CHAPTER ELEVEN
You must not demand proof to believe.
—MAEVE MAHONEY TO KARA LARSON
The Irish pub was warm, the lights dim, and the group of travelers struggled to keep their eyes open. Their rooms weren’t ready yet, and they’d all agreed to stay awake until at least dark when they could sleep and start fresh in the morning, but they were fading quickly.
“Okay,” Kara said. “Let’s finish talking about plans. That way we’ll all stay awake.”
“Yeah, that always makes me stay wide awake,” Jack said. “Logistics.”
She pushed at him so he fell off the bench of the pub booth and landed on the floor, sprawled and laughing. “I think I just landed on my arse.”
The waitress came toward them and looked down at Jack on the floor. “Okay, should we cut him off this early in the evening?” Her Irish accent added a note to each syllable.
Jack jumped up and shook his head at the waitress. “Don’t pay any attention to them. They’ve been flying all night, and they thought pushing me to the floor on my arse was a funny joke.”
“Arse?” she asked.
Hank leaned across the scarred bar table. “You can settle a bet here once and for all. Do the Irish say ‘arse’?”
The waitress smiled at them, glancing from one to the next. “Okay, where are you from?”
“Palmetto Pointe, South Carolina,” Kara answered, scooting over to allow Jack back onto the bench, kissing his cheek and mouthing, “Sorry.”
He pinched the end of her nose and then glanced back at the waitress. “A wedding.”
“Ah, so I’ve heard,” she said. “You must be the group from the States getting married on Christmas Day in the church here.”
“That we are,” Kara said.
“How grand. From what I hear, old Maeve Mahoney had something to do with this?”
“That she did,” Jack said, attempting to imitate her Irish accent and sounding a bit more like he was trying to imitate a Jamaican accent.
“Oh!” Harry hollered across the table. “I wouldn’t be trying that accent again, my man.”
The waitress shook her head. “Okay, I’m Moira. Tell me what you need.”
“Sleep,” Charlotte called out.
“Well, you won’t be getting any of that in here, what with the Shenanigans going on soon.”
“The what?”
“That’s the name of the band coming in any minute. If you can sleep through them, you can sleep through anything.”
While they waited on their food and drinks, Kara rattled off the last-minute plans. “So, we’ll have a quick rehearsal before the Christmas Eve mass at the priory, and then we’ll have a dinner at the hotel restaurant. Then the bride will get her beauty sleep, and we’ll meet at the church by ten Christmas morning.” She glanced at Charlotte. “Do you think those magnolia leaves showed up?”
“What leaves?” Jack asked.
Kara smiled at him. “It’s a surprise. I’ll explain later.”
He shook his head. “You girls are crazy. Leaves. Whatever.”
After a round of drinks and fish and chips, the band did indeed come in, set up their fiddles and guitars, and begin to play Irish music that filled the room and the hearts of everyone at the table.
“Wow!” Kara hollered across to Charlotte. “Jimmy would love these guys!”
Charlotte gave a sad smile. “Yeah, I bet he would.”
Kara slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m such an idiot. I am such a moron. That is what no sleep does to me. I’m sorry, Charlotte.”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, you’re right. He’d love them.”
Jack reached across the table, squeezed Charlotte’s hand, but didn’t say a word. The dancing had started up full force by now, and words were buried beneath the stomps, laughter, the fiddle and pan flute. A man from the crowd reached down and grabbed Charlotte, pulling her into the pressing and dancing throng.
Charlotte was dizzy with the Guinness, the sleepless plane ride, and the loud music; she protested but to no avail. The man with the dark beard, the blue eyes, and the cragged face of a fisherman took her onto the dance floor and twirled her in circles, laughing. Kara and Jack joined Charlotte and the unknown man.
Isabelle watched this scene from the bench, and tears filled her eyes. Jimmy, damn him, should be here for his brother, for this magical and mystical moment where they danced at the edge of a bay in another land. She grabbed Jack’s cell phone, took a quick picture, and e-mailed it to Jimmy. Then she erased the photo and snuck Jack’s phone back into his coat pocket.
Hank leaned over. “What did you just do?”
“Showed that ole Jimmy Sullivan that he’s a fool. A big, grand fool.”
“Isabelle . . . ” His voice trailed off like a father reprimanding a child.
She held up her hand. “You be minding your own business now.”
