Fifty laps. James touched the wall, breathing hard, and let the water lap around him as he let his body relax. His endurance was back. His body ached, not with pain, but with the exertion of a good workout.

Smiling, pleased, he swam at a leisurely pace to the ladder.

He was over the worst of the symptoms.

Eight weeks of a lot of sleep, a lot of medicine, and careful exercise had paid off. His joints no longer ached.

He had already talked his next step over with Kevin. He thought his body was ready to tackle a building project again. It was time to know. Three weeks working on a house with Kevin would tell him if he was right.

The smell of chlorine was strong in the air as James crossed the tile deck to the chair where he had left his towel and locker key. The health club was surprisingly empty for a Thursday afternoon. A glance at the wall clock showed he had just enough time for ten minutes in the whirlpool followed by a quick shower before he needed to leave to pick up Dave.

Rae was bowling in the finals tonight.

She was still too busy to suit any of them, but James had watched her eyes begin to smile again, knew Rae was adjusting, finding a balance between her life and her work.

He’d become one of the group.

His initiation had been one short-sheeted bed. He still had no idea which one of them had done it, but they had all obviously known about it.

In the six weeks since, he had come to profoundly appreciate their offer of friendship.

He was part of the group.

He’d never experienced anything like it, a camaraderie coupled with loyalty that went so deep as to be nearly unbreakable. He had begun to realize the significance of it the day Dave flew back on a chartered flight from San Diego during a trial to be at an awards banquet where Lace was speaking, and from the awards banquet went back to the airport for a return trip in the middle of the night. It was Rae networking her contacts to donate the medical equipment he would need for the clinics then pulling more strings to get even the shipping costs donated. It was Lace putting in an all-nighter with Dave to prepare a court defense, then getting on a plane herself to make a major presentation the next day. It was Friday night dinners at Dave’s place, movies at Lace’s, basketball games at Rae’s. It was a network of names and contacts and favors that they used freely to solve problems for each other, from getting plane tickets on a moment’s notice to getting phone calls to the top executive of a corporation put through. It was inconceivable amounts of cash flowing from one individual or another to needs the group spotted. It was a common “what I have is yours” use of their time, resources and talents. Cementing it all together was a lot of laughter.

They were friends.

They had chosen him to be one of them.

As the weeks went by, he had grown to appreciate how big a blessing God had dropped in his life.

He had become their expert advisor on cars, construction, real estate, large organization management, and, somehow, their elected chief arbitrator of decisions. There would be options on the table for what to do, where to go, whom to call, priorities to set. And when he finally stated what he thought, they would go that way. He had finally understood a few weeks back that they were doing it intentionally. They wanted him to be part of the team, not a newcomer.

He was going to miss them when Africa put him half a world away.

Six weeks, and he would be standing on scrubland, putting a clinic together where there was only a dream and a need.

He had a feeling that the three of them had simply decided they were going to extend their network around the globe to follow him. Dave had been adding contacts in the State Department to his Rolodex; Lace had already put her international banking contacts at his disposal; Rae, through the foundation money she managed, was already picking his brain for details about the type of doctors he needed to staff the clinics.

They were being friends.

They hadn’t been able to solve his medical problems, but they had literally put in his hand access to one of the best health clubs in the area, the private cards of the best doctors in the city, even season tickets to the White Sox games.

There were times he marveled at the blessings God chose to give. This group of friends could have only been conceived and put together by the hand of God.

 

“Anything else, Janet?” Rae asked, pausing on her way back from a telephone conference with Gary in Seattle and Mike in Houston.

Her secretary glanced down her running list. “Mark said he would fax the corporate resolutions over tonight, Linda had a question on the tax distribution from March—I had the information she needed so I faxed it to her—I need a decision on when you would like to meet with Quinn Scott, and Bob Hamilton wants to have lunch next week to follow up on your proposal.”

