by Sally John
“You don’t have a life itinerary.”
“I do. An itinerary and a strong belief that the color gray does not exist.”
“That’s pathetic.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Seriously.”
He met her gaze. “Seriously. I’m going to make X amount of dollars before I’m thirty-five. If a woman looks like a Haight-Ashbury, hippie leftover, she must be a drug addict. You get the picture.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve shaken things up already. Which means, in my mind, that ‘us’ is a good thing.”
Skylar bit her lip. The words were gone again.
He said, “Good for me, anyway. Maybe not so much for you.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and waited. The thoughts were there, but not the right words. I think you’re the cat’s meow. You’re the Tracy to my Hepburn. I’d follow you to Timbuktu.
How lame was that?
“Sky?”
And his nickname! A name based on a name that wasn’t even her real name!
“Danny, there’s so much you don’t know.”
“We’re just at the beginning. We’re friends.”
“I can’t be more than that.” Ever. Not ever.
“You have an itinerary, too, you know.” His gentle voice soothed. He touched the corner of her eye, his little finger diverting the tear from her cheek. “Wally Cleaver is outside your relational experience. You must be absolutely dumbfounded trying to figure out why you’re sitting on the beach with him.”
Her laugh sounded like a choke. “Yeah, okay, I admit it. You’ve thrown your own monkey wrench.”
“Good. I prefer to be on equal footing with you.”
His grin nearly blinded her.
I have to go,” Skylar said as they retraced their steps along the beach.
“We reenter practical life.” Danny blew out a loud sigh. “Which reminds me, I told Mom I’d come up to the house tonight.”
“Really?” She winced at the excited schoolgirl voice.
“I think between the anniversary of the fire and Dad being gone, she’s feeling afraid to be alone.”
“I’m there. She seemed fine the last few nights.”
“It’s the trauma thing. Comes and goes. And besides, you’re not exactly a macho presence.”
She groaned. “Here it comes: the macho card.”
He bent his elbow and flexed his biceps. “Yes. I do have one of those in my back pocket.”
Skylar’s giggle started from deep inside her, in a place that had been locked up for a very long time. It bubbled up, frothed, spilled over. It grew to a full-on laugh. It sang out into a sidesplitting belly laugh.
Danny paused in his silly display, his face a question mark. Slowly its furrows evened out. His dark eyes shown in a way eyes had never shone in Skylar’s direction.
If it hadn’t been for the honey-thick sweetness holding her heart together, it just might have burst apart from this infusion of pure joy.
Forty-four
Jenna smiled at Amber. The two of them sat in Jenna’s classroom long after the students had gone home on Thursday. “You look as perky as a freshman.”
“Except for the hair.”
“Well, yes, except for the hair.”
Amber cocked her head at a jaunty angle and touched the fashionable straw hat she wore over a scarf. “Joey and I are having a date-to-die-for tonight.” She pursed her lips, allowing for a pregnant pause. “Wig shopping and sushi.”
Jenna chuckled.
“If it doesn’t work out, can you take me on Saturday?”
“Sure. If you promise to go with blonde and curly.”
“You sound just like Joey. I’m thinking Angelina Jolie in her early days. Long, straight, dark, and full.”
Jenna groaned. “I want my Amber back.”
“Talk to God about that.”
They both grew somber. Amber had told her about the nightmares, the headaches, the dread already of telling Joey good-bye, the fear even of returning to her classroom. She had stopped by to check on things in her classroom long after the students and sub had left.
Jenna said, “I am talking to God about it. So is my mom and gram.”
“Danny too?”
She rolled her eyes. Amber knew all about her brother’s propensity to pray. “Danny too.”
Amber stood. “We’ll be all right then.”
“We will.”
They hugged each other tightly for a long moment. Their goodbye was wordless and almost tear free.
After she left, Jenna sat back at her desk. Three weeks back in the saddle and she still had too much work to catch up on. It helped, though, being in the routine.
Being near Cade.
Not that she saw more of him than any faculty member did on a given school day. But knowing he was in the same building kept emotional extremes at bay.
Tomorrow, Friday, she would go up to the Hideaway. Nana would give her some ancient herbal remedy for the scar on her arm. She’d sleep in Tuyen’s room as Lexi had suggested. She’d help her mom with the guests. Throughout the fall they’d been coming most weekends. It was probably time Jenna stopped distancing herself from her parents’ new lifestyle, uncomfortable as it was to see strangers in their home.
On Sunday she would swing back up to Oceanside and eat dinner with Miranda and a couple of the other wives. She would fill the hours between Kevin’s sporadic e-mails and phone calls.
She would be all right.
Jenna’s cell phone rang as she walked into her apartment building. As usual, hypervigilant to calls just in case it was Kevin, she had her phone handy in a front pocket of her handbag.
It was Miranda.
She answered. “Hi—”
“Jenna.” Miranda sobbed.
Halfway up the exterior staircase within a courtyard, Jenna sank onto a step, hugging her book bag. Dear God, no. No.
At last Miranda found her voice again. “It’s Evie.”
