Echoes (19 page)

Lauren thought long and hard about Mindy’s words. There was a lot of wisdom in them. There always was, mixed in with her crazy brashness. She had trusted Mindy’s common sense before and hadn’t been disappointed. This was a pretty major decision. Perhaps she should take her friend’s counsel to heart.

However, in some ways she felt closer to KC than she did to Mindy. Finally she e-mailed him and said she couldn’t make it to Oregon that weekend. They would have to wait for the Lord to work out another meeting time and place for them. KC responded with understanding and said that since she wasn’t coming, he was considering going to see his brother that weekend:

Lauren considered showing the letter to Mindy. What kind of ax-murderer visits his brother and says he’s willing to wait patiently for a divine encounter? She knew Mindy would say, “An exceptionally clever one.” So Lauren kept the letter to herself along with the other treasures in her notebook.

The day before Lauren left for Teri’s wedding, Mindy asked if she was satisfied with her decision not to meet KC.

“I can wait.” Then with a smile she repeated KC’s response. “I’m a patient woman.” It made her feel as if she and KC had some sort of secret code. Lauren felt more connected with him than if she had disagreed with Mindy’s counsel. The link to KC grew only stronger.

The next day Lauren had to work late because it was the second of the month and therefore one of their busiest times. She finally balanced her cash and dashed to the parking lot, completely flustered and certain she would miss her 6:45 flight to Burbank. Her luggage was in the car, so she could drive directly to the airport. But the Friday night traffic was atrocious, and Lauren started to lecture herself on the folly of booking a flight that she couldn’t possibly make. What had she been thinking?

She pulled into the airport at 6:20 and chose the short-term parking, even though she knew she would be sorry on Sunday afternoon when she had to pay the big bucks to
retrieve her car from there. If she didn’t park close, she would certainly miss her plane.

With only one bag and an extra large shoulder bag to jostle, Lauren locked her car and ran into the terminal. Her bag was small enough to be considered a carry-on, and the shoulder bag qualified as a purse. No need to check luggage. She dumped them both at the security check, blitzed through the scanner, and grabbed them before they were completely out of the x-ray machine. Then, running down the corridor, she heard an announcement for the final boarding for the flight to Burbank. Dashing to the gate as the attendant was about to close the door, Lauren flashed her ticket and asked breathlessly, “Burbank?”

“Yes,” the attendant said, pulling off the stub of her ticket. “You better hurry!” A few more panicked strides, and she was at the door of the plane.

“Just in time,” the attendant at the door said. “We have a fairly open flight so sit anywhere you like. You’ll need to switch to your assigned seat when we stop to take on more passengers.”

Lauren plopped in the nearest open aisle seat and smiled politely at the disinterested man sitting in the window seat. The attendant lifted Lauren’s bag into the overhead bin as Lauren tucked her “purse” under the seat. Then, catching her breath, she looked up at the seat number and then down at her ticket. Wonder of all wonders, she had landed in her assigned seat.

I guess the good Lord is watching out for me after all. I made the flight, and I’m in my seat. After …
She checked her ticket and saw they had a snack on the flight, then stopped in Dallas to take on more passengers, then dinner on the way to Los Angeles, then on to Burbank. The best part about this flight was that she didn’t have to change planes the whole trip.
After
Dallas, I’ll have some dinner, and if I get in a good nap, I’ll be ready to stay up all night talking to Brad. I want to hear his opinion on KC
.

The attendant passed by, closing the overhead bins. Lauren asked him for a blanket and pillow. He handed them to her and said, “We’ll be serving dinner soon. Leave your tray table up if you don’t care to eat.”

“That’s a change in schedule, isn’t it?”

“It might be. I usually don’t work this flight.”

“Oh. It’ll be down. I’m ready to eat now!” Her lunch had consisted of a granola bar and a bottle of mineral water, her half-hearted attempt to lose weight.

“We’ll serve a few minutes after take-off,” he said with a gracious smile.

Lauren snuggled under the blanket and popped on the headphones, drowning out the safety instructions and flight information being repeated as the plane taxied down the runway. The engines’ hum quickly lulled her into a deep sleep.

The night before, after an exhausting day at work, she had tried to pack for the trip and found she didn’t have an appropriate dress that still fit her. In a flurry, she had gone to the mall and bought the first thing she found, a cool, summer dress with gold trim and a missing button. She bought it anyway and then stayed up half the night trying to fix it and decide on shoes and accessories that matched. By 2:30 that morning she had everything ready to go, including the gift-wrapped present.

Lauren suddenly opened her eyes and sat up straight. She had left the gift at home on the table. Oh, bother. Now she would have to mail it. Or maybe she could find something quickly in Escondido, if she could get to a mall before the eleven o’clock wedding.

