“And then what would happen?”
“What else?” Cheryl said with a clever twist in her voice. “They give the happy mother grandbabies.”
Katie wasn’t quite ready to go down that trail. All she wanted to do was figure out what was next for Eli and her.
“Listen.” Cheryl put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “It’s going to work out, Katie. It will. Everything has a purpose.”
“I know.” Katie heard the flippant tone in her voice and tried to add a spiritual curlicue for Cheryl’s benefit. “God has a plan for us, together or separate. And it’s a good plan.”
Katie hated that she had just spouted the “right” answer the way she had heard lots of others do when she was at Rancho Corona. It was as if, whenever anything went wrong, their default was set to a robotic-sounding “God is in control,” and that would explain the pain or the life complication.
Katie believed that truth with all her heart. But she preferred quietly to believe, trust, and wait to see how God was going to do one of his God-things rather than turn the dial to an automatic response. She never wanted to sound stale or trite. She wanted to sound like a God lover.
It was hard to tell if Cheryl took Katie’s answer as sincere. She gave Katie a motherly smile, and the two of them exited the restroom and returned to their booth. When they sat down, Jim pointed to the beverage awaiting Katie. “It’s a Malindi macchiato. That’s Eli’s usual. Let’s see what you think of it.”
Katie gave an appreciative nod to Jim as she reached for the handle on the glass espresso mug and noticed the design squiggled in chocolate on top of the foam. Before she took a sip of the steaming beverage, Katie thought of how much Rick would like this place. He would want to study their menu and sample the signature dishes. Nicole would take pictures of the chairs, windows, and light fixtures. Together they would devise a way to incorporate some of this place’s elements into one of their new restaurants. And they would be happy.
Katie paused, realizing that she had just thought about Rick and Nicole as a couple with no twinges of hurt or regret. She really was happy for them. She did wish them well. That small realization gave Katie an unexpected sense of hope about Eli that she couldn’t explain.
“Go ahead. Try it.” Jim nodded at the Malindi macchiato.
Katie took the first sip and closed her eyes, letting it slide down her throat slowly. “Oh, that’s nice. Very spicy. I can see why Eli likes it. It wakes up your mouth.”
The next Eli-inspired offering arrived at the table just then: Masala fries. The three of them shared the plate like an appetizer. The thick-cut french fries had a spicy sauce drizzled over the top that made Katie want to lick her fingers and order a second batch.
Their sandwiches arrived, and Katie’s was a toasted bacon, cheese, and tomato, nice and crispy. “This is Eli’s favorite? Really?”
Cheryl nodded as she took a bite of her hamburger. Katie was envying Cheryl’s meal because it looked like a great burger, and it had been months since Katie had had one. The burger even came on a sesame seed bun with lettuce, tomato, and pickle, just like she ate all the time in California. Next time she came here, Katie would order for herself. She would definitely pick the Masala fries again, but she would go for a burger instead of a toasted cheese sandwich.
Katie saved the last bit of the Malindi macchiato to drink at the very end so that she would have the lovely, spicy taste in her mouth the rest of the way home. She swished the final swig around and remembered how she and Eli playfully had fought over the mocha dregs from their shared drink on her second day at Brockhurst. If he were here now, she probably would let him have the last of her macchiato. That’s how much she missed him.
Katie looked around the cozy café one more time before they left. If she and Eli ever did go on a date, which according to him was not what they did, she would like for him to bring her here. They could each order a Malindi macchiato and savor their own dregs.
The fatigue of the journey seemed to catch up with all of them after their stomachs were filled. They strolled slowly to the car, and in the dark of the night, they headed up the hilly road to cooler, less congested Lemuru.
As they drove closer to Brockhurst, Cheryl checked her cell phone and let out a low, “Oh, dear.”
“What is it?” Jim asked.
“They found Evan.”
Katie leaned forward. “Callie’s husband?”
“Yes. He was beaten and left for dead.”
Katie held her breath.
“Callie sent the message. She said he’s receiving medical attention, and she’s gone to be with him. She left the children with Esther at Brockhurst and wants to know if we’ll take them when we return.”
“Of course,” Jim said. “We’ll put them in Eli’s room.”
Katie offered to help with the children or do anything else she could.
Despite being dead tired, Katie felt very happy to open the door to her small room and see all the comforts that had been provided for her there. The first thing she did was take a bath. Not a shower but a bath. It was only the second time she had used the bathtub, because it seemed like a luxury to consume all that water when a five-minute-or-less shower would do the job. Tonight she needed to soak and use the attached shower nozzle to wash her crinkled hair.
When Katie slid into her bed and felt the fresh and fragrant sheets, she considered herself the wealthiest woman in the world. Stretching out in the dark and peacefully cool room, she listened to the frogs croaking away under the bathroom window that was cracked open to let in the calm night breeze. It was open only an inch. Not enough to give way to any monkeys real or imagined.
What would it be like to be married? To go to bed on a night like this and lie beside the man with whom I will spend the rest of my life?
