Isabel stood on Michigan Avenue across from the Chicago Tribune Tower, the sky a brilliant blue against the nearly white stone that soared heavenward.
She closed her jaw. At the radio station where she interviewed, they teased her about behaving like a tourist. She wondered now if Lia could help her develop a big-city air about herself. Teach her how to dress and walk, how not to gawk with her mouth hanging open.
But this was procrastinating. She wanted to see Tony, to apologize, to…well, to just see him.
Swallowing the intimidation that kept welling up, she made her way across the busy boulevard, dodging people in the crosswalk. Where in the world did all these people come from? Where did they all live? And park their cars? And buy groceries?
She went inside the building and eventually found herself standing before a security guard.
“Anthony Ward,” the woman said, reaching for a telephone. “That smart-alecky reporter. You sure you want to talk to him, honey? You look way too sweet for the likes of him.” She pressed the phone pad buttons. “Used to be I could send you right on up. Too many threats these days. I seem to remember one or two against him in particular. What’s your name?”
“Isa—Izzy. Tell him Izzy is here.”
“Mr. Ward, this is Sheila downstairs. There’s an Izzy here to see you. Oh! He hung up. Rude, rude, rude! You’d think he’d at least—”
Isabel somehow made her way back out to the sidewalk, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from falling. Now that certainly manifested a big-city attitude. She dug in her bag for sunglasses and a tissue. Well, she had tried. If he didn’t want to see her… Sunglasses in place, she glanced to the right and left in what she thought was a nonchalant manner. Where was her car again? The people at the radio station had given her directions to the Tribune building, just a short distance across town. There was no reason to stay and so much to do at home. And she had promised to work early tomorrow—
“Izzy!”
She turned to see Tony running toward her.
“Izzy! What are you doing here?” He didn’t smile, but he wrapped her in a brief hug.
“Um, looking for you.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you want to walk a bit? We can find a bench.”
“You have time?” She tried to sniffle unobtrusively.
“Sure.” He grasped her elbow and steered her toward the river, across a type of courtyard and away from the avenue.
They walked without speaking for a few minutes. After descending a stairway, they reached a sunny bench in a quiet area overlooking the river. Across the way, skyscrapers rose, the early afternoon sun glinting off their black windows.
“Izzy, you’re the last person I would expect to show up here.”
“Guess what? I’m taking your challenge.”
He shook his head and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “And which one would that be?”
“The one about not hiding away in Valley Oaks.”
“Iz, you know I’m full of hot air. You shouldn’t take me literally. It’s bad for your health.”
“Tony, I’m sorry for not telling you about being pregnant. I should have told you years ago. I certainly should have told you before now.”
“I’m sorry for jumping down your throat. I had no right to get nasty with you. If I were you, I wouldn’t have tried to tell me. Once a jerk, always a jerk. I pushed you so far out of my consciousness that after one feeble attempt to call you that summer, I forgot about you. I mean, I totally forgot about you. Now I know I did that consciously, because I was falling in love with you. And that, above all, gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
You loved me? She fought down the emotions his confession ignited. “I’ve blamed you all these years for not coming after me and making an honest woman out of me.”
He looked back at her. “I should have. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through it alone. I’m sorry you never finished college.”
“I survived. I can always go back if I want.”
“I’d pay for it.”
“Hey, it wasn’t entirely your fault.” She smiled. “You can pay for half.”
He turned again toward the river. “I feel like I’ve lost a sister and a child.”
She rubbed his hunched shoulders.
He sat quietly for a while. She wondered if he blinked away his own tears. “Iz, I can’t write the article. Every time I try to work on it, I have this image of you walking away. And you’re walking with my sister. My mind goes blank.” He straightened, put an arm across the bench behind her, and smiled in that crooked, self-deprecating way with his head tilted. “Heavy, huh?”
“What does it mean to you?”
“God’s leaving old Tony Ward out in the cold.”
“Hmm. Like that song you sang to me at breakfast. Just come in and leave all that guilt outside.”
“That’s all there is to it.”
He drew her closer and hid his face in her hair. “You are so beautiful, Isabel Mendoza.” He let her go and crossed his arms. “Now tell me why you really came to Chicago.”
“To see you.” She smiled. “I came for a job interview, but I think I came for that because you were here. I needed to apologize before any more time passed.”
“Job interview? In Chicago?”
“Mm-hmm. Radio announcer for a Christian Spanish-speaking station. Enough of a challenge to meet your standards?”
“I’d say so. Did they like you? Silly question. Of course they loved you.”
She shrugged. “They have to think about it. I have to think about it.”
“You’d leave Valley Oaks?”
“It may be time. I’m also considering missions work in Mexico. My heart is still there.”
