by Sally John
“Laurie!” The low-pitched voice conveyed surprise layered heavily with wariness. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m good. I have a job, as a cook. And I met Wally Cleaver.”
“Who?”
“From TV. Not really. He just reminds me of—how are you?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Dad?”
“Just fine too. He’s at the hardware store.”
“Any news?”
A slight hesitation. “No.”
“Okay. Well, I just wanted to check in.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Sure.”
“Take care.”
“You too. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Skylar hung up the phone, shuffled to a nearby bench, and sank onto it.
Replaying that voice, she heard the usual relief in the “Take care.” If she listened hard, really hard, she could almost make out regret in the “Bye.” Almost.
Most likely, though, it was simply her imagination filling in gaps with what she’d never, ever in her life heard in that voice.
Eighteen
How did you do it?” Jenna gazed at Beth Russell. She’d been watching her all afternoon. She could not look away from such an enigma.
They sat alone outdoors, in wicker chairs tucked between a low boulder and a young sycamore tree at one end of the courtyard. A black streak marred half the trunk from the ground up, but wide leaves rustled and their odd scent wafted in the afternoon breeze.
“How did I do it?” Beth’s smile eclipsed the fact that they had met only a few hours ago. The heart connection between the two women was ages old. “You mean, how did I get out of bed every day while the love of my life lived in a war zone the other side of the world?”
“And not lose your mind?”
Beth reached over and placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, dear heart.”
On any other day, Jenna would not be conversing with the likes of a woman who said “dear heart” and reeked of such utter compassion—most especially one her grandmother practically demanded she meet because of one of her visceral conclusions.
But today was not any other day. Today was the day she’d awoken from a vivid, explicit dream of lovemaking with Cade Edmunds.
Jenna said, “I’ve heard the pat spiritual answers.”
“Indio.”
“Yes. They don’t seem . . . available to me.”
“Your grandmother lives in the mystery.” Again the gentle smile, the eyes so sparkly they were of no particular color. “God is real, Jenna. He is our only hope for sanity.”
“But how?”
“Talk to Him. I talked to Him nonstop after BJ left. I determined to expect Him to show up in the everyday.”
“But what did that look like in the everyday?”
Beth giggled. “You are your father’s daughter, and I mean that as a compliment. Max was always pushing for answers. He kept me and BJ on our toes.” She paused. “It looked like friends offering to be with me. It looked like opportunities to grow in my studies and work. It looked like camaraderie with other military girlfriends and wives.”
Jenna thought of Amber and her invitations to dinner and movies and gatherings with other Pendleton wives. She thought of the list of names tucked in a drawer, names of local women whose husbands were in Kevin’s squad.
Beth said, “I remember I stopped watching the news and reading the paper. I still cried at least once a day, but the images of war grew less immediate. I stopped saying ‘God, keep him safe’ with every other breath. I prayed instead, ‘Thank You for being with him.’”
“And when you heard . . . ?” Fear, thick as the grossest of phlegm in her throat, strangled her voice.
“When I heard . . . That’s when I entered hell.” She squeezed Jenna’s arm. “There is no escaping the pain. It becomes the focus of your life the moment he enlists. Right?”
Jenna nodded.
Beth looked at the sycamore near them. Fine lines appeared around her eyes, giving her a look of weariness. “I’m like this tree. My black streak from a long-ago fire is still obvious, but so is new growth.” She turned back to Jenna. “You’re in the fire now. You can’t escape it or make any sense of it whatsoever. It’s scorching through you, leaving its mark. The question is, will you let it consume you . . . or will you let God bring about new growth through it?”
Now Jenna tore her gaze away from the woman, unable to view such a raw display of brokenness.
Midweek, early in the morning, Jenna trekked again up into the hills to the Hacienda Hideaway. She would miss half a day of school. Cade hired a sub for her, no questions asked.
She had one giant of a question.
