Over the Waters (7 page)

The girls were fascinated with her thick blond mane of hair, and fought for turns to braid and re-braid it. She'd always loved having someone mess with her hair.

"I'm coming," she said. "Let me get my brush." She went back to tell Jaelle and Nadage she was leaving, then let the little girls lead her to her room for her hairbrush and comb before they went out to the veranda.

She plopped down in the shade on the warm concrete floor, and three of them went to work on her. With a tender touch, Monique sectioned her hair into three hanks and assigned one to each of the other girls who started the intricate process of twisting it into tight braids. She let them fill her head with bright ribbons and the tiny, colorful beads and barrettes they were so fond of.

Beside them, another group of girls had gathered small stones to play
osle,
a game that reminded Valerie of jacks. With the gentle tug of the brushing and plaiting, the babble of girlish conversation and the rhythmic clapping games and songs, Valerie was almost lulled to sleep.

She was startled out of her near-trance by a burst of laughter. She opened her eyes to see half a dozen little faces giggling. She reached up to feel the silly "do" they'd invented at her expense. If Will could see her now, he'd be laughing harder than all of them put together.

She pushed the thought away. Will was no longer a part of her life. She had to quit thinking of him as though he would be there when she got back.

She held out her arms and immediately there were two little girls holding each hand, yanking her to her feet.

"Let's go find a mirror so I can see what terrible thing you did to me," she teased. "A mirror?" She held an imaginary mirror in front of her face.

A petite girl called Mariana apparently understood her pantomime and repeated the word in Creole.
"Glas...Miwa!"

"Yes! Mirror," she cheered.

They all squealed and scrambled to their feet, taking Valerie's hands and pulling her along in their wake.

Laughing, she followed them to the dormitory, relishing the feel of the new mop of bead-laced braids slapping at her neck and face as she ran.

Brizjanti, Haiti, January 15

"W
as this Joshua's room when he was here?" Max stopped on the dusty pathway and cocked his head in the direction of the guest room where he'd slept the last four nights. He somehow knew the answer to his question before Samantha Courtney's nod confirmed it.

"I guess I should have told you." She paused. "It's really the only guest space we have. I hope that's okay--"

"No, no, it's fine."

He followed Samantha as she showed him around the grounds of the orphanage. It was the first chance he'd really had for a tour of the place--and a good talk with the young woman who seemed to have known Joshua better than he ever had.

His first days in Brizjanti had been spent setting up a temporary clinic and giving each of the children in the home a cursory physical examination. The facilities--if you could call them that--were appalling. Cracks in the uneven walls let in a menagerie of insects and rodents, and the filth that permeated the very air made it impossible to disinfect anything. The gates couldn't keep out the acrid smoke from a garbage heap smoldering in the ditch beyond. The stench seeped in through every window. Max had a fleeting glimpse of his days as a young resident serving an Indian reservation in Arizona. Only this made that tumbledown clinic look state-of-the-art.

He'd forgotten how influential those brief and horrid months in the desert had been. Janie and Josh had remained in Chicago, and after three miserable months, Max had fled the west and returned to civilization. On the long bus ride to Phoenix to catch a flight home, he'd sworn to himself that he would never work or live in such dire circumstances again. It was one of the few promises he'd kept in his life.

Or had he? Could he really make that claim when his only son, the heir to the small kingdom Maximilian Jordan had established, had died here in the heart of the world's most impoverished country?

"What makes you so sure Joshua was happy here?" The words tumbled out before he realized he'd spoken them aloud.

"Oh, Dr. Jordan..." The girl's expression took on that dreamy quality it always did when she spoke of Joshua. "I wish you could have seen him here. You wouldn't have had to ask me that. Josh loved his work, loved the children. As Madame Duval told you last night, he was the best thing that ever happened to this place. Aside from the lives he literally saved, he just added such joy and fun to life. The kids adored him. Kids all over the village knew him because he helped at the other two orphanages here."

She stopped abruptly at the edge of a sparse lawn where some children were kicking a soccer ball around. She bowed her head briefly before looking back up at him. "I have something I need to tell you. A confession, I guess you'd have to call it."

"Oh?"

She led him to the cement slab where the older girls did the laundry. They each took a corner and sat. The sun was warm on his back.

She hesitated, then started with a sigh. "The first night in the hospital, Josh asked me to get a paper and pencil...He wanted me to write a letter to you. I--I put him off. I hated the way he was talking...as though he knew he was going to die. I told him he could tell you all those things in person. But he insisted. I
did
write down the things he told me...later. I think I got everything. But I should have gotten it word for word...in his own words."

