Chasing the Wind (46 page)

She stepped in. "Caroline. It's Amalise. I'm here."

She could hear Nick and Charlie and Daisy upstairs. Caroline clobbered down the stairs, wearing an apron. She wiped her hands on it and held them out to Amalise. "What a night you've had!"

Amalise took her hands, and Caroline pulled her into a hug. "Jude told me all about the hospital and the crowds and everything." She patted Amalise's back for a moment, and then released her. "Thanks be to God he came. I worried that you'd all be there all night. And you, missing work, and Luke in all that pain."

"But everything worked out, and I made it back to work in time."

Caroline nodded. She planted her hands on her hips. "Well, I've talked to Jude, and he thinks Luke ought to stay with him awhile." She studied Amalise.

"Jude's singing to him." Amalise's smile was wry.

"Isn't that something! Ellis and I . . . well, we've just never been able to communicate with the child at all, and here you and Jude come along and he comes to life." She led Amalise to the living room and picked up a small bundle of clothes folded on the corner of the couch. "I've gotten his things together. There isn't much. Jude said you'd be coming by to pick them up."

Caroline dropped her eyes as she handed the clothes to Amalise. When she looked back up, Amalise saw something in her eyes that held her. "He's become very attached to you, Amalise."

"I know. The feeling is mutual."

Fingering a strand of hair near her cheek, Caroline glanced down at the little pile of clothes and back up at Amalise, and she smiled.

She couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd slept. The fatigue had hit her all at once while driving from Caroline's to Jude's. With muscles still knotted with tension from the past twenty-four hours, Amalise trudged up Jude's front steps and pressed the doorbell. Once. Twice. Then she knocked.

No answer. So she turned the knob, and the door opened.

She leaned inside and called, "Jude?"

But still no one answered. She set her purse down on the coffee table in front of the couch and walked through the living room, dining room, the small hallway where the stairs went up, and into the kitchen. There she saw that the back door was open, and through the window over the sink she could see the bare bulb lighting up the yard. And she could hear Jude's voice.

Brows raised, she walked toward the door.

A ripple of high-pitched giggles, a child's laughter, made her stop. Listening, she heard Jude again, his voice deep and even. Picking up her step, she hurried to the back door and looked out through the screen.

Luke sat beside Jude on the wood-planked floor, plastered leg stretched out before him, fully engrossed. Jude said something as he handed Luke a hammer, and Luke, taking it carefully, inspected it. She could see his face shining. Smiling.

She stood still, not wanting to interrupt anything.

Then Luke leaned forward, as Jude folded his hand over the boy's hand, so that they held the hammer together. He helped Luke to lift it, and then he let go. Luke, holding the hammer up, watched as Jude pointed to a nail in the wood below.

Luke nodded, his expression turning grave. Then he slammed the hammer down on the nail. And looking up at Jude, he laughed.

Amalise's lips parted.

Jude ruffled the boy's hair, and she opened the screened door. Both Luke and Jude looked up. "Looks like you're doing all right," she said.

Luke turned sparkling eyes to her. "Mak!"

"He's been helping," Jude said.

Luke twisted around, struggling to stand but weighed down by the cast. He cried out. Jude took the hammer and scooped him up, forming a chair with his arms as he stood beside Amalise. Luke reached out, touching Amalise's chin with the tip of his fingers, as if making certain she was real. "Mak!" he said again, but softly now.

Her throat was thick as she held out her arms.

Jude's brows drew together. "He's heavier now, with the cast."

"That's all right." So Jude slipped Luke into Amalise's arms and she held him close, cradling him. Luke rested his head on her shoulder, looking at Jude. Then he pointed his finger at Jude.

"Ju," he said.

Amalise caught her breath.

Jude looked at Luke. "That's right, buddy." He touched his finger to Luke's chest, tipped his head to one side, and raised his brows.

"Luke." Luke spoke his own name.

Amalise looked from one to the other, staring.

"I figure he's been listening for a long time," Jude said, taking her arm and guiding her back into the house.

Jude went out to buy some hamburgers, and Luke ate every bite of his, looking from one to the other of them as he ate. He smiled, and he laughed when Jude teased. Sometimes he imitated a word—like
hamburger
—and then Jude would stop and repeat it, saying it over and over again with him until he got it and understood. She was amazed.

After they'd tucked Luke into bed and he'd fallen asleep, almost instantly—lingering effects from the previous night, Jude said—Jude took her hand and steered her out of the room. "Let him sleep."

"But he's alone."

"He'll be fine. We'll be nearby." He took her hand in his. His was callused and strong as it curled around hers, the hand of a working man, steady and constant. A good man, she knew.

But he was Rebecca's now. She slipped away and started down the hallway to the stairs. "I think I'll go home and bathe and change. I'll be back before he wakes."

"Wait a while," Jude said, trailing behind her. "I want to hear what happened today."

And she wanted every moment she could have with him. So in the living room, instead of heading for the door, she curled up in the corner of the couch she'd made her own from time to time and looked at him.

He sprawled beside her, facing her, arm stretched across the back of the couch, the tips of his fingers only inches from her shoulder. Images of Jude sitting like this with Rebecca came to mind, and she tucked her hair behind her ears. She wouldn't think of that right now. Jude inched closer, threading his fingers through her hair. The hair on the back of her neck rose as he did this.