Parking between Danny’s truck and Erik’s Mustang, she pondered it. Greeting the entire family in the courtyard, she pondered it. Hiking the steep trail behind the barn, she pondered it.
Why in the world had she come?
A subdued bunch trudged along the path with her—her parents and grandparents, Erik, Danny, Lexi, Tuyen, Beth Russell, and Skylar Pierson. The whole gang was there in honor of September 9, Uncle BJ’s birthday. They made their way to the wilderness area her grandparents had dedicated to their eldest son.
It was an odd sort of commemoration for him. But then, what exactly was a family to do with a member’s birthday when they didn’t know if that person was alive or dead? No address for mailing cards and gifts. No grave marker for placing flowers.
What would she do if Kevin didn’t come home and yet didn’t get killed?
They reached the spot. Scrub vegetation. Dirt. Rocks. A boulder. On its face toward the rising sun was a crude carving of a cross. Beneath it, in neatly grooved letters and numbers, was his name, Benjamin Charles Beaumont Jr., and his birth date.
The ritual began. Papa, almost formal in his collared shirt and bolo tie, laid a small wooden figurine he’d carved on the ground. Nana set down a bunch of sunflowers picked from her garden. Max placed a small stone in a pile. They all sat on blankets in the dried grasses. Claire prompted Nana to tell about the day BJ was born. Nana spoke, her face aglow with sweet memories.
Once more Jenna wondered why she had come. She hadn’t been since childhood. Usually only her parents came with Nana and Papa. Why the pull on her heart to come this year?
She looked over at Beth Russell, who sat close to Tuyen, an arm around her fiancée’s daughter.
And then she knew the answer.
She had come to see the impossible: proof that God was real in the midst of unspeakable pain.
Hey, Princess!” Beth’s youthful voice rang out across the hacienda’s front yard. “Wait up!”
Jenna turned, car key in hand, fifth-hour American lit in mind.
Beth reached her, grinning broadly and catching her breath.
Jenna groaned. “‘Princess’?”
“Danny referenced you that way. And then the Lord gave me a word for you.”
Try as she might, Jenna did not shut her eyelids quick enough to conceal their flutter.
Beth laughed. “I know. I am weirder than your grandma. Hear me out?”
“I need to get to—”
“I know. I’ll be brief.”
It was impossible to say no to the woman.
Beth wiped a sleeve across her perspiring forehead. “Here goes. They’ve been calling you ‘princess’ forever, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Nicknames get imprinted in our hearts. We totally buy into them. Deep down, we believe that’s who we are.”
“I know I’m spoiled, fairly close to rotten.” With anyone else, Jenna would not have cringed at the huff in her tone as she did now.
“Exactly. I mean you’ve been taught the negative side of ‘princess’ and that’s how you see yourself—spoiled rotten, selfish, snooty.”
A hot stab of pain shot through her chest.
“Jenna, I want to challenge you. Try this ‘princess’ on for size: you are royalty. You are the King’s daughter.
As His child, you are indeed privileged and adored and gifted to serve others. That’s what He wants you to grow into. And that, dear heart, is how you do it, how you live through this season.” Her eyes shone, two stars unbearably bright. “Okay?”
Even if she could form a coherent thought, she could not have expressed it. All she could do was lean into Beth’s embrace and notice in the shimmering distance a row of trees with their charred trunks . . . and branches heavy with green leaves.
Nineteen
Three weeks had passed, weekdays full of learning the ins and outs of running a retreat center, the weekends with the goofiest bunches of high-maintenance guests imaginable. Skylar’s first complete day off came none too soon. The emotional garbage heap to process had grown to the size of Kilimanjaro.
She steered Claire’s foreign-built dream machine into a downtown parking garage space, cut the engine, and listened to U2 sing about peace on earth. The power clicked off. She sat in the silence, enveloped in a pleasant squishiness of leather and a sweet scent of some high-end department store perfume.
The music was compliments of Erik. He’d delivered a stack of CDs to her one day, thinking she might grow weary of his parents’ narrow selection of classical and oldies.
