Providence (34 page)

“Wow, this place brings back memories. It’s hardly changed. I didn’t realize so much of the town would still look the same.”

“The students are always changing, but Providence … not so much. A lot of things are just like yesterday.”

“Which do you care most about, Jack, yesterday or today?”

“Today. But that hasn’t always been my answer. I’ve unpacked all my yesterdays and sorted through them. Everything’s in order now. The past and present have caught up with each other and are getting along just fine. Though they do have a lot in common.”

We sat at the cozy booth, breaking our focus on each other only when the server came for our order.

“So, are you going to let me read this new book you’ve been working on?”

“You know what it’s about, right?”

“Yes, the Jack Clayton story. How you went from college dropout to the cover of
Time
magazine in twenty short years.”

“Wow, you could work in marketing. It’s something like that.”

“Does the book have a happy ending? Does the boy get the girl?”

I didn’t answer right away, but her good-natured question was inflating with importance every second we remained in the quiet.

“That chapter’s still being written,” I finally said.

Jenny smiled, and after the waiter returned with our food, we settled into long, slow conversations about London, Jenny’s parents, my mom and her new life, and CMO.

After lunch we stepped outside. The sun was perched in the middle of the sky, warming the air, inviting us to take a walk. We wandered casually up the street, window-shopping like we’d done years before as money-stretched college students.

“You know what would feel perfect right now?” I asked her.

“What?”

“Me picking out a gift for you. A ‘Welcome back to America’ gift. You know, I do have a little money now,” I joked.

“Oh, so you have money now, huh? Is the Lexus dealership open? We need to put those best-selling author dollars to work!”

“Dear, you’re thinking too small. I’m talking about getting you something really nice. What’s the nicest gift I ever got you?”

Jenny thought for a minute. “What was the nicest gift … probably the locket. Do you remember the locket?”

“The one you gave back to me.”

“Yes. Sorry … I mean, yes. It was the right thing to do at the time. Do you still have it?”

“No, I hocked it when I wanted to forget you, back when I still thought that was possible.”

“You sold my locket? I can’t believe it!”

“Yeah, I got twenty-five dollars for it.”

“You stinker.” She laughed.

“You know, I could buy you a big diamond now.”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

On Bush Street we approached the front window of Baxter’s Jewelers and peered into the glass display case. The small boutique presented a beautiful array of diamond rings and watches, colored stones and bracelets, earrings and gold jewelry, all set out on posh jewelry boxes on a plum-colored sash.

“Oh my gosh!” Jenny blurted out.

“What is it?”

“They’ve got one of those lockets like you bought me!”

I looked in the window. On the top glass shelf, in the center of the window display, rested a little silver heart-shaped necklace on a chain. Across the heart the words
Love Is Forever
were engraved in a graceful script.

“You know, I think you’re right.”

Jenny turned to me, her mouth gaped open in mock shock.

“Unbelievable! Let’s go in and see how much they want for it,” I said.

“Last time it was fifty dollars; this time it’ll be fifty thousand.”

The clerk lifted the locket from the display window and placed it in Jenny’s hands.

“This is a classic silver heart-shaped locket,” he said. “It once belonged to a young couple, very much in love, but beyond that, I can’t tell you much. Lockets hold secrets. If you look at the back, you’ll see it’s tarnished, and there’s no longer a key to open it.”

“You don’t need a key for these,” Jenny said. “I used to have one just like it, but I lost my key days after I got it.”

Jenny pulled a hairpin out of her purse and stuck it in the keyhole. Instantly the locket sprung open, and there inside were two heart-shaped pictures, one of Jenny and the other of me. She turned to me and stared, disbelieving what her eyes were telling her.

“I brought it down yesterday, Jenny. I never sold it.”

She smacked me on the arm and huffed. “Just for that, I’m keeping it now,” she said, both put out and delighted by the trick.

I smiled at the manager, who gave me a wink, and Jenny and I left the store with the keepsake wrapped inside a jeweler’s box.

“Jack, do you really believe love is forever, or is that just childish sentimentality?”

“I think it lasts forever,” I said.

Jenny was quiet as we walked back up Meadowgreen toward the campus. I thought of going to CMO since it was nearby, and the weather had gotten considerably colder. When a sudden burst of arctic wind hit us out of nowhere, we raced up the street and into Marilyn’s Bakery to escape.

Inside Marilyn’s it was cozy and warm. A recent renovation had opened one wall, connecting the bakery to a cozy bookstore next door. Modern life was well represented by several people sitting in plump, oversize chairs, sipping coffee, their laptops connected to the bookstore’s Wi-Fi.

We made our way to two comfy wingback chairs in a section of the store decorated with an eclectic mix of colorful contemporary art and twentieth-century antiques.

“It’s getting cold out there,” Jenny said, opening her coat to let in the warm air.

I made my way to the counter for hot chocolate to accelerate her warm-up, and to collect coffee for me.

Jenny wrapped her hands around the ceramic mug and thanked me for the hot chocolate. “And thank you for the necklace, too. That was really a sweet gesture, Jack. I’m still trying to soak in what it means.”

“What’s next for you and the boys? I asked.

“I’m going to enroll the boys in a private school at Mike and Tessa’s church in Indianapolis, help my mom and dad get situated, and give the kids plenty of opportunities to get to know their cousins.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Who’s taking care of you?”

Jenny set the mug on a table. “Jack, can I change the subject?”

“Sure,” I said.

Jenny ran her thumb across the jewelry box in her lap. “I’ve only loved two men in my life. One of them, I lost, because the Lord decided to take him. It was abrupt, it was painful, and it’s been a long process of grieving to get to where we all are now, which is finally a good place. The other man I loved once, I also lost. I lost him to his own youthful immaturity. That, too, was abrupt, it was painful, and it took a long time to get over. I can’t compare you with Murphy, and thankfully, I don’t have to. However, I do have to do what’s right. Things have to make sense.”

