by Jan Thompson
He wished he hadn’t let Marie go three years before. He regretted going through with the divorce.
What couldn’t they resolve without separating from each other?
Couldn’t they have met in the middle somewhere?
It stilled bothered him that Marie couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know about her other job, the hush-hush one that she couldn’t even talk about.
And her friend Esperanza—she didn’t look like someone Marie had randomly met at the hairdresser. She looked like she could kill.
The fact that Logan’s house now had security guards twenty-four seven revealed a lot about where he and Marie were now: back to square one of unanswered questions.
Logan figured that all this could be over once they captured the Buchanan guy. That was one name he had caught during the Wednesday night attack outside the coast of Ketchikan. He must be some bad apple if so many international agencies were after him.
Logan waited for Jonas to finish his prayer.
The boy went on and on.
At some point, Logan closed his eyes and followed along.
“Help Mrs. Ping catch the captain. She said he’s a whale.” Jonas’s eyes were shut tight. “She’s going to need a big fishing rod.”
A whale of a catch?
Logan wondered whether he should leave the child alone.
“All those people in our yard. They won’t play with me.” Jonas’s voice broke.
Logan recalled what Marie said to him on the last day they were still onboard the cruise ship when it docked in Victoria.
He needs siblings to play with.
Poor Jonas. An only child who tried to befriend the Mendenhall Security guards stationed on Logan’s property.
Mrs. Ping was more like a surrogate grandmother to him than a playmate.
What about the kids in kindergarten? They could come over and play with him? They had done so before—many times.
Still.
“Amen!” Jonas said the word so loudly that Logan’s eyes snapped open.
“Daddy!” Jonas ran to him, tripping over his tracks.
He froze. Stared at the broken tracks, and began to cry.
“Shhhhh.” Logan was on his knees. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but my tracks are.” Jonas tried to fix the disjoined tracks.
“Let me help.” It was easy.
“It’s a boo-boo.” Jonas inspected it.
“Does it need a Band-Aid?”
Jonas nodded.
Logan went to the small kitchenette to find the first aid kit.
“Two Band-Aids.” Jonas held up five fingers.
“One big one is enough, don’t you think?” Logan waved it in the air.
“I guess.”
They taped the Band-Aid under the track where two parts met.
“Why not on top?” Jonas asked.
“Because we need a smooth surface for the car wheels to glide over.”
Jonas shrugged. He yawned.
“Time for bed, Mr. Jonas.” Logan crumpled up the Band-Aid cover and threw it in the trash can.
“I want Mommy to tuck me in.”
Here we go. “Mommy is at work, but she’ll be home soon. How about I tuck you in and we can pray for her?”
“Okay.”
Logan made a quick work of their nightly process. Jonas brushed his teeth and climbed into bed. He read a passage from the children’s Bible about Jesus feeding the five thousand.
Jonas was fast asleep before Logan finished praying.
After turning off the bedroom light, Logan went downstairs to do some work. He recalled trying to make Marie talk to him in a business setting in his office, as if that would work.
He heard music coming from the laundry room near the kitchen, and figured Mrs. Ping was still awake. Sure enough, Mrs. Ping was listening to music on her phone while folding Jonas’s laundry. She looked pensive.
“You okay?” Logan asked.
She nodded.
“When are you going to see your grandkids?”
“In a week. I’ll arrive one day before my youngest granddaughter celebrates his first birthday.”
“If you need to take more time off…”
“No need.” Mrs. Ping shook her head.
“You can leave a week sooner. Or later.”
Mrs. Ping gave him a look.
Logan lifted up his left arm. “See a cast?”
“No.” She looked puzzled.
“Neither do I.” Logan dropped his arm. “It’s been over two months. My arm has healed. It’s not broken any more. I can handle my own son.”
“Really?” Mrs. Ping picked another article of clothing from the dryer. “Can you survive Jonas without me for three weeks, Mr. Logan?”
“It’s still Mr. Logan after all these years?” Logan asked.
“It’s best if we keep a wall between us, even though I’m old enough to be your mother.” Mrs. Ping placed the folded shorts neatly in the laundry basket at her feet.
“You’ve been a blessing to us,” Logan said. “I need to give you a raise.”
“You’ve given me a raise every year.”
“Not enough, it seems.”
“Now you’re giving me three weeks off.” Mrs. Ping knotted her eyebrows together. “You going to be okay that long without me?”
Logan nodded. “I’m on a staycation the entire time, remember? Plus, Polly does all the cooking, so we’re not going to starve. I’m going to give Wallace some time off too, so I’ll take Jonas to kindergarten.”
“Okay.” She still looked worried.
“You’ll still have your job when you come back.”
Mrs. Ping picked up the laundry basket. “I won’t when Marie returns.”
“If she does.” Logan would love to see Marie in town, but not if it didn’t make her happy.
“Won’t she? She told Jonas she’ll be back.”
“To visit, yes. But I don’t know if she will stay.” Logan had spoken his mind, but he wasn’t sure if that was too much to tell his son’s nanny.
“Pardon my intrusion, Mr. Logan, but I thought you two got back together on the cruise.”