And that was just the tip of the garbage pile.
For her first day off, Claire had given her the car keys along with a credit card, “For gas or for whatever you need.”
Lexi and Tuyen had her over the previous night for dinner and chick-flick fest.
Indio gave her a one-handed knitting lesson and two hours’ worth of Kumeyaay folklore.
Ben took her horseback riding.
Max not only removed the tools from her room and fixed the shower; he delivered a clock radio and comfy armchair.
Jenna smiled at her and told Danny to lighten up. Coming from the wife of a guy on the front lines, the gestures meant a lot.
Danny lightened up to a small degree.
Hideaway guests went out of their way to praise her cooking and baking.
All that didn’t even begin to address her freedom to roam three hundred acres and work in the vegetable garden and play in that kitchen of all kitchens.
Not to mention Beth Russell who—if Skylar bought into childhood Sunday school stories—could be a stand-in for the Virgin Mary.
Skylar could find no emotional space to store all that was coming at her with gale-wind force. She thought she’d answered an ad for a cook. What she got was a family. And it felt . . .
She didn’t know how it felt. She only knew she needed a day off.
Skylar spotted Danny a split second before he spotted her, not enough time to slip away through the crowd.
With a slight lift of his chin he noted her presence, checked both ways for traffic, and made a beeline across the street to her. Like her, he wore sunglasses and a ball cap. Hers was forest green, plain. His was black with deep-blue embroidery of a curling wave around the words “Ro-Bo Shop.” His curly hair spiraled out from beneath it.
“Hey, Skylar.” He hopped the curb to where she stood.
“Hey, Wally.”
He smiled. “Ah, Wally Cleaver. The Beav’s brother. The handsome, truly cool one.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Or the goody-goody nerd.”
“Now, that sounds like a Lexi description of yours truly.”
“You do work with computers, so you have to accept the nerd part. Moving right along . . .” She pointed to his hat. “What’s Ro-Bo Shop?”
“I guess Lexi only told you about my conservative three-piece-suit side. You’ve met Hawk Roman?”
“Yes.” Hawk was Danny’s roommate, the guy Tuyen could not stopping talking about the previous night. Evidently they were an item.
“We own a surf shop. Ro-Bo, as in Roman and Beaumont.”
“What about the computer stuff?”
“Software design. It’s how I spend most of my time. Hawk runs the shop. Come on down and we’ll give you a board and lessons, on the house.”
Again with the family fuzzies. “Thanks.”
She glanced around. They stood on a downtown street with at least a couple hundred people lining both sides of a block. The scene would have suggested a parade was on its way . . . if not for the signs some carried.
Bring ’em home now.
Peace.
End the war.
Stop the killing!
Not exactly parade slogans.
She said, “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“The nerd image doesn’t fit in, does it?”
“Your brother-in-law is a Marine, fighting overseas.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw, and he didn’t reply.
Skylar said, “I suppose that could be all the more reason for you to be here at an antiwar march.”
The sun glinted off his glasses. Skylar looked away.
The tails on those family fuzzies had fishhooks on them. She felt one now sink in under her skin. The Beaumonts carried a distinctive pain.
Danny said, “Kevin knows I don’t agree with the war. He also knows I pray every day for his safety.”
“What about Jenna?”
He gave his head a slight shake. “She’s totally apolitical. It’s too much of a personal thing for her. The rest of the world does not compute with her. She’s still stuck on how to forgive him for reenlisting. Kev’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but I’m a little stuck on how my viola-playing sister who scored a 1500 on the SATs and has two master’s degrees in lit fell for a dumb jock in uniform.”
Danny was such a guy. She clucked a noise of disbelief. “There’s just no accounting for love, is there?”
Ducking his head, he eyed her over the tops of his sunglasses.
She shrugged. “Been watching chick flicks with Lexi and Tuyen.”
“Now, that surprises me. Your being here doesn’t, but that does.”
