A Time to Surrender

by Sally John

  Skylar managed a smile in response. Claire would figure out soon enough how she’d get along without her because Skylar’s stint in Kansas was, without a doubt, over.

  Skylar packed her bag in the dead of night. Given the fact that she’d not completely unpacked it, the chore did not take long. She carried it by starlight out to Claire’s car and stowed it in the trunk.

  The shadows spooked her unlike before. Fin Harrod had managed from miles away to suck the safety right out of the estate. Tonight she would have welcomed Danny or Erik’s presence in a guest room. After a week of watching over the women, though, neither one was there now. Both had early morning appointments—

  Watching over the women?

  Because Claire was nervous with Max gone, left alone with the fire memories?

  Or because she’d encountered a weirdo asking for Annie Wells?

  Would the sheriff make frequent trips up the lane just because Claire was nervous?

  And what was that business about Lexi staying with Indio? Even the dog Samson seemed to have relocated down there.

  Skylar was losing her touch. How had she missed the clues?

  By getting lost in Danny’s attention. The evenings he’d spent at the house were the happiest times she’d had since—maybe since ever.

  Was he for real?

  She’d never know now.

  Monday morning Skylar hugged Claire good-bye and ignored the surprise in her friend’s eyes at the unusual display of emotion.

  And then she cried most of the way to Oceanside.

  The city drew her for two reasons: train station and funeral.

  The police and military presence around the church was thick. Skylar assumed that although no antiwar protest was involved, the officials were taking extra precautions. She was glad she’d worn a Lexi hand-me-down. The black skirt and loose black sweater over a brown shirt was comfortable without giving her the hippie appearance certain people in uniform might notice.

  She entered the church and slipped into a back pew just as things were getting under way. It was a packed house. She craned her neck searching for Jenna. At last she spotted her, near the front.

  Skylar released her breath. It made no sense why she was there. Guilt, maybe. Or a need to make some lame attempt at restitution. She only knew that she could not leave town until Jenna had made it safely through a military funeral.

  Nor could she make much sense of why Jenna once more attended the funeral of a stranger. She had become downright militant with her newfound semper fi attitude. She had never met the guy in the casket nor his family. She only knew that he had been a Marine and that she was not about to let the previous funeral’s experience keep her away from any subsequent ones.

  And so Skylar went, too, and sat through music and eulogies that would squeeze tears from a Raggedy Ann doll. She tried not to ponder the fact that the boy was almost ten years younger than herself.

  The funeral had not yet ended when Skylar left, but she had a schedule to keep.

  She drove to the train station, retrieved her bag, put the key under the driver’s-side mat, and locked the doors. At the automated machine she bought a one-way Amtrak ticket to Chicago, dismissed the thought that she could not avoid a possible random ID check, and got on the train.

  Fifty-one

  Jenna’s mind wandered and she let it. She welcomed it. She aided and abetted it. If not for chasing mental rabbit trails, she could not have sat through the funeral.

  She thought of Kevin, of course. He had e-mailed that morning, his one and only communication since his phone call the night Evie fell apart. “Indescribable schedule” would be his excuse.

  She thought of his e-mail. Short. Terse, even. He wrote that morale lagged, but they were getting through it. Doing better every day. Ooh-rah. So-and-so had pulled a practical joke, too gross to describe in writing, but it had made them laugh. He figured she was handling things in her usual strong way. He signed off with a standard “Miss you, love you.” And a new addition: “Remember God is with both of us.”

  To keep from screaming, she imagined that between the lifeless lines, Kevin was saying things like he was sorry for forgetting to call her “pretty lady” on the phone, that he couldn’t wait to come home, that he was proud of her for embracing the role of military wife.

  As the pastor spoke from the podium, Amber reached over and took her hand. On Amber’s other side Joey was holding hers.

  Jenna smiled in appreciation.

  Amber leaned close. “You okay?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Me neither.” She squeezed her hand. “We’ll press through, though, huh?”