He laughed. “You, my dear, can’t do an Irish accent any better than Jack. Now get up and dance with me.”
And they did, and then last but most important, so did Porter and Rosie. They all danced to the lyrics and melody of an ancient time, an old Claddagh song sung in Gaelic, words they understood only in their hearts.
The streets of New York City were packed, pushing Jimmy Sullivan as if he were invisible. And this is how he felt: invisible. The noon sun beat down, and yet it held no warmth, the air frigid and still, like he had somehow been stuck inside a refrigerator. Or freezer.
He glanced at his cell phone, and although he knew it futile, he hoped that Charlotte had called from Ireland. If she hadn’t returned his calls when she was in South Carolina, why would she call from another country on another sea? And yet and always hope has its own heartbeat, and hope still hopes even when we tell it not to care.
Jimmy then scrolled through his e-mails and saw there was one from Jack, but he didn’t open it. The crowd pushing him toward Rockefeller Center, he allowed himself to be carried along like flotsam on the incoming tide and then stood in front of the famous Christmas tree. He knew that the tree was huge, but photos, postcards, and TV didn’t do it justice, as its size was beyond his expectations. Thousands of lights flickered in the thick and widespread branches. Bulbs the size of his head were bobbing in the wind. A fence surrounded the tree, and Jimmy stood staring up and down, unable to see the entire tree at once. A commotion of voices and laughter bubbled up to the right, and Jimmy turned. A bearded man held his hands up in the air and hollered, “She said yes!”
Laughter and clapping joined the evening, and even Jimmy found himself smiling. This total stranger had just proposed to another total stranger, and yet the anonymous crowd joined in the joy as if they all needed a reason to celebrate, as if this couple’s elation could also fill their hearts. Jimmy’s chest ached with loneliness, and he stepped back from the fence, turned away from the celebration. He’d just go to bed, just sleep until his performance tomorrow, and then go straight to those he loved. He could make it another two days. Yes, he could. He gritted his teeth.
The hotel was warm and inviting, the bundled-up door-man opening the glass doors and welcoming Jimmy into the foyer where a fireplace and Christmas tree cuddled up next to a menorah.
He checked into his room, and then threw his backpack onto the floor. After ordering pizza and a shot of whiskey from room service, he stared out the window and watched the crowd below, thought how everyone had their own pain, their own demons, their own sleepless nights and haunted choices. He thought of how he’d probably lost Charlotte with his own choices, yet still his emotions swung from anger to loss to hope.
He sat on the bed and took the pad off the fauxmahogany desk and wrote the first lyrics that came to him:
I can’t tell my heart what to do.
I can’t demand it stop hoping for you.
He wrote until his eyes wouldn’t stay open, and then he checked his cell phone one more time—hoping, yes, still hoping—and then closed his eyes.
Charlotte and Kara stood at the threshold of the door to their Claddagh hotel room, and their laughter started at the exact same moment.
“Are you kidding me?” Kara asked. “That’s a bed?”
“They look like those bunks we stayed in when we went to the awful camp in North Carolina in high school.” Charlotte entered the room, threw her purse onto a chair. “But look at that view.”
Kara walked to the window, and together they stared out at the bay and the long-necked swans dancing on the water as if they were at a formal affair in their finery.
“Wow,” Kara said. “And I’m so tired I bet I could sleep on the floor at this point anyway.”
“What a great day and night,” Charlotte said. “I love when there’s a wide-open day like that and you don’t know what could possibly happen, and then only the best things in the world happen and not one of them was planned.”
Kara shook her head. “Now, I love you for a million reasons, but here right now is one of them. I know you’re sad. I know you miss Jimmy. I know he broke your heart, but here you are looking at our day through the lens of joy.”
“I am sad, but this day was like a little miracle in the middle of ordinariness.” Charlotte ran her finger down the windowpane. “You know?”
“Yes, I do,” Kara answered.
They each fell back onto the bed, and Kara mumbled, “I don’t think I can even get up to brush my teeth.” But Charlotte didn’t answer because she was already asleep, her breathing even and quiet on top of the down comforter where she lay fully dressed.
Jimmy Sullivan’s hotel room phone rang its jangly, broken sound. Confused and disoriented about his whereabouts and the time, city, or day, Jimmy fumbled for the earpiece until his hand landed on the cold case and he lifted it to his ear. “What?”
“Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yes,” Jimmy answered, clearing his throat in case this was again the press.
