by Hannah Luce
Austin didn’t know that Papa was pretty much already sold on him when he called to ask him to come to Texas for an interview. Since two of Papa’s top people had recently stepped down, he wanted to meet Austin in person to get a feel for which job would be best for him. I told him that Austin would be a great asset, no matter which position he took.
Papa and Austin only spoke for a few minutes on the phone, but the conversation was easy between them. Both of them were personable and straightforward and, even though Austin respected Papa’s place in the evangelical world, he wasn’t intimidated by his position or his power, the way Garrett and others were.
They had only spoken for a few minutes on the phone when Papa asked Austin, “So when can you come for a talk and tour?”
Austin didn’t hesitate. “I can be there this week if you want, sir,” he said.
“Great,” Papa said. “I’m looking forward to meeting you.”
“Me, too, sir,” Austin said.
I was beside myself with excitement when I heard Austin was really coming. I missed him terribly, and I couldn’t wait to see him again. He said he’d be there on Friday. “This is a dream come true!” I said when he told me.
And that’s how the nightmare started.
20
Destiny
Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted.
—JACQUELINE CAREY, KUSHIEL’S DART
Austin was nervous about meeting Papa. He’d seen him onstage at an Acquire the Fire event back when he was a kid, but they’d never officially met. He must have called me five times a day asking for tips. What should he say? What not to say? “First and foremost, no cussing,” I said. “And get it across that you have a strong relationship with God.”
“I think I can handle that,” he said in his Oklahoma country boy twang. I could hear the smile on his face. Even though I knew Papa would fall in love with Austin, I was nervous for him. Papa wasn’t just some guy he needed to impress. He was a serious man of God.
Austin was scheduled to come to Texas for his in-person meeting on that following Friday. I knew it was a hectic time for Austin. He was graduating that weekend, and he’d told me he was struggling with his senior business presentation, which had to be finished before he walked. Nothing could stop Austin from getting what he wanted, though, and he wanted the job with Papa at Teen Mania.
He planned to drive from Tulsa that Friday morning, spend the day with Papa at Teen Mania, and return home that same night in time to wrap up his business final. I was excited for his visit and over the moon about the prospect of his coming to Texas to work with us. I was screeching into the phone the night before. “You’re coming! I can’t believe you’re coming!” He had so much to offer Papa and Teen Mania, and I was dying to have my wonderful friend nearby. It would be just like the old days.
Austin called late on Thursday night to let me know he was packed up and ready to roll at sunup. I reiterated the rules. No swearing. No God jokes. Be careful what you say and, even more important, be mindful of how you say it. You’ve got to sound humble, I said. God frowned upon people who bragged. In the Bible, the boasters are listed among the wicked of men. “And the people at Teen Mania will hold it against you,” I said. “You’re not making this any easier,” he said. We both laughed. “I know, Hannah. I know,” he said. “Oh, by the way, Garrett is coming with me.”
He could have been saying, “By the way, I just got my car washed,” or, “By the way, the weather’s supposed to be nice.” But, Garrett is coming? The butterflies I had felt in my stomach over Austin’s visit suddenly felt like birds flapping around my insides. “What?” I cried. “What do you mean Garrett’s coming? Why is Garrett coming?” Austin knew all about what had happened between Garrett and me. He knew I hadn’t heard from Garrett for two months, not a word since our confrontation, and he knew how I felt about the whole engagement thing. Yet he’d invited Garrett without even telling (or asking) me first. I was beside myself. This was something my dad would do.
I always said that in some ways Austin reminded me of Papa, except that he was more fun. He knew social etiquette, but he overstepped it whenever he felt like it, and he was so charming he could get away with it. Darn him! “Austin!” I cried. “Why is he coming? There’s no reason you need a chaperon for your job interview.” I know Austin thought I was overreacting. “I don’t know!” he said. “I don’t know, but he won’t stop talking about you. He won’t shut up! He even offered to pay for the gas for the trip. He’s crazy about you, Hannah. You know he is.” Then why was he marrying someone else? I hadn’t heard any news about a broken engagement or a change of wedding plans. The last thing I’d heard was that Garrett and his fiancée had just bought a house together, and the wedding plans were chugging right along. Under the circumstances, it was easier not seeing him. What was the point? It could only complicate things for us both.