Max wondered why she was telling him this now. Were the things Joshua told her so terrible that it had taken her four days to get up the nerve to repeat them?

"I'm so sorry, Dr. Jordan. I should have listened to him. Josh's last thoughts were of you. He felt responsible that you two didn't have...the best relationship and he wanted you to know that he loved you." A faraway look came to her eyes, as though she were remembering that last conversation with Josh. "He wanted you to know that he was sorry."

Regret washed over Max. He felt jealous that this girl, this stranger, had been the one to hear his son's last words. Yet, he was touched--and a little surprised--that Josh's last thoughts had been for him. Something about Samantha Courtney made him feel uncharacteristically open, and eager to talk about Joshua.

"I think...I think you knew Joshua differently than I did. Tell me about my son."

She nodded. "Josh said that once. That you two didn't exactly see eye to eye, that you never really understood each other. He wanted you to know that he was sorry for that. He never told me what happened between you, really, but he regretted the way he acted. He said he wasn't very Christlike in his responses to you."

"That was pretty important to him, huh? Being...a Christian?"

"It was the most important thing in Josh's life." Her eyes met his and she held his gaze until he turned away, unsettled by her honesty.

"I think," she said, "that sometimes, when people first find faith, they're so excited and happy that they just want to share it--especially with the people they love most. But like Josh said, they sometimes end up trying to shove it down people's throats instead."

Max gave a humorless laugh. "Yes, he did that all right."

"I hope you won't hold it against him. He wanted a chance to make it right. To explain it better. No," she said. A faraway look came to her eyes. "He just wanted to let you see it...in the way he lived his life."

A lump rose in Max's throat and he bowed his head. When he finally had a rein on his emotions, he looked at her, "Are you a Christian?" Again, he somehow knew the answer before the question was even out.

"Yes. I am."

"So you understood him?"

She laughed softly. "As well as a man and a woman ever understand each other."

Max smiled. He liked this girl. He wondered if Joshua had had feelings for her, as she'd so obviously had for him.

"I understood his passion for the things of God," Samantha said. Then, eyes downcast, she told him, "After Josh died, I wrote down the things he wanted to tell you. I know it's not the same as having it in his very own words. I'm sorry. But I saved the paper for you. And...I'll answer any questions you have. It's the least I can do."

"Thank you," he said. "I'd like to have it. And I do have questions. I'm just not sure I'm ready to ask them yet."

"How long are you staying?"

"I don't know yet. I cleared my schedule until the end of the month." He shaded his eyes and gazed off toward the front gates. "To be honest, I'm not sure why I came. I guess I just needed to feel a connection to him. To see what was so all-fired special about this place that he gave up...everything for it."

She grinned. "I'd guess by your tone of voice you haven't quite figured that out yet."

"No. I haven't." He glanced at his watch. "What time were we supposed to go to the market?"

She gave a little gasp. "What time is it?"

"Almost ten."

She jumped up. "Oh! Madame Duval is going to kill me. We'd better run." She sounded like a ditzy teenager, and it jolted Max to remember how young she really was.

And yet she had wisdom beyond her years, and an obvious contentment and purpose in life that Max Jordan hadn't unearthed in forty-seven years of searching.

Max stepped down from the tap-tap and thrust two crisp five-gourde bills into the driver's hand, hoping it was enough. The driver seemed satisfied. One by one, he offered a hand down to Madame Duval, Samantha and two young Haitian women who cooked at the orphanage. The truck pulled away, leaving them on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes.

He looked to the west where a "housing development" sprawled across a slope of land. It looked like something a gang of ten-year-old boys might erect at the city dump on a Saturday afternoon, sheets of tin and cardboard jutting everywhere at odd angles.

In the market, vendors crowded the street, hawking their wares, and shoppers bargained in a hundred rich nuances of the Creole language.

Madame Duval distributed shopping lists along with plastic pails and sturdy shopping bags for their purchases. She instructed everyone to meet back here in an hour. "Enjoy yourselves, but be careful," the older woman warned.

Max had been able to log onto the Internet on his laptop computer for a few minutes each morning. The news sites carried accounts of sporadic uprisings in Port-au-Prince. The natives didn't seem overly concerned. But then, they'd lived with constant unrest for two hundred years.

"This way," Samantha yelled above the clamor of the streets. "Stay with me."

Swinging a large plastic bucket on her arm, she led the way to a crossroads where an elderly woman had laid out a variety of anemic fruits and vegetables on a tatty blanket.

