmet.
After tomorrow, everything would make sense.
Jamie barely closed the door and made it to her bed before she collapsed to her knees. “God!” The sound was a whisper soaked with anguish and fear and desperation. “I'm not ready for this.”
This time there were no holy messages, no still, small voice assuring her that God was there, standing ready.
Always she had known it would come to this, that someday she would have to explain to Sierra how her father had actually been killed in the terrorist attacks. But now it seemed impossible to say the words, impossible to explain that the man she'd brought orange juice to, the man she'd sat with and sang with and read stories with for three months while he got better, hadn't been her father but a stranger.
In the years since then, Jamie had always figured she'd know when the time was right. But that wasn't really what she'd counted on. The truth was, she hoped she wouldn't have to tell Sierra until she was a teenager, eighteen maybe. That way her daughter wouldn't remember anything but a blur of hazy images from the time in her life when Eric Michaels lived with them.
But now? When she still had the picture of the man on her dresser?
She'd probably looked at it a thousand times in the last three years, and now, tomorrow on the beach, she would have to tell Sierra that the man in the picture wasn't her daddy.
I don't want to tell her, God … She hung her head. What's wrong with me? I should've said something a long time ago.
Her knees hurt. She struggled to her feet and fell onto her bed. Her own questions echoed in her heart until an answer started to form. She didn't want to tell Sierra because a part of her still wanted to believe it herself. That was the problem, wasn't it? Those were the three most difficult months of her life, and having Eric Michaels, believing he was Jake, was the only reason she'd survived.
God knew she would've crumbled much like the towers if she'd learned that week that Jake was one of the dead. So instead he brought her a substitute. A Jake look-alike.
Once she knew he wasn't Jake, she had helped him to figure out his identity. After that he'd gone home to his wife and son, but a part of her still held on to the comfort of knowing that she'd had Jake three months longer than Sue had Larry, than any of the other FDNY widows had had their husbands.
Telling Sierra the truth would change that time, alter the memories so that none of them brought comfort. How could they if the man in the memory wasn't Jake but a stranger? If she was forced to paint the situation with truth, those mem
ories would be shocking, abrasive. How could she have mixed them up? What was wrong with her that she could sit and talk and eat and laugh with a stranger and all the while think him Jake?
No matter that a part of her wanted to tell Sierra the truth. It was easier the way she'd chosen to deal with it.
For three months she'd had Jake back, almost the way she'd always had him. And then, overnight, he turned into someone else, someone with a family in Los Angeles. Before he found his wife and son, she wished he never would, that somehow she could keep him. Even after she helped him find his family, even at the airport with his wife about to get off a plane and take him home, Jamie wanted to grab his hand and run away with him.
But that would've been wrong. First, because the man belonged with his family; second, because he wasn't Jake.
Even now, it felt like Jake had been with them. Eric had done such a good job of studying Jake's Bible, his journal, that as the weeks passed he actually sounded like Jake and acted like him. He even learned to curl Sierra's hair the same way Jake would've curled it.
He was like Jake in every way. But he wasn't Jake.
When Eric Michaels said good-bye, Jamie felt God's peace like never before. She watched him walk away, kept her eyes on him while he went to his wife and hugged her, then Jamie turned around without ever looking back. She had kept her promise and told only Sue and Aaron. The media called often back then, but she shared the story with no one.
Jamie stared at the ceiling. What had she done? Were her efforts to close the door on Eric Michaels so good, she'd forgotten to work through her emotions? She'd broken down when they had his blood tested, the day they realized he wasn't Jake. But her grieving had been over losing Jake, not about believing a stranger was her husband.
She looked at the clock. Nine-forty-five; Sue would still be up. The cordless phone was a few feet away, off the charging unit as usual. Jamie grabbed it and punched in Sue's number.
Her friend answered on the first ring. “Hello?”