Rae felt like doing a dance, but settled for a significant smile. “Accept any day next week that Bob Hamilton has available—I’ll call and apologize to whomever you have to bump from my schedule. Remind me to send Dave a thankyou. Pencil Quinn in for either late Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon next week.”

Janet added the information to her list. “I’ll leave you a confirmation message on your voice mail and update the board with what I can arrange. That looks like it.”

“Wonderful. Thanks, Janet.”

Rae was going to be able to leave the office by 6:00 p.m. The changes made in the past six weeks had finally begun to pay off.

She entered the trading room for one last review of the day’s events. She had the place to herself, a rare occurrence.

Mr. Potato Head was smiling.

Rae grinned and tipped his pipe down. Leo’s toys still dotted the room. She’d never had the heart to remove them. This was still his domain, even today. Besides, she liked his toys, they each had a story to tell that made her smile.

It was a spacious room made crowded by the volume of equipment. She glanced at the news feeds, three televisions monitoring CNN, the financial channel and the news channel, all three taped for playback in case of breaking news, then at the bank of stock price monitors. Leo had written the software driving the price monitors. One monitor showed prices and movements for all the stocks they owned, another monitor showed prices and movements for stocks on their watch list, and the last monitor showed prices and volumes in the market as a whole.

Scott was breaking down the stocks that had dropped or jumped up during the day, would give his recommendations by voice mail tonight; she would do her own analysis of the data in the morning in light of his recommendations and make some decisions.

Rae settled down in the captain’s chair and tipped back, sipping the cup of coffee she had brought with her as she watched the terminals on the trends desk flip through the daily, monthly and yearly graphs for each stock they owned. She paused the progression of the graphs occasionally, adding a few of them to her work list for the morning. On the whole she was satisfied with what she saw.

A touch of a key flipped the display to client portfolios. Rae took her time reviewing the thirty-two screens, looking at the effects the day’s markets had had on her clients’ portfolios.

It had been a good day overall.

All the information she was looking at was available in her own office, but she had decided after coming back from vacation that it would be a strategic move to separate the analysis and planning work she did from the trading work she also directed.

After six weeks, her office felt like a haven again. She had to worry about instant decisions and responding to events when she was here in the war room; outside of this room, she could back off to her more natural planning mode. It had been a good compromise.

Hiring two more excellent secretaries and thinking through carefully what data she needed to see each morning had let her focus that critical first forty minutes of her day. At Lace’s insistence, she now had breakfast being delivered for everyone in the office at 7:00 a.m. Her appetite was still nonexistent, but Janet was keeping a watch on her, showing up with a plate of food if she forgot to stop working to eat. Rae was pretty sure the dozen roses on the corner of Janet’s desk were from Dave. Trust her friends to have a spy in her office.

A glance at the middle clock on the wall, the one set for Central Standard Time, showed ten minutes before six. It was time to get moving. She needed to swing by Lace’s condo and pick up Dave’s leather jacket on the way to the bowling alley. How Dave’s most cherished possession had ended up at Lace’s place in July was a mystery Rae intended to solve before the night was out.

Lace had been in Canada for a conference, it could have conceivably been cool enough she would need a jacket, but Dave’s leather jacket? It wasn’t fashionable. And Dave didn’t exactly just hand that jacket out. Letting a lady wear that jacket was Dave’s equivalent of giving a class ring.

 

“Nail it, Rae.”

She stopped the swing, the loud call coming just as she began to step forward, the momentum spinning her around. “Would my cheering section please quit interrupting my concentration?” she demanded, amused.

“Why? You bowl better when we interrupt you,” Dave said.

“Your only strikes came with our help,” Lace confirmed, her patent leather shoes resting on the back of the chair in front of the bench. She was shelling peanuts. She looked about sixteen with the outfit she had on—the poodle skirt was vintage sixties if it was a day, the bubble gum had to be interfering with the peanuts, and her hair was in two ponytails. Two. It was carrying cheerleading beyond the call of duty. It did explain the leather jacket.

“How many strikes is that?”

