Unlocked: A Love Story

  “Thanks, Riley.” Cody laughed and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Let’s get home.”

  He and Riley jogged back and Riley found a cool spot on the bathroom floor while Cody took a shower. Like he did every day after his late afternoon run. “Just you and me again tonight, buddy.” Cody wrapped a towel around himself.

  Once he had changed into sweats and a T-shirt, Cody found the most comfortable spot on the sofa. Maybe Baylor was right. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Andi and him. He considered it for a minute and then dismissed the thought. No way. It was definitely too late. Things couldn’t be worse between them.

  Not just the broken first engagement, but his recurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD was like a snake in the grass, ready to strike at any moment. And so their relationship had suffered deeply. His episodes of anxiety and moodiness were something he hadn’t explained to Andi. Didn’t want her to know he was still struggling. A misstep for sure. A mistake. Cody sighed. If he had it to do over again, he would be more honest, more open.

  But there was no going back now.

  God had shown him so much since then, ways to handle the terrifying flashbacks and phobic fears that almost always came without warning. A guy at church had told him about a group for wounded soldiers that met at a home close to Cody’s. For five months he attended two meetings a week and over time Cody learned how to deal with the episodes. How to live with them.

  So why not call Andi and explain the situation? How messed up his mind had been and how much better he was doing?

  He thought about it but after a while he let the possibility die and settled in with his book. She would never pick up. Not if he texted or called. In that way, there was nothing different about this night compared to the others. Riley lay on his feet as Cody read three chapters in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and then the entire book of James in the Bible. Cody kept the TV off and turned in early. Like most nights lately as he fell asleep he saw the blue eyes of the girl he still loved. The one he missed with every breath—even if there was no chance he’d ever see her again.

  The eyes of Andi Ellison.

  2

  Andi Ellison carried a box of wrapped turkey sandwiches into the temporary shelter set up for flood victims. Heat sweltered against her skin, and her white T-shirt clung to her back, but with every breath Andi knew this much:

  She was right where God wanted her.

  “Over here, miss. We’re hungry! Please!” A woman in a torn dress waved her down. Huddled beside her were three young children. “Help us, please!”

  “I’m on my way.” Andi hurried toward her. “We have lots. More bottled water on its way, too.” She stooped down and handed sandwiches to the kids. Then she locked eyes with the woman. “I’m sorry . . . for what you’ve been through.”

  “We . . . we lost everything.” The woman was shaking. She looked small and lost, as much like a child as her little ones.

  Andi kept her voice gentle. “Would you like me to pray for you?”

  Tears filled the woman’s eyes. “Yes. Please.” She struggled to speak. “We have nowhere to live.” She shook her head, despair hanging from her like a cloak. “A police boat rescued us from the roof. Our house is gone. Everything inside it. All of it.” Her voice broke. “I don’t know what to do.”

  It was the same story Andi had heard over and over again.

  “He sees you.” Andi believed that with everything in her. She took the woman’s hands. “God says that His Word will be a light unto our path. Let’s just pray for that.”

  The woman nodded and hung her head. Beside her, the children held their wrapped sandwiches in silence. Andi prayed that the Lord would extend mercy to them in this terrible situation, that He would lead them to whatever was next.

  As Andi talked to God, the woman nodded. Tears streamed down her pale, weathered face. “We were still coming back from last year’s floods.”

  No words could make sense of the disaster. Andi squeezed the woman’s hands. “I need to pass out the other sandwiches. I’ll be around if you want to talk.”

  For the second year in a row storms had parked over the Gulf Coast and created mass flooding in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The entire region had again been declared a state of emergency. Andi Ellison had been dispatched to the area as part of a relief team that handled national disasters.

  This was Andi’s life now. She had taken a job with the Christian organization after she ended things with Cody. She couldn’t stay in Southern California, couldn’t risk running into him again and being reminded of their second failed engagement.