What to say? “We had our moments, but they were mere moments, you know? It might be over for us.”
“Maybe there’s still something there.”
“Marriage is hard.” Their no-fault divorce was a case in point.
“Life is hard,” Mrs. Ping said. “But all things are possible with God. Hope in Him for the best.”
The best? Logan knew that the best partner for him was Marie. “She’s all but disappeared. I sent a care package to Mendenhall Security, but I haven’t heard back.”
“If she’s working, she’s busy.”
“Maybe she has moved on.”
“Not Marie.” Mrs. Ping sounded confident.
It made Logan curious. “Why do you say that?”
“She seems to be a one-man woman type.”
“That so?” Curiouser and curiouser.
“I think she’s still in love with you—care package or not.”
Logan sighed. “We’ve hurt each other too much.”
Mrs. Ping stopped at the door. “Sometimes we have to love unconditionally.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
After two weeks, Logan’s staycation routine became automatic for him. Wake Jonas up, read the Bible to him, get ready for school, feed him breakfast, drop him off at the kindergarten, come home, putter around, pick up Jonas, take him to lunch, bring him home, play with him all afternoon or supervise playtime with his friends, feed him dinner, prepare him for bed, read the Bible to him, send him to bed, crash like an exhausted dad, and start all over again the next day.
Saturdays, they slept in all morning. Sundays, Logan set five alarms to get them both up and ready for church.
Midtown Chapel was about twenty minutes south in midtown Atlanta. The pastor had mentioned raising funds to plant a church in the North Georgia Mountains, but that would be even farther awa
y from Paces Ferry Road.
Logan wished there was a church down the street from them that they both liked. Sure, there were many churches in the area, but he liked Midtown Chapel the best, in spite of the distance. Both the pastor and assistant pastors were thoughtful preachers.
Their children’s program was top notch and biblically sound. Logan didn’t want to pull Jonas from that environment.
This Sunday, the sermon was for Logan. Their senior pastor was out of town, so Assistant Pastor Byron Moss preached. The congregation laughed until they cried when Byron told the story of how he met his wife Tina for the first time when she was in Nassau to teach Vacation Bible School. They hated each other then. Two years later, they met afresh when Tina returned to the Bahamas.
Logan began to wonder if he could look at Marie “afresh.” If they could start over, would they? Could they?
Byron went on to remind everyone to love one another with God’s love, not human love. “You have all heard that God’s love is sacrificial, but do you really know what that means for yourself, your own situation?”
Logan thought Byron was looking right at him. He turned his eyes toward the open Bible in his hand to avoid eye contact with the pastor, who also happened to be his friend. Logan made a note to himself to sit way in the back pews next Sunday.
“Ephesians 5:25 says, ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.’ When Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, He gave himself for us. God sacrificed His only Son to save us.”
Byron walked to the edge of the platform. “Jesus is my example of how I am to love Tina. That is, I am to love her more than I love myself. Am I doing that on a daily basis? Or is it just at my own convenience? It wasn’t convenient for Jesus to sacrifice for us, was it? Yet, He did it out of love. Husbands, what does your love for your wife look like?”
Do I love Marie more than I love myself?
Logan wondered if he would be able to put up with Marie disappearing for months at a time, leaving their son with an absentee mother and a husband to sleep alone in their master bedroom? It would be almost like a long-distance relationship, and he wasn’t sure he wanted one.
Byron went on to his next point. “God’s love is unconditional.”
Whoa. What Mrs. Ping said before she left for her vacation.
Logan looked to his left and right, and then back at his Bible. What was God trying to tell him?
“Let’s read Colossians 3:19. ‘Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.’ What does that mean to you?” Byron asked. “Are you angry with your wife? Bitter about something she’s done to you? Unforgiving about the past?”
Again, Byron seemed to be staring right at Logan.
Am I bitter toward Marie?
Once upon a time, he had been. Now, not so much. After their Alaskan trip, Logan began to realize that he had to accept Marie for who she is. If she worked for INTERPOL—as that Buchanan guy said she did, which she hadn’t denied—then Logan had to live with it.
Why couldn’t he live with it? They’d have to adjust to their special relationship, like military spouses had to. It would mean many months of loneliness, but if Logan truly loved Marie, he would deal with it.
If he truly loved her…
After church, one of Jonas’s friends wanted him to go over to their house for a hamburger cookout. Logan went with him, accompanied by two men from Mendenhall Security.
By the time Logan reached home, Jonas was ready for his afternoon nap.
So was Logan, but he drank some coffee and padded to his office.
He knew it was still there in his safe, but he had to see it firsthand to make sure.
He punched in the combination to his safe, and reached in to get the box.
Yes, Marie’s diamond ring and their wedding bands were still there. The rings they had bought together in Paris some six years before. The rings they had worn for three years into their marriage.
The rings he could not part with.
Logan closed the jewelry box and placed it on his oak desk. He leaned back against his office chair and closed his eyes.
Lord, please forgive me, and restore our marriage.
When he finished praying, he knew what to do.
