Jamie’s confidence grew. She lowered herself to the porch and sat cross-legged, facing him. “I’m sorry … about the shooting.”
“Yeah. It happens.” Alex stroked the top of Bo’s head, his eyes on his dog. “I don’t really need time off, you know.”
She thought about her years at St. Paul’s Chapel, how driven she’d been never to miss a day in her quest to bring meaning to Jake’s death. A car drove by and the distraction gave Jamie time to gather her courage. When it passed, her voice filled with a depth that hadn’t been there before. “I understand, Alex. More than you know.”
He looked at her, his eyes narrowed just enough that his unspoken question was as clear as if he’d said the words.
Jamie held his gaze. “I know about your father. How he died.”
Alex’s expression hardened. “I’m over it. A lot of people died that day.”
“Including my first husband. He was FDNY.” It still hurt to say the words. “He died in the Twin Towers.”
For the first time since he had come into their lives, the walls around Alex’s heart crumbled just a little. Jamie could see the change in his eyes. “You … were married to a firefighter?”
“Yes.” She drew up her knees and hugged them to her chest. “His name was Jake Bryan.”
“How come …” he turned his eyes straight ahead again. “… Clay never said anything?”
“Wanda too. Her husband was a firefighter in New York.” Alex sat straighter, his back rigid, eyes wide and unblinking. “I never … I had no idea.” Slowly he regained some of his composure. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“The guys thought it would scare you off.” Jamie could feel the sadness in her half-smile. “Too much pain.”
He was quiet, processing the information. “So why tell me now? What brought you out here?”
Jamie breathed in slowly, allowing God to turn her thoughts into words. “For a long time, I’ve wondered whether your father might’ve known my first husband.” She looked out past the rooftops of the houses across the street. “Wanda and I have talked about it, and there was no connection between her husband and Jake. But I wasn’t sure about your father.”
“What would it matter?” The muscles in Alex’s jaw flexed. “They would still be gone.”
Bo must’ve heard a change in Alex’s tone. The dog lifted his head long enough to size up the conversation. When he was satisfied everything was okay, he stretched out again.
Jamie’s heart pounded harder than before, and she tried to find the right words. She wanted to tell him it mattered because the terrorists were still waging war seven years later, right here in Alex’s heart and soul. But she didn’t want to make him run. “My husband kept a journal. For years while he worked for the FDNY, he wrote about his thoughts and … and the people he met.” She felt Jake’s loss like a knife that never quite dislodged from inside her. “He had a very strong faith.”
Alex released a quick, angry-sounding sigh and stood, restless. “Ma’am? I guess I don’t get it. Why are you telling me this?”
Bo lifted his head again, alert and ready, his eyes locked on his master.
“Call me Jamie.” Her tone remained kind, unshaken. She dropped her knees back to the cross-legged position. “Please sit back down. I have something to tell you.”
He paced a few steps toward the walkway, and then back again. “Ma’am … Jamie …” He stopped, his struggle clearly intense. He spoke through tight jaws. “I don’t do this. I don’t talk about him.”
I feel You, God … be with him, please. A quiet strength came over her, and she watched him, undeterred. “It won’t take long.” She motioned to the spot where Alex had been sitting. “Please.”
For a few seconds, it looked like Alex might call his dog and run off without another word. Instead he breathed a few times through his nose, the battle playing out in his expression until finally he came closer and slowly lowered himself back to his spot beside Bo. He pulled up both his knees and rested his forearms there. “Go ahead.”
She tried to imagine the massive twist of anger and pain that tied up the heart of the young man across from her. The same anger and pain that bound the hearts of countless people Jamie had talked to at St. Paul’s. She leaned closer. “The other day I looked through Jake’s journal. It was a long shot, but I had to know — whether Jake knew your dad or not. Whether they’d ever talked.”
Alex looked down at his dog and waited.