  She hadn’t been good enough for Cody Coleman. Before she broke up with him she found a live YouTube performance by country singer Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum. She was singing “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” and every line . . . every single line had spoken straight to Andi’s heart.

  I can’t make you love me if you don’t . . .

  Whatever the reason, however she had fallen short of Cody’s forever love, she had to admit the reality of the situation. She couldn’t make Cody Coleman love her. And so it had been time to leave.

  After the breakup, knowing she was not sure what to do or where to go, Andi’s parents had told her about a job opening with the disaster relief group. The next week Andi became part of their team. So far she’d spent time in Indiana after tornadoes hit the state and on the flood-ravaged East Coast in the wake of Hurricane Hermine.

  With every day on the job, Andi was more sure she was right where she needed to be. Helping people recover from a tragedy they never saw coming. Praying with strangers and handing out food and water. Raking mud from the ruined remains of homes and businesses. Yes, this was where God wanted her.

  But that didn’t mean she loved Cody any less. She would love him until she drew her final breath. But the lyrics to the song were spot-on. She couldn’t make him love her, she wouldn’t try. Besides, she was getting comfortable with being single. She was making friends now.

  Her new life was better than rejection.

  She and God had a plan. Andi helped people all day and God helped her fall asleep at night. Not everyone got married, not everyone was supposed to. Life could still be good and rich and full and complete. The Lord was enough.

  And when the loneliness crept in and her broken heart got the better of her, Andi pulled out her journal. So all the aching and hurting and loss of her own tragedy would have somewhere to go.

  The sound of voices broke through the memory. She needed to keep moving. Andi took the box of sandwiches down the long aisle where the flood victims rested on cots. More rain was expected tonight—something the rivers and levees and bayous couldn’t take. She and the others from the agency staff had an inexpensive hotel on higher ground. But at some point if it kept raining, none of them would be safe.

  That didn’t bother Andi.

  Life wasn’t safe. And no matter what happened God was with her. If she could get through saying goodbye to Cody Coleman, she could get through anything. Even a disaster like this.

  “Sir.” She put her hand on the shoulder of an older man. He sat on a thin cot, his eyes glazed over like the clouds outside the tent. “Are you hungry?”

  The man stared at the ground. Andi had seen shock on the faces of disaster victims often enough to know the signs. She looked at his hands. Fingers trembling, and his teeth were chattering. Andi set down her box of sandwiches and jogged through the tent to the place where dry blankets were stacked. “There’s an older man on Row One,” she told the woman behind the table. “He’s in Bed Eleven. He needs a medical examination.”

  “I’ll put him on the list.” The woman had worked with Andi on other disaster projects. The two of them and the rest of the team knew how to give their best in a situation like this. How to stay calm and collected and process the victims as quickly as possible.

  Andi hurried the blanket back to the man. She opened it and eased it around his shoulders. He still didn’t make eye
contact, but his shaking fingers grabbed hold of the ends of the blanket. He pulled the edges around himself and turned to Andi.

  “They . . . can’t find her.” His teeth shivered together with every painful word. “Have you . . . seen her?”

  “Your wife?” Andi crouched down so she could look into his eyes. “Is she still out there?” Keep it positive. That was her training. She searched the man’s eyes.

  “Yes.” His gaze drifted again. “She’s out there. Somewhere.”

  Andi pulled a sandwich out of the box and handed it to the man. “Maybe if you ate something. You have to keep your strength up. She’d want that.”

  He cast her a frantic glance, the way a lost child might look. “You think so?”

  Andi understood what was happening. The man needed hope more than he needed a sandwich. “I know she would. You need to keep up your strength. You’d want that for her, right?”

  The man nodded, never breaking eye contact.

  “Okay, then.” Andi partially unwrapped the sandwich and handed it to the man. “Let’s pray for her, okay.”

