Chapter 8 #3
Hi Ethan. Please find attached a sample of the youth group design I said I’d do.
Sorry I didn’t send it earlier, but I was so tired when I got home yesterday I went straight to sleep.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and if there’s anything you want me to change, please let me know.
And thanks again for making the weekend so good—I’m really looking forward to seeing you on Saturday! God bless, Ellie
He smiled and tapped on the file she’d sent through. Smiled at the vibrant font and colours she’d chosen, which looked one thousand percent better than anything he could have done.
Around him, the crowd was heaving and pushing. He gripped his phone harder, with no desire to see it get dunked into the harbour. He screenshotted it, then forwarded it to Charlene for her final approval.
She sent back an immediate thumbs-up emoji, along with a message: “This is a surprise, since you’re usually so bad with technology.”
“A friend did it,” he typed back.
A second later, he got a notification of an incoming message. This time from Ellie. “I’ve sent you the youth group design. Hope it arrived okay.”
He’d tapped out a “Got it. Thanks” in response, when a shove loosened his grip and the phone clattered to the ground, just as the next ferry pulled in, the sides clanking against the wharf.
“Hey, that’s my phone!” He bent to get it, then someone fell into him.
“Whoa! What are you doing, dude?”
“I just need my phone!” He pointed, but as he did, someone kicked it and it skittered across the ground, under a dozen pairs of feet, and disappeared from view.
“Wait!”
There was no time for phone retrieval, as he was caught in a crowd surge that pushed him up the gangplank. “Wait, I need to get off and get my phone!”
But there was no backtracking now. He couldn’t fight the tired commuters all trailing up on board.
“Get to your seat,” one of the ferry workers demanded.
“But I dropped my phone out there,” he protested.
The man winced. “Was it black? Sorry, mate. That might be the one I saw fall into the harbour.”
“Are you serious?”
“‘Fraid so.”
Unbelievable. Could this day get any worse? Well, in the grand scheme of things, poor Christine’s diagnosis was a lot worse, so he shouldn’t complain. But how was he going to get in contact with Lucinda? She wasn’t exactly known as the princess of punctuality.
But there was nothing he could do. Not unless he borrowed a stranger’s phone and tried to remember her Instagram account name. What was it? Gone were the days he had phone numbers or brand-new Insta accounts memorised.
His heart froze. What would that mean for Ellie? He’d barely had a chance to connect with her, so would an unknown name on Insta sync to the cloud? Did he even have that syncing thing turned on?
He groaned aloud, then felt a tap on his shoulder. A little old lady stared up at him. “Young man, are you okay?”
“Thanks. I’m fine.” No way was he going to stay focused on the loss of his phone right now. “I just got some bad news about a friend’s mum.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll be praying for you.”
“Thanks.”
Yeah. That was a good reminder about what he should be doing. Lord, be with Lucinda and Christine and Don. Bring peace to their family. Help me be like Jesus in this situation.
His heart was nearly at peace by the time the ferry pulled in at Balmain Wharf.
This was an older part of the city, where the working-class people who used to live here had been replaced by the yuppies and inner-city latte drinkers who often held big opinions about places far away from them.
But he didn’t mind. And Christine and Don were kindhearted.
Christine Steele had been his mum’s best friend for as long as he could remember, and even despite different postcodes, they’d always kept in touch.
Until his mum had succumbed to cancer so swiftly.
One moment, a diagnosis. Then three months later, gone.
His only comfort—apart from the fact that she was in heaven—was that she hadn’t been in pain in the end.
He waited until most of the crowd had exited the ferry, then joined the end of the queue. Was Lucinda out there already waiting for him? He glanced around. Nope. No sign of her.
He exhaled. It was getting darker now, and the grey clouds of today meant it felt gloomier than normal.
“Ethan!”
He glanced up. Saw Lucinda wave. Then he nodded and wove his way through waiting commuters and finally found her.
“Oh, you came.” She flung herself into his arms and sagged, forcing him to lift her up.
“Come on, Lucinda. You’re going to be okay.”
“I’ll never be okay again.” But the way her arms slid around his neck and she pressed herself against his body suggested she could be. “Thank you for coming,” she murmured, then kissed his cheek.
He startled and gently extricated himself from her, holding her hands in both of his. “Where did you park? Are you okay to drive?”
“It’s sweet of you to worry, but I’m okay.” She frowned. “Why didn’t you answer my messages?”
He winced. “Long story. Short story is I lost my phone.”
“You lost your phone? How do you do that these days?”
“It takes skills, I know.”
“Oh, you poor thing. I think I’d die if I lost my phone. Oh well. Never mind. Let’s get you home.”
And she led the way to her car, while regret chased his every step.