After dinner was served, Lauren returned to her nesting
position and fell into a deep, albeit uncomfortable, sleep. When the plane landed, she felt groggy and only interested in more sleep. Passengers came on. The plane took off and made a second stop. Lauren blinked and looked past the man still seated next to her and tried to look out the window at Los Angeles airport, a place she had become familiar with during her years in college. It was bright outside, which surprised her. She dozed again until the plane came to its third stop. Shuffling off with the other weary passengers, she made her way into the terminal and toward the car rental booths.

That’s funny. I thought we deplaned outside the terminal here in Burbank. They’ve made some major changes since I was here last. This Native American motif is kind of a surprise. But what do I know? I’m not a decorator
.

Standing in front of the car rental agent, she noticed again how light it still was outside. “Oh, excuse me,” she said as she met him with a yawn. “It’s much later according to my head. I have a reservation. It’s for Lauren Phillips.”

The round-faced man wore his long hair in a braid down his back and seemed unaffected by her chit-chat. He began to punch in the information on his keyboard.

“And I’ll need a map. Particularly if you have one of the San Diego area. I’m going to Escondido.”

The man looked up at her without blinking. “What was your last name?”

“Phillips. P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S. Lauren. I reserved it with my Visa card, if that helps.”

“It’s not here.”

“Are you sure? It has to be. I made the reservation two weeks ago. It was for this company, for tonight, for me, here in Burbank.”

His expressionless face took on a glimmer of knowing. She had to ask. “What?”

“You’re in Fairbanks.”

“Alaska!?” Lauren shouted.

He didn’t move.

“I’m in Alaska?” She looked around frantically. This wasn’t Burbank Airport. Not even a renovated Burbank.

“Would you like a compact car or midsize?” he said.

“I don’t want a car! I want to get to LA! Where’s the ticket counter?”

He motioned with his eyes; his face remained stoic.

Lauren grabbed her luggage and marched off to the ticket counter where she told her story to the only agent who was working there that night. Fortunately, the woman was a perky young transplant from California and showed more compassion than the man at the car rental booth. She called for a supervisor and, as she explained for Lauren what had happened, her fingers flew over the keyboard searching for a flight to LA. The supervisor examined Lauren’s ticket and listened again to Lauren say, “And I ran to the door just as she was closing it and I said, ‘Burbank?’ and she said, ‘Yes’ and took my ticket stub and told me to hurry.”

“We would like to make this right for you, Ms. Phillips. Your flight to Los Angeles will be at no charge.”

“I appreciate that,” Lauren said, trying to calm down and think straight.

“Okay,” the petite agent announced. “This is the best I can come up with. I have a flight leaving here at 8:55 in the morning. It will route you through Seattle and then to San Diego and back up to LAX.”

“There’s nothing tonight?”

“Nothing. The only other flight I can get seats on tomorrow before 8:55 …” She punched in some more numbers. “Actually, it’s wait-listed right now, but that one would take you back through Anchorage and then to Portland with a four-hour
layover and then a direct flight to Burbank that afternoon arriving at—”

“I can’t get there in the afternoon,” Lauren said. “I have to be in Escondido for a wedding by eleven.”

The supervisor and agent exchanged glances.

“There’s nothing out of here that could get you to southern California before eleven tomorrow morning. I’m sorry,” the supervisor said.

Lauren let out a heavy sigh and swallowed the tears of desperation that had sprung up. She looked at her ticket, at the agent, at the supervisor, and down at her luggage. “Okay. Just get me back home to Nashville and don’t charge me for it.”

“We’ll do better than that,” the supervisor said. “We’ll give you a free ticket to anywhere our airline flies in the United States and treat you to a complimentary meal in our VIP lounge tonight. Why don’t you come with me.”

“I’ll need to make a few phone calls.”

“No problem. Do you like smoked salmon?”

N
ow, let me get this straight,” Mindy said in the lunchroom on Monday. “You ended up in Alaska and missed the wedding, but the airline gave you a free ticket. The newlyweds are having a reception somewhere in Oregon this weekend. So you’re using the ticket to go to Portland on Friday, and you think God did that so you could meet KD.”

“It’s KC, and yes, it’s possible that God is working all this out. You’re the one who’s always telling me he’s in control.”

Mindy put her head in her hands. Her body language said,
Yeah, but that’s only when God doesn’t have goofballs like you to work with
.

“It’s still a bad idea, Lauren. Far too risky. You would be making a poor choice and counting on God to rescue you. He does expect you to use the brain he gave you, you know.”

“I didn’t say I was going to meet KC for sure. I’m still thinking about it. You have to admit, though, the free ticket is a little unusual.”

“Not for you, Lauren,” Mindy muttered.

Lauren’s spirits were unquenched by her friend’s sarcasm. That evening an e-mail from KC was waiting for her:

Carefully choosing her words, Lauren wrote back that she was, in fact, still considering the trip to Portland. She didn’t go into any details about the free ticket or the detour to Alaska. No need to drop hints that she was a magnet for peculiar occurrences. The part about his telling his parents won her heart over. It couldn’t have been clearer that he wanted to marry and settle down the way his older brother had. These were not qualities
of a psycho serial killer—were they?