The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (73 page)

“I’ve wanted to meet you, Captain Steele, because—”

“Rayford, please.”

“Well, I’ll call you Mr. Steele for now, then, if
captain
is too formal. Rayford is a little too familiar for me, though that is what Irene called you. Anyway, she was the sweetest little woman, so soft-spoken, so totally in love and devoted to you. She was the sole reason I came as close as I did to becoming a Christian before the Rapture, and—second only to the vanishings themselves—she was the reason I finally did come to the Lord. Then I couldn’t remember her name, and none of the other ladies from that Bible study were still around. That made me feel lonely, as you can imagine. And I lost my family, too, I’m sure Bruce told you. So it’s been hard.

“Bruce has certainly been a godsend though. Have you learned as much from him as I have? Well, of course you have. You’ve been with him for weeks.”

Eventually Amanda slowed down and shared her own story of the loss of her family. “We had been in a dead church all our lives. Then my husband got invited to some outing at a friend’s church, came home, and insisted that we at least check out the Sunday services there. I don’t mind telling you, I was not comfortable. They made a big deal all the time about being saved.

“Well, before I could get my little mind around the idea, I was the only one in my family who
wasn’t
saved. To tell you the truth, the whole thing sounded a little white trashy to me. I didn’t know I had a lot of pride. Lost people never know that, do they? Well, I pretended I was right there with my family, but they knew. They kept encouraging me to go to this women’s Bible study, so finally I went. I was just sure it was going to be more of the same—frumpy middle-aged women talking about being sinners saved by grace.”

Somehow, Amanda White managed to finish her meal while talking, but when she got to this part of her story she clouded up and had to excuse herself for a few minutes. Chloe rolled her eyes. “Dad!” she said. “What planet would you guess she’s from?”

Rayford had chuckled. “I do want to hear her impressions of your mother,” he said. “And she certainly sounds ‘saved’ now, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, but she’s a long way from frumpy white trash.”

When Amanda returned, she apologized and said she was “determined to get this said.” Rayford smiled encouragingly at her while Chloe made faces at him behind her back, trying to get him to laugh.

“I’m not going to bother you anymore,” she said. “I’m an executive and not the type to insert myself into people’s lives. I just wanted to get together with you one time to tell you what your wife, and your mother, meant in my life. You know, I had only one brief conversation with her. It came after that one meeting, and I was glad I got the chance to tell her how she had impressed me.

“If you’re interested, I’ll tell you about it. But if I’ve already rattled on too long, tell me that, too, and I’ll let you go with just the knowledge that Mrs. Steele was a wonderful lady.”

Rayford actually considered saying that they had had a tiring week and needed to get home, but he would never be that rude. Even Chloe would likely chastise him for a move like that, so he said, “Oh, by all means, we’d love to hear it. The truth is,” he added, “I love to talk about Irene.”

“Well, I don’t know why I forgot her name for so long, because I was so struck by it at first. Besides sounding a little like
iron
and
steel
, I remember thinking that Irene sounded more like a name of someone many years older than your wife. She was about forty, right?”

Rayford nodded.

“Anyway, I took the morning off, and I arrived at this home where the ladies were meeting that week. They all looked so normal and were wonderful to me. I noticed your wife right off. She was just radiant—friendly and smiling and talking with everyone. She welcomed me and asked about me. And then during the Bible study, prayer, and discussion, I was just impressed by her. What more can I say?”

A lot,
Rayford hoped. But he didn’t want to interview the woman. What had so impressed her? He was glad when Chloe jumped in.

“I’m glad to hear that, Mrs. White, because I was never more impressed with my mother than after I had left home. I had always thought her a little too religious, too strict, too rigid. Only when we were apart did I realize how much I loved her because of how much she cared for me.”

“Well,” Amanda said, “it was her own story that moved me, but more than that, it was her carriage, her countenance. I don’t know if you knew this, but she had not been a Christian long either. Her story was the same as mine. She said her family had been going to church sort of perfunctorily for years. But when she found New Hope Village Church, she found Christ.

“There was a peace, a gentleness, a kindness, a serenity about her that I had never seen in anyone else. She had confidence, but she was humble. She was outgoing, yet not pushy or self-promoting. I loved her immediately. She grew emotional when she talked about her family, and she said that her husband and her daughter were at the top of her prayer list. She loved you both so deeply. She said her greatest fear was that she would reach you too late and that you would not go to heaven with her and her son. I don’t remember his name.”

“Rayford, Junior,” Chloe said. “She would have called him Raymie.”

