But worry covered her face. “Jake? Are you afraid of heights?”
How he wanted to say no, to act like a tough guy, let go of the railing and show her how unafraid he was. He wanted to, but he couldn’t.
“You are. You’re afraid of heights.” She came back from taking in the view and put her hand on his arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to spoil it for you.” His gaze begged hers to both understand and to get him down.
“Well, for the love of Pete, it’s not worth you having a heart attack. Come on. Let’s go.”
Jake wanted to thank her, but he didn’t have the lung capacity to do that, owing to the fact that the air was turning stale from not moving out of him. “Okay.”
All the way down Liz kept one eye on the steps and one on him. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” But his voice was shaky beyond belief. Why hadn’t she noticed this on the way up? Strange how she had always seen him as somehow indestructible, but the green on his face screamed something very different. He was clutching that handrail as if it might save his life.
“You really didn’t have to go up there,” she said as guilt seeped into her. “You could have told me no.”
He grimaced meekly at her, and she decided that brow-beating him for trying to make her happy probably wasn’t such a great idea.
“I think we’re almost down.” She angled her steps around the bend in the staircase. “You any better?”
“Trying to be.”
“Well, just think happy thoughts. Honey bees. Cherry blossoms. Field of daisies.”
His eyebrows arched. “Field of daisies?”
“Work with me here.”
“Okay. Okay.” He laughed softly. “But I’ve never seen a field of daisies. What does one look like?”
“You don’t know what daisies are?”
“Well, yeah. Aren’t they those little white things with the yellow in the middle?”
“That’s the one. Now just picture a whole field of them.”
“Field or hill?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, yeah. A field is wide and flat. A hill would have more character.”
“Okay.” She laughed, thinking he must be feeling a little better. “Then make it a hill.”
“What time of day is it?”
At first she was going to make fun of him, but then she realized why this was helping. “Um, morning. The sun just came up.”
“Are these wild daisies or in a garden?”
“Wild.”
“Is there a breeze?”
“Yeah, a light one blowing out of the east.”
“You mean the west.”
That stopped her, but she recovered quickly. “Of course, the west. I’ve always been bad with directions.”
He smiled at her. “That makes two of us.”
She laughed at that, happy he was looking better, and even happier he was starting to joke around. “So we’ve got a hill of daisies at sunrise with the breeze blowing out of the west.”
“Right.”
“Is that it?”
“No, there’s an old wagon wheel in the middle of the daisies.”
“Oh, yeah. I missed that.”
His gaze jerked back to her. “You see it too?”
“What? Yeah, totally. Of course, I see it. It’s right there by the fence post, the one with the sagging barbed wire.”
“Oh, yeah, right. I didn’t see that, but you’re right.”
This was, by far, the most bizarre conversation she’d ever had with anyone. “What else is there?”
“I think maybe there’s a house on the other side of the hill. One we can’t see.”
“Oh? Who lives there?”
Jake didn’t say anything for a long time, and Liz’s panic meter went blaring.
“Jake? You okay?”
“What?” His gaze jerked back to her, and something had changed on his face other than it wasn’t pale, ghost white. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m good.”
The noise of the tourists at the bottom increased, and Liz realized they were in fact only steps from the bottom. “Whew. Looks like we made it.”
“Yeah,” he said with a breath. “Looks that way.”
After being inside the statue, outside felt very, very good. Jake inhaled deeply, trying to snag back onto reality. That was so weird. That picture of the cabin behind the hill. He hadn’t seen that coming at all, and then all of a sudden it was there. Another piece of the puzzle.
“You sure you’re okay?” Liz asked, gazing up at him with concern.
He tried to laugh it all off. “I’m back on solid ground, aren’t I?”
She looked back and up at the statue, but Jake didn’t dare. Even the height of the thing like this freaked him out.
“So you want to go to Ellis?” she finally asked. “Or do you want to walk around a little?”
Walking around sounded like a great idea. “I think we should walk.”
“Then walking it is.” She reached down and took his hand in hers, and together they started down the little sidewalk. They had gone all the way out to the first turn before she continued. “So, you’re afraid of heights then?”
He exhaled, feeling like a complete failure. “Yeah.”
“But you live in New York City. How does that work?”
“Mostly it doesn’t bother me unless I have to go up in something. Looking out is even worse.”
“So you don’t go into tall buildings then?”
He shook his head. “Not if I can help it.”
She nodded and took five more steps. He wanted to say something, to head off what she was about to ask, but he couldn’t think of anything. The headache of being up so high was starting to catch up to him.
“So what was that?” she asked, glancing behind them.
“What was what?” He hoped she wouldn’t be able to pin it down.
“That... back there. It was like... like you... I don’t know... suddenly saw something or something.”
She was way too perceptive for her own good.