“I found an entry, an entire page about your dad.” She held her breath. “They knew each other. But more than that, Jake wrote that — “
“Please.” His eyes flashed, his tone sharp. “I don’t want to hear it. There’s nothing he could’ve written that would change anything now.” His voice softened. “I’m sorry, I just …” He let the air gather in his cheeks, and he released it in a rush. At the same time, he pushed his fingers through his hair, his frustration tangible. After half a minute, he shook his head and made a sound that was half-groan, half-cry.
She didn’t know whether to apologize or argue with him, so she stayed quiet, watching him.
“Don’t you see?” His expression begged her to understand. “It’s different for you.” He motioned to the front door. “You have Clay and your kids. You have a life.” He stood and unhooked Bo from the porch post. “I have a job to do.” He waited until Bo was up and at his side. “I’m not looking for healing.” He took a step back. “Thank you for dinner. Tell the others good-bye for me.”
She stood and dusted her hands on her jeans. “Alex?”
He was already at the end of the walk, but he turned back to her. “Yes?”
“We’re praying for you.”
The sharp intensity in his gaze barely let up. He hung his head for a moment, and then nodded in her direction. “Thank you.”
That was it. He opened the back door of his truck, waited while Bo scrambled up, then climbed into the front and drove away. Jamie leaned against the post and watched him go. Well, God, that didn’t go very well.
Prayer is a powerful thing, precious Daughter … be strong, and do not give up.
The answer resonated deep within her, like a silent roar across the hills and valleys of her soul. Jamie’s knees trembled, and she leaned harder into the post so she could keep her balance. Rarely did she feel the Lord’s response so clearly. But the thought that echoed within her was exactly what she’d read in the Bible that morning. She’d known Alex was coming for dinner tonight, and she’d been wrestling with whether she should approach him about the journal entry or wait for another time — after his two-week leave, maybe, when the shooting was farther behind him. But her devotion time had been in Galatians — one of Jake’s favorite New Testament books. In Chapter six, one verse stood out. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Of course, God would whisper those very words to her now, when she felt ill-equipped and unable to reach the hurting young man who’d just driven away. The fruit of her concern for Alex would come if she did not give up. And she wouldn’t. She would get the journal entry to Alex one way or another, because that was the right thing to do. Even Clay agreed on that much.
Jamie went back in the house and returned to the dinner party. The others seemed concerned about Alex’s early departure, but after a few minutes the laughter and lighthearted talk continued. When their guests were gone, and after CJ was in bed, Sierra found Jamie and Clay in the kitchen. Her face was drawn and worried. “Wrinkles looks sick.”
“She might be tired.” Clay wiped his hands on a towel. He was the parent in charge of pet issues. It had been that way from the beginning. “It was over a hundred degrees today.” He thought a minute. “Or maybe she got into another fight.”
“I don’t see any cuts on her. And her eyes look funny.” She held her hand out to him. “Please, Daddy, come check her with me.”
Jamie watched the way Clay took hold of Sierra’s fingers and walke
d with her toward the back patio. She followed, but only because it never got old, hearing Sierra call Clay “Daddy,” and knowing that he so perfectly fit the description. She stood in the doorway and watched her husband and daughter tend to the old cat, still curled up on the nearest patio chair.
Clay ran his hand along the cat’s back, and when he reached the base of her tail, Wrinkles jerked away and let out a pained meow. “Hmmm … this might be the trouble.” He gently took hold of the cat and parted the fur near her tail. “Sure enough. Looks like she was mixing it up with the neighbor cat again.”
Sierra’s worry turned stern. “Wrinkles! What did we tell you about fighting?” She crossed her arms and frowned at the cat. “We should never let you out again!” The cat almost seemed to be listening, and Sierra lowered her face so Wrinkles had no choice but to look straight at her. “Remember when you used to play dress up, Wrinkles? You were a lady back then!”
A grin tugged at Clay’s lips but he hid it by looking at Jamie. When he had more control, he cleared his throat. “How ‘bout you hold her and I’ll get some hydrogen peroxide?”
