by Lea Sims
“I’m a great believer in the beauty and the power of surprise.”
—Mark Gatiss
“Drew, I just wanted to remind you that the film crew is going to be here around ten this morning, and they’ll probably be here all day.”
John Bailey poked his head into Drew’s office, his grizzled beard wrapping around the doorframe. Drew looked up from his laptop and nodded. “No problem. Just tell me what you need from me.”
John leaned against the doorframe and ran his fingers absentmindedly like a fork through his beard, something he did a lot without realizing it. He scrunched up the left side of his face, considering Drew’s question. “Well, I tell ya…I’m not really sure. We’ve been on prep calls with the Escape Artist team for the last month, and I still don’t get how it all works. Supposedly, they’re going to capture a lot of footage from all kinds of cameras, including some drones, and we’re just supposed to do what we normally do. But we’ll also be giving some on-camera interviews. I’ll radio you when they get here. Just come up to the house then and we’ll meet their team. They’ll brief us.”
Drew nodded again. They chatted for a minute about a potential new wolf being brought in next week, then John left and Drew returned to documenting a laceration he’d stitched earlier that morning on one of their older males who had rubbed against some fence paneling and cut his ear on a fragmented piece of wood. He was blessed to be able to give his time to the sanctuary. He split his time between the sanctuary and his salaried position at a clinic in downtown Savannah. He had received an inheritance from his grandfather while he was in vet school that he had invested with the help of his father, who was an investment broker in Sacramento. Those investments had paid off very well in the last ten years, enough to supplement his income from the clinic and enable him to serve both the church and Timber Ridge with his time and skills.
There was a lot of work to keep him busy between the clinic, the sanctuary, and the worship team, and he’d needed it in the days and weeks after Delaney’s departure. It still astonished him that a single week with someone he’d never met before and may never see again would have had such a huge impact on him. He was even now, three months later, still feeling it. He knew that in time, God would heal his heart and show him the lesson in it all, but for right now, Drew could only push himself through it day by day. He figured if he kept his heart lifted to heaven and his head down in his work, he’d find his way out of it all and look back on it some day without disappointment.
His greatest struggle was fighting off the urge to climb back behind the walls of self-protection that had marked his life for most of his twenties. After a couple of years in college at UC Davis playing fast and loose with his relationships with women, he had fallen hard for a sorority girl named Megan in his junior year, and by the end of his senior year, he was ready to marry her. But on the night he serenaded her with his guitar and proposed to her on the front lawn of her sorority house, her sisters lined up on the balcony and his fraternity brothers circled around him, she’d told him no, shocking everyone. When Drew stood there unable to move or speak, the crowd had dispersed and Megan had tried to explain to him that she couldn’t marry him because she’d realized she still had feelings for her high school boyfriend.
That blow cut him deep. Not only did he leave that night devastated and heartbroken, he was angrier than he’d ever been in his life. She had embarrassed him in front of all those people knowing she was conflicted about their relationship. His proposal would not have come as a surprise to her. He’d been hinting at it for weeks beforehand. She could have let him off the hook at any time, but she didn’t. He got over the heartbreak of losing her pretty quickly, but it took years for him to let go of the deep well of bitterness that event had created inside him. It was the reason he’d chosen to go to the University of Georgia for vet school instead of staying at UC Davis, even though UC had the best veterinary medicine program in the country. He’d needed to put some distance between himself and his life in California.
He’d shown up in Athens with a lot of walls around his heart—walls he’d erected to keep from ever feeling that kind of pain and humiliation again. His life changed the day he met Jason Moore through a campus info fair. Drew was representing the vet program and Jason was there to pass out information about campus student ministries. Their tables were adjacent to each other, and since there wasn’t a lot of student traffic that day, Drew and Jason had spent most of the afternoon chatting. Jason was a brand-new pastor right out of seminary, was the same age as Drew, and had the same sense of humor Drew did. Jason invited Drew to a men’s Bible study, and mostly out of boredom and curiosity, Drew went. Through that study he gave his life to Christ, and he and Jason became the best of friends. Drew served in campus ministry for the remainder of his time in vet school, and when Jason and Lisa felt called to plant a church in Savannah, Drew was part of the church plant team that came with them.
Over the time he had grown as a believer, Drew had walked out healing and resolution around his life before Christ, he’d learned to let go of the distrust he had about relationships, and his walls had gradually come down.
But Delaney’s revelations to him in the garden had landed an arrow to that old wound. He felt that he’d opened himself up to love and once again had been left standing on the lawn holding his heart in his hand. He hated feeling exposed, hated being made a fool of. But in the days after she left, he had to come to terms with his reaction. He had brought his own baggage into that conversation without realizing it. Delaney was not Megan. She had done nothing to make a fool of him. In fact, she’d done the exact opposite. She’d opened herself up, exposed her most painful truths, and made a fool of herself for his sake. She did not have to tell him any of the things she’d shared. She could have just told him she wasn’t interested and didn’t care about him. But there were two things he’d held onto since that night, two things that had helped him get past his anger and pride. Delaney did care about him, and she’d had the integrity to be completely truthful with him.
