As soon as Dad booted up Leanne’s computer, Autumn opened Safari and found the memorial website for Tragedy on the Tracks, where the tribute was meant to stream live. The thing was, there was nothing to stream. Autumn had made sure of that.
A small circle spun on the screen while whatever they were meant to be watching loaded. Dad pulled up a chair beside her.
Finally, the circle stopped.
Anna Montgomery filled the screen. She stood behind a small podium in the center of the stage, so unexpected that Autumn leaned back in her chair. The slight woman with the shy smile was talking into the microphone about the time she ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Daniel under a bridge while it rained.
Autumn touched her lips, which were smiling along with Anna’s. This time as she listened, she couldn’t help but think of her own rainy-day story, with Paul and basketball and laughter and ice cream. He might never talk to her again, but she would always have that memory.
The audience clapped.
Mr. Collins was up front now, talking about the time his teenage daughter came home with a pair of butterflies tattooed on the back of her neck. He’d been livid. Outraged. Chloe was grounded for two whole weeks. “But when I had a chance to settle down,” Mr. Collins said, “I was secretly proud of her. Chloe was a girl who knew what she wanted, and she went after it with tenacity, no matter what anybody else had to say about it. It’s something I will remember every time I see a butterfly. My tenacious Chloe, chasing her dreams.”
A butterfly taking flight.
A phoenix taking flight.
Straight out of the ashes.
Caroline Winslow, the younger sister of Margaret Winslow—a forty-year-old accountant who had been working late during tax season—walked to the podium. Autumn found herself thinking, Oh, I hope she tells the story about the water balloons and the cat.
These were real people to her now. They weren’t just family members of the dead she stalked online. They were people she would hug should she run into them on the street, because despite all her eye-rolling, she was as much of a hugger now as Claire.
Right at this moment, that behemoth-sized church was packed with people, and Autumn knew a significant chunk of them. People who were choosing to celebrate, even though the plans had gone all wrong. People who had survived, just as she had.
And she was blessed because of them.
It didn’t make the hard easier. It was still there, as horrible as ever, and probably always would be, so long as men like Benjamin Havel walked the earth. Real evil existed in this world. But real good did too. Beauty that Havel could not erase. In fact, his heartless words had them holding on to it all the tighter.
Autumn was watching it unfold right now as Ina May Huett hobbled up on the stage.
What story would she tell? This woman who had been born during the Great Depression, started dating her late husband on the heels of World War II, and marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
The old woman nodded at the crowd, then adjusted the microphone. It let out a sharp squeal that had her hands jerking back. She laughed a nervous, jittery laugh.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice shaking. “I wasn’t planning on coming up here today. My husband was the one who liked speaking in front of a crowd. I prefer tea with close friends. Although, at my age, I don’t have many anymore.”
Autumn considered herself one of them. As she leaned closer, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would visit Ina May again. The woman had so many stories to tell, and Autumn couldn’t wait to listen to them.
“But I felt the Lord’s prompting, and I’ve learned that when He nudges, it’s best to follow, no matter how crazy. My husband was Lazarus Huett. I believe he was the oldest on the train. We were married for sixty-five glorious years, and I have to say, I’m overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the bravery that’s represented in this room.
“It’s not easy to keep going. It’s not easy to get back up after life knocks you a hard one. But the people in this room have all gotten back up.” She gave the podium a small, but determined bang with her fist.
Autumn sat there in the small den, wondering if the same was true for her—the miracle survivor. Had she gotten back up?
“I kept wondering, now what story could I tell about my Lazarus? After sixty-five years you accumulate a lot of them. I started to thinking, why not talk about his name? My Lazarus used to get teased for his name. I loved his name. And I hated his name.”
Ina May seemed to lose herself for a moment. Not more than a second or two. Then she blinked and continued on with her story. “His mother named him after her favorite story in the Bible. Proof that when all seems lost, our God is a God who can accomplish the impossible.
“Laz and I went through our troubles, just like any other married couple does. We both had our fair share of weaknesses and flaws. I won’t say who had more.”
A chuckle rippled through the crowd.
