Page 104 of Wait for Me

“You’ll still have your job when you come back.”

Mrs. Ping picked up the laundry basket. “I won’t when Marie returns.”

“If she does.” Logan would love to see Marie in town, but not if it didn’t make her happy.

“Won’t she? She told Jonas she’ll be back.”

“To visit, yes. But I don’t know if she will stay.” Logan had spoken his mind, but he wasn’t sure if that was too much to tell his son’s nanny.

“Pardon my intrusion, Mr. Logan, but I thought you two got back together on the cruise.”

What to say? “We had our moments, but they were mere moments, you know? It might be over for us.”

“Maybe there’s still something there.”

“Marriage is hard.” Their no-fault divorce was a case in point.

“Life is hard,” Mrs. Ping said. “But all things are possible with God. Hope in Him for the best.”

The best? Logan knew that the best partner for him was Marie. “She’s all but disappeared. I sent a care package to Mendenhall Security, but I haven’t heard back.”

“If she’s working, she’s busy.”

“Maybe she has moved on.”

“Not Marie.” Mrs. Ping sounded confident.

It made Logan curious. “Why do you say that?”

“She seems to be a one-man woman type.”

“That so?” Curiouser and curiouser.

“I think she’s still in love with you—care package or not.”

Logan sighed. “We’ve hurt each other too much.”

Mrs. Ping stopped at the door. “Sometimes we have to love unconditionally.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

After two weeks, Logan’s staycation routine became automatic for him. Wake Jonas up, read the Bible to him, get ready for school, feed him breakfast, drop him off at the kindergarten, come home, putter around, pick up Jonas, take him to lunch, bring him home, play with him all afternoon or supervise playtime with his friends, feed him dinner, prepare him for bed, read the Bible to him, send him to bed, crash like an exhausted dad, and start all over again the next day.

Saturdays, they slept in all morning. Sundays, Logan set five alarms to get them both up and ready for church.

Midtown Chapel was about twenty minutes south in midtown Atlanta. The pastor had mentioned raising funds to plant a church in the North Georgia Mountains, but that would be even farther away from Paces Ferry Road.

Logan wished there was a church down the street from them that they both liked. Sure, there were many churches in the area, but he liked Midtown Chapel the best, in spite of the distance. Both the pastor and assistant pastors were thoughtful preachers.

Their children’s program was top notch and biblically sound. Logan didn’t want to pull Jonas from that environment.

This Sunday, the sermon was for Logan. Their senior pastor was out of town, so Assistant Pastor Byron Moss preached. The congregation laughed until they cried when Byron told the story of how he met his wife Tina for the first time when she was in Nassau to teach Vacation Bible School. They hated each other then. Two years later, they met afresh when Tina returned to the Bahamas.

Logan began to wonder if he could look at Marie “afresh.” If they could start over, would they? Could they?

Byron went on to remind everyone to love one another with God’s love, not human love. “You have all heard that God’s love is sacrificial, but do you really know what that means for yourself, your own situation?”

Logan thought Byron was looking right at him. He turned his eyes toward the open Bible in his hand to avoid eye contact with the pastor, who also happened to be his friend. Logan made a note to himself to sit way in the back pews next Sunday.

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