Her blissful thoughts were radically altered when she thought of how different the nights would be going to bed in a mud hut in a village. Katie had always considered herself a no-fuss, low-maintenance kind of gal. She didn’t need much to get by. She didn’t mind being dirty and roughing it. At a moment like this, though, she certainly did like her bathtub and her bed.
Katie thought back to several months ago when she and Christy had gone to Newport Beach and had to share a large bed at the home of Christy’s aunt Marti and uncle Bob. At the time, Katie had been contemplating what it must be like for Christy and Todd to sleep next to each other every night. In the middle of those thoughts about how great Christy and Todd were for each other, Katie had realized that she and Rick weren’t knit together at the heart the way Christy and Todd were.
And that was the night Katie decided to break up with Rick.
She let her thoughts float back to the day she broke up with Michael. She hadn’t practiced what she was going to say, but she had decided she would tell him in the school parking lot at the end of the day so she could hop into her old car, Baby Hummer, and drive away before she changed her mind. They didn’t make it to the parking lot. Michael was waiting for her by her locker, and she blurted her announcement out with heartless precision. “I am breaking up with you, and there is nothing you can say or do to change my mind.”
Michael was right. I did owe him an apology.
She hadn’t said good-bye to Michael when they left the village, either. At the time, Katie was too numb from Eli’s announcement to give Michael a final good-bye. She wished now that she had. In spite of Michael’s impetuousness, he deserved better.
Katie thought about Eli being with Michael and the other videographer in a new village tonight. No doubt they were once again stretched out on a tarp under the stars. What did guys talk about on “sleepovers” like that? Would they talk about her? Katie didn’t like that possibility. She wondered how Eli would handle Michael’s brazen and direct ways.
Closing her eyes and pulling the blankets up over her shoulders, Katie gave herself a final hakuna matata mandate and turned on her side, eager to sleep deep and dream sweet.
She woke when it was
still dark. Her eyes opened wide in the shadowed surroundings. Her heart pounded. She had been dreaming of her childhood. Memories of things that had really happened seemed to have inspired a hodgepodge sort of dream in which she was watching herself as a young girl.
Rolling over in bed, she listened to the still sounds of the night: a distant chortle of a frog, the steady ticking of the alarm clock she had picked up at the Sharing Closet. In the comfort and safety of the darkness, she let her thoughts roll back to her childhood, paying attention to the trigger points that had remained with her from the dream.
She recalled a moment when she was no more than four or five and had impulsively burst through the front door of the house and found her parents in a heated argument. Instead of running to her room as usual, Katie had marched into the fray with her hands on her hips and spouted something she had heard the day before on a sitcom.
“You two need to go rent a room!”
She had no idea what it meant, but on TV the actors had laughed.
In real life, her parents stopped fighting and looked at her, and for a moment they seemed to have forgotten what they were angry about. Her dad sort of smiled at her. “Where did you come up with that?”
Delighting in having their attention, Katie imitated another scene she had seen on an old rerun. With a funny little wobble of her head, she said, “I’ve got a million of ‘em.”
That’s when her mother laughed, and it was the sweetest sound Katie could remember hearing from her mother’s lips.
Capping her moment in the spotlight, Katie remembered waving as she had seen funny people do a number of times on shows and saying, “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.”
That got both her parents laughing and looking at her with a curious mix of appreciation and wonder. She remembered how their expressions made her feel. She also recalled the directive that seemed to have been written on stone in her heart that day. To get my parents to love me — or at least to like me—I need to make them laugh.
Katie sat up in bed and drew in a deep breath. She was so tired. Was her subconscious trying to put together the Eli puzzle for her in her sleep? Had she cut and pasted those childhood beliefs into her life as an adult?
To get Eli to like me—no, to love me—I need to always …
She stopped herself before filling in the blank. She didn’t want to write any more false truths for herself. That belief system was then. It had been dismantled. This was now. When she boarded that airplane in San Diego and came to Kenya, she did it as an act of faith. In some ways it could be considered an act of obedience.
Katie knew that she didn’t want the kind of life in which she rattled off a platitude about God being in control while in her heart she was trying to manipulate the circumstances to ensure the outcome was what she wanted. What was true, genuine, and lasting had to be that she believed God, really believed him, with all her heart, soul, strength, and mind. If she believed he knew what was best and was working everything out for a purpose, then she could live each day with confidence and hope.
“Because my hope is in God,” Katie murmured in the darkness. “And he has never abandoned me nor stopped loving me.”
With that verbal declaration, Katie hunkered down, pulled up the blankets, and thought about Christy’s advice to enjoy the “what ifs” in Katie’s unfolding relationship with Eli and to experience the mystery of riding along inside the unknown.
Then Katie cried just a little because her exhausted spirit didn’t know what else to do.
18
The next morning, Katie volunteered to watched Callie and Evan’s three youngest children. She took them out into the largest open area of the conference center and had fun making up games for them to play on the grass. They knew some games from the children in the village where they lived, and Katie tried to teach them the game she had learned earlier that week in the village she had visited. After all of them had worked up a thirst, Katie gathered them close and asked who wanted to go to the Lion’s Den with her to get something cold to drink.
