by J. J. Alston
“My girls,” she breathed from behind her oxygen mask. “Come here.”
They stood on either side of the bed and held her hands, tearful, but strong.
“I know I haven’t got long. Shh. Don’t worry. I’m all right. But you …”
“We’re okay, Mom,” Candace said, squeezing her mom’s hand. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us.”
“I don’t worry about you, Candace. I know that Rio will take care of you. Listen. There will be some money after I go. I want you to take the money and go to Indonesia.”
“No, Mom, I can’t.”
“Promise me.”
Candace didn’t know what else to do. “Okay, Mom. I promise.”
“I love you girls so much. Take care of each other.”
With failing strength she guided her daughters’ hands together.
“We will, Momma,” Tiff said. “We promise.”
A smile of peace playing on her lips, Mom left her girls to each other’s care.
The grief was more than Candace could take. The trailer was too empty. Mom’s recliner seemed so forlorn without her in it. If it weren’t for Rio, for Tiffany, for God, she would have been lost.
For so long her whole life had been taking care of Mom. But now there was no one to cook for, no one to watch TV with, and no one to put to bed at the end of a long day. She knew she’d miss her mom, but she never realized how much she’d miss the little things about their life together.
The funeral came and went. Christmas was coming soon. Candace spent her days working and emailing Rio and reading his words of comfort. On Christmas Eve she volunteered to work, as much to keep her mind off her mourning as to give others a chance to be with family.
She got home late that night, but the lights were on in the trailer. Christmas lights were on, wrapped around the old artificial tree in the big front window. But she hadn’t decorated for Christmas. She thought she’d gone to the wrong place until she saw Tiff’s shiny little car in the driveway.
Tiffany greeted her at the door with a big hug. “I thought we shouldn’t forget about Christmas. She wouldn’t have wanted it.”
Candace sighed. “You’re right.”
Tiff guided her to sit on the floor in front of Mom’s empty chair like they used to do when they were kids. She noticed Tiff had moved her present from Candace from the counter to the bottom of the tree. Candace shrugged with a little laugh and gave it to her.
“I didn’t know what else to get you,” she said apologetically as Tiffany unwrapped a memory book full of pictures of Mom.
Tiffany blinked back tears. “It’s perfect. Now, yours.”
She held out an enveloped card with an oversized red foil bow on it. Almost without thinking, Candace ripped open the envelope and opened the card. Inside was a boarding pass. A ticket for one to Bali, Indonesia.
“It’s round trip if you want, or you can refund it if you only want one way.” Tiffany fixed her with a meaningful stare.
“This is too much!”
“Yeah, well, there was a seat sale. I paid for it myself, you know. So you can’t say a Sugar Daddy paid for it.”
“You shouldn’t have. Really.”
“Candace, you promised Mom. You have to go. I knew if I left it up to you, you’d never use the money for yourself. So I took care of it.”
“Tiff, I don’t know what to say.”
“Just take it, Candace. You have no idea how much you’ve helped me. And now I have this small way to help you.”
Candace looked closer at the ticket. “It’s in two days!”
“I guess you’d better pack, then.” She smirked. “Don’t worry about telling Rio. I already let him know you’re coming.”
She clutched her boarding pass as though it might vanish in a puff of smoke as she said goodbye to Tiffany, checked her suitcase, and went through security. The day was finally here. On the other side of a long plane ride, she would finally see Rio face to face, waiting for her at the airport in Bali.
She’d waited for months to meet him, and yet the matter of a few more hours seemed like an eternity. Again she checked her reflection, smiling at her longer blonde hair, her striking blue eyes, and the ample curves he loved. It wouldn’t be long now. She picked up a book and tried to read as she waited.
Boarding time came and went, and Candace glanced at the attendants waiting by the gate. They were talking in low voices, concerned expressions on their faces. One of them picked up a phone receiver and began to speak.
“Passengers for flight 847 to Indonesia, we regret to inform you that your flight has been cancelled until further notice.”
As the attendant hung up the phone Candace’s heart dropped with a thud. Of course. Something had to go wrong. She opened her laptop, connected to the internet, and sent off a quick email telling Rio about the delay. He might not get it, but she could hope. At least he might not have to spend hours stuck in an airport, as she would.
Candace lined up with the other passengers at the desk for more information. A new boarding pass would be issued for a later flight. Enjoy the lounge until then. With a sigh, she went off to do just that.
Hours passed. Candace bought a magazine and read it all. She couldn’t concentrate on her book. She went into the restaurant and ordered a salad, then picked at it, too distracted to eat. The news was playing on a TV over the bar.
Then the word Indonesia caught her eye.
Abandoning her salad, she went over the TV, reaching up to turn up the volume and ignoring the stares of the people at the bar.
“... devastation everywhere. Experts are calling this the worst Tsunami in recent history.”
Candace sank onto a barstool as the screen changed to an on-location reporter, gasped at the debris-strewn background. Buildings were washed away, trees uprooted, water flooding streets. The screen changed again, showing a group of frantic Indonesians, some of them wounded, weeping and shouting and holding up pictures of loved ones.
“Are you okay?” the bartender asked, leaning toward her and extending a hand to touch her shoulder.
She looked at him, not really seeing anything but the images of Rio’s homeland – the homeland she’d hoped might be hers someday – seared on her memory. She blinked, then shook her head.