Evie. Flaxen hair, spiked in every direction. Turned-up nose. Big blue eyes that sparkled whenever she mentioned her twin boy and girl, two years old, or their daddy, Nick. Everyone said he was a sweetheart.
Fear clutched at Jenna’s throat. She scanned what she could see of the parking lot, glanced up at her door. No somber military guys lay in wait for her. Thank You, God.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know exactly. She’s sort of gone off the deep end. I’ve never seen her so distraught. She can’t seem to handle not hearing from Nick for days at a time. It’s like she’s just given up.”
And what am I supposed to do about that? Jenna wanted to scream.
Miranda went on. “We’re all in the same boat, you know? But she’s hit a wall or something. Some of us are helping her with the kids. Her parents are on their way from Idaho. They’re driving, though, so it’ll take a couple days. I . . .” Her voice choked up again. “I just wanted you to know, Jenna.”
She masked the curse on the tip of her tongue with a loud moan. “It is so awful, this whole lousy scene we’re living in.” She exhaled loudly. “What can I do? I’ll come up. Should I come?”
“Oh.” The word was a long sigh. “Would you? It would mean so much to Evie.”
“Okay.” She thought about the freeway, about traveling north at four thirty alongside half a million other people averaging thirteen miles per hour. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
After tearful good-byes, Jenna scrambled up the steps. She fumbled with the front-door key and burst into her apartment, eyes going straight to the answering machine on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t blinking.
No message on the machine.
No voice mail on the cell phone.
No e-mail.
Again, too much time had passed between the last communication and this moment.
Exactly how long did those faceless people in charge expect them all to go on like that?
Exactly how long did Kevin expect her to
go on like that?
Jenna was totally “there” with Evie. The line between nightmare and reality grew dimmer by the day.
She grabbed the cordless phone, dialed her mom’s number, sat on the floor, and burst into tears.
Far too many hours passed from the time Jenna heard about Evie’s emotional collapse until she heard her own husband’s voice.
She spent the time at Miranda’s house with four other wives. Instead of lifting each other up, they wallowed in self-pity. The hours were not filled with shared encouragement. Tears and angry outbursts flowed freely as if anguish were a contagious virus.
Now she walked in tight circles around Miranda’s front yard, cell phone at her ear. The damp night air soaked her shoes. A street lamp cast eerie shadows.
“Jen.” Static accompanied Kevin’s voice as it traveled seven thousand, seven hundred, thirty-one miles to Jenna’s ear. “Calm down. I said I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Oh, Kevin.”
The repetitive conversation did little to compose her shredded nerves.
He sighed heavily, wearily. “Are you okay?”
“I’m at Miranda Bell’s house, crying with four other wives. Evie’s asleep, heavily sedated. Her parents are driving all the way from Idaho.”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not okay!” she snapped. Her voice rose to a screech. “How did this happen?”
“Calm down, Jen.”
“Stop saying that. It doesn’t help one iota!”
“I don’t know what else to say. This is just the way life is for now. It’s beyond incredibly difficult. Some days I think it’s easier to be in the battle over here than in the one you ladies are fighting back home.”
She rubbed at her eyebrow where a headache had begun to pound. Despite the words, his tone made her feel like a kid on the football field during a losing game.
Whenever Kevin had gone off to do his macho stuff—coach 24-7 during the fall, play some sort of ball himself every season of the year, reenlist in the Marines, even—he kept her separate from that side of life. Even so, he made her feel a part of him in other ways. In the way he looked at her, the way her spoke to her, he communicated that they were one entity.
Until now. Now the war slithered up between them, a palpable energy that breathed destruction.
“Jenna, we guys are doing our best to stay in contact. It’s impossible to describe the schedule. We’re don’t go off to work from eight to five with phones at our elbow and computers at our desk. We don’t go home and flip on the computer while dinner cooks. It’s just not like that.”
“I know, I know, I know!”
Silence filled the line for a moment.
He said, “I’m not sure how to say this. I don’t have words for it yet. At the risk of sounding just like your grandma, here goes.” He paused.
“What?”
“God is real, Jen. He truly is real. I tell Him all about you, and I ask Him to take care of you. Then this sense of peace sort of wells up inside of me, like He’s hugging me and telling me He’s with you.” He chuckled softly. “I’m Nana in desert cammies.”
Jenna kneaded her brow. The hammering had spread. Kevin’s version of Nana’s faith was too much to swallow. Like her, he’d always acknowledged God’s existence. They trusted that He loved them, that He even answered prayers, albeit in His own way and time. But up close and personal like Nana and Danny espoused? Not exactly.
She had only one word. “Huh?”
“Yeah, blows your mind, doesn’t it? What I want to say is just try to rest in Him, okay? He’s involved in our lives, Jen. I think He wants us to act like it. Hey, it’s late and you’re way up in Oceanside. Go home, please. You need to take care of yourself.”
“No way, José. This is your semper fi in action, wife-style. I have to be here. We’re helping each other through this even if it looks ridiculous to you nonemoting types.”
He sighed loudly. “All right. Do what you have to do to get through this. I gotta get off—”
“Wait! Wait a sec! I have to tell you! Amber woke up and she’s fine.”
