Skyler never wasted smiles. She used those and tears when she wanted something.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Skyler’s sugar-sweet tone didn’t fool Jayden one bit.
“Of course.” Jayden stepped to the side. “Come right in. Don’t mind the mess. I just finished up my school year and haven’t gotten my things put away. Would you like a bottle of water or a beer?”
“Beer is too fattening for me.” Skyler let her blue eyes travel from Jayden’s toes to the top of her sister’s head. “Have you put on a few pounds since Christmas?”
“Maybe,” Jayden said. “I don’t worry about that. Water, then?”
Skyler brushed the sofa cushion before she sat down. “Nothing for me. I just had a diet soda.”
You will not intimidate me. Jayden repeated the phrase half a dozen times as she took a seat on her recliner and popped up the footrest.
“I’m going to Europe with my school’s music group,” Skyler said.
“When are you leaving?” Jayden decided on the spur of the moment to play dumb.
“Monday morning. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, and I just can’t give it up. We plan on seeing the Vatican and traveling through England, France, Germany, and Italy. Our group will be singing in several churches while we’re there, and of course I’ll be helping them,” she said.
In addition to her birdlike figure, Skyler had been blessed with the ability to sing like a bird, too. Jayden could carry a tune, but she had never been as musically inclined as her sister.
“So, are you still a guidance counselor?” Skyler asked, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been one for ten years,” Jayden answered. “And I’ve lived right here for every one of those years. You’ve never been here before. Why now?”
“We always saw each other at Mama’s house before she died, and . . .” Skyler shrugged. “I have my own life. You have yours. Our circles don’t . . .” She hesitated.
Mine doesn’t include fancy enough folks for you, Jayden thought.
“We each have our own worlds.” Skyler sighed. “I didn’t want to ask you to do something for me on the phone. You know that I’ve been working at the Piney Wood Academy every summer. Well, I kind of signed a contract for this year, and if I don’t have a replacement . . .” She let the sentence dangle.
Well, well, well, Mary didn’t mention that part, Jayden thought.
“Please,” Skyler begged with tears in her eyes. “I’ve already talked to Henry and Mary, the caretakers of the camp, and they’re fine with you stepping into my place. I put you down as an alternative counselor when I took the job. They might already have vetted you and everything. They do that sometimes.”
Jayden Bennett was tough as nails, but just like always the tough side of Jayden melted when Skyler turned on the tears.
The pesky little voice inside Jayden’s head said that if she did this for her sister, it might go a long way in mending the fences that had been torn down five years ago when their mother died. But she wasn’t quite ready to say that she would do it.
For the first time in Jayden’s thirty-one years, Skyler wanted something from her. Jayden could make her squirm for a little while, but that wouldn’t be right. Gramps always told her to do what she knew was right and not worry about those folks around her who were doing wrong.
“Tell me what I have to do if I agree.” Jayden sighed.
“Mary does the cooking, so you’ll have three meals a day, and Henry takes care of the grounds. You’ll be given the rule booklet when you get there,” Skyler answered. “Going to Europe has been a dream of mine forever and this might be my only chance.” She pulled a tissue from one of those tiny packages that she always carried in her purse and delicately blew her nose.
Skyler was always ladylike and prepared for anything. If Jayden were to have a crying jag—even a fake one—she’d have to go to the bathroom and blow her nose on a fistful of toilet paper. The walls wouldn’t be able to contain the elephantine noise.
“What’s the name of this place again? Where is it? And when do I have to show up?” Jayden continued to not know anything at all, and then added, “If I decide to do this for you, then I’d like to know a little more than just ‘Mary cooks and Henry takes care of the yards.’ Did you already tell the people at your school that you would go?”
Skyler squirmed in her place on the sofa just a little. “Well, I had to tell them one way or the other so they could get the plane tickets bought and travel arrangements taken care of.”
“And you’re waiting until now to ask me to take your place?” Jayden asked. “Why would you do that?”
