To Protect & Serve (37 page)

Lisa’s chest felt as if the air had been going in, stacking on top of itself until there wasn’t room for any more. What had Jeff said about small steps? About trusting? What had Eve said about letting go? In different words, they were all saying the same thing—she, the perennial ice queen who could handle everything on her own, was kidding herself that she was going anywhere on her own power. No, she was stuck, right where she had been all those long years before when she had vowed that unlike her mother, she would never fall into the trap of needing someone so much she couldn’t let go and then have them let her down anyway.

That vow, so sensible at the time, had cost her time. It had cost her being close to anyone, letting anyone get close to her. And it had nearly cost her a life with the man she loved. Of course, one decision didn’t banish all the other doubts, but if she kept her gaze on God’s plan for her life instead of on the waves and the wind around her, His power could become hers and together…

“Okay, God, I’m ready. Show me the first small step,” she prayed, and for the first time in a forever of prayers, she felt like Someone had actually heard.

“You’re awful quiet,” Eve said as she and Jeff sat by the big bay windows of the restaurant. Then she smiled. “Not that you’re ever very loud.”

The words running through Jeff’s head pulled thoughtfulness to his face. “I was just thinking about what the guy said in the sermon today—you know, about how if Friday had been the end, then the cross would be a symbol of tragedy instead of the symbol of hope.” His fingers went up and drifted across the metal cross at his chest. “We always want it to be Sunday, don’t we? We don’t want to go through the Fridays of life, but the resurrection of Sunday would mean nothing without the tragedy of Friday.”

“I don’t think I’d ever thought about it like that either,” Eve said softly. “I kind of feel like I’m at Saturday now—waiting, not knowing what’s coming next. Sometimes I think what’s coming will be Sunday, and sometimes I’m afraid it’s going to be another Friday.”

Jeff nodded. “I’ve been at Saturday so long, I’m not sure I’d even recognize Sunday anymore.” He held up the cross. “Mom gave me this.”

“At the academy,” Eve said, and Jeff nodded. “I take it she wasn’t thrilled about the fire department thing.”

“No. She didn’t understand. She thought I had a dea
th wish.” He shrugged. “Maybe I did.”

“What does she think now?”

He breathed in the question. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since she left that day. I thought it’d be easier for her if I stayed away.”

Eve twirled her fork on her plate although she didn’t seem to see the food there. “How would that be easier?”

Jeff wasn’t eating much either.  Food had lost its allure. “That way, she wouldn’t have to think about me every day and remember everything she’s lost.”

“Your dad and Kit.”

Slowly he nodded. “She blamed me for it.”

“No, she didn’t.”

It would’ve been nice to believe that, but he knew better. “Yeah, she did, but even if she hadn’t, she should have. I killed the two people she loved most in this world. I did, and she never forgave me for that.” He sat back and closed his eyes against the pain that admission brought up. “If I’d just put those dumb rags away like she told me to… Why was that so hard? But no, I had to throw them on the bench like a spoiled little brat. Kit could go to the party. I couldn’t. It seemed like such a big deal at the time. Now…”

There was only softness in Eve’s eyes. “You were a kid.”

Anger slashed over him. “Yeah, a kid who should’ve known better. A kid who did know better. Oily rags and a water heater flame don’t mix. I knew that, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. Not to even mention that propane tank Dad had told me to move six times already.” Jeff sighed softly. “But I was too busy as usual, with my own life. Too busy to worry about little details like that. And then Mom was left with me—the one who didn’t have the funny stories to tell. The one who couldn’t tell a joke to save his life. The one who was a terribly poor substitute for her favorite.”

“Jeff…”

“It’s true.” He stopped her protests with one look. “It is. Do you know she didn’t get to tell them she loved them? She didn’t. She told me that one night, that all she wanted was to hear them say it and to be able to tell them one more time that she loved them. I took that away from her. And because of my stupidity, she’ll never have that chance again.”

“And what about you?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What about me?”