  He clasped the sandwich and started to cry. Not the quiet tears of the woman Andi had met a few minutes ago. The man’s tears came in sudden waves. Like the storm itself. He sobbed while Andi spoke. “Lord, You know this man’s wife and where she is. Please . . . will You be with the rescue workers and help them find her? And will You protect her until they find her?”

  Andi covered the man’s hands with her own. His skin was cold and clammy. Definitely shock. She took a quick breath. “Comfort this man and let him know You’re here. All things are in Your control—even this.” She paused, her own emotion welling up in her throat. “We trust You, Lord. We do. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  “A–a-a-men.” His eyes found hers one last time. “Thank you.” He held out his hand. “Please . . . can I have a sandwich for h-h-her?”

  Andi smiled. “Good idea.” She reached in the box and handed him another. “She’ll be hungry for sure. I’m Andi, by the way. What’s your name?”

  “Harry.” He set the sandwich beside him and stared at it. “She’ll be hungry. That’s right.”

  “What’s your wife’s name?” Andi’s tone said she didn’t doubt for a minute that the woman would be found. “I’m sure she’s worried about you, too.”

  “Her n-n-name is Patsy. Harry and Patsy. That’s us.” He looked at Andi again. “Thank you for thinking of her. I always think of her.” He was still shaking, but he seemed calmer than before. “We’ve been married forty-nine years.”

  Tears filled Andi’s eyes, and she blinked them back. She forced a smile because the man was still watching, still hanging on to any thread of hope. “I’m sure she loves you very much.”

  The man’s gaze drifted and he touched the extra sandwich. “She does love me. Forty-nine years. She’s all I have.”

  If Andi didn’t move on, she’d drop to the ground from the heartache of it all. Please, God, let them find her. Please. She steadied herself and found her smile once more. “If you need me, I’ll be handing out sandwiches.” Andi hesitated. “Keep praying.”

  “Yes.” He nodded again, his eyes still locked on some distant place or maybe some long ago memory. “I’ll pray. I will.”

  The conversation, the sandwich, the prayer . . . all of it was a life rope for the man. Whether his wife was found or not Andi had given him a reason to hold on. And in so doing she had given herself a reason to hold on, also. Which was why she’d gone into relief work in the first place. As she helped others, she herself was helped. They were all trying to survive some kind of storm.

  Whether it came with the wind and rain or not.

  Andi picked up the sandwich box and moved to the next cot. She swiped her fingertips beneath her eyes and struggled to compose herself. The next victim needed her at her best. Tears came with the job, of course. But she had to find a way to hide them. People caught up in the aftermath of devastation and disaster desperately needed to be surrounded with strong people. Calm people. They needed workers with a solid plan for what happens next, people to listen to their terribly sad stories and pray with them. Workers who could get them food and water and shelter, so the shock would have a chance to wear off even a little.

  Sometimes Andi waited till she got back to her hotel room before she let the tears come. People from her agency worked twelve-hour shifts every day as long as victims lived in their shelters. As long as they were needed. After a tragedy like the Louisiana floods, they would receive a month of paid leave. Time to recuperate and find restoration for their souls. So they’d have a well deep enough to draw from when the next disaster hit.

  As far as Andi knew, they had at least another month before they’d have every flood victim placed in more permanent housing, before the next team could help everyone salvage whatever they could from their homes.

  Today was one of the tougher days for Andi. She checked with the man at the front desk before she left. “What about the gentleman in Bed Eleven? Did they find his wife?”

  The man’s expression fell. “Not yet. He’s been coughing, too. Probably inhaled water during the rescue.”

  Andi looked over her shoulder at the old man. He was still sitting on his cot, still looking straight ahead, catatonic-like, the blanket still around his shoulders. In his hands was the second sandwich—the one for his wife.

  “They need to find her.” Andi turned to the man. He was the crew leader this time around. “Can the medics start him on antibiotics?”