  Jenna nodded. They would press through

  It had been Amber’s idea to attend another military funeral. Jenna was so tired of resisting in general that she gave in to her friend’s convoluted thinking that it would help them work through that other funeral. It didn’t matter that neither of them were acquainted with the deceased or his spouse or his parents or even a distant friend. Military was military.

  This church was nothing like the other one. This one was Protestant with padded pews. Not much in the way of stained glass, but they sat in the center anyway, far from the few small windows.

  She and Amber didn’t look like they had when they sat at the other funeral. Jenna wore a gray dress, not a black suit. Amber wore a wig of long, straight, dark hair, nothing like her bouncy blonde curls. Both bore scars.

  They weren’t the same women they’d been two months ago at the September funeral. Amber had said they were older and wiser. Jenna tweaked her phrasing. “Less gullible and more angst ridden,” she’d said. Her friend did not disagree.

  They were surrounded by prayers this time too—her mother’s and grandmother’s. Joey was there with them, GI Joe-slash-Transformer in the flesh. Nothing was going to hurt them this time.

  Not even that rotten, pointless, adolescent e-mail from Kevin.

  The jerk.

  Eulogies, prayers, music, Marines in dress blues, flag-draped coffin, a widow in black . . . Jenna only used one hankie and six tissues. Tombstones, flag snapped crisply into folds just so, rifles blasting . . . only eight tissues. Casseroles that swam, children of one absentee parent laughing with innocence, their older relatives drinking too much beer . . . she was in the bathroom going through a roll of toilet paper, congratulating herself for not bothering with mascara that day.

  She would press through. She would make it.

  Fifty-two

  Claire snuggled with Max on the love seat in the master suite. It was their first moment alone in two weeks and she relished in it.

  Earlier at the airport, she’d wept at the sight of three glowing faces. Max, Ben, and Tuyen physically displayed the healing that had taken place in each of them while in Vietnam. Max’s stories during their few short phone calls had not been able to capture the reality of such peace.

  “Jenna won’t be here for dinner?” Max asked.

  “She’s not planning on it after that funeral.”

  “And Skylar’s not cooking?”

  She chuckled. “She needed some time off. But no worries. We have plenty of her goodies left over from the weekend meals. Our guests were not big eaters.”

  “Hmm.” His murmur bordered on a snore.

  Claire smiled. He was exhausted after the trip and lunch downtown where the three of them had poured out immediate reactions to the whole experience. Indio wept through it all, tears of joy and sadness.

  Tuyen sensed a release from her past. With her uncle and grandfather at her sides, she felt like a person for the first time in her homeland. She was an American with a Vietnamese heritage.

  While overseas, Max had described to her how BJ would have deeply loved her mother and her. He was that kind of guy. Ben believed that her mother was the kind of woman who loved BJ deeply, as evidenced by how she nursed him back to health and protected him. The tragedy that had been their short life together resulted in the wonder of a life in
Tuyen.

  According to Max, such words could not have been spoken or received until the three of them stood where BJ had been buried. The reality of his last years spoke to them almost audibly.

  Ben had been ready at last to hear such a reality. The beauty of the people and the country touched him. The image of a humble, tiny mountain village broke his heart. He began to grasp the conditions that condemned BJ to a life far from home.

  Max found himself admiring his brother to the point of awestruck. He’d spent most of his life knocking BJ off the pedestal his parents placed him on. By the end of the visit, he believed BJ belonged on one.

  They had called Beth Russell from the restaurant. Max briefly filled her in on developments. He told her that the remains would be sent for burial in San Diego. She said she would come.

  Claire listened now to Max’s rhythmic breathing, her ear against his chest. She would stay put while he napped, grateful for how God had brought healing to the wound that had remained open in the Beaumont family for so many years.

  Claire clasped Max’s hand on top of the dining room table and smiled. “I’m having a hard time letting go.”