“You’re still here. Why doesn’t she tell you she loves you?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

“Jeff…?”

“She’d never bothered to before, why would she strain herself now?”

“But…?”

“I never quite fit into her plans,” Jeff said, his gaze settling on his fork with the admission. “She was supposed to go back to work after Kit. International finance—that was her dream. She was on the fast track to being the vice president of her company. Then she got pregnant with me, and her whole life changed. I guess she had a lot of trouble because she was in bed for like the last three months of it. When I finally got here, I was a pretty sick little kid. If it made you sick, I caught it. We were in the hospital more than we were home. Daycare was out, so finally her work had to find someone else. Eventually I grew out of that, but her career was shot by that time. I can always remember Dad trying to make me not notice how she felt about me. He’d take me out, to do things, fly kites, fix cars, but I knew. It wasn’t hard to notice. On Saturday mornings I’d hear them in the kitchen all laughing and talking, and I’d know that the second I stepped through that door, the fun would be over.”

His gaze never lifted from the table. “Then I burned the house down, and as bad as it was before that, things were worse after. She’d scream at me for every little thing. If supper wasn’t ready on time or if I left my car too close to the fire hydrant, or a hundred-thousand other things. I tried, but…” He exhaled. “I went to business school. I thought that would make her happy. Dad always said he wanted his sons to graduate from college. Kit never got that chance, so I went even though I didn’t really want to. That day I stood on that stage, I looked out across that whole auditorium of
thousands of people, and there wasn’t one face out there I knew. Not a single one.” He laughed softly. “She still wouldn’t know about what I’m doing now if it wasn’t for Dustin.”

“The letter.”

Jeff nodded. “I think he wrote more of it than I did. I never would’ve had the guts to put it all on paper. Honestly I figured she’d trash it the second she got it anyway.” His thumb traced over the cross. “She told me to tell them not to call her if something ever happened because she couldn’t handle another funeral. Then she gave me this, told me good luck, and left. I haven’t seen her since.”

“You know she thinks about you every day.”

“I doubt it.”

“And every day she wishes she had done
things differently, and that she could have another chance.”

“Yeah, right. And you know this how?”

Eve looked at him. “Because I know how it feels to push away just when you need to be there the most.”

In the darkened apartment as the lights from below traced across his ceiling, Jeff lay watching them. One day their time on this earth would come to an end. There was no surer bet in the world. She would leave him, or he would leave her, but regardless of the circumstances, the opportunity to say those words would forever be gone. How many times had he wished that Dad or Kit could come back for one moment and give her what she so desperately wanted? Yet his own heart wrapped around those words like a dog hording food. True, she had never said them to him, but he hadn’t said them to her either. If the opportunity evaporated before his eyes, would it be her he blamed for that, or…?

His gaze slipped over to the clock. It was late, and yet how much later was it getting with every tick of that clock? Would he have tomorrow if he didn’t take the chance tonight?

Pushing the idea ahead of him, he swung his legs out of the bed and dragged them through the hallway to the phone on the
counter. It was one phone call, and yet it was so much more. A slow button at a time, he dialed the number and waited through the rings. When it clicked, his heart clicked with it. “Hello?”

Time froze around that voice. “Mom?” He fell through the word, his heart plummeting ahead of him. “Umm, it’s Jeff.”

“Jeff, what’s wrong?” He heard the concern flood through her voice.

“Nothing,” he said softly. “I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you.”

The words rang on the wires between them followed by a long moment of utter silence.

“You…? Oh, well, I love you, too,” she said slowly
with surprise lacing the words. “Where are you?”

“At home.”

Another long moment of silence. “Are you still… with the…?”

“Department? Yeah. I still am.”

“Oh.”

His brain fought for something to say. “Are you still…?”

“Liquidating estates,” she said slowly. “It keeps me busy.”

He wound an elbow up to the
countertop. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m going on a trip to San Marcos with some friends next week.”

“Oh, yeah? That sounds like fun.”