Three hands shot up. They were such cute kids. So well-behaved. She could easily picture Eli being in a group like this little flock while he was growing up in a village the same way they had. For them, climbing trees and playing games with small rocks and twigs was normal.
On their trot over to the Lion’s Den, the littlest chick in Katie’s brood said, “Do you know what we got last night, Katie?”
“No, what?”
“Guess.”
“Okay, give me a clue.”
“It was a treat. A yummy treat.”
Her sister said, “You’re giving too many hints.”
“Try to guess,” the little doll asked again.
“Was it a new toy?”
“No.”
“A DVD?”
All three children looked at each other as if they weren’t sure what that was.
“Do you mean a movie?”
“Yes, a movie,” Katie said. “Did you get a new movie?”
“No.”
“I give up.”
“It was apples! We each had our own apple to eat before we went to bed. Apples are my favorite. I had a whole apple for myself.”
The simplicity and sweetness of that little girl’s jubilee hit Katie in a profound way. She thought of all the times growing up when her school lunch came with an apple on the tray and she glibly threw it away. It was just an apple. A stupid apple. Not a cookie or an ice cream bar. An apple. Yet to a child who had grown up with very little, having an entire apple was better than a new toy or DVD.
When Katie entered the Lion’s Den with her entourage, no one was working behind the counter. “You guys order whatever you want,” Katie said. “I’ll make it for you.” She went behind the counter and washed up as Adam read the menu to his sisters and they decided what they wanted.
“Two orange juices and one milk, coming right up,” Katie said after they placed their order. She set them up at one of the tables and pulled her laptop out of her shoulder bag.
“Are you working?” Adam asked.
“Sort of. I’m checking my emails.”
“Can we send an email to our dad?” Adam asked.
“I have a better idea,” Katie said. “Why don’t you guys make pictures for him?”
She remembered seeing a box of colored pencils and some paper in the drawer of a table by the fireplace. Katie scooted off to retrieve the items, and when she returned, she passed them out to the kids and told them she was sure their pictures would make their dad happy.
With the three of them busy drawing, Katie pulled up her emails. The first one she opened was from Nicole. In her sweet way, Nicole gave Katie an overview of how she and Rick arrived at their decision to marry in October. Rick and Nicole were offered the opportunity to renovate a restaurant in New York City. As Nicole described it, since Rick and his brother had already sold their other cafés, the timing was perfect for Rick and Nicole to take on this new endeavor.
Nicole also made it clear that she wanted to tell Katie all this but hadn’t been able to connect with her before their good news was announced. The end of Nicole’s email read:
When you have a chance, I’m eager to hear all the details about you and Eli. Rick and I both loved the photos you posted of you guys feeding the giraffe. Rick said you looked like you were glowing in the pictures. I thought Eli looked pretty glowy too, the way he was looking at you.
If there’s any chance that you and Eli are coming back this way in October, we would love for you to come to our wedding. I wanted to explain that I didn’t ask you to be one of my bridesmaids because of the distance. I want you to know, Katie, that if you were still here, you would have been the first one I would have asked.
I miss you, Katie. Write me when you can. Rick says hi. Say hi to Eli for us.
Hugs,
Nicole
Katie leaned back and checked on her little artists. They were still busy coloring. She let Nicole’s email s
ettle on her. Parts of it felt a little awkward and uncomfortable. That was mostly because Nicole’s words pulled up images of her and Rick cuddled up together, so in love, so eager to dream together about their future and move ahead with those dreams. Katie felt as if she and Eli were on pause. She told herself that was okay. That’s where they were for the moment. They wouldn’t be on pause forever.
I guess it’s easy for some couples to figure out what’s next and to make the commitment to each other effortlessly, like Rick and Nicole. Eli and I aren’t that couple.
Katie couldn’t identify exactly what sort of couple they were, but then she decided she didn’t need to make any declarations to Nicole, even though she had asked for details. Katie liked keeping Nicole and Rick’s impressions as they were — that Eli and she were happy and that coming here was the right decision for her.
Katie tapped out her reply to Nicole, keeping it short and wishing Nicole and Rick all the best that God had dreamed up for them. Her concluding line was simply, I’ll tell Eli you said hi, and I’ll keep you updated.
She left the details of her love life at that. Katie knew that she and Nicole could never be the same midnight whispering girlfriends they had been in college. That season of their friendship was over. It would always be Nicole and Rick from here on out, just as the relationship dynamic with Christy had changed when she and Todd married. Katie and Christy managed to adjust. She hoped she and Nicole would be able to adjust as well.
Katie went through the rest of her emails quickly and found herself smiling when she came to one from Christy. She read the update about how Todd’s dad had met a woman he was serious about and how great that was since his parents had split soon after Todd was born. Now Todd’s dad was getting a second chance at love.
Christy’s email went on to say:
They met in the Canary Islands, and Todd thinks that if they get married, that’s where the wedding will be. I checked a map, and the Canary Islands are off the coast of West Africa. So that means if we end up going to the Canary Islands someday in the next, say, year or so for their wedding, then we’ll have to fly to Kenya to see you and Eli.