“After the meeting I sought her out and told her that my family was the opposite. They were all worried that they would go to heaven without me. She told me how to receive Christ. I told her I wasn’t ready, and she warned me not to put it off and said she would pray for me. That night my family disappeared from their beds. Almost everyone was gone from our new church, including all the Bible study ladies. Eventually I tracked down Bruce and asked if he knew Irene Steele.”

Rayford and Chloe had returned home chagrined and a little ashamed of themselves. “That was nice,” Rayford said. “I’m glad we took the time for that.”

“I just wish I hadn’t been such a creep,” Chloe said. “For hardly having known her, that woman had a lot of insight into Mom.”

For nearly a year after that, Rayford saw Amanda White only on Sundays and at an occasional midweek meeting of the larger core study group. She was always cordial and friendly, but what impressed him most was her servant’s attitude. She continually prayed for people, and she was busy in the church all the time. She studied, she grew, she learned, she talked to people about their standing with God.

As Rayford watched her from afar, she became more and more attractive to him. One Sunday he told Chloe, “You know, we never reciprocated on Amanda White’s dinner invitation.”

“You want to have her over?” Chloe asked.

“I want to ask her out.”

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me.”

“Dad! You mean like on a date?”

“A double date. With you and Buck.”

Chloe had laughed, then apologized. “It’s not funny. I’m just surprised.”

“Don’t make a big deal of it,” he said. “I just might ask her.”

“Don’t
you
make a big deal of it,” Chloe said.

Buck was not surprised when Chloe told him her Dad wanted them to double-date with Amanda White. “I wondered when he’d get around to it.”

“To dating?”

“To dating Amanda White.”

“You noticed something there? You never said anything.”

“I didn’t want to risk your mentioning it and planting an idea in his head that wasn’t his own.”

“That rarely happens.”

“Anyway, I think they’ll be good for each other,” Buck said. “He needs companionship his own age, and if something comes of it, so much the better.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not going to want to be alone if we decide to get more serious.”

“Seems to me we’ve already decided.” Chloe slipped her hand into Buck’s.

“I just don’t know what to do about timing and geography, with everything breaking the way it has.”

Buck was hoping for some hint from Chloe that she would be willing to follow him anywhere, that she was either ready for marriage or that she needed more time. Time was getting away from them, but still Buck hesitated.

“I’m ready when he is,” Chloe told Rayford. “But I’m not going to say a word.”

“Why not?” Rayford said. “Men need a few signals.”

“He’s getting all the signals he needs.”

“So you’ve held his hand by now?”

“Dad!”

“Bet you’ve even kissed him.”

“No comment.”

“That’s a
yes
if I ever heard one.”

“Like I said, he’s getting all the signals he needs.”

In fact, Buck would never forget the first time he had kissed Chloe. It had been the night he left for New York by car, about a year before. Carpathia had bought up the
Weekly
as well as any of the competition worth working for, and Buck seemed to have less choice than ever over his own career. He could try bootlegging copy over the Internet, but he still needed to make a living. And Bruce, who was at the church less and less all the time due to his ministry all over the world, had encouraged him to stay with
Global Weekly
, even after the name was changed to
Global Community Weekly
. “I wish we could change the last word one more time,” Buck said. “To
Weakly
.”

Buck had resigned himself to doing the best he could for the kingdom of God, just as Chloe’s father had done. But he still hid his identity as a believer. Whatever freedom and perceived objectivity he had would soon be gone if that truth was known to Carpathia.

That last night in Chicago, he and Chloe were in his apartment packing the last of his personal things. His plan was to leave by nine o’clock that night and drive all the way to New York City in one marathon stretch. As they worked, they talked about how much they would hate being apart, how much they would miss each other, how often they would phone and e-mail each other.

“I wish you could come with me,” Buck said at one point.

“Yeah, that would be appropriate,” she said.

“Someday,” he said.

“Someday what?”

But he would not bite. He carried a box to the car and came back in, passing her as she taped another. Tears ran down her face.

“What’s this?” he said, stopping to wipe her face with his fingers. “Don’t get
me
started now.”

“You’ll never miss me as much as I’ll miss you,” she said, trying to continue to work with him hovering, a hand on her face.

“Stop it,” he whispered. “Come here.”

She set down the tape and stood to face him. He embraced her and pulled her close. Her hands were at her sides, and her cheek was on his chest. They had held each other before, and they had walked hand in hand, sometimes arm in arm. They had expressed their deep feelings for each other without mentioning love. And they had agreed not to cry and not to say anything rash in the moment of parting.

“We’ll see each other often,” he said. “You’ll rendezvous with your dad when he comes through New York. And I’ll have reasons to come here.”

“What reason? The Chicago office is closing.”

“This reason,” he said, holding her tighter. And she began to sob.