The Water Keeper(60)
But in order to do anything, we needed a break. Thank God for old men who pretend to be hard of hearing but aren’t.
Ellie was awake when we walked in. I doubted she’d slept. She was sitting at the table spinning the lockbox key like a top. We asked my mechanic friend to look after the motorcycle, and ten minutes later we were headed southbound in the ditch. Ellie stood beside me and showed me the map on her phone. She pointed. “We’ll pass right by it. They open at nine. Won’t take but a second. Then you can be rid of me.”
She was right. We would. Since our return to the hospital, I’d not asked for my Rolex back but let her continue to wear it. Figured it gave her a sense of peace that as long as she wore it, chances were good I wouldn’t run out on her.
I glanced at my watch on her wrist. “What time is it?”
She checked the time but made no attempt to give me back my watch. “Quarter ’til.”
I stared at the sun making its way higher. What would twenty minutes hurt? She’d waited her whole life. A tortured creature who—despite her crusty exterior and like the rest of the human race—had been and was continually asking two questions: Who am I? And more importantly, whose am I?
In my life, in my strange line of work, I’d discovered that we as people can’t answer the first until someone else answers the second. It’s a function of design. Belonging comes before identity. Ownership births purpose. Someone speaks whose we are, and out of that we become who we are. It’s just the way the heart works.
In Eden, we walked in the cool of the evening with a Father who, by the very nature of the conversations and time spent together, answered our heart’s cry. It was the product of relationship. But out here, somewhere east or west of the Garden, beyond the shadow of the fiery walls, we have trouble hearing what He’s saying. And even when we do, we have trouble believing Him. So we wrestle and search. But regardless of where we search and how we try to answer the question or what we ingest, inject, or swallow to numb the nagging, only the Father gets to tell us who we are. Period. This is why fatherless boys gravitate toward gangs. No, it’s not the only reason, but it plays a big part.
In the absence of a dad, can the mom answer it? Sure. Happens all the time. I’ve met many a mom who has more gumption and guts than the weasel of a man she married. Truth is, ninety-nine percent of broken homes are caused by dads leaving. Not moms. The problem seldom lies at the feet of the mom. They’re stuck cleaning up the mess. Although there are exceptions. And maybe those exceptions are the most painful of all. But whatever the cause and however it is answered, and regardless of who answers it, we—as broken children—forever ask, “Whose am I?”
This is the cry of the human heart.
And as I looked down at Ellie, her eyes were screaming both questions. And I couldn’t answer either one. “Okay.”
Her feet moved nervously. As if she stood on the precipice of some great discovery. And while it was tough to tell because she wore a practiced poker face, I almost thought she was smiling.
We returned down the narrow IC, past the North Palm Beach Marina and beyond the Old Port Cove Marina where we’d boarded Fire and Rain the day before. As I’d figured, she was gone. Slip empty.
A few miles farther south, we tied up at the boardwalk, lining the side of Gone Fiction with bumpers. The security agent at the bank opened the door for us and said, “Welcome.” Ellie, Summer, and I approached the teller.
“May I help you?” she asked.
I held out the key. “We’d like to open this box.”
She eyed the key and nodded. “Follow me, please.”
We did, winding through a door and down into a basement. The old, damp bowels of the bank. Another security guard unlocked a door that led into a room of what looked like a thousand lockboxes. The teller wound her way through the aisles, reading numbers, leading us to 27. Finally, her eyes came to rest on the one. She inserted her key into one of the two keyholes and asked me to insert mine—or Ellie’s—into the second. I did. She turned both, unlocking them with a clink, swung open the door, and allowed me to slide the box out. She then led us to a room, pointed at the desk, and closed the door behind her, saying, “Take your time.”
Ellie sat opposite me, staring at the tarnished box. It wasn’t mine, so I spun it clockwise, facing her. Then Summer and I sat waiting.
For Ellie, all her life and every point on the compass had led to this moment. When she reached for the knob, her hand was shaking. A tear had puddled in one eye. Embarrassed, she palmed away the tear and stuck her hand in her lap. Looking away, she recovered, and her eyes narrowed. For a minute, she sat rubbing one thumb over the top of the other. Finally, she looked from the box to me and back to the box. “You mind?”
I walked around beside her, knelt, and lifted the lid of the box, allowing her to see the contents. Inside was a sealed manila envelope.
I spoke softly. “You want me to open it?”
She lifted it out of the box, stared at it, and then shook her head. The only writing on the outside of the envelope was a date thirteen years in the past.
She clutched the envelope to her chest and stared nervously around the room. It was the first time I’d seen a crack in her tough exterior. I sat opposite her. “We have time.”
She laid it flat across her lap. Touching it gently. Tracing the numbers. Finally, she looked at me and shook her head. “I’ll wait.”