Samantha and the merchant carried on a lively exchange in Creole, and before Max knew what hit him, she was piling his arms full of some sort of yams and huge bunches of overripe bananas. He stood there feeling like a beast of burden while she paid the woman. When she'd secured her fanny pack around her waist, she whipped a large plastic bag out of her market tote, held it open and motioned for him to empty the produce into it.

He did so, then brushed his hands off before taking the bag from her. What he wouldn't give for his corner sink and a strong dose of Betadine scrub about now. But he slung the heavy bag over his shoulder and took the bucket from Samantha. "Okay, what's next?"

Before she could reply, they both turned at the sound of loud voices across the street. Max watched as two young men, their arms and necks draped with strings of colorful beads, tried to persuade a blond woman to buy some of their wares. She was accompanied by a young native girl, who was tugging on her arm, obviously trying to get her away from the pushy salesmen.

The blonde spoke American English and Max thought something about her seemed familiar. "No," the woman insisted. "I'm not interested."

She turned in his direction and he saw genuine fear on her face. Recognition struck him. It was the woman who'd sat across the aisle from him on the flight from Miami. The one whose luggage had been lost at the airport.

An unfamiliar sensation washed over him. Guilt? He really should have stayed and made sure she was okay. Well, perhaps this was his chance to make amends for leaving her stranded that day.

He touched Samantha's arm. "I'll be right back." He took off at a jog across the street. He walked up behind the American and put what he hoped would appear to be a possessive hand on her shoulder. He glared at the aggressive salesmen. "The lady told you she's not interested in what you're selling. Now go on."

The two vendors looked at each other before they shrugged and wandered off in search of their next victim.

"Thank you." Her words poured out in a sigh of relief, then recognition lit her eyes. "Oh! It's you. Hi."

"Yes. Max Jordan." He stepped back and extended a hand.

"Dr. Max Jordan. We were on the same flight into Port-au-Prince last week."

"Yes, of course, I remember." Her grip was firm, her hand soft. "I'm Valerie Austin. Nice to meet you. Officially, that is."

"You, too."

The Haitian girl spotted Samantha and waved. They must know each other. The girl stood on tiptoe and whispered something in Valerie's ear.

She nodded. "Okay. Just be sure and wait for me. I'll be right there."

The girl agreed and darted across the street.

Max hoisted the bag of vegetables higher on his shoulder. "Did you ever get your luggage? At the airport?" He tried to look sheepish. Unfortunately, it wasn't an expression he'd had much practice at.

She rolled her eyes. "Actually, no."

"Really? It still hasn't shown up?" Now he truly felt like a heel.

She shook her head. "It's probably at the airport. We're hoping to go check on it later today."

"Oh. Well...I hope it's there. I'm sorry I didn't stick around and help you out that day."

She brushed off his apology with a wave of her hand. "Oh, my, no. I wouldn't have expected you to stay. There probably wasn't much you could have done anyway. Things don't seem to work quite the same here as we're used to." She gave him a crooked smile.

"You can say that again." His first impression of her had been miles off base. He'd guessed her to be rather dour and unfriendly. Now she seemed quite the opposite. She looked rested and tanned and, in spite of being a bit shaken after her encounter with the pushy vendors, she appeared quite at home here.

"So you're...just visiting?" he asked. Haiti wasn't exactly a vacation paradise.

"I'm here on a short-term mission trip. My church back home in Kansas sent me."

Her answer didn't surprise him. Was every American here a missionary of some kind? He felt a little disappointed at her response. As though she were the enemy. After all, Joshua had essentially been here as a missionary. "Kansas, huh? I'm from Chicago."

"Oh, really? My sister lives in Chicago."

"Is that right? How long will you be in the country?" He was merely being polite. He had no desire to exchange life stories with the woman, and yet, something about her drew him.

"Another ten days," she said. "How about you?"

"I'm not certain. I'm just here to help out as I can." He knew it came out sounding far more noble than the entire truth, but he didn't want to launch into the whole explanation about Joshua's death. That would just look like a bid for sympathy.

"Oh, that's wonderful. There's such a desperate need for doctors and nurses here. Are you with one of the hospitals here then?"

"No, I'm helping out at an orphanage. Up the road...at Brizjanti."

She brightened. "Really? I'm in Brizjanti, too! Also at an orphanage.
Orphelinat d'Espoir.
Hope House."

"Is that right? I'm still grappling with the fact that a country the size of Haiti would need so many orphanages."

"Yes. I know. Three in Brizjanti alone. It's sad."

He nodded agreement. "And I guess that's only the tip of the iceberg. It's kind of mind-boggling."

She nodded. "It's a shame."

A look of deep sadness hooded her eyes and he wondered what had prompted it. She shuddered almost imperceptibly, as if to shake off the mood.