Jake shrugged, lifting the dark wool of the shoulders of his coat. The world suddenly felt very warm again, and he wasn’t even off the ground this time. “It was nothing. I just...” But he didn’t know how to continue.
“Just?” she asked when he said no more. At one of the little green benches, she slowed and turned them to it.
He sat and she sat next to him, looking more at him than at the view of the harbor beyond which glinted in the sunlight and breeze. Her gaze drilled into the side of his head, searching for the answer or maybe more.
“You know,” she said softly, “whatever it is, you can tell me.”
The invitation pulled his gaze down to the opposite side of the bench. A moment and her hand came to rest on the middle of his shoulders.
“Jake?”
Hurt twined through him, creating pain every place it touched. “Yeah?”
The center of her gaze softened until it looked like a feather pillow waiting to catch him if he decided to jump. “I want to know. Can you tell me?”
Could he? Could he trust her that far? His gaze came up but only made it out to the wind and the waves. “I got another piece. I think.”
“Another piece?” She puzzled over that a second. “Of the book?”
Not wanting to, he nodded and then looked over at her, knowing he would find judgment in her eyes. Instead, she was gazing at him with only concern that faded into interest. “Tell me.”
He looked back down, humiliated by the strange workings of a mind he couldn’t control. “I don’t know. I just... when I saw that house on the other side, I just... knew.”
“Knew what?”
A moment and finally he exhaled hard. “I knew that the family from France now lived there.”
Liz nodded, her gaze flitting across his face.
“And they know about the book.”
She was fighting to not sound like he was completely crazy,
but it wasn’t working. “Does Jasmine know about them?”
Jake thought about that, trying to dig into the story. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Okay. So what part do they play in the story then? Jasmine already has the book, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I don’t know. The pieces, they don’t always come in logical order. I get this and that and the other thing over there.” He scratched his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just nuts.”
But her eyes softened again. “You’re not nuts, Jake. You’re a creative genius.”
He laughed out loud at that.
“What? I’m serious.” And she sounded serious too. “You are.”
Jake raised his eyebrows. “That’s one I’ve never heard before.”
Anger coursed across her soft face. “Well, somebody’s got to say it because it’s true. You have this incredible imagination. I wish I could tap into it. You’ve got a gift, Jake.”
“Feels more like a curse.”
She looked down for a moment and then back up at him. “Who else knows about this? About your story-telling I mean?”
Why did it suddenly feel a million degrees on this planet? He shifted to get free of his coat that was going nowhere.
“Does anyone else know?”
Slowly he shook his head though he kept it down. “Only a few people online, but they don’t really know me.”
She was nodding, pulling the truth out of him with each bob of her head.
“Everyone else would think I was crazy.”
“I don’t,” she said softly.
His gaze went over to her, and he had to fight the tears that stung in the backs of his eyes. “I don’t know why.”
And then, just like that, she put her arm around him and pulled him into her embrace. Her hand wrapped up onto his head as she cradled him against her body. “Hey,” she breathed against him. “It’s okay. I promise. We’re going to figure this thing out. We will.”
When he finally sat back, Jake wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coat and stared out at the world that felt so very far away. “I always thought everybody did that, you know.” The words started, and he couldn’t get them to stop. “That they all had the movies going in their heads, but I know now they don’t. I get it that I’m strange like that, that I see things I can’t explain, and I know things and I don’t know how or why I know them, I just do.” He glanced over at her. “Told you I’m nuts.”
Liz pursed her lips together as she looked at him even as he dropped his gaze to his hands. “I’m not sure where you got that or why, but just because you’re different doesn’t mean you’re crazier than any of the rest of us. You’re just crazy in a different way, a cool way. A neat way. But you’re pushing it away instead of letting yourself be what God made you to be.”
He laughed. “I think God messed up when He made me.”
“No.” The word was adamant and hard. “Satan is telling you that, but it’s not true. God made you the way you are for a reason, Jake. He gave you a gift. Now just because you’ve bought into the lie doesn’t make it true.”
“But it’s weird to be like that, to be like me, to see stuff you don’t understand.”
“Or it’s awesome. It all depends on how you look at it.”
A moment and his gaze came over to hers. “You really think it’s awesome?”
She nodded, holding his gaze in her gentle one. “Yeah, I really do. But more than that, I think you’re awesome. I’m so glad God brought you into my coffee shop and let us become friends.”
“Friends?” His gaze dropped between them to her hand which he took in his. “Is that what we are?”
When he slid his gaze back up to hers, there was peace in her soft ones. She held his gaze steadily and carefully. “Unless you want it to be more.”
Somehow he hadn’t expected that answer at all. Everything bad in his life floated away from his consciousness as he drank her in with his eyes. “Yeah.” He was moving toward her, leaning in, closing the space between them. “I definitely want more.”
The next few hours passed in a haze. They talked for a while longer and then took the ferry to Ellis Island.