“But I feel like I need to confess that the story his mother loved started rubbing me the wrong way. You see, the Lord had gone and given me a husband crazy for kids and me a body that refused to bear them. The more my friends started having babies and the harder I prayed for my own Lazarus moment and the longer Jesus tarried, the more resentful I became.”
Autumn thought about Anna Montgomery and the frozen embryo.
She pictured her in the crowd, nodding along. A woman like her would understand.
“Mary and Martha only had to wait a few days. Why was I having to wait years and years? My sadness gave way to anger. And anger, like it usually does, gave way to bitterness.”
Autumn pictured the framed photograph of the chubby, drooling baby sitting on Lazarus’s knee.
“Is that your grandchild?” she had asked.
“Heavens, no. The Lord didn’t give us any children of our own.”
It had been nothing more than a passing comment. One that came and went with little effect. Sure, there was resignation in her voice. But her tone spoke more of a person who wished they’d gotten a scoop of chocolate instead of vanilla. It definitely hadn’t spoken of a person who’d passed through a long and weary battle without a victory in the end.
“Finally, my husband had enough. He said, ‘Ina Honey, if you don’t let this go, that beautiful heart of yours is gonna shrivel up into a tiny, ugly prune.’ Hoo boy, did I tear into him a good one. I started going on about time ticking away and how all my friends’ children were growing up. And how much I hated his name because where was my Lazarus moment? When was God gonna show up and perform that miracle? And he looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘Ina May, you have your Lazarus right here. It doesn’t get much better than this, baby.’ ”
People laughed.
So did Ina May. And then she shook her head. “God never gave me children.”
The crowd went silent.
“That was a hurt I had to learn to live with. But you know what I’ve come to love about that Lazarus story?” The old woman paused, like she expected someone to answer from the audience.
Autumn answered from her chair in a choked, barely-there whisper. “Jesus wept.”
“What’s that?” Dad asked.
She shook her head, not wanting to miss a single one of Ina’s words.
“Before Jesus performed His big fancy miracle, He met those two sisters in the middle of their pain, and He wept alongside ’em.”
Breath knotted in Autumn’s throat. Tears gathered in her eyes.
God isn’t cruel.
Because the cruel didn’t weep with the hurting.
“That’s our God.” Ina May gave her finger a wag. “We worship a God who might not give us the miracle, but He will always give us the comfort. And that, my friends, is the God I see here, alive and active in this sanctuary today.” She gave the podium one more enthusiastic pound, then hobbled off the stage.
There was a moment of silence.
Autumn sat in the chair, stunned.
She didn’t understand how it worked. She didn’t understand why people starved to death and children ended up in orphanages while barren women longed for babies. She didn’t understand why a cigarette break could save one person’s life while driving home to get your daughter’s hair bow could snatch another’s. She would never understand why those people. Why that train. Why her.
But maybe she’d been asking the wrong question.
Maybe comfort wasn’t to be found in the why.
Maybe comfort was to be found in the who.
A God who wept.
There was a lull on the stage, as though the sanctuary needed a moment to breathe in Ina May’s words. And then, Jordan Brokaw, ex-drug addict and dealer, walked up to the podium. Seemingly bolstered by Ina’s profession of faith, he took the microphone, and he began to share his testimony.
His was a story Autumn had struggled with.
Did God have to kill a mother and her little boy to save a young man? Of course not. God didn’t need tragedy to accomplish His work. And Benjamin Havel wasn’t a marionette on a string, like Reese’s zebra puppet. He was a broken man with free will who caused real pain. But God refused to let that pain remain meaningless. Because God was good. It was a goodness she’d seen with her own eyes.
Maybe it was time to stop trying to make the puzzle pieces fit.
Maybe it was time to let go of the why and remember the Who.
“The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy,” Jordan said. “But Jesus came that we might have life, and have it to the full.”
Like a phoenix, Autumn had been pulled from the rubble. Only instead of rising from the ashes, she had curled into a ball on top of them.
The entire nation had celebrated her survival.
And for the past year, that’s all Autumn had been doing.
Surviving.
Until a twelve-year-old girl named Reese Elliott showed up on her doorstep and interrupted everything.