  “Me too.” He glanced around the semi-raucous crowd eating dinner. “Is it just me, or is this a cross between a celebration and a wake?”

  She surveyed the group.

  Ben, surprisingly fresh after the long flight from Ho Chi Minh City, sat with Indio on one side, Tuyen on his other. A new peace had settled about him. Indio appeared tired, but content. She’d made sure to be in on Ben’s phone call to Beth Russell, in which he told her all about the trip. Closure was written all over Indio’s face.

  Tuyen and Hawk had eyes only for each other, but along with Lexi, Nathan, and Erik, they kept the conversation lively.

  Danny kept leaving the table and checking the grounds for any sign of Skylar.

  Jenna hadn’t made it either. Max caught up with her on her cell phone. She was far too upset to visit.

  Rosie was missed; she had to work.

  Claire said to Max, “Nope, it’s not just you. We’re all so happy to be together again, but at the same time it’s a sad occasion because you’ve just come from BJ’s grave.”

  He nodded. “Dad’s been such an inspiration to me through all this. Watching him let go of the past at his age and grow spiritually by leaps and bounds is not something you see every day. Remind me when I’m eighty that it’s not time to sit back and watch the world go by.”

  She smiled. “I could have married you just for the privilege of having your parents as mentors.”

  “Thanks.” He laughed. “So what should we do, if anything, about Skylar?”

  She glanced at her watch. “I don’t know. She said she’d be back for dinner, but sometimes she still shies away from special family times.”

  “The problem, though, is that business with the stranger on the road.” Claire had filled him in on the incident. He had been upset that she hadn’t told him on the phone when he called from overseas.

  Danny leaned across the table, his forehead wrinkled. Evidently he’d had one ear on their exchange. “I agree.”

  Claire blinked in surprise.

  “I know, Mom. I figured it out. That guy knows Skylar. I think something’s wrong. I’m calling Rosie.”

  Even as he pushed back his chair, there was a knock on the sala door and it opened. Rosie walked inside. “Hey, everyone.”

  Behind her came the sheriff. “Hey.”

  Neither of them smiled. Both were in uniform.

  A third guy entered. He looked out of place and official in a black suit and tie.

  Everyone quieted at the table.

  Rosie said, “Where’s Skylar?”

  Danny shook his head. “We don’t know.”

  Erik stood. “Rosie, what’s up?”

  She sighed. “We have a warrant for her arrest.”

  The man in the suit was an FBI agent. Even seated by the fireplace, sipping a cup of tea, he looked out of place to Claire.

  But then, the whole scene looked out of place.

  Rosie sat on the hearth and, after convincing the agent that, yes, all the Beaumonts and company needed to hear some of the story, began to talk.

  Claire snuggled against Max on the couch. He held her close. Although Rosie had probed gently about what Claire knew of Skylar’s whereabouts, she was shaken.

  Danny paced while the others sat in various places. Everyone was subdued, even Erik. While Indio had made tea, Rosie and the other two made phone calls. The entire county was now on alert to the make, color, and license number of Claire’s car. They also had a description of Lexi’s hand-me-downs that Skylar was wearing.

  Rosie said, “Skylar’s real name is Laurie Ann Rockwell.” She looked at Danny, who stopped and stared back at her.

  “Annie Wells,” he said.

  The name the stranger had used with Claire.

  “And Skylar Pierson. Piers is a form of Peter, which means rock.”

  He said, “She was adamant about the spelling of Pierson. How did you find out?”

  Rosie shrugged. “I like to play around with names. Baby name books are a great resource. Skylar I don’t get, though. It means sheltering. I guess by then she just went random.”

  “Not so much,” Danny said. “All she wanted was a shelter.”

  Claire began to weep softly.

  Danny went back to pacing.

  Rosie cleared her throat. “She grew up in San Francisco. Her dad is a wealthy owner of a construction company, her mother a socialite type. Both came out of a late-sixties-type hippie lifestyle. Skylar has an older sister and brother. She went to Berkeley for a while, then just seemed to drop out of sight. Her parents don’t know where she is. We—”

  Indio gasped. “My word! Her parents don’t know where she is?”