“Can you imagine what it was like,” Liz said, again leaning over the railing, him right behind her. “Can you imagine coming up on this place, not knowing what you were even going to find when you got off the boat? The old ones who gave up their whole life to come here; the young ones who left their families. I can’t imagine.”
Jake rested his hand on the railing at her elbow, his face turned into the wind brushing past them. She looked up at him, and love gripped her so hard she nearly gasped.
“All those hours,” he said as if to the wind. “All those hours on the boat, out there, at the mercy of the wind and the waves, and then you’re here. It must have been incredible.”
Liz dropped her gaze back to the water. “So many of them had no idea what they were even coming to. They didn’t have family here. They didn’t have friends. All they had was a dream they couldn’t even really see.”
“But so much of that was just letting go of what was so they could embrace what could be. Believing that life could be better. Hoping that it could be. Believing it didn’t have to be the way it was back in the old country.”
“Yearning to be free. Free to chart your own course and do what God sent you here to do.” Her gaze swept back out as Ellis Island began to loom larger around them. “But still, I think that would be so hard to really do that, to really let go and trust in what you couldn’t see.”
“I don’t think they were trusting in that.” He looked down at her, and there was a peace that hadn’t been there before when she looked up at him. “I think they were trusting God to get them through it all.”
That surprised her— him talking about God, but it felt really good to her spirit. “I guess that’s pretty much what we all have to do— trust Him with our unknowns.”
“And be willing to let go.”
The great hall of Ellis Island where so much of humanity had passed was huge. It soared above them as Jake swung his gaze this way and that to take it all in. He let his hand go to the small of her back so that he wouldn’t lose track of her.
“Wow. This is amazing,” Liz said in awe as she walked slowly just in front of him. “Look at the flags. Can you imagine standing here with maybe a child or two, wondering, hoping, praying you would get through?”
“You can just smell the history, the humanity.” Jake took a deep breath, and she followed. “It’s like all of these millions of storylines in history crossed right here, through this place.”
“Would you get to go to the new country or be sent back to the old?” She touched the wooden railing. “I can’t imagine the fear, the courage.”
“You just wonder, would we even be here right now if it weren’t for them. I mean, I know I’ve got some Irish in me and some German, so chances are that my family came through here.”
“Who knows, we could look out on the wall. See if there are any McCoys listed.”
The thought of the wall— all those undecipherable names— brought him up short, but he covered it with no effort. “Sounds like a plan.”
Sure enough, half an hour later, they stood at the wall. Jake put his hands back on his hips, leaning backward to take it all in. “There’s so many of them.”
“I read it’s something like 200,000.” Liz dug out the brochure she had stuffed in her pocket. “Yeah, 200,000.”
“Amazing.” He glanced over her shoulder but only that. “You just wonder whatever happened to them all. Did they find the dream they were searching for?”
“Well, it was hardly a road paved in gold if they did. The shanty towns, the hard labor. Still. They were the pillars this whole country is built upon. Their faith and determination built that.” She swept her finger the other way toward New York, and Jake shook his head.
“
It’s so hard to believe.” With another small shake of his head, he found a place on the sidewalk to just sit and look up at all the names. What he wouldn’t give to be able to read them all— not just to read them but to ask them to tell their stories, to sit and listen. It would be incredible.
Liz looked down at him and then joined him there, sitting on the sidewalk. “So, what do you think? You glad we came?”
When Jake’s gaze grabbed hers, his smile answered for him. “Very.”
“Me too.” She smiled at him until he couldn’t keep from kissing her. At this rate they were going to have kissed in every historic spot in the whole city. Not that he would mind. When the kiss ended, she snuggled closer to him. “So do you think that family’s name is here?”
Surprise and confusion jumped into him. “What family?”
“That one. From France. You know, the one with the book?”
Jake’s thoughts ricocheted back through their day. “Yeah,” he said with no trace of hesitation or fear. “They were here.”
She angled her gaze up to his face. “And the book?”
A slow smile spread through his entire body. “Yeah. It too.”
Chapter 14
“So,” Liz said as they sat at the tiny bistro across from her apartment as the sun dipped behind the buildings of New York, “what’s up for tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, Mount Rushmore sounds like fun.” Jake sat back in the little booth, smiling at her in open amazement. Never had he been with anyone so easy to be with.
“Well, that’s a little far out of our budget right now, don’t you think?”
He leaned forward on his elbows, really liking the opportunity to just sit and look at her. “Well, then, what do you have in mind?”
She said nothing for a long minute and then only glanced up at him. “Well...”
Raising his eyebrows, he scanned her suspiciously. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Well.” She shifted in the booth, looking supremely uncomfortable. “I was just thinking. In the interest of Jasmine not keeping you up all night, you could come over to my place and write.”
That slammed him backward with surprise.
More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel Page 24