“Your father is down here, and he says he needs to see you. May I give him your room number?”
“I think you’ve got the wrong room. I don’t have a father.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Sullivan.”
The operator hung up, and Jimmy rolled back into the pillow. Damn. He’d been sound asleep, a place he’d longed to be for a month now. The phone rang again, and he groaned.
“Hello,” he said, glancing now finally at the clock: 11:00 a.m. In a quick calculation he estimated it was 5:00 in the evening in Ireland—Christmas Eve.
“Sir, this is the front desk again, and I’m sorry to bother you, but this man has shown his ID and is insistent that he is related to you and needs to see you.”
“Can you put him on the phone?”
There were fumbling noises, and then Jimmy heard the gruff, gravelly voice he would have known after a million years or more. His father. “Jimmy, son, it’s me.” There was a long pause as this man’s voice traveled from childhood to adulthood. Then he spoke again. “Your dad. It’s me.”
Jimmy’s instinct was to hang up, but his hand shook and he sat up in bed. “What?”
“Listen, I know this is crazy. But I’m downstairs in the lobby. Can you come down and see me?”
“No,” Jimmy said and stared around the room. Where was he? New York. Yes, New York.
“Son, I’ve been waiting for you for ages. Just give me five minutes.”
Jimmy’s heart raced in that thick-thumping way that makes a chest feel as if it has been filled with air too quickly. He rubbed his forehead, stood, and opened the curtains to the room, allowing the late and glaring morning sun into the room. The sunlight flashed off high-rise windows, lit window answering lit window in some secret language. “Five minutes. That’s it.”
“Got it. Thanks, son,” the voice from the past said in quiet gratitude.
Son. When was the last time he had been called son by his father? Jimmy rubbed his head on the way to the shower. His head hurt; his body hurt; his heart raced. What was going on? He stepped into the hot water and allowed it to awaken him. Then without shaving, he threw on his jeans, boots, and a black sweater. With a last quick glance at his weary face, he opened the door to his hotel room and exhaled to go face his father. His father.
The elevator doors opened, and Jimmy stared out into the lobby, trying to find his father before his father saw him. He wanted, in some small, victorious way, to be the first to recognize the other. The man stood thin and alone, leaning against the wall next to the fireplace, as if the wall held him up. Wagner Sullivan stared toward the other bank of elevators, his face furrowed and tight, chewing his bottom lip while he rubbed his hands together. He wasn’t the large man Jimmy remembered, as if time, memory, or liquor had shrunk him, or maybe it was some vital combination of all three that diminished this man he’d once called dad.
Jimmy stepped forward and stared at this man for a moment before he decided how to call his name. “Wagner,” Jimmy said out loud.
Wagner turned now and stared at Jimmy, his eyes filled with tears; Jimmy looked away from the pain. He would not be suckered into thinking this man had a heart or cared about anything other than his drink, his next drink. Jimmy took three steps forward and held out his hand to shake. Wagner looked down at Jimmy’s hand and then smiled a sad smile. “No hug for the old man?”
Jimmy dropped his hand and shook his head. “You aren’t my old man.”
Wagner nodded. “Okay, fair enough. I figured you hated me, but hoped . . . ”
“Well, don’t hope anymore.” Jimmy heard the callousness in his own voice, but he couldn’t stop the hate from emerging. It was an ancient revulsion he’d thought long gone, but it rose from the place of childhood, a distant land that really wasn’t so far away at all.
Wagner cringed. “Can we sit down?” He motioned to a couch on their right.
Jimmy sat on the far end of the couch. “Okay, what are you doing here?”
“Well,” Wagner sat and faced his son, “I had this entire speech planned. But now I’ve forgotten the way it went.”
Now Jimmy smelled the familiar aroma: whiskey. He felt the nausea of fear rise in his belly. This sweet-sour aroma had meant only and always fighting, yelling, slammed doors. “You’re drunk,” Jimmy said.
“No.” Wagner shook his head. “Maybe this would be easier if I were. Listen, Jimmy. I know you must hate me. I know that. But just let me say a few things, okay?”
Jimmy nodded. “As long as you know I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“I know that.”
Wagner took in a long breath and leaned back onto the couch cushions. “I have one chance to say this, so I’ll do my best. I love you, Jimmy. I love Jack. I always have.”
“Yep. Beating us was a great way to show that.”