Jenny stopped. For once it seemed she didn’t quite know what to say. Or how to say it. When she finally spoke, her words were tender and intimate, her pauses confessing a deep vulnerability.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is … Can you tell me if this is special to you, Jack? Tell me if there’s a part of you that remembers us. Do you still have any feelings for me, or is this all just my imagination? And are these old feelings or new feelings? I feel like I’ve come home to something I remember. It’s more than just being back in the States. It’s … bigger than that, but I just can’t put it all together yet. I guess I’m a little … I don’t know … overwhelmed? Uncertain? Both?”

“Jenny, I think there’s a story you need to hear. I’ve been wondering all along why God would want me to go through all that’s happened these past months. But I see now that this is the journey I needed to take. I mean, it couldn’t have all happened any other way.”

“What do you mean?”

“My friends suggested there was some big important reason God wanted me to write my story. My friend Aaron said that while many people had benefited from
Laborers of the Orchard,
maybe God wasn’t finished with
me
yet. You’re asking me if I still have feelings for you, aren’t you?”

“Yes … I mean, that’s part of it. I mean, yes.”

I collected the brown parcel I’d been toting around and handed it to her. “Jenny, this is the manuscript for my book, the answer to your question.”

She pulled the white-lace bow and opened the tan wrapping, revealing a pile of white papers, the result of my memory excavation. I secretly thanked Bud for staying up late, putting this together with me the past two days.

Jenny ran her fingers over the title. “Am I in this story?”

“You have no idea. I started writing this story back when I didn’t know if I would ever see you again, when I didn’t even know
why
I was writing. I just wrote to be faithful, but now it’s something more. This book is your answer. And mine, too … to so many questions.”

The rest of the afternoon, Jenny sat on the large sofa in my living room, with her back against the cushioned arm and her feet resting on the middle cushion. I brought her drink and food as she poured over the double-spaced pages, the pile on her lap shrinking as she delved deeper and deeper into my story.

As sunlight slipped and dimmed in the silent house, I switched on the floor lamp at the end of the sofa and the reading light behind her. She took a break around 4:30, curling up to take a nap. I took the quilt from the foot of the bed in the guest room and covered her up, watching her sleep awhile before heading upstairs for my own nap.

I awoke from a peaceful dream into an even more peaceful reality. Jenny was sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I just finished your book.”

I pulled myself upright and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Any good?”

Jenny just nodded her head, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. “Jack, I asked you this afternoon, but I want to ask you again. Do you think love is forever?”

“Yes, I do. I know it is.”

Jenny was holding the small silver locket. She opened her hand and stared at the photos. “I remember those times,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice. She looked at me with a sense of wonder about everything that had happened. “Jack, what are we going to do about all this? I’m forty-two years old, with two children and parents who need me. I can’t live in the past. But that’s not where we are … is it? What exactly am I to do with this? I mean … with you?”

“Why don’t you let me take you to dinner?”

“Jack, I’m serious.”

“So am I—I’m starving.”

Jenny let her body fall against mine, and I held her there.

“It’s all happening so fast,” she said.

“Yes, just twenty years in the making.”

“Do you really believe this is twenty years in the making?”

“No, I don’t think everything that’s happened has been designed to bring us to this moment. That would devalue what we’ve lived between then and now. I just believe that every right thing we’ve done by faith has made a moment like this possible.”

Jenny sat up and wiped a tear from her eye.

“I can think of three important questions to ask you, but I think I know the answers to at least two of them.”

“Okay … ask,” I said.

“Do you love me?” Jenny looked at me with the serious expression of an adult woman, not the college girl I once knew.

“Yes, with all my heart.”

“Do you care for my parents, my family?”

“I love them, too.”

Jenny wiped another tear from her eye. I’d seen her cry many times. These were tears of joy.

“I watched you on the trip, spending time with the boys. Do you think you could love them? Would you add to their lives, give them all the things that young boys need? Could you do that, Jack?”

“I would make it my life’s work if given the chance, Jenny.”

Jenny broke out in tears and laughter. She melted into my arms. This was where I wanted to be forever, wrapped around Jenny, wrapped around hope. I was trying to figure out if she’d asked two or three questions when she spoke again.

“Well, then I guess there’s only one thing left to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“What do you want to have for dinner?”

Bud Abbott delivered my book well ahead of schedule to a very relieved and very broke Arthur Reed. Two weeks earlier he’d confessed to me, his employees, and his wife how he’d gambled away a staggering ten million dollars. As I write this, Arthur is in the process of selling his publishing company to Burrows in New York for an undisclosed sum. My book will be the last publication with the ARP logo on the binding.

Carlos Garcia was sentenced to thirty years to life in the Puttington Correctional Facility. He has one regular visitor—a humbled man who first saw him on the other side of a gun; a man who took seriously the call to pick up his cross and follow Christ.

Bud and I still talk on the phone every so often. He’s been down to visit on several occasions, bringing his lovely wife, Katie, and their little boy, Josh. He even came to church with us once, twice if you count the wedding.

Jenny and I were married on June 14th by Aaron Richmond in Providence Chapel. It was a small wedding attended by Jenny’s parents, of course, and my mother and her new husband, Frank; Erin and Donald; Andrew and Nate; Raymond Mac and Mrs. Hernandez; and Peter, Nancy, and many of the students who’ve worked with us over the years at CMO. Arthur wanted to hire a publicist to service a photo to the press … Like
that
was going to happen! Erin was the matron of honor; Peter and Donald were my best men.