“Two,” James added cheerfully from his seat as acting scoring secretary.

She scowled at him. She was having a rotten game.

“Try to behave, you’re embarrassing my team.”

“They’re okay, Rae,” the rest of her bench chimed in. Dave tipped his can of soda in thank-you for the support. He had bought the first round of soft drinks for the entire league. He was everyone’s pal tonight.

Rae reset her position, considered what Leo would have done in this situation, and laid a blistering twist on the release, crossing her ball over the fifth board. She watched it flair out to the second board, cross the second set of diamonds and promptly hook into a pocket with a vicious pop.

“All right, Rae!”

She walked back to the bench, smiling.

She slapped hands with her teammates and picked up the towel she had tossed on her seat.

“You’re a pretty good player, aren’t you?” James leaned forward across the back of the seat to whisper.

“Sort of,” Rae whispered back. “We promised the league we would make the games competitive this year.”

 

“So, where are we going from here?”

It was late, and the foursome paused in the parking lot to consider Dave’s question.

Dave had his arm draped around Lace’s shoulders. James could understand why he didn’t want the evening to end. He didn’t particularly want to see the evening end, either.

Rae paused beside him as they considered what they would do, shifting her bag holding two bowling balls to her other hand. He had offered to carry it for her, but she had declined with a smile and a soft thanks. He hadn’t made an issue of it. The symptoms were gone, but she was still being cautious. Either that, or she didn’t want his help. He preferred to think she was still being careful of his wrists. The first time at the bowling alley, weeks ago, he had picked up a bowling ball and the pain in his wrist had made him nearly gasp in pain. Tonight, he bet he could bowl a game and not feel even a twinge.

“James, will a late night be a problem?” Rae asked him in an undertone, confirming his suspicions of what she was thinking.

He appreciated the question, but he really was okay now. “No.”

“We could go to Avanti’s for a pizza,” she suggested to the group.

“Great idea. They have the best garlic bread sticks,” Lace commented.

“Garlic? Lace…” Dave began to protest.

Lace slipped out from under his arm. “Don’t go making assumptions, Dave. I’ll ride with Rae and we’ll meet you two there.”

Dave sighed. “Sure.”

James hid his smile, aware, as was Rae, how Lace and Dave were skirting around actually dating. “Come on Dave, ride with me and give me directions. I’ll bring you back here to pick up your car.”

They walked across the parking lot to the car Kevin had loaned him, listening to the laughter of the ladies as they walked in the other direction to Rae’s Lexus.

James unlocked the car, catching sight of Dave’s expression as he turned to watch them. “She does like you, you know.”

“I thought getting a kiss when I was sixteen was a big deal,” Dave commented. “It’s nothing like trying to get one from Lace. I’ve never met a lady with more contrary signals in my life.”

“She doesn’t want to mess up a friendship.”

“No, it’s not that. Rae was like that. I think Lace just likes to be contrary. I made the mistake of asking her out only after I found out she was dating some tax attorney. She’s miffed at me.”

James smiled. “She looked really miffed tonight.”

Dave gave him directions to the restaurant. He smiled. “She does make nice company. But James, I swear, she’s going to have me going in circles for months before she says yes.”

“So, ask her to something you know she can’t refuse. She’s into art in a big way isn’t she?”

“Impressionists.”

“Find a showing she would love to see, make it hard for her to turn you down,” James suggested.

“That’s a good idea.”

James turned east on Hallwood street, easily keeping Rae’s Lexus in view up ahead.

“What’s Rae like to do?” he asked casually—too casually—a few minutes later. He had a few weeks before he left the country; he wouldn’t mind spending some of that time with Rae. He enjoyed her company.

Dave laughed. “Not aiming low, are you?” He thought for a moment. “Rae? I guess I would put bookstores at the top of her list, pet stores, charity auctions, medical conferences. Any conference related to work—financial planning, taxes, stock selection. She’s always been pretty hard to pin down.”

“Does she dance?”