"Tell me how the closing went today. I've been worried about you."

She closed her eyes, then opened them again, and a wave of dizziness overcame her. The room wavered.

Jude leaned toward her, looking into her eyes. "Are you all right?"

"Just tired."

"You were up all night. How about some coffee?"

Without waiting for an answer, he stood and said he'd be right back.

She nodded, too tired to speak. Beside her on the couch was the bundle of Luke's clothes Caroline had given her. Yawning, she reached over and picked them up. The clothes were neatly folded along with a small blanket from his bed. Enough for a few days, Caroline had said. Setting the blanket aside, she picked up each piece of clothing, inspecting it. There were three pairs of brown pants with big square pockets on the legs—little boys pants—and three small T-shirts, a sweater, some socks, and some underwear.

At the bottom of the pile she found a faded shirt, a loose cotton weave unlike the other articles of clothing. She held it up to the light. It used to be white, she could see. And it was much too small for him now—he'd have worn it years ago. She wondered if this ragged, shapeless shirt was what he was wearing when he'd left Cambodia. Folds in the cloth were bleached lines, almost white. The edges of the sleeves were frayed and the cloth worn thin.

Amalise dropped the small shirt into her lap and lay her hands upon it, trying to imagine Luke's escape. He'd been brought to America from Vietnam, but how had he gotten to Saigon from Cambodia? She envisioned him on one of the orphan rescue flights out of Saigon that she'd seen on the news two years ago, and thought of the years he'd endured since in gray institutional places, and the foster homes that had sent him away. But why had he ended up here?

She knew she'd probably never find the answers.

She turned the shirt over and spread it across her knees, and a glint of light caught her eye. She looked down and fingered a small silver broach hanging on the square shirt pocket, pulling it down into a permanent sag. She rubbed her fingers over the smooth three-leafed design. The jewelry had the heavy feel of old silver, the look of a family heirloom. Not something you'd expect to find on the pocket of an orphan from Cambodia.

And then she felt the bulge, just a slight thickness to the pocket, as if the pin were holding something hidden.

Carefully she spread the worn pocket and looked inside. There she found a faded envelope, the kind used for international air mail, pale blue paper with a thin red stripe. Carefully she unlatched the pin, sliding it from the pocket and the paper. Then she closed it and set the pin down on the coffee table.

The envelope was folded into squares. Someone who cared about Luke had pinned this to his shirt. Amalise unfolded the envelope, square by square. The envelope was empty. She saw it had been addressed, by hand in ink, to the United States Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

That's all. How had it even gotten there with that address?

And then her heart began beating a strange, rapid rhythm as she stared at the address and the handwriting. She lay the envelope flat in her lap and smoothed the paper, noting the many official certifications and the date stamps from different countries as something stirred just beneath the surface of her mind.

Barely breathing now, she turned the envelope over to find the return address. Time stretched and twisted and turned, and then she closed her eyes, wanting to hold onto this moment, wanting to believe.

She did not hear Jude arriving with the coffee. She didn't open her eyes or say anything when he set the cups down on the coffee table before them. And when he sat down beside her and asked in a worried tone if she was not feeling well, she couldn't answer.

She merely opened her eyes and, with her heart pounding, she held up the envelope for him to see. Because written on the back in handwriting she knew so well, were these words:

Mrs. A. Sharp
5 – Dumaine Street
Apartment A
New Orleans, Louisiana

"What's this?" He took the envelope from her.

"I found it in the pocket of one of Luke's old shirts."

Then she sat very still, remembering. It was the spring of 1975. She was sitting at a table in the Café Pontalba, addressing the envelope and writing a note. The tip money she'd saved for weeks, without telling Phillip, was on the table beside the envelope. She folded the note around the ten-dollar bills and stuffed it into the envelope.

The money was for the shadow children.

From that dark place where she'd buried the images two years ago they reeled, frame by frame, through her mind. The contrast between her life and that of the children on the television screen. The urgency of their plight, with the Khmer Rouge closing in. The scorching feeling of helplessness, watching suffering from across the globe in her own living room. And the guilt, knowing that she could turn off the television set the moment the news touched too deeply.

What can one person do?
she'd asked herself at that time.

She looked at the envelope, now lying in Jude's lap, and wanted to cry.
Thank you, Abba.
One person had been able to do something after all. And then slowly she felt that infinite hole inside closing up at last, the emptiness that could never be filled with finite things.

This was why she'd been given a second chance, she realized. Luke was as much her child as if she'd carried him in her womb. Looking down at the letter she'd sent on a wing and a prayer, she knew that now. With Jude still holding onto the envelope, she rose, weak with fatigue. She walked up to Luke's bedroom and lay down beside him. She didn't touch him. Just lay there watching his little chest rise and fall, not wanting to wake him. He'd had a long day, Jude had said. At last her own eyes closed, and Amalise slept.

An hour later she woke—slowly—lingering in
that half world between dreams and wakefulness, not quite sure where she was. As her mind cleared, it came back to her, all of it: the envelope attached to Luke's tiny shirt, the new purpose in her life, this child. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at Luke, feeling all at once a new kind of love, a force that almost overwhelmed her, surpassing every emotion she'd ever felt, even instinct, even survival.