“Yeah, it does.” The wires buzzed loudly
between them. For a long moment he waited, thinking, hoping that she would ask about him, but finally she said, “Well, I’m sure you’ve got other things to be doing. I’d better let you go.”

“Yeah.” The word hurt. “I guess.”

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will,” he said, willing strength into his voice. “You, too.”

When he hung up, the center of him ripped in two, and he laid his forehead on the corner of the wall. She could do that. Just hang up and go on with her life. She could, but somehow he couldn’t. He needed someone he could love, someone who could love him in return. He needed that, and of every single person on the face of the earth, there was only one person who fit that description. Closing his eyes, he picked up the phone and dialed the number. He had to swallow the protests in his head. Strength was in the asking. Courage was holding out a hand and trusting that she would take it. Faith was believing that Sunday would follow Saturday as Saturday had followed Friday—if only you held onto the hope long enough.

The phone clicked. “Hello?”

“Lisa? Hi, it's Jeff. I need to see you.”

“What is up?” Lisa asked in barely concealed panic when she opened her door at nearly midnight to find him looking like he was about to jump out of his skin at any moment.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but this couldn’t wait.” Jeff ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

Slowly she opened the door wider. “Come on in.”

He stepped past her, and she felt the pent up energy flowing off of him. When she closed the door and turned to him, he hadn’t moved as far as she had thought. He was standing there, two feet from her, and if ever she had felt out of control, this was it.

“So what’s the emergency?” The concern in her narrowed her gaze like a laser.

With one look at her, his body shook slightly. “This isn’t right.” Quickly his hand grabbed hers. “Here, sit down.”

Uncertainly she let him lead her to the couch where she sat, but still he didn’t calm down. Instead he paced back and forth in front of her. She watched him—back and forth, back and forth. “Whatever it is, you can say it. I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”
Well, me and God
, her heart said, and she smiled. But his pacing continued. “Look, Jeff, it’s okay. Really.” One of her hands caught his as he passed, and he looked down at her. She tried to get peace into her eyes. “It’s okay. Really. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

A moment. A nod, and slowly
his body slid onto the couch next to hers although the jitters didn’t leave. It took him a long moment even then to say anything. Finally he let out a long breath. “I’ve known how I felt about you for a long time now, but I’ve had a hard time putting it into words.”

“Yeah,” she said
as worry for him brushed her heart, and she kept her gaze trained only on him.

When he looked at her and smiled, some of his nervousness slid away. “Before I met you, I didn’t have much luck with girls. They didn’t understand me. I didn’t understand them. At least that was my excuse. The truth was I knew that sooner or later I would do something to ruin anything that got started, so I just didn’t start. I stayed in my little hole and hoped no one
would notice me. It was easier that way. Then you came along, and all of a sudden that little hole wasn’t nearly as comfortable as it had been before. I can’t explain it, but for the first time I felt safe with you—like I mattered too.”

“You do matter.”

He put a finger up to stop her. “Shh. I need to say this.” She nodded wordlessly, and his finger dropped away. “There are seventeen million reasons why I should’ve just walked away from this thing right from the beginning, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because you make it safe for me to live, to be myself, even when I don’t think ‘myself’ is all that great. I like who I am when I’m with you, but I think that I haven’t been honest with you about who that is.”

Her gaze searched his profile as he let go of her hand and took a breath. He closed his eyes to get the words out. “I didn’t become a fireman to help or to save lives. I became one because I was trying to make up for something I did.” His voice faded
out, and her spirit fell with concern. He looked right at her then, and nothing in her could look away. “When I was seventeen, I got careless with some rags I was using on my car. My mom told me to put them away, and at the time I was mad at her, so I threw them on my work bench and left.”

The words slowed. “I heard the box drop. I can still hear that thud in my head, but I didn’t go back to pick them up. I was mad, and I thought I had every right to be, so I left them there and walked out.