Dave looked troubled. “I would recommend that you stay away from it. Leo was trying to teach her.”

Dave pointed out the restaurant. “They were two days away from being engaged, James. She’s still dealing with a lot of big issues. I’m not saying don’t pursue it, but I would move cautiously if I were you.”

 

Engaged.

Lace hadn’t told him that.

James slid out of the booth as the ladies came to join them, allowed Rae to slip back into her seat. She was sitting beside him in the booth.

It had been a laughter-filled last thirty minutes. Rae was still riding high with energy, her team having won the competition, and Dave was in usual form tonight, keeping them laughing at his stories. James was finding it hard to join in. He kept considering the implications of what Dave had said.

Engaged.

There was a lot of pain to process when you lost someone you loved. It may have been almost two years, but when he looked at Rae, he knew she had a long way to go before she had processed all the grief. The implications of how her life had changed—the work pressure, the added weight of responsibility, were still fundamentally affecting her life.

How well he could remember the first time he met her, how deep the grief had been in her eyes. Now, after weeks around her, he was catching glimpses of Rae without that pain; moments when the glimmer of laughter would reach her eyes, moments when her smile would cause her eyes to twinkle. As a friend, he wanted to see that healing continue. He wanted to help in any way he could. As a man, he wanted her to be able to move on from the past.

He liked her.

It was a pretty profound emotion, because he wanted it to be more than a casual friendship.

He knew the reality. He was returning to Africa in six weeks. He had an obligation and commitment there to finish what he had begun, and the need was there, but the part of him that looked at the cost of that commitment was chalking up Rae as one of the steeper costs he was going to be paying.

Before he went back to Africa, he would like to see the smile in her eyes there all the time.

He wouldn’t mind spending more time with her before he went back overseas, simply because he enjoyed listening to her and being with her. But he no longer could treat her past as a casual fact. It was big and powerful, and to be a friend he had to at least appreciate what that past meant to her. Until tonight, he really hadn’t understood.

It made the idea of asking her out take on a whole new implication.

She hadn’t been on a date since Leo passed away. He ought to have at least realized that before he popped off a casual question. No wonder his suggestion of going into town to get ice cream had startled her.

She hadn’t been prepared to hear such a casual offer.

He would know better in the future.

He smiled as he listened to Rae debate Dave over the merits of the latest tax cap proposal for the county, Lace interrupting occasionally to add her concerns. The three of them had a passion for politics and legislation that made him wonder why none of them had ever gone into politics. The debate came down to point of interpretation and all three of them looked at him.

He grinned as he picked up his soda. “Sorry, I can’t even give an opinion.”

“We’ve got to stop doing local politics,” Lace apologized, pushing her plate to the side.

“Who wants the last two pieces of pizza?” Between the four of them, a large Canadian bacon pizza had nearly disappeared.

“Rae,” he and Dave said at the same time.

Rae rolled her eyes. “I don’t need to gain that much.”

“A bird has been eating more than you have. Take it for lunch tomorrow,” Dave insisted.

Rae conceded because she was outvoted.

James leaned back in the bench and watched Rae, a smile on his face because she was beside him and because occasionally she would turn to ask him a question in a low voice so the other two wouldn’t hear and her eyes would be sparkling. She had chosen him, since Dave and Lace were skirting around actually dating each other, to be the one she would turn to when she needed a partner. She sent him to get her soda, asked him to find the hot pepper shaker for her. Little things that made him smile. She’d returned the favor by announcing Dave was buying the pizza. Dave had groaned and protested and she’d just looked at him, prompting laughter around the table when Dave didn’t say another word.

Rae was happy tonight and he didn’t want the night to end.

She needed more breaks like this. He’d been thinking about it as they sat and talked tonight. He had one option up his sleeve, something he thought might get a yes from her even though everything he had seen so far said she was comfortable in the group of friends, but not beyond that group. Puppies were a hard date to turn down.

 

“Have a nice night?”

