Finally & Forever (21 page)

The chef replied, but neither Sasa nor Katie was sure of what he said. They both went ahead and motioned for the chef to carve some meat for them and loaded up their plates.

“It smells wonderful,” Katie said. “Asante.”

Returning to the table, she dug in, enjoying every bite of the firm, well-seasoned meat.

“How do you like it?” Svetlana, the publisher from Bulgaria, asked.

“Delicious.”

“I agree. It is the best goat I’ve ever had,” Svetlana said.

Katie felt her last bite stopping halfway down. She swallowed hard and took a long drink from her soda can. “Goat. Hmmm. So that’s what it was.”

Sasa gave her a “Well, how about that?” sort of look, and the two of them quietly kept on chewing and finished their meal.

Katie knew she had come a long way from scrunching up her nose at ostrich meatballs and turning down the chance to try a flying peanut. This had been a delicious meal, and she had enjoyed every bite. Well, maybe not that last one …

Some of the group had already made their way down the trail to the lake. Katie lingered at the table, taking dainty, delightful bites of a piece of coconut cake that perfectly topped off the gourmet luncheon. By the time she had finished, she was the last one at the table. And that’s when she missed Eli more than she could hardly stand.

Deciding to once again assume the role of Princess Hakuna Matata, Katie lifted her cloth napkin to her mouth and dabbed the edges of her very lonely lips. Then, folding her napkin like a proper princess would do, Katie gracefully backed her chair away from the table and headed out the door for the main attraction.

She was strolling by herself on the trail that led quite a way down to the lake when Ngokabi came up behind her. “Are we the last to leave the restaurant?”

“I think so.” Katie was glad for the companionship. “This is beautiful, isn’t it?”

To their left, in the grove of slender acacia trees that surrounded both sides of the trail, Katie heard a rustling. She looked over her shoulder and saw a zebra. Then another and another.

“Ngokabi, look! Zebras!”

“Yes?”

It seemed to Katie that Ngokabi’s response was about the same as if they had been walking down the sidewalk at Todd and Christy’s apartment and Katie had said, “Look, a stray cat.”

Katie stayed where she was, awestruck by the zebras, as she counted fourteen of them. She pulled out her phone, set it on zoom, and took several pictures before moving on down the trail with patient Ngokabi, who had waited for her.

Katie grinned. “My first zebra. What can I say?”

Ngokabi’s expression remained respectfully attentive. She asked Katie if she had been to the Masai Mara on a safari.

“No. Eli told me a little about it. I’d love to see a lion or cheetah. Or an elephant. That would be amazing. We went to the giraffe reserve, and I fed Daisy out of my hand.” Katie was still feeling proud of that.

“Did you? I’ve been to see Daisy. She can be fickle.”

“She liked me.”

Without changing her expression much, Ngokabi said kindly, “I can see how she would. You have the Lord’s presence in your life. I understand why Eli spoke of you the way he did.”

Katie wasn’t sure she wanted to press this topic of conversation. She already was missing Eli terribly. He would have understood her amazement over the zebras. Unable to quench her curiosity, she asked, “What exactly did he tell you about me?”

“All good things, of course. He was waiting patiently, very patiently, for you to turn your head his way.”

For the first time, it hit Katie how long Eli had waited for her to pay attention to him. For some reason Katie couldn’t explain, Eli had set his affections on her the day they had met. He prayed for her and certainly thought of her for a year before Katie turned her head his way and gave him the same attention and consideration he had already focused on her.

Here Katie felt like she was dying because it had been almost two weeks since she had seen Eli and since they had last talked. She thought she was the one who was mastering the art of patiently waiting, yet Eli had waited a year.

“He’s amazing,” Katie said.

“He feels the same way about you. I’m sure you know that.”

Katie nodded, even though at times she had let herself wonder if her attraction for him was a one-sided exercise. It wasn’t. She knew it. Deep in her heart she knew it. If only they didn’t have this huge obstacle of their opposing goals. Why was it that way for them? Their friends who were couples didn’t have that same challenge.

Ngokabi and Katie came to the end of the path where the rest of the group had gathered, standing in small clumps, pointing to the water, and shielding their eyes from the sun with their hands.

