It took a second to realize he was serious. I tried not to laugh. “That’s how they’ve always been! You’re just really hearing them for the first time, that’s all.” He grinned and shook his head in amazement.

When they started “Silent Night,” I tugged his sleeve and whispered up to him, “This is the last song. Do you want to slip out?”

He thought for a minute, then shook his head. “If I’m gonna be coming here, people are gonna have to get used to seeing me. We’ll just leave when it’s over.”

Coming here? He was planning on coming here?

And with that, the lights rose, Paul bade us all good night, and people began shuffling up the row toward the doors in the back. Missy looked over at me in surprise. “You guys didn’t leave.”

I shrugged. “He didn’t want to.”

We sat and talked, deciding what to do for the rest of the evening, and it wasn’t until we were on our way out that I heard someone behind us say to her husband, “Call me crazy, but I think that’s Jack Harrington up there!”

Her husband snorted. “You’re dreaming, Lucy.”

Jack and I stifled a giggle as we threaded our way through the cars. The couple behind us continued to bicker, oblivious to how their voices carried, and as we climbed into my car Jack yelled back, “Merry Christmas, Lucy!”

I laughed until I had tears in my eyes as the stunned face of Lucy stared at us as we sped away.

JACK

FOR WEEKS I FELT like a completely different person, and I seemed to see the world in a new way. I saw the way things were interconnected, the way people reacted to God without even realizing it, including myself. Greg had given me a book when I saw him after my “conversion,” which is what everyone kept calling my weekend in Big Bear, and it talked about the basic beliefs of Christianity. I devoured it in two days. Grace and I talked about it on the phone in the evenings, and I was constantly amazed by how much she knew when she’d only been a Christian for a couple years. “It’s not me coming up with these answers,” she’d laugh. “God’s giving them to me. Trust me, I don’t know that much!”