“Really? That’s great news. See, God is at work. My time’s up.”
“I love you!”
“Love you, too, babe. Bye.”
Click.
Babe?
Babe!
What happened to pretty lady? She hated babe. He never called her—
“Do what you have to do to get through this.” What did that mean? Don’t bug him with details about how she coped? How she got through the hours of every day? Just talk to God about it like apparently he was doing all of a sudden?
She felt it again, the war sliding in between them, taking up permanent residence in their relationship.
A glitch in the system? That explanation did not begin to account for the darkness just unleashed.
Forty-five
Claire debated with herself about Danny’s idea that they keep Skylar in the dark about the stranger on the highway. Somehow the guy had connected the hacienda’s street address with Skylar. Who knew? Maybe he was an old friend and Skylar would like to see him. Worst-case scenario, he was not a friend and Skylar needed to be warned.
“Claire.” Rosie waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you on the bus?”
“What? What bus?”
A chuckle went around the sala. Erik, Rosie, Danny, and Skylar sat with her at the fireplace end of the room. A fire blazed in it, warding off the night chill and Claire’s shivers that had little to do with the temperature.
She frowned. “You know, you guys really make me feel old with those inside jokes of yours. Why would I be on a bus?”
They howled with laughter, a welcome sound, even if it did mean she now understood why Indio got lost in a conversation with Claire and Max, the “young” ones, and had no desire to learn how to work a DVR.
Rosie said, “Sorry, Claire. It’s just a silly way to ask if you’re mentally present here with the rest of us. You’re obviously preoccupied with what Jenna told you about her friend.”
Claire felt a heaviness in her chest. Jenna had sobbed hard on the phone, but she wouldn’t come up to the house. Claire worried about all the men’s wives in Kevin’s unit. And the husbands. How did they cope? The emotional strain on everyone had to be stretched to the limit.
She had been continuously praying for all of them. Fortunately or unfortunately, the added stress gave more credence to her emotional state in front of Skylar. If the girl thought about it much, she would not have believed Claire was undone solely by Max’s absence and the anniversary of the fire.
Rosie said, “We don’t have to talk about this.”
Erik scowled in his dramatic way. “Should you be talking about this anyway?”
“I can share what we’ve already told the reporters.”
“Officer Delgado.” His deep newscaster’s voice resounded. “I do so love it when you talk cop-speak in that tone of authority.”
Rosie turned deep red but tried to look nonchalant with an eye roll.
Erik grinned at Claire. “Isn’t she adorable?”
Claire laughed with the others. Even Rosie smiled. The obvious deepening relationship between her son and this woman was a definite bright spot in the evening.
On the other hand, the obvious deepening relationship between son number two and the mystery woman cast a shadow.
Danny said, “So what do the reporters know?”
“That the bomb was a small, simple one. Any kid halfway familiar with combinations of accessible chemicals could put it together. Pack it all up in cardboard and voilá. The good news is it wasn’t made into a pipe bomb, which would have resulted in much more damage.”
Claire winced.
“Sorry, Claire. I get carried away imagining how a criminal’s mind works. Like, why didn’t he make it bigger? I guess his motive was to disrupt the funeral, to make a sick protest against the war without taking out a city block and killing—sorry. Again. Anyway, th
ey figure the bomb was hidden sometime before the demonstration began. The grounds are fairly private along that side of the church, with a lot of vegetation.”
Danny said, “How was it detonated?”
“A fuse.”
“So someone had to light it during the funeral?”
“Right. Again, with the secluded area we’re talking about, it was easy for him—or her—to do that unseen.”
Danny cocked his head. “This is helpful information?”
Rosie grinned. “Yeah, it is.”
“It sounds like a beginner’s crossword puzzle, the kind anybody can solve.”
“But there’s always a tricky clue that makes or breaks a successful completion. Not just anybody will be able to do it, or at least not easily.”
“You’re saying there are things about this situation that reveal not every kid in Chem 101 could pull it off?”
“Maybe.”
Erik said, “Ah, we stray into restricted territory.”
Rosie winked at him.
Claire tried to smile at them, but all she could think about was Jenna needing more stitches.
“Mom.” In that one word Danny communicated that he picked up on her distress. “You don’t have to keep us company. Go to bed.”
Skylar cleared her throat a few times, as if she had trouble finding her voice. “The kitchen looks disorganized, Claire, but there is a method to my madness. If you touch anything, the lunch for tomorrow’s guests won’t happen until dinnertime.”
Claire wondered how these two bossy, control-freak natures had been able to mesh. “Mind if I get a glass of water?”
“Not at all.”
Claire smiled, bid everyone good night, and left the room quickly, shutting the door with the hope that her stress stayed put on the other side.
Rosie caught up with Claire in the courtyard. “I needed some fresh air.”
“Rosie, I’m really okay now that all of you are here.”
“You’re not morphing into Cleopatra, are you?”
She’d heard that one before. “Queen of Denial? All right, honestly I’m not exactly okay, but I am less upset than I was, now that you’re all here. Do you have your gun?”
