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“That’s a yes! That’s a big yes, oh my gosh.” She fans herself. “Keep going, church, firefighter, and...”
I do the thing I do when a conversation gets too close to something I’m not ready to hand over. I change the subject to the one part I can actually give her.
“I’ve been going to church every Sunday, Harper.”
That stops her. All the way.
“To church?”
“Every Sunday since you dragged me. I even joined a life group.” It feels good saying it out loud to the person who’s prayed I’d go back for years. “I’m doing the six-month thing. I’m actually doing it.”
And Harper, who is never quiet, goes quiet. Her eyes fill, right there on the screen, an hour and a half away.
“Liv,” she says, soft. “You went back.”
“I went back.”
“I’m so...” She wipes under her eye and laughs at herself. Then she doesn’t finish the sentence to me at all. She twists toward the kitchen and hollers loud enough to rattle the phone speaker. “Micah! Micah, come here. Right now.”
“What?” His voice, alarmed, getting closer. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” She’s crying and grinning at the same time. “Olivia went back to church.”
A pause. Then his face drops into the frame beside hers, and I watch it hit him too, this man who has prayed over me at more tables than I probably know about.
“You’re serious,” he says.
“Yep, all on my own,” I tell him.
“Liv.” Micah isn’t a loud man, and he doesn’t get loud now, but something in his face just cracks wide open. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all week.”
“You have no idea how long we’ve been asking God for this,” Harper says, one hand pressed over her mouth. “Since before you’d even admit you missed it. Do you understand what you just told me?”
“I’m starting to.”
For a second the two of them just look at me through the screen, wrecked and beaming, an hour and a half away and somehow right here in my kitchen. I have to look down at my own hands, because I did not expect it to land on me this hard. I forgot that my coming home was something other people had been waiting on.
Then Micah kisses the top of Harper’s head. “Food’s on the table,” he says, gentle. “I’m happy for you, Liv.”
Harper points at the camera, wiping her face, all business again. “Okay. He’s making me eat like a functional adult. But listen.” Her eyes narrow, delighted. “We are not done with this. Not even a little. There’s a firefighter in the picture, and I want every detail. I’m calling you this coming week, and you are going to actually answer, and you’re going to tell me everything. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say, and mean it more than I expect to.
“I love you. I’m proud of you. Go be mysterious about your firefighter.” She blows a kiss. “Bye, church girl.”
The call ends.
And the apartment’s quiet again. But it’s a different quiet than the one I sat in a few weeks ago, the night I met Bo, when I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone anything. Tonight I told Harper something. Not everything. Not the almost-kisses or the kitchen floor or the way I felt watching Luke eat a cupcake his son picked out for him. But something. The church part. The most important part.
It’s a start.
I decide that when Harper calls later this week, I might tell her a little more.
Baby steps. Somebody once moved a candle four inches to teach me that.
Chapter 18
Luke