  Rosie read from a notebook, “Quote, ‘She calls now and then,’ unquote.”

  “For goodness’ sake!” Indio did not conceal her indignation. “That poor baby. Something was not right in her home.”

  Rosie took a deep breath. “There are a string of coincidences that link her with Fin Harrod. One is that they were at Berkeley at the same time. Eighteen months ago there was a bombing at NorCal Lumber Company, up north. The place was demolished. We believe Harrod was behind it. He’s a known ecoterrorist, part of an underground network. We believe he had accomplices. According to our source, a young woman going by the name of Annie Wells used to hang out with him.”

  Max said, “How can you arrest Skylar with all that hearsay?”

  Rosie glanced at the FBI agent. He nodded. She said, “We have one partial fingerprint from—from the incident. It matches one we took from Danny’s apartment. I’m sorry.” She looked around at everyone. “It’s enough to go on.”

  Max said, “If Harrod’s an ecoterrorist, what’s he doing blowing up a church that’s hosting a military funeral?”

  Rosie eyed him like she would a pesky gnat.

  He shrugged. “Can you tell us?”

  The agent shifted in his chair. So far he had let Rosie do most of the talking. “Harrod no longer fits the typical profile. Ten months ago we connected him to a bombing at an event that had nothing to do with the government, environment, or the military. Since then we suspect he participated in other unrelated explosions. He’s not interested in a cause.”

  Ben said, “Except his own sick cravings.”

  The agent nodded.

  Max said, “Did Skylar have a clue what’s been going on here, that you were investigating her?”

  Rosie said, “Not that I’m aware of. Neither Danny nor Claire told her about the stranger, who we’re convinced was Harrod. There is a chance she saw him at the demonstration.”

  Claire said, “But that was, like, six weeks ago, and she didn’t leave.”

  Rosie smiled and the professional mask melted away. “Claire, she stayed because you all loved on her like crazy. Of course she stayed as long as could. My guess is it’s taken him this lo
ng to track her down and that now he’s contacted her.”

  Claire remembered how she found Skylar seated on the floor with the phone in her hand. “I think he called her last night.” She related that scenario.

  Ben said, “That’s it, then. She’s done hightailed it out of here.” He took hold of Indio’s hand. “Love, I hope you weren’t planning on sleeping tonight. We have some heavy-duty praying to do.”

  “Yes, we most certainly do.” Indio grinned. “It’s what got her here in the first place, you know.”

  Claire sighed to herself. The tandem ride was in motion, zooming at full speed toward blind curves.

  She stole a glance at Danny. His face was scrunched up like it did when he was a tyke, just before he screamed an unholy roar. Without a word, he marched out the door.

  She listened, but heard nothing.

  Oh, Lord, where do we begin?

  Fifty-three

  Jenna sat in her car parked outside a condominium complex. As faculty members, she and Kevin had been there a couple of times for cookouts at the principal’s home.

  The buildings were not new. Views were of freeways and shopping malls. But it was nice, in a central location not far from school. Not far from Jenna’s apartment. She remembered his unit’s décor as tasteful, no frills. Definite bachelor pad.

  Her cell phone rang. She recognized his number and answered. “Hi.”

  “Do you want to come inside?”

  Obviously he had spotted her through a window. She hadn’t told him she was coming. She didn’t know it herself, not until after she’d negotiated the I-5, thinking she needed to turn on the windshield wipers for her tearful downpour. The sun went down about the time she ran out of tears and tissues.

  Not much thought had been put into her destination. She had told her dad she planned to go home, but instead she simply zipped past her exit and took the next one. Nor was much emotion involved. She was drained of emotion except for that insatiable ache to feel safe.

  The only place she knew that would be real was in Cade Edmunds’s arms.

  “Yes, I want to come inside.”