Katie was startled to see the vastness of the lake and what a soft, powdery blue shade it was. High above the lake the clouds floated like forgotten wishes blown from tiny pink candles on a child’s birthday cake. The ground around them was flat, covered with green marsh grasses. In the distance, a wide and all-encompassing plateau rose at the far end of the lake. That’s when Katie realized they were in a deep valley. The Rift Valley. This was where the earth was being slowly pulled apart, revealing fertile soil and cavernous lakes. Eli had stood by her side when they peered down into this immense green valley, and now she was in the valley looking up.

“There’s one!” A man in the group who was from India had brought a pair of binoculars. He was the first to spot the bubbles and spouting spray of the emerging hippo.

At first the huge creature rose only high enough to reveal the top of its head; its small, flittering, round ears; and its severe-looking eyes. It was evident that the part hidden below the water was terrifyingly huge. Even though they were far away from the where the hippopotami were reported to come up on shore, it still seemed like they were awfully close. Katie could hear the great beast’s snorting sounds and deep groans.

Then, in a series of motions that were magnificent and yet seemed a little silly at the same time, the SUV-sized creature emerged from the muddy water and trotted up on the shore in a way that made him look as if he were prancing around on his thick-as-an-oak-tree legs that seemed way too short for his immense carriage.

The group seemed to draw in their collective breaths when the enormous hippo turned in their direction and gave them a terrible gaze. Katie noticed for the first time that a uniformed game warden was with their group. He was equipped with a pistol and a walking stick.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to employ either deterrent, because the hippopotamus trotted in a small circle twice and then plodded his way back to the lake.

“He’s just making sure we know who’s in charge,” the game warden said. “We know. We don’t challenge his control over his domain.”

They waited and watched another ten minutes or so and tried to count the number of hippos in the water by the raised heads and wiggling ears that looked more like small floating gray mounds. Katie checked her phone for the time and saw that they had about forty minutes before they had to be on the bus. She decided to head back before the rest of the group so that she could settle the bill and be in place to do her nose count as the group boarded.

Katie also noticed that she had a new text message on her phone. It was from Eli. She clicked on it and read, I MISS YOU.

Her heart melted a little, and then she remembered that was the message he had written to her when they were on the bus on the last tour. She recalled how he had been in the seat in front of her, and the two of them had kept a texting conversation going. What she just read had to be the old message. But it wasn’t. She scrolled up and back and saw that this new I MISS YOU had been sent twelve minutes ago. That meant Eli was in range of cell service in whatever village he was in.

Katie loved the idea of the possibilities that seemed open to them. They could communicate again!

I MISS YOU TOO, she texted back. I’M AT LAKE NAIVASHA. JUST SAW A HIPPO. THINKING OF YOU.

As she walked back to the building, she watched for zebras and checked for a reply message from Eli at the same time. Her eyes went up, her eyes went down. The zebras had moved on. Eli must have moved out of range as well, because he didn’t reply. Katie kept checking her phone after settling the bill, visiting the restroom, and collecting her colorful group. They had to wait on the bus for one rather lively member of their bunch named Nicholas, who was from Scotland. He had become “otherwise engaged,” as his associate, Graham explained.

That delay set them back only five minutes, and they were on their way. Katie didn’t feel the need to provide a stand-up routine, and blessedly none of the lovely people on the bus requested one.

Sitting alone by the window, Katie pulled out her phone, hoping for another text from Eli. They were on the road for more than an
hour when her phone beeped, indicating that she had received a new text. It was from Eli, and her lips rose in a smile.

SHOULD I BE OFFENDED? he wrote.

“What?” Katie murmured. She quickly typed, WHY?

The response came back, YOU JUST SAID YOU SAW A HIPPO AND THOUGHT OF ME.

Katie laughed aloud and then drew her shoulders in to ensure privacy as she responded. TWO UNRELATED INCIDENTS. HOW ARE YOU DOING?

Katie waited for his reply, and as she did, something inside her wished he would indicate that he was terrible, miserable, and ready to return to Brockhurst so he could see her. That he couldn’t stand the thought of spending another moment without her.

Something like that.

However, nothing prepared Katie for the enthusiasm in his virtual voice as she read his reply. I’M DOING GREAT. EXCELLENT! I’LL BE STAYING ON ANOTHER FEW DAYS. IT’S GOING BETTER THAN HOPED.

