by Sally John
“It’s not about rules, is it? Even no-divorce rules.”
“I suppose I still believe God doesn’t want us to divorce. But . . .” The little girl from the basement grabbed hold of her emotions again. What was it? A hurt. An agonizing pain. Terror beyond words.
“But what, Mom?”
“Earlier, when I was crying . . . I was reliving a time when I got locked in a basement.” She told her daughter the story.
Lexi sat up and peered at her in the dim light. “That’s awful.”
“Yes, it is. My parents abandoned me. In other ways, your dad abandoned me. I’ve never felt safe and secure, not really. I know I need to forgive them and him. I know God helps with that sort of thing. But still it hurts so much. I don’t think that forgiving means I have to live within the old parameters that allow them to do it to me all over again.” She blew out a breath and thought for the umpteenth time, Max should be here.
Lexi squeezed her hands. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, honey.”
She saw movement behind Lexi. “Ah. Our heroes return.”
“Good news!” Eddie crouched in the center of the group, grinning.
Zak raised a fist toward the ceiling. “Yeah! The fire has passed!”
Everybody cheered, Samson barked, and Chad whistled.
Indio said, “Yes, God is so good.”
“Amen,” Eddie said. “We crawled out to the opening and couldn’t hear a thing. Couldn’t see any flames. But the stones over the entrance are hot to the touch. More than likely our path is full of ash and cinders. So unfortunately, we need to hang out in here awhile longer, give the earth time to cool.”
Ben asked, “How long?”
Lexi laughed and stood up. “Papa, he just told us we’re not going to burn to death tonight, and you’re concerned about how soon you can check on the damage and look for Chester?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“Give it a rest. Let’s celebrate the moment.”
Indio clapped her hands. “She’s right. We’ll eat dessert first. Chocolate before apples!”
She unpacked the food they hadn’t been interested in earlier, and Lexi distributed it. Eddie sat back down next to Claire, removing his helmet.
He said, “Good news, huh?”
“Yes.” She shook her head. “But it’s so horrible not being able to reach my family and tell them. I can’t imagine what they must be going through!”
“There’s nothing to be done about that. Just imagine the sweet reunion. Focus on that; otherwise you’ll get an ulcer before we get out of here.”
She tried to imagine it. Max would blame her for being at the hacienda. Jenna would be an absolute mess, inconsolable. Had she called Kevin? Danny and Erik would be exhausted and irritable, unable to handle their emotions. The sweet part wasn’t coming to her.
She sighed. “It’ll be awful out there.”
“Yes. The devastation will be worse than anything you’ve ever seen. But the earth replenishes itself. Buildings can be rebuilt.”
“Actually, I was talking about the awful impact on my family. What about yours?”
“Well, I told you my ex-wife lives in Washington. She won’t know. Hopefully our two grown children in LA haven’t heard either. They probably assume I’m fighting the fire, but the department might not notify them yet that we three are missing. My special friend, Sheila, knows I’m at the fire. I can only hope she hasn’t gone to the station and found out.”
“I wish my family didn’t know. It’s not like they can do anything. It seems cruel if your kids or friend would be told.”
“It’s a cruel world.”
“I’m starting to feel safer in here. I’m not sure I want to go back out there.”
He smiled. “Everything is going to be all right. And that’s not just the official rah-rah version.”
It clutched at her again, a gnawing sensation in her stomach. Fear paralyzed the little girl who craved safety.
“Claire, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so afraid.”
He touched her arm. “We’re really going to be fine. And you’re going to be just fine reuniting with your family.”
“What if the lights go out?” She heard a childish whimper in her voice.
Eddie squeezed her arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you, lights or no lights, in or out of this mine, for as long as you need.”
Sixty-seven
Indio watched her daughter-in-law fall apart again, quietly this time, her face turned in to Eddie’s shoulder.
Once more, Indio asked God why He had brought along a stranger to offer comfort instead of Max.
“Is there more chocolate?” Chad asked.
Indio smiled and handed him an unopened bar of Cadbury’s dark. He was a sweet young man. Obviously churched, since he knew the words to all the hymns. Samson had loved him at first sight.
Ben polished an apple against his flannel shirt. “We’re just like the Israelites in Egypt. We got passed over tonight. The angel of death saw the entrance to the tunnel and just kept on going. I wonder what he saw on our doorpost that sent him on his way.”
Chad bit into the chocolate. “I left a prayer there. I bet we all did.”
Indio grinned. “Yes, I bet we did. Hallelujah.”
“Nana,” Lexi said. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That we’d make it?”
“I didn’t.”
“You kept saying things like ‘Hallelujah.’”
Indio shrugged. “God is God. Glory belongs to Him—no matter what. It’s my job to give it to Him—no matter what. You know how Job in the Bible lost everything? When he whined about it, God asked him if he hung the stars in the sky. God comes through, even if it’s not how we think He will or how we want Him to.”
Ben said, “At least He gave us a clue. Three clues. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego showed up just when we needed them.”
“Yes. And I’d like to have them all over for dinner soon. Chad, you’ll bring your wife and baby? Zak, you come too.”