“I am here to say sorry. To apologize. The liquor ate me alive. It ate us alive. It killed me inside, and when that inside part was dead I did things that I, as a man, would never have done. I don’t know where it happened or how it happened, but one day I was a man with a family and a wife and two brilliant sons, and the next I was facedown in the street while your mother drove all of you into the dawn light and out of my life. It’s not that I blame the liquor; I just blame myself for becoming the liquor.” Wagner looked away.
Jimmy nodded because an unbidden lump rising in the back of his throat would now allow words.
“I live here in the city. I have for ten years now. When your mama took y’all away, I hit the road. I wandered for years. I tried to find you, but your mama did a good job of making sure I couldn’t. I still don’t know where you’ve been all these years. I came here and somehow found myself in a rehab facility that was more like a dungeon, but I did get clean.” He turned away. “I’m the janitor for a church on Fiftieth Street. I live in an apartment at the bottom of the church. It’s not much of a life, but it’s a life. At least it’s that.” Wagner paused, and stared toward the front door.
Jimmy found his voice. “How did you find me?”
“I’ve followed your career for years. When I saw you were coming to New York, I made a few phone calls until I found the concert organizer. He told me where you were staying.”
“Damn Milton.” Jimmy shook his head.
“You look great, son. Please, although I know I don’t have the right, please tell me how you’re doing. Tell me about Jack. Please.” Wagner’s face shook as he fought the tears that already sat in the corners of his eyes.
Jimmy stared at this man, at his father, and sorrow rose up next to the anger and whispered, Have mercy.
Jimmy summarized the places they’d lived and then continued, “Well, Mama is in California. If you’ve been following the band, then you know what we’ve been up to. We’re fine. Doing fine. Jack is in Ireland right now. He’s getting married tomorrow. I’m here for the performance, and then I’m flying to Ireland. We’ve been living off the bus for a while now, but Jack and Kara will live in Palmetto Pointe.”
“He went back to Palmetto Pointe to find her?”
“Well, actually, Kara found him.”
“He’s marrying the girl next door. Wow.”
Jimmy nodded. Wagner settled further back into the couch.
Silence fell between them until Wagner stood. “Well, I promised I’d only bother you for five minutes, and it’s been more than that. I don’t want to break another promise to you. I just needed to see your face, to tell you I never stopped loving you, and that I’m sorrier than any man could be. I’ve never been able to find my way. But you and Jack have always been on my mind. Always. Every day. Please tell Jack.” Now the man did begin to cry, large tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks as he looked down at Jimmy. “I can’t buy a ticket to hear you tonight, but I’ll be outside in case I can hear something . . . ”
Jimmy stood to face the man. “Why did you come here, Wagner?”
“I just told you.” He didn’t reach to wipe away a single tear, allowing them to settle as puddles in the wrinkles of his face.
“No, really. Why? The real reason. Do you want forgiveness? Did you expect me to invite you to the concert? Did you want to see Jack?”
Wagner shook his head. “No. I came to tell you I’m proud of you. I came because I love you. I’m not the man I ever wanted to be, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about you or your brother. That is why I came. That’s all.” Wagner looked, for the first time in twenty years, directly into his son’s eyes and then turned and walked away.
Jimmy watched as his father pushed open the double doors and then glanced back with a smile. A sad smile. Wagner then disappeared into the outside crowd, and Jimmy stood in the lobby for a full five minutes before he began to shake with emotions he couldn’t name. The whiskey aroma remained, and Jimmy realized, in that moment of gut-plummeting recognition, that it was not his father he’d smelled, but his own breath. The aroma was from his own sweat and his own life, as if there were a mirror or shimmer of apparition showing Jimmy who he was becoming. Not yet who he was, but who he could be.
Jimmy returned, trembling, to his hotel room, as if he’d just left an odd dream. He ordered breakfast from room service and then sat at the desk, staring at the song about hope that he’d written last night. Hoping. Yes, he’d always hoped his father knew about him, was proud of him. But if that was all he ever wanted, why did he still feel empty and hollowed out? Why did he feel as if he’d been punched in the chest?
He ate his breakfast in silence and then decided that a long, cold walk would clear his head. He threw on his coat, and by the time he stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street, he was overcome with the need to talk to Jack. He pulled out his phone and called. But of course there was no answer. It was 6:00 p.m. in Ireland, and they would all be at the rehearsal or the dinner celebration where Jimmy was supposed to be the best man, supposed to be making a toast.