“Mom had a meeting that night. She had just left, and Dad and Kit were working on some computer program Kit had brought home from college. I went to my room and slammed the door planning to mope there all night.” All the words stopped as he sat squeezing the pain from his eyes and trying to breathe. Finally he sucked in a ragged breath and forced himself to continue. “It all happened so fast. There was this unbelievable explosion. I didn’t even know what it was at the time, but it knocked me off my bed. When I hit the floor, all I could think was that whatever had happened was bad.

“By the time I got to my door, there was fire and smoke everywhere. I couldn’t see anything. It was just all smoke and flames, but I knew where Dad and Kit were working. It was in the direction that all the flames were coming from, so…”

Lisa knew him, and she knew what was coming although he didn’t speak the words immediately. The nightmare hung there between them, so close she could feel the heat and the terror of that seventeen-year-old boy knowing his family was in danger, and yet helpless to get them out.

Unshed tears clung to him. He beat them back. “I went as far as I could into it, but the smoke was just so thick, and the fire was everywhere.” He shook his head. “Finally I got down on my hands and knees and started crawling, yelling their names, listening for them so that maybe I could find them. I don’t know how long I crawled like that. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. I heard something once, and I tried to get to it, but when I got to where I thought it was, there was nothing there—at least I couldn’t see anything. All I remember is knowing that if I didn’t get to them, no one else would.”

He exhaled slowly. “The next thing I remember is the fireman dragging me out onto the lawn. I looked up, and I remember how bright the stars were. Then I remembered why I was out there and who was still in the house. I begged the guy to go back in and find them. That’s all I could think, ‘Get them out. Please, just get them out.’”

The words stopped for a long moment, and then he shook his head. “He shouldn’t have gone back in. It was too dangerous. I know that now. He shouldn’t have gone back in, but he did because I asked him to.”

Softly Lisa put a hand on Jeff’s knee which he obviously didn’t feel as he fought through the memories surrounding him. Still, she wanted to let him know, she was right there for him—whether he realized it or not.

“I remember
watching the roof cave in,” he said as if he was seeing the scene before him now. “That whole section just collapsed into this huge ball of flames.” Haze took over his voice. “He’d just gone in… just had time to get right in the middle of that thing when it fell. I sat there on the grass, and I knew he wouldn’t make it out, they wouldn’t make it out, and it was all my fault.”

“He was a fireman, he knew the risks,” Lisa said, trying to make it better, but knowing all too well the other side of the fireman’s story.

“And he wanted to help because I’d asked him to.” Jeff’s head fell forward. “Just like Dustin.”

That name shattered across her heart. “Oh, Jeff, that wasn’t your fault.”

“That night, I yelled at Dustin for help,” Jeff said only hollowness in his voice. “There were these three people I found trapped, and I thought we could get them out. I couldn’t do it alone, so I called for help, and Dustin came. If it hadn’t been for me, he would be at home with Eve right now.”

“Oh, no, Jeff, that’s not true. It was an accident.”

“I heard the ceiling fall,” he said, the words broken and splintered. The tears began to fall for real then. “I heard it… and I should’ve gone back right then. If I had, maybe…”

Seriousness drilled into her. “No, now you listen to me. You had no control over that ceiling. You had no control over where he would be when it fell. It was an accident.”

“Just like the rags?” Jeff asked, and bitterness seared the question. “They were an accident too. Right? An accident that never would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for me.”

Gently Lisa slid over to him and pulled him into her arms. His head dropped onto her shoulder. “Okay. Now, you listen to me, Jeff Taylor. There are things in this life that we can’t control. Things that make no sense while we’re here. But you can’t blame yourself for them, and you can’t spend your life trying to right the past by torturing yourself now. Helping people is who you are. It’s you—not who you’re trying to be, not who you want to be. It’s you, and I love you for that. But putting these obligations to help on yourself because it’s going to change the past doesn’t work. It’s won’t. It can’t.”

His head moved side to side. “I just wish I could get them back.”

Love for him slid through her. “Of course you do because you care.”

“I wish I didn’t. Life would be a whole lot easier.”