Nervously, he texted Esperanza. He didn’t want to send another care package. He wanted to talk to Marie, to hear her voice, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Of course, Marie wasn’t available.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Before Logan knew it, Monday and Tuesday came around again, and then Wednesday. He was back to his weekday routine. He would drop off Jonas at the kindergarten and then go to the grocery store. Except on Thursday.
On Thursday, he stayed in Jonas’s class during the first period to talk about his job as a father. The teacher had asked if he was a stay-at-home dad. Finding out he wasn’t, she asked him to speak to the kids anyway about what it took to raise a five-year-old. The entire time, Jonas was lying down on the rug, playing with his fingers and toes, not paying any attention to his dad’s carefully prepared speech.
Then Logan went home only to realize that he had worn mismatched socks to kindergarten, and that there was a dollop of organic mixed berry jam on his Balenciaga polo shirt.
He threw his clothes into the washing machine, and wished Mrs. Ping was back working in his house. She had started out as a nanny, but agreed to add on more work around the house for extra pay.
Thank God this was his last week of staycation.
Somehow he didn’t miss Wallace as much. Without the chauffeur around, Logan could drive his other cars. Jonas was excited to be allowed in some of the sleek vehicles, which looked like his toy cars, except bigger and more expensive.
However, after being driven around in Logan’s Bugatti La Voiture Noire, Jonas said he would rather be in his dad’s Ford pickup truck than “all the sports cars in the world.”
Good for you, son.
However, after grubby hands went all over the interior of the truck, Logan had to clean it up. That was Wallace’s job, but he wasn’t there.
This morning, Logan decided he would wash a few of his vehicles by himself. That was also Wallace’s job, but he deserved the time off too.
As far as Logan knew, Wallace was probably at home, tending his vegetable garden. His lovely wife would never be short of squash and tomatoes and whatever else the couple loved to plant in their backyard.
As Logan gathered up things to wash and polish his truck, he wondered what Mrs. Ping was doing. She was supposed to fly from Florida, where her youngest granddaughter lived, to Victoria, British Columbia, where her latest boyfriend would meet her.
Somehow Mrs. Ping had kept up with the captain of the Alaskan Queen of the Arctic Seas, although this would be the first time those two would see each other since June.
More than Marie and me, I suppose.
Logan walked down the gentle slope next to his driveway to find the faucet and the garden hose. When he came up, there she was—wearing a light pink tee shirt, a pair of stonewashed jeans, and what looked like black combat boots—like she had just finished work, and changed only her blouse.
Or maybe, like she could run away in those boots if she had to.
Caught off-guard, Logan nearly slipped down the grassy slop, hose in hand.
“Logan.” It was all she said.
“Marie.” Logan couldn’t speak beyond that.
I love you.
I miss you.
I hate being without you.
None of those words came out of his mouth.
“Marie,” he said again, dropping his hose, and making his way toward her. He straightened up. “Are you here to help me wash my pickup truck?”
“What? You’re putting me to work right away?” Marie smiled.
“Speaking of work, I thought you were in the middle of a project.”
“I was. We finished early.”
“Does that mean all is well?”
<
br /> “For now.”
“Are we safer?”
“You mean like you and me, or the world in general?” Marie asked.
“The world?” Logan didn’t want to pry for details. He remembered Mrs. Ping’s advice.
Sometimes we have to love unconditionally.
Perhaps Marie was the CIA-type. She couldn’t tell anyone what her job was. At the very least, she worked for INTERPOL, and that was like the FBI. Agents had to be people of integrity, right?
Logan was confident that Marie wasn’t a villain.
A villain?
Logan rolled his eyes. He had watched too many cartoons with Jonas these past two weeks, for sure.
“Why?” Marie asked. “What’s the matter? Why did you roll your eyes?”
“I was just thinking about the cartoons that Jonas and I have been watching.”
“Distracted, aren’t you?”
Logan cleared his throat. “You were saying?”
Marie didn’t reply. She was looking at him. The brown specks in her eyes sparkled. Or maybe her eyes were moist. Logan couldn’t tell. Dared not tell.
The way she looked at him reminded him of their wedding day on Cumberland Island, how the morning sun also shone in her eyes when they pledged their love for each other before God and family.
It reminded Logan of the love they had for each other.
“I’m happy to see you,” he said. “I’m happy you’re safe.”
“Thank God for that. He was with us every step of the way, everywhere we go.” Marie waited, as though to see how Logan would respond.
Logan would have in times past, but not today. Right now, all he felt was love for Marie.
He should not have let her go.
They stood in silence for too long, perhaps, because Marie stepped back. “I have to talk to you about something.”
“Let’s go inside.” He had to go inside. He wanted to open his office safe to take out the most precious thing inside. Oh, wait—the box was still on his office desk. He hadn’t returned it to the safe since Sunday. He had stared at its content every day at least once since then.
Marie pointed to the garden hose on the ground. “I thought you were going to wash your truck.”
“It can wait. I’ll wash it later, maybe after I pick up Jonas from school. He’s going to rub his sticky hands all over it anyway.” Logan paused. “Right now, I have something to show you.”