“Wrinkles!” Sierra looked indignantly at the cat. “Thank you, Daddy. Wrinkles appreciates that very much.”
Clay was chuckling as he passed Jamie, went into the house, and came out with a spray bottle of the clear liquid. Wrinkles needed a lot of hydrogen peroxide lately. Clay returned to the place where Sierra was holding onto her cat. “Here …” He aimed a few long sprays at the troubled area and stepped back. “You can let her go. If it doesn’t look better tomorrow, we’ll take her to the vet.”
“Maybe she should be in time-out someplace.” Sierra still sounded put out by the cat’s actions. “What’cha think, Daddy?”
Jamie angled her face, touched by Clay’s obvious concern. He was such a wonderful dad, so good to the kids. No one ever would’ve known that he wasn’t Sierra’s biological father. His adoption of her simply made official what anyone else could easily see. Sierra was his daughter, no doubt.
“Well,” Clay bit his lip, again doing his best to stay serious. “Maybe we could give her another chance. She might’ve learned her lesson this time.”
Eventually Sierra agreed, and they left Wrinkles to wander off to the back of the yard. Half an hour later when Sierra was in bed, Clay and Jamie headed to the kitchen. “So,” he faced her. “How’d it go with Alex?”
A sigh slipped from her. “He wouldn’t let me tell him what I found.” She was still disappointed, but the holy encouragement she’d received earlier stayed with her. “I told him we’d pray for him.”
Clay came to her and took her in his arms. “You still think this is a good idea?”
“I think God wants me to keep at him.”
Quiet surrounded them, but Jamie could almost hear what Clay was thinking, as she sensed his deep love and understanding. “Then you do that.” He kissed her, tenderly and with a confidence that told her he was doing all he could to stand by and let her make Alex her project. “I’ll pray for him. And for you.”
Peace soothed the jagged edges leftover from her conversation with Alex, and as she did the dishes and Clay cleaned up the backyard, she analyzed the few glimpses Alex had given her of the battle that raged inside him. What stuck out most were his final words. You have a life … I have a job to do. And the last part, where he’d told her he wasn’t looking for healing. Jamie ran the hot water over another plate. Alex was telling the truth. He wasn’t looking for healing.
He was looking for revenge.
But that sort of angry hurt wouldn’t just consume him; it would kill him. It would drive him so hard that one day he’d make some dangerously heroic move on a call and get shot in the process. If not, he’d die on the inside, long before his heart stopped beating. Either way, spending his life seeking revenge would destroy him.
Jamie set another few glasses into the dishwasher. Somewhere in the life Alex Brady lived before the terrorist attacks, he must’ve had someone. His mother, for one. Perhaps he’d even been in love. Jamie felt the flicker of hope light the dark path ahead of her. That was it. She needed to contact his mother and find out who Alex had cut himself off from.
Maybe then she’d find the missing pieces that would better help her understand not only who Alex Brady was —
But also who he used to be.
FOURTEEN
Alex took Bo home, gave him food and water, and settled him down for the night. He needed to run, but since he didn’t have time for a workout before the meeting with Owl, Alex had just one choice. Let the road take him somewhere far away. He drove his truck onto the northbound Ventura Freeway and exited at Las Virgenes Road toward Malibu. No specific destination drew him, but he had to put distance between him and the conversation with Jamie Michaels. Alex turned off his air conditioning, rolled down all four windows, and let the canyon air fill the truck.
Forget about it, he ordered himself. She was only trying to help. But everything about those fifteen minutes on the porch stayed front-and-center in his mind. How was it possible? Jamie and Wanda had both lost firefighter husbands in the terrorist attacks. The idea that he’d been coming to Clay’s house every month for a year without knowing about their connection was more than Alex could take in. He laughed one time, a bitter, ironic laugh. What had he just told himself? If Clay hadn’t come home from the hostage call that day, Jamie wouldn’t have known what to do, right? Wasn’t that it? He had guessed she and the kids would’ve been decimated by that kind of tragedy.