Jimmy finally looked at the e-mail Jack had sent the night before; he opened the photo and stood in the freezing cold, shivering, waiting for the picture to load. Then he stared at Jack, Kara, Charlotte, and a dark-haired Irish man dancing in front of a band. Charlotte’s head was back, and he knew her look of laughter.
Regret snuck up behind him, pushed him, and grabbed him around the middle where his ribs contracted; he released a groan. My God, what was he doing here? If proving himself were the point, then the man who just came to his hotel would have been enough. Would anything ever be enough? As he’d written in his song, only Love was enough. Only that.
He stared again at the phone. He was missing his brother’s wedding. He had broken Charlotte’s heart. All in the name of what?
Not love. Not that.
His mind began to toss through the options: He could leave for Ireland right now and get there on time, but he didn’t have a credit card or enough cash to buy a ticket. He flicked open his phone and called the airlines to find the next flight.
The airline employee’s voice was flat and lifeless, as if it were a recording or a piece of cardboard with a voice. “Yes, there is only one flight today, and it leaves in about two hours.”
“How much would it be to change my ticket from tomorrow to today?”
The employee continued with all the vital information in the most unvital voice. He had an hour and a half to make an international flight and pay for a ticket when he had no money, no credit card. Impossible.
He groaned. “Can’t I just transfer my ticket? I don’t have that . . . ” He stopped.
The crowd pushed him toward the wall where a woman who looked to be homeless was wearing a thick white down jacket that covered her from neck to feet. Over the jacket were pinned frayed, dirty angel wings. She smiled at Jimmy, and he looked away, not wanting to be asked for a handout. He was down to his last cash until he got paid his full promise next week. A drunken man jostled into Jimmy, shoving him into the angel. “Sorry,” he mumbled to her, slamming shut his phone.
“It’s no problem, son. But you look miserable. You okay?”
He stared at this old, tattered woman, whose voice did not match her cragged face and dirty clothes. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She smiled. “You looking for a pawnshop?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, beginning to run back toward the hotel for his backpack. His luggage had not yet arrived from the tour. All he had on him was Charlotte’s ring and his wallet with very little cash. Then he stopped and turned, staring at the angel. “Yes, I am. I am.”
“Right there,” she said, pointing down the block. “Four doors down on the right.”
Jimmy stared at the woman; she’d just answered his question without knowing she had. She’d led him without even knowing he needed to be led. That was how he’d get the money: Charlotte’s ring. He could come back after Ireland and buy her ring back, but all that mattered now was getting on that flight that left in an hour and a half.
He ran toward the pawnshop.
It was Christmas Eve day, and the group, which now included Deidre and Bill and Brian, who had landed only hours ago, stood in front of the church, waiting for the director to meet them for the rehearsal. They’d all scattered during the day, some touring Galway, others resting and reading. Charlotte and Kara had wandered the streets, alleyways, and museums of Galway, where Kara took photos of Christmas lights for her new portfolio. They attempted to find the places Maeve had spoken about, walk the path she had walked, take photos of her land and time. They visited the jewelry store, which purported to make the original Claddagh ring, the ring of legend. Kara had asked to meet the owner, but was told she was out of town and would return in the morning.
Deidre yawned and then shivered in her down jacket. “This is beautiful, Kara. Simply amazing.”
Charlotte entered the church first, and the others followed. She winked at the Mary statue, glancing down to see the shell still resting as an offering.
The wedding party went through the wedding motions with the church coordinator, Iona. When they stood at the altar, each in their place, the coordinator, in her soft Irish accent, asked Kara, “Would you like me to place the leaves tonight? I think our congregation would love to see them, to know they came from where Maeve lived the last of her life.”
“What leaves?” Jack asked.
Kara smiled. “I have a surprise for you.” Then she looked to Iona. “If you’ll tell me where they are, I’ll get them.”
Iona held up her hand. “They are back in the sacristy. They came last night. I haven’t unpacked them.”
Kara followed Iona, and when she returned she held a single magnolia leaf in her hand. She walked toward Jack, who leaned against a pew. “This,” she said with this sweet smile on her face, “is from the tree where we used to hide when we were kids. I sent enough to put on each pew’s end.”
Jack, who had held it together quite nicely until this moment, fought the tears rising in his throat and eyes. “Kara,” he said in a tender, quiet voice. “My God, I am the luckiest man in the world. I just am.”
