He turned his attention back to Alexandra. "So, what do you do when you're not caregiving?"

"I'm a starving artist." When she laughed, her freckles danced. "Actually, not starving, but not completely successful at this point." Her eyes connected with his. "The truth is, I love painting, and I'm happy just being able to do what I love."

The waitress set their drinks on the table. "Ready to order yet?" She pulled a pad from her apron.

"Not yet," Ben frowned. "Please give us a few more minutes."

The girl snapped around and walked away.

"Looks like we need to order," he suggested. "Before she has a breakdown."

Alexandra laughed. "Well, I want something extravagant with lots of cheese." She studied the menu in front of her. "I'm celebrating."

"Is it your birthday?" Ben couldn't imagine the coincidence.

"No . . . no. It's the first time I've been out for lunch on my own in a while. Caregiving has kept me tied down. It's nice to relax without having someone's life in my hands." She blushed. "Sorry, I suppose you never really get away from that feeling."

"It's an art," he teased.

She smiled.

"Do you know what you want to eat? Everything here is good."

"Can we share a pizza? Maybe a veggie one?"

"Absolutely." Ben waved the waitress to the table.

"Yes, sir."

"We'd like a large Veggie Margherita Pizza." He picked up the menus and gave them to her. "And make sure we have extra cheese."

The corners of Alexandra's mouth curled. "Thanks."

"What were we talking about?"

"You," she said. "I admire your career choice, helping people. What led you to it?"

"The flower shop."

"I don't understand."

"I worked in my grandfather's flower shop when I was a boy, actually until I left home for college." He exhaled a long breath of air, thinking about those days. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

"Yes." She nodded and took a sip of her drink.

"I was fascinated early on with the human thought process. It was interesting how people went about choosing flowers for special occasions. It sounds like a stretch, but color and scent are neurological functions."

"Makes sense." She propped her chin on her hands, elbows resting on the table.

"There was a lot of motive in the process as well. Understandably, many people use flowers to express what they cannot. You'd be surprised, however, how some people use them to express what they don't mean yet feel obligated to say." He studied her beautiful face.

"I'd never thought about it like that."

"When I was a teenager, my grandfather suffered a stroke, and I watched him struggle with neurological issues." Ben drew in a deep breath. "That's when I began managing the shop. I had known long before then that I didn't want to make it my life's work, and I was miserable. But I had to do it, to take care of my grandmother. Later, my grandfather was able to build back up to a normal life."

"So your grandparents raised you?"

"Yes. My grandmother was my angel."

"Mine too," Alexandra nodded. "My mother left when I was a little girl. And I never knew my father. My grandparents meant everything to me."

"I lost both parents early in life."

"Do you remember them?" Alex asked.

"Not at all. Except through the photographs my grandmother kept for me."

"My grandmother shared my love of art. She encouraged me in it, and when the time came, she made sure I was able to attend one of the best schools available. I was a shy child, and art brought me out of myself." She sipped her drink. "Moore College is where I met people outside my faith tradition. It was a life-changing experience."

Alex's blue-green eyes drew Ben in as she spoke. They had much in common. Growing up in New York and leaving the Jewish faith. "Columbia was an escape for me. I couldn't wait to leave the confines of my grandfather's home."

The waitress delivered their pizza and provided plates and utensils.

"That looks and smells wonderful," Alexandra said. Then she bowed her head.

Ben felt vaguely voyeuristic watching her silent prayer, yet her self-assured grace somehow brought comfort to him. She appeared to be at peace with who she was. Something he envied.

She picked up her fork and slid a piece of pizza onto her plate. "Do you mind if I eat with my hands?" She grinned.

"Please do. I don't want to be the only one." He grabbed a slice of the fresh, hot pizza.

"Yum. Look at all that cheese," she said, before taking a delicate bite. "So what do you do for entertainment, to free your mind from your exhausting career?"

"I enjoy riding my bike. I usually ride about forty to sixty miles a week. And I garden," he laughed. "As much as I hated the flower shop, it seems to have stayed with me."

"I garden too. Mostly roses and flowering perennials."

"My yard is filled with daylilies," he said. "Much easier."

After discussing the merits of composting, they launched into a conversation about musical interests.

Ben took a second slice of pizza while Alexandra told him about the first time she had tried klezmer dancing. The custom dated back to the early centuries of Judaism and had religious origins. Klezmer dancing, which was similar to American-style square dancing, had recently reemerged within contemporary Jewish culture.

He listened intently while Alexandra exaggerated her attempts to master it. She had a self-deprecating and refreshing sense of humor. Something he didn't often find in such a beautiful woman.

"And then I fell to the floor." She delivered the punch line to her story.

Ben laughed until tears filled his eyes and inhaled when he tried to swallow a bite of pizza. The crust attached itself to his throat, sticking halfway down. He made an effort to dislodge the food by coughing.

"Are you okay?" Alexandra asked.

He tried to speak but couldn't. He waved her off, certain he could get through it if he coughed enough. The expression on his face must have cued her that wasn't the case.

Within a few seconds, Alex stood up and rushed to the back of his chair. "Stand up," she said, helping him to his feet. She wrapped her arms around his waist and delivered a swift, upward thrust into his diaphragm.

Ben didn't have time to be embarrassed at the attention they had drawn because the room around him began to spin.

"Relax. I know the Heimlich," she whispered in his ear.

Just as he was about to lose consciousness, she thrust her wrists into his abdomen, and he heard himself cough. The food lodged inside his windpipe was expelled onto the floor. He remained bent and gasping for air.

Alexandra led him back to his chair and stood beside him with one hand on his shoulder.

He offered her a weak smile. A few seconds later, she returned to her seat.