Katie didn’t text back. She didn’t know what to say. Was she glad that things were going so well? Yes, of course, in a general team-effort sort of way. But her heart ached at the thought of “another few days” being added to the separation side of the scale. That side already felt far too weighted to be balanced out with the hope, courage, and patience she kept trying to add to the other side.

After several minutes of gazing out the window and thinking about her choices, Katie decided to take the route that Eli had selected over the course of an entire year as he waited out being overlooked by Katie.

With a grace she could feel growing inside her heart, Katie texted back the words that she knew would mean the most to Eli: I’LL BE PRAYING FOR YOU.

F
or the next four days, Katie lived out the sort of walk of faith and steps of obedience that she and Christy often talked about as they exchanged emails. Katie had to believe that one step would lead to the next and that a purpose was tucked away in all this. She helped out at the Coffee Bar, watched Callie and Evan’s children for an afternoon, and cranked out all the work she needed to do on the fund-raiser packet.

Michael emailed her the name and contact information of his father-in-law as he had promised. He included a note that read:

Katie appreciated Michael’s sending the information, and she appreciated his comment about the homecoming being sweeter. She hoped that would be the case when Eli returned from the village. The
nice part about Eli’s having off-and-on cell phone service in the location where he was now meant that the two of them had kept a pretty steady stream of conversation going over the past four days.

They had a good rhythm going. Being able to send snapshots of their everyday moments helped too. That evening at dinner, Katie saw that they had banana pudding for dessert. It had been a while since Eli had feasted on double desserts of banana pudding, so Katie took a picture with her phone and sent it to him with the text message, IF YOU WON’T COME BACK FOR ME, WILL YOU CONSIDER COMING BACK FOR THE BANANA PUDDING?

Eli’s reply came through when Katie was already in bed. He wrote: YOU’RE CRUEL. WE HAD TWIGS FOR SUPPER. AT LEAST THAT’S WHAT IT TASTED LIKE.

Katie texted back: FOR YOUR HOMECOMING DINNER, I’LL SEE IF I CAN TRACK DOWN AN OSTRICH AND MAKE AN ENTIRE MEATLOAF FOR YOU. HOW DOES THAT SOUND?

QUESTIONABLE, was his prompt reply. IT SEEMS BEST TO LEAVE THE OSTRICH RECIPES IN THE HANDS OF THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO COOK.

ARE YOU SAYING YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW HOW TO COOK? she typed back.

Eli’s reply was short: MICROWAVE POPCORN, SMOOTHIES, GREEN FACE. THAT’S ALL I’M SAYING.

Katie laughed aloud in her bed. She had forgotten about the night that she and Christy had decided to have a girls’ night at Todd and Christy’s apartment since Todd was at a church event. They smeared their faces with some sort of avocado facial mask, whipped up strawberry smoothies in the blender, and attempted to make microwave popcorn that resulted in the decrepit apartment microwave catching on fire. Katie put out the fire with the smoothies, so the crisis was averted.

The second crisis was when Eli knocked on the door a few moments later because he had smelled the smoke. Katie greeted him
nonchalantly with a green face and had the brashness to give him a hard time about carrying a bag of trash to the apartment complex Dumpster.

“Okay, point taken.” Katie muttered to herself. It amazed her how many memories she and Eli had made over the past year at school without even trying. She tried to think of what to text back.

Eli beat her to the next topic. DID DAD SHOW YOU THE PHOTOS OF THE MASAI MARA TRIP?

Earlier that day Katie and Eli had banter going on over something that had happened at Eli’s uncle’s wedding. Katie thought for sure the glitch had occurred at Todd and Christy’s wedding. Both weddings had been held on the same meadow on upper campus at Rancho Corona, but they were a year apart.

The end of that string of unnecessary text messages came down to the comment Eli made to cap it off: POINT IS, WESTERN WEDDINGS ARE STRESSFUL. BETTER TO BE OUT ON THE MASAI MARA WITH A FEW CLOSE FRIENDS, A MINISTER FOR AN EXCHANGE OF RINGS AND VOWS. DONE.

She had texted back, WHAT IS IT YOU LOVE SO MUCH ABOUT THE MASAI MARA?

He replied, ASK MY DAD TO SHOW YOU THE PHOTOS.