  “They did.” Her boss gave her a sad smile. “Get some sleep, Andi. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  She breathed in deep. Already the air was pungent with mold and mildew—the way flood areas always smelled. She swatted at a mosquito on her arm and met the man’s eyes again. “I’ll try. See you in the morning.”

  Andi boarded the shuttle that ran between the temporary shelter and the hotel where she and her co-workers were staying. A few seconds later, one of her co-workers—Caleb Rhimes—entered the bus and took the seat beside her.

  “Hey.” His eyes were warm, deep. “Long day, huh?”

  “Always.” Andi leaned her head back against the headrest. “So many hurting people.”

  Caleb studied her for a beat. “I watched you today. With that older man.” He hesitated. “You’re the most compassionate person I know.”

  His kind words were a balm to her ragged heart. “He can’t find his wife.”

  “I figured as much.” Caleb took hold of her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m honored to know you, Andi Ellison.”

  “Thanks, Caleb.” Andi smiled at him. Lately she enjoyed this work friend most of all. Their friendship might even be leaning toward an attraction. “You, too.”

  Caleb was in his late twenties, a dark-haired handsome guy from Amsterdam. Last winter he came to the United States to do mission work, something he’d always wanted to take part in. He’d worked for a church in Louisiana before being hired by the disaster relief organization a few months ago.

  This was the first mission he and Andi had worked together.

  As they exited the bus onto the rain-soaked sidewalk, Caleb hugged her and kissed her cheek. The way Europeans and Hollywood types do. But this time his lips lingered and their eyes met.

  “You are the highlight of my days here.” His breath was soft against her skin. “I want you to know that.”

  A rush of heat filled her cheeks. “Thank you.” He made her feel beautiful and wanted. Something she hadn’t expected to feel again after Cody. “Get some rest.”

  “You, too.” He walked her to the door of the hotel and they parted ways at the elevator. Caleb’s room was on the first floor, Andi’s on the third.

  Long before she reached her room Andi knew this would be one of those nights when the tears came all on their own. When she was helpless to stop them. Caleb was interesting, yes. But how could he be more than a diversion? She didn’t want to live in Amsterdam, and he?
??d already told her that’s where he was returning when his term of relief work was over. Amsterdam was his home.

  Once inside she adjusted the air-conditioning. The housekeeper must’ve dropped the temperature to sixty-eight degrees. Andi liked her room warm—with a breeze if at all possible. This time around she didn’t have a roommate, so she could keep the room how she liked. She raised the window and fresh air rushed over her. This far away from the flood zone, the night air smelled like sweet springtime.

  She found her journal and her Bible in the nightstand and dropped to the chair near the window. Already tears trickled down her cheeks. Her eyes found a line of lights in the distance. Please, Father . . . Harry needs his wife. Even for a few more years. If she’s alive . . . please.

  Andi closed her eyes and tried to stave off the wave of sadness. The irony of course was this: All day long she worked with people who had lost everything, even very nearly their lives. But in the process she had found hers. The victims needed her.

  Which was more than she could say about Cody Coleman.

  She glanced at her journal, the place where she could pour out her heart and soul and try—one more time—to understand what had gone wrong with Cody. He had loved her at one point. More than he had ever loved anyone.

  Even Bailey Flanigan.

  She believed that, because if she didn’t, the heartache would bury her alive. What they shared was real. It had to be. The feelings she’d seen in Cody’s eyes couldn’t have been anything but the truth. Otherwise she would struggle to get out of bed in the morning.

  Andi exhaled and opened her eyes. She read the Bible first—something she did every night. The way she figured it, she still had a lot of time to make up. Her days of living crazy had cost her much, days when she had walked away from God and His Word.

  She had assumed the Bible to be some archaic book, a stodgy list of old-fashioned dos and don’ts. Real life, she had told herself, was out there waiting for her to grab hold of it. She’d had no use for the faith her parents had raised her with. It had never occurred to her that God’s ways might’ve been instituted by a loving Father who only wanted the best for His children.