"I was just going to tell you that I spent one summer working as a lifeguard," she said. A slow grin connected the freckles on her extraordinary face.

Please, God, tell me you put this woman in my life.

37.

Present Day Josh had a full day of errands before leaving for the road. After picking up his guitar from a repair shop near Music Row, he set out for a meeting at the bus leasing company across town.

He had made the decision after the Noah Awards to order a new lease bus. Although it was based more on practicality than pride, he was excited about the new coach. It would provide extra room and comfort for himself, his band, and his crew, and it would be one of the few Van Hool models out of Nashville. These days, most entertainers rode in Prevosts, but Josh had always loved the styling of the Van Hool. The extraordinarily tall windows, curving onto the roof, almost like skylights, filled the front lounge with light.

Rain poured from a murky gray sky as he approached a traffic signal near the intersection of Broadway and the front-age roads accessing the interstates that run through Nashville. A shaggy-looking, stoop-shouldered man caught Josh's attention. The man carried two grocery bags, one in each hand, and walked toward the center of Nashville's downtown area. He wore his coat collar up and held his head down, trying to shield himself from the downpour.

It was nasty weather for grocery shopping. Then Josh remembered there were no grocery stores within several miles of the center of downtown Nashville. This was a homeless guy, and rather than food, those sacks most likely contained all of his worldly possessions.

When Josh slowed his Jeep to navigate a large puddle of water, the traffic light at the corner of Broadway and Twelfth caught him. He made the stop and continued to watch the vagrant, who kept walking. Without looking either way, the man stepped off the sidewalk to cross the road, disregarding oncoming traffic.

Just as he did, a black Cadillac Escalade barreled through the waterlogged intersection, sending a giant geyser of muddy water in the pedestrian's direction. To avoid being soaked, the homeless man jumped backward onto the curb, almost losing his balance. He somehow remained upright, as much as his crooked carriage would allow. Once he had his feet flat on the ground, he offered a broad smile and a wave to the driver of the car that had almost upended him.

Crazy old man.

The light changed, and Josh eased through the water-covered intersection and onto the entrance ramp of the highway below. Low-hanging fog replaced the rain, and steamy puffs of mist tumbled around the wheels of the vehicles in front of him, like dust stirred up by the heels of horses.

After a few miles of driving north on I-65, Josh reached the Briley Parkway exit. He hummed a new song idea as he steered to the right, toward the river. A giant, white-barked tree in the low-lying right-of-way caught his attention. The old sycamore stood stark and bare beside the roadway.

Something about it reminded Josh of the homeless man. It had grown crooked and looked different from the other trees around it. Perhaps seventy feet tall, its trunk had bent about halfway up.

Josh speculated that the tree had encountered an obstacle many years before. Perhaps a fence. Or another tree. But, instead of stopping there, it had altered its path sharply to the left, and then began to grow straight toward the sun again.

Maybe the old vagrant wasn't crazy after all.

Could it be he was just made of better stuff than the rest of us, with more faith and less discontent? Perhaps the old man had chosen to look up through-or at least around-his problems while still smiling, knowing that a detour didn't have to alter the destination, it merely changed the path.

Josh stared into the misty, rain-soaked distance. Weather like this had always reminded him of what it must have been like in the Garden of Eden, before God took the nothingness and created green fields and four-legged creatures. Right after he changed the darkness into light and before he gave purpose to it all by creating man.

Shame stabbed him in the chest. If God could do that, he could bring purpose to the things that had happened during the last few months of his and Bethany's lives. If the old man could look up despite his problems, why couldn't he?

Josh had held himself up many times, standing onstage, asking people, even his friend Danny, to do what he hadn't been able to do: to keep the faith during the hard times. Perhaps he had encouraged others, but he still had to wrestle his own doubts to the ground.

Could he really give everything to God? Could he rely on him to get them through whatever lay ahead? Beth's addiction. A miscarriage? Eventually learning which one of his friends had been stealing from him?

Did he have that kind of faith?

It would have helped if his father had kept his. Or if his mother were still here to encourage him.

Josh knew in his heart that there was hope, even though he had a difficult time feeling it. Not all trees grow straight toward the sun. He must somehow grow beyond the obstacles in his path. The failures in his life. And the failures of those around him.

He must grow upward again.

Toward the light.

After a brief meeting at Rally Coaches, Josh turned his Jeep south toward Brentwood. The sky cleared about the time he approached the thriving residential and business community, which was a twenty-minute drive from downtown Nashville.

Glory Records occupied part of the first floor of a medium-rise office building in the prestigious Maryland Farms office park. Glory was a small but powerful label with product wholesaled by a major distributor in the industry. They had launched half a dozen contemporary acts into successful careers. Josh hoped he would become one of their high-priority artists now that he had won a Noah Award.

Although Glory had a small promotion and production budget, their twelve-member team included some of the music industry's finest professionals. Josh considered them almost family. They had stood by him, believed in him, and nurtured his career from the beginning.

He entered the yellow brick building through one of the giant glass doors and approached the reception desk. "Hey, Rhonda. How are you today?"

"Okay," the pretty brunette spoke without emotion.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just busy," she said, not looking up. "You can go on into the conference room. Mr. Benton is waiting for you."

"Okay." He offered a parting smile and turned toward the meeting room, which had an entrance off the lobby.

Greg Benton and Matt Holliman were already seated at the conference table.

"Josh." Greg stood and offered his hand. "Good to see you."

"You, too, man."

Matt stood as well. "Did Rhonda offer you a drink?"

"No. But I'm fine. Just ate lunch a couple of hours ago." Josh settled into a plump, leather chair on the opposite side of the conference table, his usual seat when he had meetings at the label.