Katie saw the photos that afternoon on Jim’s computer. They were breathtaking and enchanting. A few years ago, Jim and Eli had gone there on a safari. They stayed in a white canvas tent set up on a wooden platform. Inside the large tent were full beds, not just cots, draped with romantic-looking sheer mosquito netting and some luxurious decorator throw pillows. They had a bath house tent that had a claw foot tub and an old-fashioned pedestal sink with towels folded over a bronzed ring towel rack.

Jim had showed her how dinner was served in the evening at sunset with cloth napkins at the tablecloth-covered tables. Directors’ chairs were set up around a blazing fire pit, and in the morning, tea and coffee were served in a silver teapot that a server brought to the door of their tent.

During the day the guides drove them around in a fortified Jeep. One photo was of a lion that had come right up to Eli’s closed window and placed his mighty paws on the glass pane.

Katie agreed when she saw the photos that it looked like the most amazing, over-the-top sort of safari adventure imaginable. She had no idea such excursions existed. When she saw the final photos of the colorful hot air balloons that rose over the terrain and transported tourists to a bird’s-eye view of the wildlife, Katie knew she wanted to go there one day.

When she had asked Jim if he and Eli had ventured up in a hot air balloon, he said, “No. Eli said he wanted to save that for another trip, another time, with … well, not with me.”

Katie was sitting in bed with her phone in her hand when she replied to Eli’s texted question and wrote, YES, I SAW YOUR DAD’S PHOTOS. AMAZING!

Eli replied, DID YOU SEE THE TENTS?

YES. ARE THEY NICER THAN WHERE YOU’RE STAYING TONIGHT?

THE STARS ARE MY BLANKET. BTW, I DRAINED DAN’S CAR BATTERY RECHARGING MY PHONE TODAY.

DID AN ANGEL COME TO FIX IT?

NO. USED JUMPER CABLES TO THE DIGGING RIG.

IS THE WELL ALMOST READY?

TOMORROW!

THAT’S GREAT NEWS!

I KNOW. DO YOU WANT AN ENGAGEMENT RING?

Katie stopped short.

She typed WHAT?!?!?! but didn’t send the text yet. She scrolled back to reread the stream of conversation to make sure she hadn’t missed anything significant. No, she hadn’t. Eli had just slipped in that random thought. Although, with the question about the wedding on the Masai Mara that he had tossed in that afternoon, Katie had to admit her thoughts were forming a picture of what it would
look like to get married in the wild and for their getaway car to be a hot air balloon.

If Eli was asking what she thought he was asking, then he had arrived at the question-asking stage sooner than Katie thought he would. But then she remembered how he had a head start on their relationship — by a year.

Before Katie could send her reply, Eli sent another text. YOUR SILENCE IS DEAFENING. GUESS WE CAN LEAVE THAT UNANSWERED.

Katie erased the WHAT?!?!? she had typed a few minutes ago and texted back a simple answer: NO.

She waited for Eli’s reply. And waited. After twenty minutes she gave up and turned off her light. It was so frustrating not having steady phone service. Or had her reply gotten through just fine, but now he was retracting his thoughts and wishing he hadn’t asked the ring question in such an unexpected, random way.

Katie couldn’t sleep.

Was he proposing? Preparing to propose? Just making small talk? What? Eli, you’re driving me crazy!

Katie couldn’t figure out why Eli would throw that line into the conversation. Wasn’t the plan for them to sit down and talk things through nice and slow after he returned from the village? Wasn’t that how things were done in Kenya — nice and slow?

She picked up her phone and checked it again. Still no message from him.

Letting out an exasperated
grrr!
Katie pulled the blankets up over her head. One growl wasn’t good enough, so she let out another.

Somehow she managed to fall asleep and spent the night doing a series of flips and flops. With the morning light she was even more aggravated. She wished she hadn’t quickly typed back NO as her answer about wanting an engagement ring. It was a true answer. She didn’t want a ring. No diamonds, pearls, emeralds, or rubies. That wasn’t her. A wedding band, yes. A rock of any kind, no.

What upset her was that Eli had asked the question in a text. In the middle of a text conversation. He just dropped it in. Such a random question shouldn’t have received an immediate answer. She should have made him wait. They really needed to talk through what the future looked like for them. In all their texting, they hadn’t once discussed how they were going to figure out how to overlap their interests, or if one of them needed to cancel his or her goals. They needed to come to some sort of reasonable conclusion.