She kissed him right there in that church in front of family, friends, and Iona, in front of God and Our Lady of Galway and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the angels rejoiced. They did. Trust me. They always do when love presides.
Jimmy Sullivan had sold the ring for half of what he’d bought it for, but it was enough cash to get a ticket to Ireland if and only if he got to the airport in time. He ran to hail a cab. The Christmas Eve crowd pushed into stores, hotels, and high-rises. He stood at the curb and exhaled when he felt wetness fall onto his hand, a teardrop, or what looked like a teardrop, landing on his cell phone screen. He glanced up. Snow. Falling from an invisible source, the flakes were large, oversized, and melting on impact. Tumbling onto and over one another, the whiteness filling the sky and gathering its strength.
“No,” he mumbled and shoved his phone into his pocket. He noticed another cab approaching and flagged it down, and when it stopped he moved toward the back door. A woman in all black jumped out of the backseat, and the cabbie yelled toward Jimmy, “Off duty!”
Jimmy leaned down toward the window. “I’m desperate. I need to get to the airport for a plane that leaves in less than two hours.”
The cabbie didn’t even answer, but drove away, leaving Jimmy jumping back onto the curb, where he bumped into a young child dressed as a star. Her face was surrounded by bright-yellow plastic or maybe it was foam. Either way her head had been transformed into a huge star. “Sorry,” he said.
“That’s okay,” the little girl said. “We’re late too.”
A woman, probably her mother, bundled up in a black fur coat, glared at Jimmy. “Excuse me,” she said and grabbed the little girl’s hand, pulling her toward a long black limousine.
“Wait, Mother,” she said and walked toward Jimmy. “Will you miss your plane?”
Jimmy nodded; she must have heard him begging the cabbie. “If I don’t get a cab I will.”
“Where are you going?”
Jimmy smiled at her star face. “Ireland.”
“Wow,” she said. “That far, far away?”
“Yes,” he said, enchanted with the flecks of light and dark playing in her eyes. Snow fell harder now, landing on her eyelashes and black parka. “That far away.”
“You want to spend Christmas with someone you love.” Her voice was clear, like the bells of a church ringing midnight. And he realized she wasn’t asking a question, she was telling him the truth.
He smiled at her. “Where are you going all dressed up like a star?”
“I’m the guiding star in the Christmas Eve pageant tonight. I really don’t do anything but stand there, but I guess I’m still important. The shepherds won’t get there without me.”
He smiled and almost patted her on the head but thought better of it with her mother staring at them. “Go be a star. Your mama’s waiting.”
“You won’t get there without me, either,” the little girl said in a quiet voice.
“Pardon?” Jimmy asked.
“Mother,” the girl said and turned to the woman, “this man has to get to the airport right now or he will spend Christmas all alone.”
“Dear, I’m quite sure that man knows how to get a cab.”
The little girl stared at her mother for so long that Jimmy began to walk away.
“Come back,” the little girl said.
Jimmy stopped, turned.
“No,” the woman in the black coat said, “we can’t, Maria. We can’t save the entire world. You’ve got to stop this.”
“It’s not the whole world. It’s one man. Imagine, Mother, if you were alone tonight and stuck somewhere. Roger will just be sitting there waiting for us. Why can’t he take this sad man to the airport?”
The woman looked at Jimmy, and her face held so many conflicting emotions Jimmy couldn’t decide whether she was mad, sad, or irritated with her young daughter. Then she took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said to Jimmy. “I don’t mean to be rude at all. The holidays, God, they kill me. I don’t think this is the way it’s supposed to be. If you can spare another five minutes, our driver will drop us off at church, and then I’ll tell him to take you to the airport while Maria is in her play. She’s right. He’ll have time.”
“Ma’am,” Jimmy said, “that is too generous. I can’t accept.”
“Yes, you can. Consider it a Christmas present. Now, don’t stand here and talk me out of it. We’re late and so are you.”
“Thank you,” Jimmy said, “You have no idea . . . ” And then his voice broke as he crawled into the backseat of the limousine as the woman explained the situation.
Roger, the driver, looked back to Jimmy. “I recognize you, man. You’re that country singer that was on TV last week. You seriously want to make an international flight that leaves in less than two hours?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said.
“That’ll take a miracle, but I’ll do my best.”
A miracle, yes, but there are such things. Oh, yes, there are.