Needless to say, I didn’t get any sleep that night.
They arrived earlier than scheduled on Friday morning. I had gone to get my passport renewed in Tyler because I was scheduled to travel with Papa to Mexico, and I wasn’t around when they got there. I’d tried calling Austin on my way back from Tyler to see what their estimated time of arrival was, but there wasn’t any cell service between Tyler and Garden Valley, so I drove straight to Teen Mania.
When I heard they were already there, I went to find them. Austin was already interviewing with Papa, so I went looking for Garrett and found him hanging out with some of his buddies from the ministry. Garrett was a bit of a legend at Teen Mania. He’d gotten to know a lot of the kids when he’d joined them on mission trips in the past, and many of them worshipped him. He was reveling in the attention of his fans when he first saw me. It was an awkward moment, and he was sheepish at first. I wasn’t sure what to say, but I knew I couldn’t say too much in front of everyone who was there. “Let’s go back to my parents’ house so we can make some coffee,” I said.
Garrett had never been to my house before. It’s very peaceful there. The house sits on a lake at the end of a private lane with lots of trees. He loved the setting. We brewed a pot of coffee and took the steaming mugs down to the dock by the lake. Garrett still wasn’t saying much, and my words seemed stuck in my throat. I tried to think of something to make things less awkward. I stifled the urge to ask him about his wedding plans. “Let’s go fishing,” I said instead.
Garrett said he was game. I’m sure he was as relieved as I was for the distraction. I ran up to the house and pulled a couple of poles out of the garage, and we dug in the soil by the lake for worms. I made him put the worms on our hooks, and we cast our lines into the lake. “It’s beautiful here,” he said. He sounded melancholy.
I guess it was me who brought up Austin. I was telling Garrett that I worried if Austin took the job he’d be overwhelmed, as I was, because there was so much work to do to make the ministry current. He said he was worried, too, and thought Austin was getting in over his head and couldn’t handle the executive position he wanted because he’d never run anything before. I think Garrett was feeling left out and probably jealous that Austin had the flexibility to be able to come to Texas and join the ministry, Garrett’s ministry, the one that had changed his life. “He’ll be overwhelmed, and I’ll have to help him,” Garrett said.
I’m not sure at what point in the conversation it happened, but I noticed that the tension that had been separating us had eased. Garrett had inched closer to me on the dock, and we weren’t watching for fish to tug on our lines to avoid looking at each other anymore.
Garrett’s voice turned quiet. He dropped his head and said his engagement wasn’t going well, and he was sad about that. He wasn’t happy in the relationship, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t either. In fact, he said, he’d found a “Dear Garrett” letter she’d been composing on her computer that said as much. They’d been trying to work through their differences, he said, but he
was feeling torn about what he wanted. “I really don’t know what I want to do or where I want to be,” he said.
Garrett could be a bit of a drama queen, especially when it came to love and relationships, but I could tell this was weighing heavily on him. “What are you going to do?” I asked gently. “Will you go through with the wedding anyway?” Garrett hesitated for a moment, then turned to look at me. “Do you think it would be good for me to come to Teen Mania?” he asked.
He caught me completely off guard with his question. I didn’t know what to say. I never expected that from Garrett. He was already hugely successful in his career, and had recently taken a full-time job as an assistant professor at Northeastern State University, about twenty minutes outside of Tulsa. He was earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year with a bright future in academia. Teen Mania paid a fraction of that, and he’d be giving up his university career. I was afraid he was thinking about coming to Texas to escape from his wedding plans and because Austin and I would be right there to help him pick up the pieces. Yet I knew that neither Austin nor I would be long-termers at Teen Mania. The last thing I wanted was for Garrett to one day look back on his decision and blame me for letting him make a huge mistake at such a vulnerable point in his life. As much as I may have selfishly wanted to shout out, “Yes! Come! We’ll all be together again!” I couldn’t.