They stared at her, silent, odd expressions on their faces. Ben’s jaw worked slowly at the bite of apple.
“What?” she said.
Lexi inhaled sharply. “Oh, Nana.”
Ben slid near her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Love.”
“What?”
“The fire. Most likely it hit the house. We might have a roof and walls, but nothing else.”
Lexi whispered, “No gardens.”
Something snatched Indio’s breath away.
She hadn’t thought about the aftermath. She had been so focused on the moment, so intent on prayer—for their safety, for Max and her grandchildren, for courage and peace for them all—she hadn’t imagined her home being destroyed.
She looked up at Ben.
He kissed her forehead.
God is God. God is God. God is good.
“Well. Hallelu—” Her breath released only syllables before Ben’s shirt was soaking up her tears.
Her home? Her grandmother’s woven rug. The chair her father made. Her mother-in-law’s china. The old buffet and shelves and antiques handed down by Ben’s ancestors. His beloved barn and workshop.
The parking lot? Claire’s car with the photos? Her babies at every stage, infancy to teens . . .
Oh, Lord! I can’t. I can’t sing praise. How do You expect me to—
The horror consumed even her thoughts.
Sixty-eight
Acharcoal grayness seeped into the area. Only this subtle absence of midnight black suggested dawn had arrived.
Jenna stood next to the car, her arm entwined with her dad’s, grateful for Kevin’s foresight to bring winter coats for them all, a thermos of coffee, and travel mugs. Still, she shivered. Kevin, Erik, and Danny stomped their feet and huddled together. Their breath frosted the air. Such extremes in the desert climate.
But no one wanted to sit in the warm car and b
e removed even one step further from the situation. Even Erik didn’t linger with the group of journalists who got fewer updates than her family did. The firefighter named Noel informed them frequently of the latest—which hadn’t meant a thing, really.
Max had calmed to the point of being an automaton. Jenna wondered if he was in shock. Maybe she should find a medic to look at him.
Noel approached again. She felt her dad stiffen and heard his ragged breathing.
The fireman stopped near Erik. “The helicopters are out now. They’ll survey the area. They’ll head to the Hideaway property first.” He turned and walked away.
No one said anything. They understood that this was it.
The Rolando Bluff Fire was already being referred to as one of the worst. Over a hundred fifty thousand acres had burned so far, fifteen hundred homes. Three people had died. The Santa Anas spread it. When those winds stopped blowing, “they”—those faceless people in the know—had said it was basically over. Said it would be contained soon. Santa Reina was on nobody’s radar.
Then the wind gusted from the ocean. A second fire erupted and met the first. Either a third one complicated the whole picture, or flames had simply jumped to encircle people who could not be alerted.
The fire shouldn’t have gone the way it did, advancing miles and miles from the origin and into places fueled only by scraggly mes-quite and sagebrush and piñon pine. Even the hills surrounding the Hideaway supported little vegetation. The mountains beyond were all rock. What was there to burn?
Erratic winds came and went and came again, tearing apart all predictions of what they would do. Communities were caught off guard. Residents of housing developments. Rural dwellers. Ranchers. The Hacienda Hideaway . . .
The ancestral homestead was old and austere, but a cherished piece of living history for Jenna. She remembered the first time she’d read H. H. Jackson’s novel Ramona. The fictional hacienda and grounds leaped off the pages. Jenna knew the place. Her grandparents owned it! Her imagination took flight. The Beaumonts were the Morenos, the fictional family who lived in the house.
The book sealed her love for literature and energized her ambi-tions for teaching it. She was twelve at the time.
But now . . . Now she couldn’t give a flying fig about the fate of the Hacienda Hideaway.
The minutes dragged. Jenna had no idea how many. There was an eerie, ashy feel in the air beneath a yellow sky overcast with some-thing other than its normal clouds. All the lights around the encamp-ment stayed lit.
The cameraman from Erik’s station found their little group standing by her dad’s car. She watched her brother talk with him. Erik’s impudence had been totally wiped from his demeanor. His expressive eyebrows didn’t budge. Scrunched lips replaced his easy smile. The camera guy left, disgust written all over his demeanor.
Erik stepped nearer Danny. “He wanted to make us the morning news. I told him where he could store his camera.”
Noel, their fireman of few words-slash-personal liaison, strode toward them again. Danny told Jenna that at first he had been chat-tier. That was before their dad nearly bit off his head. Now his face remained passive.
“The helicopters made their first pass over the property. The fire is smoldering, but it’s out. The house is standing. Nothing else, though. Burned outbuildings, vehicles. No one has been spotted. We should be able to move in on the ground later this morning. Meanwhile, the copters will pass over again, soon as they check on some other areas.”
Jenna wondered if they’d send someone besides Noel if the news really meant anything.
Sixty-nine
Mom!” Lexi’s hollow voice drifted down through the tunnel. “Come on!”
Claire crossed her arms at her waist and tried to smile.
Eddie chuckled. “You know, the worst really is over.”
They knelt on their haunches under the low ceiling. Only the two of them remained inside the gold mine. Directly in front of them was the entrance to the narrow passageway that led up and out. The light from Eddie’s helmet flickered.