Then, after they had sorted that out, they could talk about their future together. As a couple. Rings and hot air balloons would be open game then. At least that’s how Katie had pictured things going. During the two weeks Eli had been gone, her thoughts had been stringently focused on one step following another. Now, apparently Eli was all the way at the end of the path, and Katie hadn’t even put on her shoes yet.

She was in such a bungled state of emotions that she pulled out her phone and started the day with a text to Eli that said, PLAY FAIR, OKAY?

His reply came through when she was at breakfast: HUH?

Katie read the message and let out a huff.
Are you playing clueless, or are you really that distracted and disconnected?

Her text back said, WHEN WILL YOU BE HOME?

His unaffected reply was, SOON.

Katie felt like throwing her phone at the wall. She put it away so she wouldn’t be tempted to type about how this was torture and she didn’t want to do any more snippet conversations with him. She wanted him here, now, in her life and in her face the way she intended to get in his face about messing with her emotions.

“How are you doing, Katie?”

The question came from Callie, who had taken the seat across from Katie. For the past two weeks, whenever Katie saw Callie, Katie was the one asking her how she was doing. Apparently Katie’s countenance communicated that she was under a storm cloud today.

Katie gave a one-word answer, as if she were texting her reply to Callie. “Men!”

Callie smiled. None of her children were with her this morning, which was unusual. Katie thought of how Callie had looked nearly a month ago when she first sat in this dining hall and could neither eat nor drink, as the women of Brockhurst ministered to her and her children.

“I’m guessing your frustration this morning is not with men in general but with one particular man.”

“Yes. One particularly particular man.”

“How is he doing? Cheryl said he was due back here any day.”

“I’ve heard the same rumors.”

“And how are you doing as you wait for those rumors to come true?”

“I’m … I don’t know. I was going to say I’m okay, but to be honest, since that’s the way everyone tends to be here at Brockhurst, I’m pretty perturbed with this particularly particular man.”

Callie laughed.

“How’s your man, by the way?” Katie felt the need to change the topic and shift the focus off herself.

“Evan is doing so much better. Thank you for asking. He’s been up and walking the last two days and able to eat quite a bit more. I’m so relieved. I can’t tell you what a scare that was.”

“I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been.”

“Well,” Callie leaned closer. Her green eyes looked clear and warm. “Since, as you said, we tend to be honest in our Brockhurst family, I’ll tell you the truth about the terror. I learned some things that I would never want to have to learn again this way, but those truths feel like a treasure to me now.”

Katie met Callie’s gaze with her green eyes and moved her plate aside. “I could use some treasure thoughts this morning.”

“I discovered that when God wants to draw us into a place of deeper intimacy in our relationship with him, he undoes everything we previously knew about his ways to show us a different side of himself. When
that happens, you end up confused and afraid because you thought you knew God and knew how he worked in your life.” Callie smiled softly. “But then you tell the fear to go away.”

Katie nodded. She understood that important step to clearing the path on this walk of faith.

“And you lean in closer to the Lord. You listen very closely, and when you don’t hear a single word from him, not a sound, you wait. But here’s what I learned in all this while we were waiting to hear any news about Evan. You don’t wait in silence. During that stretch of time when we didn’t know where Evan was, I couldn’t sleep, eat, or think. But I could remember. And as I recalled all the things God had done for us in the past, it was like I wasn’t alone in the waiting room of my heart any longer. I hung every one of those memories like pictures on the wall, and then I would look at each one of them in my mind’s eye and say, ‘Thank you, God. Thank you.’ I started to praise God instead of question him.”

Katie said, “I would think that still had to be difficult to do.”

“Yes, of course it was. But what happened was that when I started to praise God and to thank him, I broke through the darkness. My heart ended up on the other side of the fear.”

Sipping the last of her juice, Katie let Callie’s words sink in.

Callie reached across the table and lightly rubbed the top of Katie’s arm. “Katie, what are you afraid of?”

“Nothing.” The answer popped out so quickly it surprised her. But what surprised Katie the most was that this conversation reminded her of the night before she boarded the plane to fly to Africa. Todd had asked her what she had to lose by going, and she had spouted out the same answer, “Nothing.” Now she was afraid that she had everything to lose if she and Eli couldn’t reach agreement about what was next for them separately and together.

Katie propped her elbow on the table and rested her head against her open palm. “I don’t know, Callie. Maybe I am afraid.”