“What else are you going to do all summer? Lay around and drink that fattening beer?” Like always, Skyler’s mean streak came out when she didn’t get her way.
“Drinking beer and reading romance novels actually sounds pretty good to me after the semesters I’ve had. I’ve had to play catch-up all year for the time we lost last spring with the virus,” Jayden told her.
“So have I,” Skyler whined. “I need this vacation. Glory Bound School has already bought my plane ticket, and they need me to help with the music, as well as be a counselor to the girls on the trip.”
“And the boys?” Jayden asked.
“David, the official music teacher, will serve in that place,” Skyler answered. “Are you going to do this or not?”
“Tell me more about who I’ll be working with if I do.” Jayden covered a yawn with her hand.
“Counselors are Novalene Kemper and Diana Jackson. Novalene is a retired school counselor and Diana is still working as one. Then there’s Mary and her husband, Henry. The camp itself is located northwest of Alpine, Texas. You don’t even have to worry about travel arrangements—just show up at the Grand Prairie Municipal Airport by ten o’clock on Sunday morning. The girls arrive on Monday. Elijah has a little six-person plane, and he’ll pick all three counselors up at the same time and fly y’all down there.”
“And who is Elijah?” Jayden asked.
“He’s kind of like the drill sergeant at the camp. He’s a good guy. He was in the air force before he came to work for Henry and Mary,” Skyler said. “If you do this for me, sister, I will owe you, big-time.”
Skyler must really want to go to Europe with a bunch of kids to pull out the sister card and to actually tell Jayden that she would owe her. Jayden wondered if there was more to this trip than her sister was admitting. Was this David fellow her new boyfriend?
“Yes, you will, and I will collect,” Jayden said. “Tell me again when you are leaving, and when do you plan to be back home?”
“I’m leaving on Monday, and we’ll be gone four weeks.” Skyler smiled.
“What if I take over until you get back and then you step into my place for the final four weeks?” Jayden asked.
Skyler shook her head and her big blue eyes floated in tears again. “That won’t work. The girls in your cabin need to bond with you. You have to go for the whole eight weeks, or I’ll have to step down and let someone else go to Europe as a sponsor for the Glory Bound kids.” A few more sniffles emerged, and she pulled another tissue from the little container to dab at her eyes. Mustn’t ruin the makeup job that took her an hour to do every morning.
“There are only three girls to each cabin—nine in all. They come from wealthy families who can afford to send them to Piney Wood. It’s not cheap by any means, but it keeps them out of juvie. You’ve taught in Dallas schools for years, so I know you can handle them.”
A compliment from Skyler. Maybe Jayden should check the sky to see if there was going to be a snowstorm in Dallas, Texas, right there at the end of May.
“Well?” Skyler’s one-word question needed an answer.
Jayden popped the footrest down. “Oh, all right. I only need to pack jeans and T-shirts, right?”
Skyler jumped up, crossed the room, and hugged Jayden tightly. “Thank you so much. I really do owe you.”
Yes, you do, Jayden thought.
“When you get home in August, we’ll have lunch and I’ll tell you all about my trip to Europe,” Skyler promised.
Jayden wrapped her arms around her petite sister and gave her another hug. There was something so hopeful about hugging Skyler—she knew they could build a relationship—that it almost brought tears to Jayden’s eyes. “We could text and send pictures back and forth.”
“Probably not.” Skyler picked up her purse. “Maybe if the reception is good in Europe, I’ll try to send a selfie when I can. Oh, and pack a pair of good walking shoes, but you won’t need a hat. They provide a cap for all the girls and the counselors.”
“Why would I need good walking shoes?” Jayden followed her sister outside. “Don’t the girls go to counseling sessions and have classes?”
“You’ll have group therapy scheduled, and they’ll do one-on-one therapy once a week with Karen . . .” She drew her brows down. “I can’t remember her last name, but she’s really good with the girls,” she said with her hand on the doorknob. “You’ll need the good boots or shoes because you’ll be doing some hiking. The cap they issue to you will keep you from getting sunburned and adding more freckles to your nose.” Skyler closed the door behind her.