“If you moved here, I’d be like your only friend in a hundred-mile radius.” He winked. “So how are things in Valley Oaks? Cal solve the pharmacy thefts yet?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard!” She filled him in on details of the attack and fire. “He got out of the hospital yesterday.”
“Poor guy. I’ll give him a call. How are the lovebirds?”
“Well, not so good. Tammy has sort of moved in and claimed her territory.” She decided not to fill him in on all the sordid details. “I should go. Don’t you have a deadline or something?”
“Actually, all of my writing seems to be a bit off these days, but yes, I do have work to do.”
“Tony.”
“Uh-oh. It’s her serious tone.”
“There’s a Spanish-speaking church here.” She pulled a pamphlet from her bag. “I went last night with the family who let me stay with them. There’s a pastor visiting here all week from…Colombia.”
He went still.
“He knows about your sister and her friends. Some of the people he ministers to met her.” Isabel folded the pamphlet in half. Pushing aside his crossed arms, she opened his sport coat and stuffed it into his inside pocket. “Go. Listen to him; they have interpreters. Stay after and meet him.” She met his deep-set blue gaze. “My challenge to you.”
Tony watched her walk away and bit the inside of his cheek. She wore black boots, a long gray straight skirt, and a black jacket. The red highlights in her hair glinted in the sun.
She looked too small under the huge buildings, too pure and innocent for the likes of Chi-town. Not fragile, though. No, she wasn’t fragile. She could move to the big city and fashion a life, making borders out of ideals and integrity. But…she would choose Mexico. Her talents lay in the city, but she would choose the extreme route. Just as his sister had done. And she would walk away from him and not turn back, just as in the image he could not erase. Just as his sister had done.
He may have been falling in adolescent love with her seven years ago, but this was different. He could not remember what life was like before he entered that vet’s office in Valley Oaks two months ago. Only two months? A lifetime.
Just now, he had asked her to keep him posted on her job decision. She smiled in that enigmatic way of hers, kissed him on the cheek, and left.
He knew that kiss had meant goodbye.
Tony sat in the back pew of the tiny church, totally absorbed in the service. He had even stopped listening to the translator, hearing the preacher’s Spanish and somehow—after all these years—understanding it. The short, mustached, European-looking man stood before the pulpit, no notes, words flowing effortlessly, hands gesturing elegantly.
Tony’s vision blurred, creating the sensation of swimming underwater. He stretched one hand to the back of the wooden pew in front of him and clung to it. It was as if the water parted, giving him a clear, tunnel-like view of only the preacher. What am I doing here?
After Izzy stuck the pamphlet in his pocket the other day, it crinkled whenever he moved. It sat on his kitchen table for twenty-four hours before he decided. He would take her challenge because he didn’t seem to have any other option. Through no choice of his own, his life was on hold and he didn’t know for what. He would go to the service and meet God and tell Him what he thought. He would set straight once and for all those hapless folks who thought he should celebrate his sister’s sacrifice.
The tears started as the little man neared the conclusion of his passionate talk. The preacher spoke of obscene poverty and of unfathomable joy. He told of how people braved threats of guerillas, how Bibles were treasured, how many miles people trudged in order to join with other believers. He spoke of young Americans who loved their enemies…and of how their deaths had softened some of the hardest of hearts.
After the service, the man reached Tony before he was able to uproot himself from the pew. Their eyes met, and he sensed that somehow the preacher knew.
The man grasped his shoulder. “My friend, I am sorry for your loss.”
“How can I forgive the men who killed my sister?”
“You can’t. Only Jesus can. Jesus living in you can forgive them. Do you want to forgive them?”
“I can’t carry around this…this…” Name it, Tony. Say it! “This hatred around anymore.”
“Then ask Jesus to live in your heart. He’ll set you free from the darkness you walk in now.” He laid a hand lightly on Tony’s head, murmured a prayer, and moved away.
The underwater sensation returned. His face was wet. His palm ached from its grip on the pew. His chest felt as if a sumo wrestler sat on it.
I’m sorry, God! I’m sorry!
What had the preacher said? What had Izzy said? What had JoJo said? “Ask Jesus to live in your heart.”
I don’t understand any of it!
He could barely breathe.
Just ask.
All right!
“Jesus,” he whispered, “live in my heart? Please?”
The sumo wrestler vanished, leaving a gaping hole in his wake, ripping the breath from Tony’s lungs. The ache was unbearable.
And then a warmth began to seep in around the edges, a fluid heat absorbing the pain, consuming the hatred, engulfing the doubts. An implosion of love.
His tears continued long into the night. He had met God all right, but it was most decidedly not on Tony Ward’s terms.