“Whatever.” Skylar gazed down the street, wondering how to politely disengage from the conversation with her least-favorite Beaumont. Why she even considered propriety when it came to Wally, she had no clue. It probably had something to do with that fishhook.
“Cops are here. And news vans.”
She said, “Guess that means it’s a gathering of note. Well, it’s been fun, but I’m going to—”
“There’s Rosie.” Danny waved an arm.
Skylar peered between shoulders and saw a policewoman head their way. She never would have recognized the woman she’d met at the hacienda in the reflective sunglasses and navy-blue uniform, hair pulled severely back in a bun. Suddenly Erik’s girlfriend was an honest-to-goodness cop.
Skylar’s jaw went rigid. She rubbed it, searching behind her own dark lenses for an exit route through the crowds.
Rosie reached them. “Hey, Danny. Skylar. I half expected to see you two here.”
Danny turned to Skylar. “Officer Delgado should make detective any day now.”
Rosie laughed. “Danny, you’ve shared your opinions often enough. And Skylar, take no offense at my profiling here, but you’ve got ‘peacenik’ written all over you.” She quickly sobered. “Do you guys know what’s going on here?”
He held up two fingers in a peace sign. “We do this at passing cars. It’s a regularly scheduled program.”
“Not this time. The demonstration organizers got a permit to march.” She pointed over Danny’s shoulder. “Down there, to a church.”
“That’s different.”
“We thought so.” She paused. “There’s a funeral scheduled to start soon inside that church. For a Marine. Not to be overly dramatic, Danny, but put Kevin in the coffin. Put Jenna and your family on the sidewalk, going inside to pay last respects. Would you want to read these signs and listen to the shouting?”
“I . . .” Danny chewed his bottom lip. “That’s . . .”
Skylar felt sick to her stomach. “That’s really ugly.”
“Mm-hmm.” Rosie scanned the crowd, her face in profile. “It could get ugli
er. Somebody’s got an agenda. Somebody wants to agitate things. Did you notice the television crews? They got wind of something.”
Danny said, “They’re not usually here. Nor the police in full force.”
She nodded. “Listen. I totally respect your right to disagree with the government’s foreign policy, but do you really want to be a part of this?”
Skylar cleared her throat. “You got me with the coffin visual. I’m out of here.”
“Yeah.” Danny shrugged. “Me too.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Rosie.”
“No problem, Skylar. You owe me some spinach-artichoke dip.”
“Anytime.”
With half nods and waves, the three of them parted in different directions.
She heard Danny call out, “Skylar?”
Pausing, she looked back. He made a tipping motion at his mouth, as if inviting her for a drink, and mouthed the word “coffee.”
With a brief shake of her head, she scurried the opposite way. She’d spent enough time with Danny for one day . . . or month.
The entire city lay before her, ready to be explored via a fancy car. She’d packed books, swimsuit, and blanket. Reading at the beach sounded great. Not Danny’s beach, though. Where exactly was it Lexi said he lived? Just her luck, she’d plop down in the sand right outside his door.
Actually, he wasn’t that bad of a guy, not nearly as deplorable as she’d first thought. As a protestor, he couldn’t be too saintly.
As she wove her way between people, her mind registered a familiar movement . . . a lanky arm bent in a gesture of urgency.
She stopped dead in her tracks.
Not ten feet away stood a guy. He was in profile, but there was no mistaking his identity. Finley Harrod. A fictitious name, of course. He’d told her it meant “blond-haired soldier and conqueror.” Ironic how the violent nature of that name found its way to this demonstration, this sublime whimper for peace.
The sight of Fin chilled her to the bone. Heartbeat hammering in her throat, she struggled frantically for a coherent thought.
Her sudden halt on the sidewalk was a stupid, stupid move.
Okay. Okay. Think, Skylar, think.
The ability to disappear in plain sight was ingrained in her. Like an adoring puppy she had learned the tactics from this master. Time and again since leaving him, she had used them. She knew how. She knew.