So, he had begun to pray for her. Recalling all of their conversations and his knowledge of her broken past, he prayed continually for her, asking nothing for himself from God. And God had given him an even deeper love and regard for her in the process. It’s hard to sustain resentment and judgment toward someone if you are continually bringing that person to the mercy seat of God. It was in doing this that he’d gotten the idea to send her a Bible with the hope that it would help answer the questions her trip home had resurrected in her heart. But he knew that if he just mailed her a Bible, she’d likely resent the implication that she needed it. She might think he was telling her to repent of all the sins she’d confessed to him. He couldn’t send her the Bible without also showing her that he truly cared for her—that their time together had meant something to him and that he had paid attention to the things that mattered to her. He wanted her to know that he could never hold someone’s past against them.
“Drew, the film crew is here.” John’s voice over the handheld radio interrupted Drew’s train of thought. He clicked through the remainder of his documentation entries and headed up to the main house. When he stepped into the conference room, he saw that it was filled with people sitting around the table and a few standing against the wall. A tall dark-haired woman was at the head of the table talking to John and Emma. John looked up when Drew walked in.
“Ahh, here we are.” He turned to the woman standing next to him. “Lexie, this is our head of veterinary services, Dr. Drew Hemming. Drew, this is Lexie Agostini. She’s the head of brand strategy for Blue Muse. She will introduce the team from Escape Artist.”
Drew reached to shake Lexie’s hand but faltered when he saw her eyes widen in surprise and then narrow speculatively on him as she stuck out her hand. “Hemming? Drew…was it?” she asked, holding the handshake slightly longer than seemed appropriate and looking at him with frank curiosity. He nodded
and let go of her hand, suddenly uncomfortable with her scrutiny.
For the next hour, Lexie introduced the film crew and walked everybody through the filming process. She explained that the goal was to film a “tour” of the facility with cameras only, recording all walking and panning 360-degree views from the perspective of the person who would walk through the experience. It would be a painstakingly detailed process of shooting that would take several days to capture. All the views would be stitched together by editors to create walking and panning options for the person who would ultimately wear the goggles. In addition, they were going to be recording interviews with John, Emma, and Drew who would tell the Timber Ridge story as “tour guides” to the person virtually walking through the facility.
Once everyone had asked their questions and they’d walked through the day’s schedule, the table broke up and the film crew went with John and Emma to begin filming the entrance footage at the front gate of the property. Lexie had asked Drew to stay behind so she could walk through his schedule of interviews. When everyone had filed out, she looked across the table at Drew, whom she’d been watching and listening closely to throughout the last hour.
“So, you’re the one,” she stated softly, her dark eyes assessing him guardedly.
Drew’s eyebrows snapped together and rose in confusion. “What one?”
“The one responsible for the shell-shocked condition my friend has been in for the last three months.”
It took a second or two for him to grasp her meaning, but when it did, several reactions swept across his face. Lexie read them all and learned in that instant the most important thing she needed to know. Drew Hemming was in love with Delaney. She had suspected for some time, especially since the arrival of the crate, that Delaney had met someone in Savannah and that what she had really come home with was a broken heart. Lexie knew what that looked and felt like. She knew the way it hollowed you out on the inside, washed the happiness from your life, and made you question everything about yourself.
“She told you about me?” Drew asked hesitantly, uncertain what to say.
“No, she hasn’t told me a thing, actually,” Lexie said frankly, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back in the tilting chair she was sitting in. “She won’t talk about it with anyone. When she first came home looking like something out of the The Walking Dead, we all thought it was grief from her aunt dying.” She paused, giving him a chance to confirm or deny that. He simply stared back at her, a mixture of caution and concern etched on his face. “But I know Delaney pretty well. She’s had a lockdown on her emotions for as long as I’ve known her. And she’s also the strongest person I know. I never thought I would see something knock her off her feet this way. The person who came home from Savannah is not the same one who left New York the week before.”
“How is she?” Drew whispered, looking down at his hands on the table. When she didn’t answer right away, he looked back up at her, meeting her gaze directly.
Lexie could see why Delaney would fall for a guy like Drew. He was handsome, rugged, and had the kind of sex appeal that probably captured female attention everywhere he went. Those eyes of his were magnificent. But there was also something powerfully magnetic about him that went beyond the physical—something Lexie couldn’t quite put her finger on. The only word that came to mind was sincere. There was a quiet humility about him that Lexie had picked up on right away as Drew talked to the film crew about the facility. She could picture him and Delaney together. And that made her very curious about what had transpired between them and why her friend had not been the same since she got home.
“She’s better than she was three months ago,” Lexie conceded. “The first month or so, she was barely functional. Her assistant Callie and I were very worried about her. It was like she was disappearing…fading into what I seriously think was depression.”
“Was?” Drew asked.
Lexie gave him a slight smirk. “Yes, she was heading down that road. Until the day your crate of goodies showed up at the office.” She watched surprise light up his face, and then he broke out in a brilliant smile that momentarily dazzled her. “That’s why I was so surprised when we were introduced earlier. The package you sent had ‘D. Hemming’ on the return address. I’ve been dying to knew who ‘D. Hemming’ was for over a month now.”