But no. Jamie Michaels had been through it all before. He drove with one hand, wishing he had a reason to open up his engines. The wind caught him square in the face, whipping his hair and filling his ears with the sound. But it did nothing to stop his mind from racing through this new reality. Jamie had been dealt the same tragic hand as he had, but somehow she’d found peace and healing.
Suddenly, he thought of something else. Sierra, their oldest daughter. If Jamie’s first husband was killed in the terrorist attacks, then … that meant the child had been four or five when she’d lost her daddy. The reason she didn’t look like Clay was because her real father was dead.
Alex sucked in a sharp breath. The information was more than he could process. Joe and Wanda’s story must’ve been different. Very different. He’d heard them talk about the younger days, so the fact that she’d been married to a firefighter didn’t really add up. He’d have to find out more about that later. But either way he was surrounded by 9/11 survivors.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Jamie’s husband had kept a journal? Notes about his days as a firefighter? FDNY guys were either loud and full of surface talk or quiet and tight-lipped — at least the ones his dad used to bring around the house. Other than his father, Alex hadn’t thought there was another New York firefighter whose passion for the job came from a tender, transparent heart. But if Jamie’s husband had kept a journal … he must’ve been very much like Alex’s dad.
Then when Jamie got to the part about finding a journal entry that mentioned his father’s name, it was all a little too far out there. Like she was making the story up as she went along, or like she was trying to crawl into a place inside his heart that he had long since convinced himself no longer existed.
He clamped his jaw tight and made the sweeping right curve that put him at the beginning of Malibu Canyon. What did it matter if Jamie’s husband had written about Alex’s dad? Nothing in the guy’s journal could’ve added a single detail to what Alex had known about his father, what he’d admired about him.
His dad was a hero long before he died in the collapse of the Twin Towers. He sat next to Alex at the kitchen table every weeknight from middle school on, teaching him how to find the circumference of a circle or the chemical names for salt and carbon dioxide and water. Testing him on the Bill of Rights and helping him edit his essay on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. He took him to the park to throw a football and taught him how to shave two seconds off his sprint time in the hundred-yard da
sh. He was there every single time Alex needed him — right up until the morning of September 11.
Angry tears poked pins at his eyes, but Alex blinked them back. Crying wouldn’t help. His dad was gone and he wasn’t coming back. Period. Even so, the memories remained. Like with Holly, Alex didn’t allow time for reminiscing, otherwise the pain would paralyze him. He didn’t need heartbreak; he needed determination. Drive, not grief, was what saw him through every shift with the LA Sheriff’s Department. The sort of drive that could keep him on his game sixty or eighty hours a week, so that no more creeps could steal the happy life from some other unsuspecting family.
He slowed down, taking the curves with expert care. His dad might as well be riding shotgun. That’s how clear his father’s image remained in Alex’s mind, his tall and handsome dad, the smile in his eyes, the laughter in his voice. The man never once thought of himself, not at work and not at home. His last morning alive, he’d only been concerned that he and Alex talk about Alex’s future, about him being a doctor or a lawyer or a salesman. Anything but a firefighter.
“I’m concerned for you, Son,” his dad had told him. “You’re driven and competitive. Fighting fires can take over a person’s life and leave him nothing for the people back home.”
His dad’s final concern as he left for work that Tuesday was that Alex might find a career that would allow him an amazing life. Others. That’s what drove his father in everything he did. Of course, he’d be racing up the stairs of the Twin Towers when everyone else was running down. His dad wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Alex dug his fingers into the steering wheel. He tried his best never to go back to that horrible Tuesday morning. But here, winding through the canyon toward the beach, he couldn’t stop himself. He’d been sitting in his Shakespeare class, first period, watching the door for the moment when Holly would pass by like she did every day at that time. Some kid from across the hall ran in and shouted something about a plane crashing into a building in the city.