His mom was still up, seated in the recliner in the family room, knitting, the late show just finishing, credits scrolling by on the screen. It was like walking back in time. So many times during his high school and college days he had come home and found her in just that chair, reading a book, watching a late show, occasionally sleeping. It was his dad’s chair.

James leaned against the doorpost, tucked his hands in his pockets, smiled. “Real good, Mom.”

For all the pain and trouble the bug he had picked up had caused, the fact that it gave him a few weeks back with family almost made it worthwhile. He was storing up memories of his mom and his sister and her family. He was going to miss them all.

“I’m glad.” She set down the sweater she was making, then touched the remote to shut off the television. “I do love Cary Grant. He made such good movies.”

His dog leveraged himself to his feet, came over to greet him. “Hi, boy.” James stroked the dog’s coat and he lazily leaned against James’s jeans, loving the attention.

His mom picked up the bowl of orange peels beside the chair and the empty glass off the table. “Your dad and I watched that movie on our honeymoon.” She touched the light switch. “There were a couple phone calls for you tonight. Jim Marshall called from Germany and Kevin called, said to tell you Monday was good on his schedule. I left the notes on the kitchen table.”

“I bet Jim’s got a new baby to announce. Heather was due about now,” James remarked walking back to the kitchen to get the message.

“It would be his second?”

“Third. He’s got a boy and girl.” He confirmed the number was the one he remembered. “I’ve got a couple guys coming over tomorrow to help me rehang the garage door so it won’t stick anymore. I’ll be over at the kennels after that. Did your dog Margo have her puppies yet?”

“Not yet, but the vet says she’s due anytime. Bobby said he would be sure to check on her tonight when he makes his rounds.”

“I’ve got someone I think I’ll invite over to see them,” James said casually.

His mom smiled, that smile she used to get when he said he was bringing a girl home with him to study.

“I’m leaving in six weeks, Mom.”

His mom nodded, but her smile only got wider. “Six weeks is a long time. Rae will like the puppies. Lock up before you turn in?”

James knew he had said nothing about Rae recently, he’d seen her only as part of the group. He spent his time with Dave or Kevin or over at Patricia’s. Trust his mom to figure out his interest before he did….

“I’ll lock up.”

 

“It’s good to have you back, James,” Kevin said, handing him the second cup of coffee he was carrying.

It was the crack of dawn, dew was still on the cars and trucks, and they were looking at what was essentially a hardened pad of concrete. Not a piece of lumber had been laid for this house that was slated to be ready for the electrician and plumber in three weeks.

“Remember how to be a carpenter?”

James laughed. “I’ve forgotten more than you ever learned,” he replied, drinking the coffee and looking over the blueprints spread out before them across two sawhorses. He was eager, impatient to get to work; he had always loved these initial few days, framing in a house and making it appear from nothing.

His devotions that morning had landed on Psalm 127. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. It was just like God to note the arrival of this day with the same expectation James felt.

It was nice to know this morning he was going to be helping God build a home.

“The rest of the crew should be arriving anytime. Find the chalk and let’s get this house underway,” Kevin said. “I’ve missed this, James. I’ve been stuck behind a desk too much the last couple of years.”

“Have you sold this one yet?”

“A real nice couple from Georgia, moving with his job. They’ve got one little girl, about six years old.”

The lumber for the frame had been delivered and rested on pallets on what would someday be a sodded backyard. James started hauling lumber. The first nail drove into the wood in two decisive blows of the hammer, making him smile and reach for the next nail.

He was back.

This was who he was.

A carpenter who made homes and clinics rise where there was only a dream.

It felt good. Really, really good.

God, thanks. The prayer came from his heart. It was followed with another nail, pounded in with a smile. There was a day coming in heaven when he was going to get the Master Craftsman in a workshop to show him the things He had made when He was a carpenter. There was something uniquely satisfying with sharing the profession Jesus had chosen for thirty years. Jesus could have been a farmer or a fisherman, or a shopkeeper. He had chosen to be a carpenter. James could understand why.