“No,” she said softly. “Pushing people away because they might hurt you doesn’t make things easier. It just makes you lonely and miserable. Believe me, I’ve found that one out the hard way.”

He exhaled, sat up, and put his elbows on his knees. Then he dropped his face into his hands. “I’m so tired of hurting. I’m so tired of waking up every morning thinking that maybe today I’ll do something to make it go away, and climbing into bed every night knowing it’s all still the same.”

Lisa laid her hand on his back. “You’re still punishing yourself, torturing yourself for something you had no control over. You’re still holding onto fear and pain that’s keeping you stuck right where you were when that fireman put you on the grass. But pain and fear don’t move you forward, Jeff. They’re holding you in that moment.”

“But it happened. I don’t know how to get it out of my head, how to make the memories stop.”

“Have you ever tried forgiving yourself?”

His head shook slowly. “Look around at all the hurt I’ve caused. How can I forgive myself? People hate me because of the things I’ve done.”

“No, they don’t. They don’t hate you, but even if they did, does anyone hate you more than you hate yourself?” Lisa watched him, knowing the answer to that question. “It’s not easy, but after you’ve taken responsibility, there comes a point when you have to step out of the boat and let go.”

He looked at her in confusion. “Huh?”

She laughed. “It’s something I heard on the radio. Life’s not easy—for anybody. The wind and the waves are right there all the time waiting to knock you over, but the point is you have to step out of the boat anyway. You have to trust God enough, to believe that He sees the bigger picture and would never let the wind and the waves get the better of you.”

Jeff laughed softly and then sighed. “That sounds great, but I don’t know how to do that.”

“Small steps,” she said with a smile. “Just like you told me
. You have to take small steps. Take the first step, then He’ll show you the next one.” Neither of them moved for a long moment. “So the question is:  what’s your first step?”

When he looked back
up, his gaze caught hers, and she could see the confusion and the interminable ache in the depths of them.

“Could you hold me?” he finally asked softly.

If that was the first step, the others should be the easiest of her life. Her arms slipped over his shoulders. “As long as you need me to.”

Delegating. It was a word Lisa had heard only in the context of reading the dictionary definition. On Monday morning however, as she sat at her desk staring at the stacks of work in front of her, she thought about him. Small steps. If he was willing to take a few, then what excuse did she have? She picked up a stack of folders, laden with information, and walked into Sherie’s office.

“These have been on my desk for six months now,” Lisa said, “and I don’t think I’ve even looked at them. Would you do something with them?”

Sherie looked up blankly. “What?”

“File them, trash them, whatever needs done with them.”

“O…kay.” The stack landed in Sherie’s hands.

“And I’ve got six more stacks just like that one, so when you’re finished with it, you can come get some more.”

Perplexed, Sherie nodded, and Lisa went back to her office. Now to give Joel his assignment.

The classes, the information, somehow they all felt different today. Small steps. That’s what Jeff was taking today by coming to class, not to somehow change what had already happened, but to move forward with his life. A life that he now chose because he wanted to—not because he felt he had to.

As the lecture continued, Jeff thought about Lisa, and the truth was he couldn’t imagine moving forward without her. However, although she hadn’t run the night before, he still had no idea if her stance toward their chances of being together had changed. His pen slipped across the paper unguided. He needed to find that out. He needed to know if they were destined to be forever friends or if she would step out of the boat with him and ask for more. And the only way to find out was to ask.

“Knock, knock,” Jeff said at 5:30 as he stood outside her office door, rapping it with his knuckle. However, when he opened it, he wasn’t at all sure he was even in the right office. Her desk was… clean. He could see the wood it was made of. There were no files, no folders threatening to slide off, only her computer and a few pieces of paper, lying there, and life shifted at his feet.

“What? Are you checking up on me?” Lisa asked from behind him. Jeff spun around to her. Her smile was lit by the glow in her eyes.

Stunned, he took the sight of her in. “I thought I must have the wrong office.”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” she asked teasingly. She stepped past him, through her door, and around her desk.