I said, “You know my experiences here, Garrett. You know what it’s been like for me. Of course, this is your decision to make. Only you know if this is something you really want to do. But Austin won’t be here forever, and I won’t be here much longer at all.” I said that because I feared for myself, too. I was reassuring myself that I had made a commitment to Papa to stay a year and not a day longer, and I needed to keep that commitment. I had plans to finish graduate school, and I wanted to spend time in Europe. I didn’t want to paint myself into a corner and not be able to get out of Garden Valley.
As I was talking, I realized this was the first time I had felt nervous around Garrett, that kind of jittery, insecure nervousness you feel when you realize you like a boy and care what he’s thinking about you. I was hoping Garrett would figure out what it was he was feeling as we hashed things out. I sensed there was something he was holding back, something he wanted to say but couldn’t, and part of me wanted to hear what I suspected it was. But I waited for words that didn’t come.
Papa hired Austin on the spot. It was a no-brainer, he said. Papa was taken with Austin’s confidence, as well as his leadership style. Austin told him how he’d motivated young Marine recruits, and that he could do the same for Teen Mania. He was a team builder and pulled people in. He was gregarious, his handshake was strong, and he looked you in the eye when he talked to you. “A man’s man,” Papa had called him. Austin was going to become his new director of marketing operations. I squealed with excitement.
After the interview, Papa brought Austin back to the house, and he and Garrett got a tour of what I call the Hall of Shame, the hallway in our house with pictures of me at every awkward stage of my adolescence. I saw the handwriting on the wall. I would be odd man out. The men seemed to be bonding at my expense, but I understood. It was a man thing. I was just happy they all got along so well. (I wasn’t so happy when I found out that Austin was going to make significantly more than what I made.) Papa told Austin he wanted him to start work the following Thursday, right after his graduation from ORU. His start date was May 10, 2012. His first official role as marketing director would be to attend Papa’s Acquire the Fire season finale, which was being held in Council Bluffs, Iowa, that next weekend.
Austin and Garrett returned to Tulsa that night. A couple of days went by, and my cell phone rang at midnight one night. Garrett’s number flashed on the screen. “Hi!” I said. “Why are you calling me so late?” He asked how I was and I told him that I’d been worried about my great-grandmother, whose health was failing. I had recently spoken to her on the phone, and she’d pleaded with me to visit in Colorado because she felt she didn’t have long to live. I adored my great-grandmother. Garrett listened patiently the way he always did. But when he spoke he sounded anxious.
“I need to talk to you about a few things,” he said. My heart skipped, the way it usually did when I was nervous. I was afraid (or did I hope?) that what he had to say was about him and me.
“I need to know a few things,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, a little too quickly.
“I’m really considering going to work at Teen Mania,” he said.
“Really?”
“ . . . But I have to make a certain amount of money. I could also work at a university nearby, and I’ve already looked into when they are going to be hiring a marketing professor.”
He went on to say how important Teen Mania was to him and what a difference it had made to him growing up. He hadn’t found a whole lot of things in life that really satisfied him, he said, but he knew that going to work for the ministry and helping to make it continue to be successful would be fulfilling. “I think this is something I really want to do, Hannah,” he said.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a big decision.” I asked myself: Is this his way of running away from his engagement? Is he looking for an excuse to get out of it, and this is his excuse?