“Did she like it? What did she say?” Drew said with a grin, realizing he sounded like a middle school boy with a crush, but he honestly didn’t care. He’d spent the last three months wishing for some kind of response from or information about Delaney. Claire told him very little.
“Oh, she liked it. She tried to pass it off like it was just a care package from the church, but I knew the stuff in that box was personal. Somebody packed it with a lot of love.” She looked at him pointedly. He just smiled back.
“What happened with you two?” she asked him, shaking her head then laughing slightly. “She was only here a week!”
“I can’t tell you that,” he said without hesitation, shaking his head firmly. “That’s her story to share with you if she chooses. The only thing I can say is that we spent a lot of time together that week, enough for me to know she’s pretty amazing. I think she felt the same way about me, but I can’t presume to speak for her.” His smile faded. “She’s dealing with a lot of things right now and the timing was just off for us, I guess. She confronted some painful memories and truths when she came home, and I think she’s processing all of that.”
“What kind of painful memories?” Lexie sat forward, clearly disturbed and perplexed by those remarks. Delaney had said nothing to her about any of this. It bothered her that this man who’d only known her friend for a week may have information Lexie was not privy to. But it would explain why Delaney had been so withdrawn, and why even now, when she appeared to be doing better, she was so different than she had been before.
“Again, I can’t share those, Lexie. I’m not sure I even know them all. She had a very rough childhood here in Savannah, and I’m praying God will help her sort through all of that so she can find some healing and lay some of those issues to rest.”
She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows at his mention of God. “Well, somebody’s listening to your prayers, I guess.”
His heart skipped a beat at her words. “What do you mean?”
Lexie stood up and began putting the papers she had spread out on the table back into her laptop bag. She began to wrap her laptop cord around her hand to tie it up. “Let me just say this. The Delaney I knew before she left for Savannah had no use for God or religion. I’ve heard her rail against it many times. Which is why…I’m not going to lie to you…I had to laugh when I saw the Bible you put in that crate. I remember pitying whoever had sent that gift because I thought there was about as much chance of Delaney Anderson opening a Bible as there was of me winning the lottery.”
“And?”
“And…I was wrong.” She shrugged and dropped back down in the chair. “I should probably be buying a lottery ticket.”
“What do you mean?” Drew knew he needed to get out to the enclosure area to help Emma move a pool unit off one of the platforms so the team could replace some rotting wood underneath it, but wild horses couldn’t have gotten him out of the conference room at that moment, much less wild wolves.
“I’ve seen that Bible in her laptop bag at least three times in the last couple of weeks and I’m pretty sure I saw it on the credenza behind her desk the other day. I haven’t caught her reading it, but obviously she is. And honestly,” Lexie said exasperatedly, looking perturbed by the admission, “she’s just not the same old Delaney.”
“What’s different about her?” Drew said with a frown, suddenly worried. He had never meant to convey to her that she needed to change who she was. He simply wanted her to know that God loved her.
“She’s just…different. I don’t know. Softer? Less sarcastic? Sh
e seems more relaxed and less closed off than I’ve ever seen her, but she’s also quieter, more serious, and not as take-charge as she normally is.” Lexie shook her head. “She isn’t depressed like she was when she first came home but she’s also not happy. She doesn’t joke around like she used to or tell me to F-off anymore when I drive her crazy. She doesn’t want to come out to the clubs with me or get a drink after work. It’s like she’s searching for something, but she won’t talk to me about it.”
Drew saw the confusion and concern on Lexie’s face. It was obvious that what was going on with Delaney was troubling her. But her words filled Drew with hope. Delaney was reading her Bible. God was speaking to her. And she was listening.
“What did you people do to her down here?” Lexie asked, jokingly but annoyed. “I don’t know what happened while she was here or why she came home confused about who she is. Did you tell her she needed to change? That she needed to repent and find Jesus or something?” She didn’t wait for his answer but pointed a finger at him and said, “She was just fine the way she was, you know.”
His heart ached at those words, but he regarded her seriously. “If you think she was just fine the way she was, then you don’t know her as well as you think you do. She’s had a pretty painful story locked up inside her for most of her life, and now she’s looking for the answers she’s needed for a very long time. I won’t apologize for pointing her to God. He’s the only real source of the peace she’s looking for.”
Lexie frowned at his answer. It was the second time he’d mentioned Delaney having a painful story, and she hated the reminder that she knew nothing about it. Seeing her confusion and frustration, Drew gently suggested, “If you want to know what’s going on with her, why don’t you just ask her? You might be surprised by what you hear.”
Lexie stared back at him in surprise. She would have taken offense at his statement, but his voice was threaded with kindness. She sighed in frustration. He was right. She realized she had been so threatened by the prospect of losing her friend that she’d forgotten to be one. If Delaney was grappling with painful memories and experiences, then she should do more to support her. The fact that she had chosen not to tell Lexie any of this probably meant she didn’t trust her, and that realization stung. Is she worried I’ll make fun of her? Give her the wrong advice? She wondered. But if her friend was searching for answers, even if it was in religion, Lexie needed to reassure Delaney that she was there for her.