He said, “After what you just went through, you’re able to conquer anything.”
“Not that.” She dipped her head toward the tunnel and winced at the vivid image of being squeezed on all sides, of tumbling into a dark void, where little girls cried alone in basements.
“Claire, you can. You’re not alone. I’ll come behind you. Chad’s at the other end. He’ll crawl in to meet you. Trust me. I said I wouldn’t leave you.”
She gazed into his eyes, nearly lost in the shadows.
“You already faced this memory, remember? And you won.” He tugged at her arms until she uncrossed them, and then he held her hands. “You won.”
“Mom!” Lexi called again. “I’m waiting for those chocolate chip cookies you promised to bake!”
Eddie laughed. “Let’s go.” He guided her, helping her duck her head into the opening. “Chad! We’re coming.”
A voice called back, “I’m here! It’s me, Claire.”
Ben.
“Come on, honey. Let’s go home. Stretch out your hand, and I’ll grab it.”
Her father-in-law waited for her at the other end.
She lay flat in the dirt, her forearms pressed against it. “Eddie?”
“I’m here.”
She felt his hand on her leg.
“Go ahead.”
She inched along like a worm. Eddie kept up a steady stream of talk behind her. Lexi sang loudly, “Well, I stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole, and the little skunk said, ‘Well, bless my soul!’”
At last she felt the tips of Ben’s fingers.
She focused on the men who stayed with her. She focused on her daughter’s silly singing. She focused on the other voice. “You can do it, Claire!”
And then she was lying facedown in ash, and someone was help-ing her to her feet.
The forced chatter had been all for her. Once Ben released Claire from his bear hug and the cheers died, all talk ceased. She immediately saw the reason for their somber faces.
The landscape before them was not the one they’d traversed the previous night. If someone told her she’d been transported to the moon, she would have believed them.
Maybe they had, after all, died. Evidently every other form of life had.
A sickly yellow light emanated from the sky. Something heavier than clouds filled the atmosphere. It was so thick it swallowed all sound. No birds chirped. No insects thrummed.
Where they stood was a steep incline. The stones they’d climbed up and over last night and the ground beneath were black. Where she should have seen trees in the distance, she saw giant broken match-sticks and wisps of smoke.
Eddie crouched in front of the entrance and inspected it.
A wave of nausea rolled through Claire. The opening was, liter-ally, a small, square hole hewn impossibly out of rock on the hillside. Last night she hadn’t been able to appreciate the full effect in the shadowy light of lanterns—else she never would have crawled into it. How the firemen in their gear and the knapsacks had fit through, she had no idea.
Eddie traced the wood slats that framed it. They were charred. “It came close.”
Chad chuckled. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
Indio whispered, “Oh my.”
Horror engulfed Claire. Its weight pressed at her like giant hands on her shoulders. She sank onto the nearest rock, propped her face against her hands, and burst into tears.
Seventy
They’ve been spotted.” Noel, the fire department’s spokesman, said nothing more. He just stood there.
Max pushed himself away from the car and moved. He made it all of three steps before Kevin threw an arm across his chest.
Max had no voice left to object, but he swore to himself if that moron Noel did not finish what he’d come to say, he would knock him to the ground and get him in a choke hold and keep him there until he guaranteed the kid would never speak again.
&nbs
p; “The helicopter can’t set down near them yet. Ground’s too steep and rocky. But they’re walking in the general direction of the house. So.” He smiled. “Great news, huh?”
Max wrestled against Kevin’s arm.
Erik said, “Maybe. Who exactly is ‘they’?”
“Oh yeah.” Noel shook his head. “Sorry. Uh, seven people.”
“Seven?” Max’s three kids cried in unison.
“Three are obviously firefighters. We’re sure they’re the guys we were missing.”
Kevin tightened his hold around Max.
“And,” Noel said quickly, seeing Max’s movement, “and an older couple, tall man with white hair, a short woman, hair braid. A skinny woman with long hair, carrying a cat, and a woman with shorter hair. And a dog was with them. Probably a golden retriever. They all waved. I mean, the people did.”
For one long moment, nobody said anything.
Then the laughter and tears and shouts and hugs began.
Relief flooded through Max, as strong as a physical sensation. It gushed, shoving out the weight of despair that had nearly suffocated him through the awful black hours. Light and warmth exploded in his being, and he could not contain the joy.
Joy?
No doubt. That was it. His family was safe.
He leaped into the air like a jackrabbit.
Sudden compassion for Noel filled him. The guy was his new best friend. He bounded over to him, grasped his head between his hands, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “I’m gonna write you into my will!”
Seventy-one
At long last, hours after emerging from the mine, the survivors neared the hacienda, speechless and exhausted beyond measure.
Claire wondered again if she had died. She couldn’t remember much of the hike except the conscious effort it took to put one foot in front of another and then to do it all over again. And again. And again.
They’d lived through the fire, but the blackened earth and yellow sky nagged at her. Death hovered all around.
She remembered reaching Ben’s truck. Nobody said a word. They all just gazed at the twisted hunk of metal that had carried them most of the way to safety the previous night.