“I need to get there.” She pointed at the TV. Then before he could say another word she picked up her carry-on and ran to the ticket counter.
The journey was agonizingly long . She’d zig-zagged the world to Borneo two days later and over paid a fisherman to ferry her across to Bali. , routed from place to place, before she touched down in a tiny plane on one of the few untouched runways in Bali. After that it was half a day before she could find out where Rio lived. If his house was still there. On the way they passed through neighborhoods that must once have been very different – resorts, villas, slums, suburbs – but were brutally equalized now by the crushing blow of the angry sea.
Rio’s house, miraculously, was still standing. But the road along the way had been washed out in some places, and it took hours to get around. By the time Candace got out of the cab stood in front of Rio’s sturdy cinder-block bungalow with the laundry flapping forgotten and dirty on the line, she was exhausted, in shock, and unsure just what she might find. Her heart in her mouth, she knocked on the door.
A young girl opened it a crack, then wider as she caught sight of Candace.
“Is Rio here?”
“You must be Candace,” the girl said with a tight smile and a thick accent. “I’m Rio’s sister, Aulia. You’d better come in.”
Candace felt it the minute she walked into the crowded little house -- the tense silence, the pent-up grief, the anxious waiting. The tsunami had touched this family in an awful way.
“Where’s Rio?” Candace asked, glancing around the room, which was filled with people sitting on every available piece of furniture and on the rug.
Aulia touched Candace’s arm. “We don’t know. He was driving along the coast toward
the airport when the tsunami hit. No one has seen him since.”
Candace gasped, her legs giving way. Someone put a chair out for her as Aulia held her hand and patted her shoulder.
“Do you think ...?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
“We think he must be .” .”
Strange how a life that a few short months ago hadn’t existed could turn Candace’s world upside down so completely. She went to her knees on the rug, and Rio’s family surrounded her in common fear and grief.
They sat together all that afternoon and evening, they sharing their memories of Rio and she sharing hers. They showed her his room, where he’d plastered the wall with printed out photos and emails. If it were possible, she loved him more than ever . She loved his family, too, and the way they instantly accepted her as one of their own.
They ate together, sang together. They prayed for his safe return, or failing that, an end to the waiting. Candace prayed along with them , united with them by faith as well as love for Rio . Plenty of people were still missing . Maybe, just maybe . . .
She went to sleep in the crowded little house full of impossible hope. Reality could wait for the morning.
Four days she waited and prayed, absorbed into Rio’s family, helped the neighbors pile up the shreds of metal and wood and plastic and cloth. She learned how to patch up broken windows and splint broken bones, and the broken things she couldn’t fix, like hearts, she pointed in the direction of someone who could. God.
He was her solid ground in the roiling sea around her. Whenever she had a moment to breathe, to think, she felt like the Balinese must have with the waters rushing at them – terrified, helpless, reaching desperately for some kind of handhold to keep from being swept away. She imagined Rio in his family’s car on the winding coast road, on his way to meet her, with a wall of water rising up beside him …
She wanted to believe he was still alive, with all her heart. But with every piece of wreckage she moved, doubt piled up with it.
This might have been the beach where it all started, Candace thought wistfully. She tried to imagine it: Rio walking up to Tiffany where she sunned herself. But among the debris of tiki huts and hotels she couldn’t picture a crowd of relaxed tourists. The angry swell of sea didn’t seem like a friendly thing. And Rio was gone. She had to face the truth.
Soon she would go home again, pick up the pieces of her life even as the Balinese were picking up the pieces of their island. But it would never go together the same way again. She wouldn’t want it to. How could she go back to her mundane existence, especially now that she didn’t even have Mom to care for? Rio had changed that forever. He had given her a gift she would never have the chance to thank him for.
It hurt -- missing him. It would always hurt. But she would never forget the love. She would never forget the change he’d brought to her life. And she’d live in gratitude for the rest of her days that she’d known him.
His family would never want for anything, she promised herself. They’d lost their main provider in Rio, and he would have wanted them cared for. Whatever it took, she could do that much for his memory, at least.
A rising sob overtook her and she had to stop walking to brace the pain in her chest with a fist.
Rio was gone. He was gone forever, and she would never love anyone like she’d loved him. Never again. There couldn’t be anyone like him in the world.
No, it couldn’t be. She had to hope. She had to believe that God could still work a miracle. Kneeling down on the sand amid the broken bits of wood and brick and metal, she prayed.
“Oh, God, please let him be alive. Please let me find him.”
She caught sight of movement at the far end of the beach and made to turn around and leave, but something made her stop. Maybe it was just that she was thinking of Rio, missing him -- maybe that was why the stranger made her think of him.
But then his pace quickened and he began to half-run, half-stagger toward her. She was oddly unafraid, frozen to the spot, a hope awakened in her that she didn’t fully understand. He came closer and she could see a familiar handsome face, despite the bruises that marred it.
“Candace?” he breathed. “Can it be you?” He reached out a hesitant hand to hover near her face.
“Rio?” she whispered.
He nodded, and the hand landed lightly on her cheek.
“How?”
“It was the car,” he said, in a soft accented voice at once unfamiliar and exactly as she’d expected. “It protected me from the debris. Then the wave left me on a rock at sea. A boat rescued me only last evening. I went home first, but Aulia told me you were here.”
“I guess miracles can happen, after all,” she whispered.
“Yes. Miracles like you.”
She closed her eyes and smiled.