Leave it to Skyler to ruin the moment by reminding Jayden that she wasn’t the pretty sister. Jayden stepped out on the landing and watched her sister drive away in a little low-slung sports car. She leaned against the railing and looked down at her green vintage 1958 GMC pickup truck, so very different from Skyler’s fancy little car. Jayden had inherited it from her grandfather when she turned sixteen and had driven it for the past fifteen years.
It seemed fitting that each sister was like the vehicle they drove. Skyler was cute and fancy. Jayden was like her truck—sturdy, dependable, and gullible enough to let her sister talk her into giving up her summer to counsel little rich girls whose folks could afford to send them to a fancy boot camp. But then, Jayden wondered, how would Skyler survive without that extra money? She couldn’t imagine her sister gearing down her lifestyle.
“We haven’t been all that close since Mama died,” Jayden whispered to herself as she went back into her apartment and picked up her purse. “But if there’s more going on, you could have been honest with me. But then, I wasn’t up-front with you, either.”
She locked the door behind her, crossed the lawn, and got into her truck. Before she left for the summer, she had to go visit her mother’s grave and talk to her.
She drove through Boyd, where she and Skyler had been raised. Her mother’s house had sold two months after she’d died, and Jayden noticed as she drove by that the yard needed mowing, the rosebushes hadn’t been trimmed, and one of the shutters was hanging askew. She and her mother, and then her grandfather when he moved in with them, had spent such wonderful hours together, taking care of the yard and flower beds.
“I’m glad y’all can’t see this, but why didn’t you leave the house to me instead of Skyler? I wouldn’t have sold it. I would have taken good care of it.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
From there, she took a farm road back to Hog Branch Cemetery, where her mother had been buried five years before. She parked her truck under a big pecan tree and wandered back to the tombstone marked WANDA SKYLER BENNETT.
“We were so close, Mama.” She laid her hand on the top of the tombstone. “Why didn’t you give me power of attorney? I would have never pulled the plug and let you die. People have come out of a coma after years of being asleep.”
“Mama, Skyler is holding out on me,” she tattled as she dropped down on her knees and pulled a few dandelions from the front of the tombstone. “She’s talked me into going to some sort of roughin’-it camp and doing her job so she can traipse off to Europe. I know what you’re thinkin’. If we’d kill the elephant that’s been in the room since you left us, we could get along better. I’ll never understand why you put all the power in her hands, and you didn’t even tell me about it. We shared everything, and she just came and went sporadically. Since then she’s acted even more high and mighty. I’m not going to agree with her about pulling the plug or the way she handled your funeral. She’s too self-righteous and full of herself to say I’m right, so the elephant remains.”
Jayden pulled a few more dandelion weeds from around the tombstone, went back to her truck, and looked over her shoulder at the grave site. “I’ll miss coming by to see you next month, but I’ll be back the first of August.” She opened the door and slid behind the wheel, shifted into gear, and started home. With midday traffic, the thirty-minute trip back to her apartment took more than an hour.
Jayden had not dipped strongly into her grandfather Jay Denton Grant’s gene pool when it came to patience. Gramps had the patience of Job, even with Skyler’s tantrums. “Dammit! Do you have to count to twenty after the light turns green?” she fumed when the fifth person in a row took their own good, lazy time moving forward.
You’re showing off your Bennett temper, her mother’s voice rang clear as a bell in her head.
“If people don’t know how to drive, they should keep their butts at home,” she argued, “and if a little road rage is all I got from Daddy, that’s a good thing.”
When she finally got home, she flopped down on the overstuffed sofa. Thank God she didn’t have to explain to anyone why she was leaving for eight weeks. She didn’t have a boyfriend, not for lack of wanting one. But relationships weren’t easy—neither was trust after being right in the middle of her parents’ messy divorce. Her mother and grandparents had passed away, and she’d already been to the cemetery to talk to her mother. Her dad was off with wife number two. Skyler had never blamed him for the divorce and had always kept up with him better than Jayden had, which was another bone of contention between them.
“No one cares whether I’m here or not,” she muttered. “Just set the thermostat, call an Uber to take me to the airport, and I’m off to live in a cabin with three unruly girls for eight weeks. Skyler, you owe me big-time, and I’ve got two months to think of a way to make you pay me back.”
Chapter Two
Elijah didn’t enjoy flying anymore, but sometimes it was necessary. Every time he got into the small plane owned by Piney Wood, he remembered the missions he’d flown in a helicopter during his years in the air force. His eyes misted over at the memory of the three coffins that he and his teammates had accompanied home. His enlistment had been up, and he only needed one more hitch to get his twenty years for retirement. Yet when it came time for him to sign on the dotted line a couple of weeks after all their memorial services, he couldn’t force himself to do it, and neither could Buddy, Chuck, or Tim. His friends went home after the funerals, but Elijah had spent a month and a half of his savings right there in San Antonio, trying to figure out what to do with his life.
“I’ve always been bad luck. Anyone I get really close to dies,” he said out loud.
Bullcrap! Uncle Henry’s gravelly old voice was clear in his head.
That brought back the day that Uncle Henry had shown up on his monthly rental motel doorstep in San Antonio and told him to pack his bags.
“You’re going to work for me, and once you get yourself straightened out, you’ll be taking over my job when I retire,” he’d said.
“What makes you think I want to work with a bunch of rich, bitchy little girls?” Elijah had asked as he twisted the top off a beer.
“You’ve got to do something, and you might like it. Taxi is waiting—put that beer down. You’ll be flying us home to Alpine. I brought the plane down here, but it’s time for you to stop moping around and get on with your life.” Uncle Henry had left no room for argument.
Most of the fight had gone out of Elijah by then anyway. He’d shoved what clothing he had into a duffel bag, left the six-pack of beer in the refrigerator, and checked out of the motel. Looking back two years later, he didn’t regret his decision. There had definitely been something therapeutic ab
out putting teenage girls back on the right track.
That first time he settled into the little company airplane, he’d sweat buckets. Nausea had come in waves, and he could swear that he smelled the blood of his buddies. Uncle Henry had laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “You can do this, Elijah. Not only can you do it, you need to fly again.”
He worried about being close to his aunt and uncle. Would being around him bring them bad luck, like it had his only brother, his parents, and now three of his best friends?
“So far, so good,” he muttered. But he wasn’t ready to think about any kind of relationship.
He landed his plane and climbed out to stretch his legs. He crossed the tarmac in long, easy strides and opened the door to the office to find his three passengers waiting with their suitcases beside them. Thank God they had only brought one piece of luggage each. His plane wouldn’t hold much more than that.
“Mornin’, ladies.” He nodded toward them.
“Good mornin’,” Diana and Novalene said in unison.
The third woman stood up and extended her hand. “I’m Jayden Bennett.”
“Elijah Thomas,” he said, looking her in the eyes, which his six-foot frame ordinarily prevented. She was almost as tall as Elijah. Her steely blue eyes held his gaze. Brunette hair floated on her shoulders. She sure didn’t look like someone who would be trying to help a group of girls work through their problems.
“You’re Skyler’s sister, right?” he asked.
“That’s right.” She smiled. “Kind of hard to believe.”
“It sure is,” Elijah said, “but thank you for taking your sister’s place.” He let go of her hand and turned to focus on the other counselors. “How’d your school year go, Diana?”
Diana had told him last year she only had about five more years until she could hang up her school cap and retire. The short woman had gray hair and brown eyes. She blamed her gray hair on more than thirty years of working with kids. She could be compassionate with her girls at the camp, but her voice could cut like steel when a girl needed correction.
The Daydream Cabin Page 2