“Well,” Garrett said, “I just don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I just bought a house. I’m engaged for the fourth time. I can see my life. I’ll get married. Have a couple of kids. Get tenure. What kind of life is that? Is that what my life is about? Getting tenure at a university?” He started choking up. “I want to do something that matters,” he said, his voice shaking. “I want to make a difference!” I imagined his thoughts like a wad of paper. He was tossing them at me faster than I could catch what he was trying to say. “Garrett,” I said, trying to calm him. “I have confidence that wherever you are, even if you are at a university, you will do whatever you want to do. Just because you have a house and these other things doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference. You can do that wherever you are.”
I thought about something Austin had said. He told me that Garrett was really struggling. That he was trying to find a way to break off his engagement without having a breakdown himself. He said that Garrett wanted to be with me, but he wasn’t sure about where he stood with me. I didn’t know what to think about that. I still wasn’t sure that I was open to the possibility of him and me, and unless and until he could tell me about how he was feeling about me, I probably wouldn’t know. In the meantime, I had to be careful that I didn’t get in the way of his decision about whether to go through with his wedding.
“Garrett,” I said, trying to tread lightly. “If it’s really something else you’re talking about here, we can talk about that, too.”
Garrett was quiet. I could hear the struggle in his silence.
I said, “I know you know how Teen Mania is. If you decide to come here, you’ll be a very valuable asset, and there are a lot of good things you can do.”
He was silent.
“Don’t lie to yourself, Garrett,” I said.
“I’m not, Hannah,” he said. “I know what I want.”
But if what he wanted was me, he didn’t say.
NTSB Identification: CEN12FA290
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Friday, May 11, 2012 in Chanute, KS
Aircraft: CESSNA 401, registration: N9DM.
The cross-country flight departed the Richard Lloyd Jones Jr. Airport (RVS), Tulsa, Oklahoma, approximately 1545, for the Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF), Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Initial reports indicate that the pilot received air traffic control services and had requested to descend from 10,000 feet mean sea level (msl) to 8,000 feet msl. There were no further radio communications between the pilot and air traffic control, nor were there any distress calls by the pilot.—National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report, May 18, 2012.
21
The Cras
h
That was the day my whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls of my house. . . . Took three months before I even looked out the window, see the world still there. I was surprised to see the world didn’t stop.
—KATHRYN STOCKETT, THE HELP
Six of us were going to the youth rally in Council Bluffs. Austin and I were going for Teen Mania, and Garrett invited himself “just to hang out,” he said, but Austin had told me it was so he could spend time with me. Besides the three of us, Austin invited his roommate from ORU, Stephen Luth, whom he had just recruited for Teen Mania’s marketing team. He brought along another classmate, Stephen’s housemate, Luke Sheets, who was our pilot. Austin’s girlfriend, Elizabeth, was coming, too, and she was supposed to fly with us, but at the last minute her dad asked her to drive instead.
Before we decided to fly, we had all discussed driving to Iowa together, but when Stephen offered up the plane and Luke’s services we accepted the offer figuring it would save time. On the drive from Texas to Tulsa to meet up with everyone, I felt anxious about the flight, but I told myself I was just being silly and pushed aside my fears.
We planned to take off from Jones Riverside Airport in Tulsa at one o’clock in the afternoon. I’d arrived in town late the previous evening. Early the next morning Austin and Stephen met me to help pack things still in storage from my college days that I would take back to Texas after the trip. When the U-Haul was loaded, the boys dropped me off at Stephen’s apartment and then took the rented van and Austin’s pickup truck to ORU to park for the weekend. Once back at the apartment, Austin realized he was missing his wallet. He didn’t want to travel without it, which meant retracing all of his steps—the storage place, the campus lot, and McDonald’s. I thought he’d be right back, but he was gone so long that I finished getting ready and was bored enough to take pictures of myself on my iPhone. Garrett called while I was waiting to ask if I needed anything from the store before we left. I giggled, excited about the idea of our trip, and told him to surprise me. Austin finally called and asked me to check his travel bag one more time and, sure enough, there was his wallet, tucked into a zip pocket. By then it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon.