by Sally John
“Hmm.”
“Poor thing comes out to California for a little R and R and what happens? The few things she has replaced are stolen. She was actually almost rude to me. Jasmyn Albright, rude! She said she needs to go home.” Liv pointed at the monitor. “Home. Do you believe it? She doesn’t have a home! She doesn’t even have any family!”
“You know better than anyone that sometimes friends are home and family.”
“Except for her best friend, she doesn’t have enough friends back there to hang her heart on.”
“Is that what she said?”
“Well, not exactly.” Exactly, Jasmyn had said her hometown was a wonderful place. “But it’s easy to deduce from her tone that she’d rather be here.”
Keagan leaned back in his chair. “It’s not her cottage.”
“What?”
“You said she spent the day inside her cottage. It’s not hers.”
“Yes, it most surely is her—” She cut off the babbling. Her voice had risen an octave and her words were running together.
“Liv, Jasmyn hasn’t paid rent or moved in. The place is not technically hers. Correct?”
She shrugged.
“You probably had one of your hunches, but you’re jumping the gun here. You’ve known her all of two weeks.”
She swallowed and lowered her tone. “I don’t want her to leave.”
He didn’t reply for a moment. “People have come and gone from the Casa for years. You always give them a healthy shove out of the nest when you know their wings are ready to fly. This morning you were ready to give Sam a nudge. When they leave, you get a little sad, but not afraid. A season is over. Such is life. And besides, everyone always comes back to visit you.”
She nodded.
“What’s different about Jasmyn Albright?”
Liv replayed the two weeks since Jasmyn’s arrival. On that first morning, there had been a deep heart connection. Since then they had spoken freely on whatever subject came up as if they’d known each other for years.
Liv had taken her around Seaside Village and introduced her to people at the market, the coffee shop, and the library. She had even explained the work involved with running the complex and the girl was quick to catch on. They had simply enjoyed each other’s companionship the way a mother and a daughter would.
Oh.
Where had that come from?
Keagan reached over and, with a few strokes on the keyboard, logged out and powered down the computer. “Have some tea. Go to bed. If you’re still this needy in the morning, I’m moving you into that assisted living care facility over on El Camino.” He smiled his almost smile and walked out the door.
Well. She released a pent-up breath. “Well.”
A hug would have been nice. Jasmyn would have hugged her.
Seventeen
Sam had never visited the particular area of the desert where she now ran, but her body recognized it. The uneven terrain hummed in a familiar way beneath her feet. The dry scents of mesquite and sage enveloped her, a security blanket that never failed to deliver.
She ran and ran, not following a marked trail but keeping the sunrise to her right. Intuitively she found sure footing in the sandy dirt, leaped over stones, and skirted boulders and low-lying vegetation.
She ran and ran. The first rays of the dawn streaked across the landscape. The black mountains to her left burst into golden hues. The color flowed from their peaks downward as if a giant swept a paintbrush across them.
She ran and ran, trusting that the lone coyote in the distance up ahead would not mistake her for a rabbit.
She ran and ran until the love-hate relationship with the desert no longer burned in her chest like hot coals.
At last she slowed to a jog, removed her visor, and wiped the hem of her T-shirt across her face. Whoever had decided to start the engineering project in one-hundred-degree September weather should be locked up.
She turned until the rising sun was on her left and then retraced her steps.
Less than sixteen hours had gone by since she had arrived at the Lotanzai Reservation, and already she’d mentally resigned from the company three times. At least she hadn’t said it out loud. Although she figured that Randy knew.
She recalled last night’s conversation with him as they had sat knee-to-knee in two wicker chairs, aka the motel lobby. If she had reached over her shoulder, she could have touched the check-in counter.
“Sammi.” His big brown eyes and puppy dog expression masked his Attila the Hun work ethic. “Are you nervous about joining the big league?”
“N-no.”
He grinned. “That was convincing. Hey, no worries. It’s understandable, your first time out on a project like this. We wouldn’t have chosen you if we didn’t think you could handle it.”
“Thanks. I’m fine. Really.”
“You seem more ticked off than usual.”
She gave him a small smile. His comment was a private joke between them, one she used on him now and then. Her work ethic matched his, and their demeanors were sometimes mistaken for irascibility.
“Seriously, Sam. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“ ‘Nothing.’ My wife’s famous last word right before she falls apart.” He rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward until they were almost nose to nose. The scent of peppermint gum filled the space between them. “Listen.” He spoke in a low voice. “I know you couldn’t wait to grow up and get off the rez in Arizona. I understand if being on one now unsettles you. The thing is, I’m counting on more than your technical expertise here. You have a deep insight that none of the rest of us can begin to fathom.”
She shook her head. “Just because three-fourths of my ancestors were Navajo doesn’t mean I understand diddly.”
“Yes, it does. You have a connection to this land and this people whether you’re conscious of it or not.”
“It’s not my land. They’re not my people.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get that.” He waved a hand, batting away her words. “Trust me, Sammi. There’s something different about you.”
Tears of frustration gathered, and she gazed at her hands in her lap, blinking. She had spent a lifetime trying to escape the something different label, and now Randy wanted to glorify it.
“Listen, all I’m asking is that you put aside the childhood junk, but don’t dismiss your respect for all the rest. Use it to enhance your work. Okay?”
Not trusting her voice, she had nodded just to get him to stop talking.
“Thanks.” He stood. “And no meltdowns allowed until we get back to the city.”
She didn’t do meltdowns. She ran.
Now she quickened her pace. The morning sun had risen well over the peaks.
Shadows atop a flat, low-lying boulder caught her attention. They outlined three or four bowl-shaped indentations. A common sight, they should not have affected her. But she slowed and walked over to the boulder, blaming Randy for whatever subliminal message he’d planted.
She stroked the smooth interiors of the shallow depressions. They were morteros, a pre-Crate and Barrel version of a mortar and pestle. Ages ago women had ground acorns, hollowing out the bowls over time.
Sam sat on the boulder and let the landscape envelop her. The desert floor. Its scrubby plant life. The mountains, purple to the east, golden in the west. The cloudless blue canopy over it all. The quiet. The ineffable quiet.
Randy respected the land. The Collins and Creighton Engineering Firm was committed to using it wisely. They would figure out how to work with its contours and its layers of decomposed granite, volcanic remnants, siltstones, and even marine fossils. They would mold and shape and remove and not disturb the past or harm the future. Their sole purpose was to bring the land into the twenty-first century so that it might provide the necessities for work and play, for life itself.
Like the ancients had done except with a bit more flair.
Sam doubted she would find ancient bu
rial grounds or proof of environmental issues. Her early research indicated the area was clear. These morteros, several miles from the site in question, were no matter. They merely proved that the Lotanzai had lived here, a fact not in dispute.
She, her boss, the company, and the Lotanzai were all in agreement about disturbing as little as possible. Yet Randy wanted more from her, some deeper insight into the impact of the project.
She didn’t have it.
Her father had had it and had tried to teach her, but he died when she was a child, long before she could comprehend his words and his stories as they walked in the desert.
Sam propped her feet up on the boulder, wrapped her arms around her legs, and pressed her face against them. Randy’s rule against meltdowns was about to be broken.
Eighteen
“Jasmyn.” Inez Templeton’s smile rivaled Liv’s when it came to expressing sheer joy. “I am so glad you join us.”
“Me too.” Jasmyn grinned. She was at Disneyland. For real. Seated on the bench with her was the Casa’s resident grandmother.
“Disneyland is such a happy place.” Although seventy-five years old, Inez could have passed for sixty. She had thick dark brown hair, clear topaz eyes, a healthy glow, and a confident air. Her heavily accented English rolled r’s and mixed verb tenses. She called her husband Loo-ees, making it, like most of her words, a soft, tender sound.
“Yes, it is such a happy place,” Jasmyn agreed, although for the life of her she could not explain why she had come. The last thing she remembered was sitting in Liv’s office, making sure that her return flight reservation was in order. It would be four weeks since she had landed in California, plenty long enough for any vacation. Right now she should be packing her few things and putting the little cottage in order, not having her picture taken with Mickey Mouse.
Jasmyn imagined Quinn’s response to Disneyland. She’d say of course it was a happy place. Once people paid an arm and a leg for admission and another arm for a cup of coffee, they were in a state of shock. They had already slid on into a fantasy world. Disneyland was the La-La Land to beat all La-La Lands.
But Jasmyn loved it. She loved the music and bright colors at every turn, the life-size Mickey and Minnie, the scary pirates, the Jedi training show, the futuristic museum, the carousel and Dumbo rides with Tasha…the hours of escape.
She really had to get Quinn’s voice out of her head.
“I am especially glad you are here because I do not want to take care of Chad alone by myself.”
Jasmyn stared in surprise at her. “You were worried about Chad? Not your great-grandsons?”
“No. My great-grandsons are smart nine-year-olds. They look after each other since babies in the cradle. They know I am on this bench in Fantasyland. I know they are on Space Mountain. We have cell phones, but they will not stray from our plan to meet here.”
“But Chad might?”
“Might? Ah, he will for certain. He is—how does Louis say it?—‘the boy is unpredictable.’ I love him to pieces, but I do not want to be responsible for him. His latest indiscretion? True, it was some months ago, but still, not good. He arrive home in the middle of the night, intoxicated.” She whispered the last word. “He cannot open the front gate. He shout and shout until Keagan hear him. Then Olivia wake up, and he fall into the fountain. This time she say he is on probation. She will evict him if it happens again. I do not understand how he think he can win Piper’s heart—Oh, dear, now I am a gossip.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Inez laughed and patted her arm. “Everybody know, querida. Just like everybody know I enter the United States illegally.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No?”
“No.” She winked. “But I did hear that your ancestors were royalty in Spain.”
Inez laughed again, a sound like tiny wind chimes. “That is a much better story. Piper tell you this.”
“Yes, she did.” Jasmyn thought how Piper had been her source for juicy tidbits. Liv never divulged personal details. Coco was too absent. Riley was too wrapped up in caring for Tasha to gossip. Sam made smart-aleck observations but probably did not know many juicy tidbits. “Tell me about your background.”
“Oh, the royalty was many, many centuries ago. It matters nothing. Are you going to ride these things?” Inez gestured toward the wide sidewalk.
Through a wall of passersby, Jasmyn caught a glimpse of Tasha and her mother in line to ride Alice in Wonderland’s giant twirling teacups. Her stomach knotted. “Uh, I’ll sit this one out.”
“Too much hot dog and flying Dumbo?”
Jasmyn laughed. “Maybe.”
“You are like a little girl having fun. This is good for you. You are in a very difficult time of life.”
She shrugged. “It’s not too bad.” Well, two days ago had been completely, totally bad, but she had survived, hadn’t she? “I lost my things in the storm, but I didn’t get hurt. No one did.”
“Do not underestimate the devastation of this loss. Your home is gone. You have been wounded.” She touched her chest. “Deep inside.”
Jasmyn shrugged again, her throat tight.
“Good news, Jasmyn! You are not alone. Many of us at the Casa arrive in much pain. Riley’s husband divorce her. He not deal well with his little Tasha’s needs.” She made a tsking noise. “Noah, his wife leave him. Piper’s fiancé is killed in Afghanistan. Samantha, she runs from something. Olivia is a widow too soon.” She shook her head. “Sad stories everywhere. But that makes us good together, like family.”
“What about you?”
“Not so sad after I meet Louis. But before…” Inez leaned forward and whispered. “My father was a bracero, a guest farmworker in the United States. World War II time. After, he does not get green card and he go home, to Mexico. There, much poverty for us, and he is ill. I am seventeen and—oh, mi Dios.” She crossed herself. “I pay a coyote to bring me here to work.”
“A coyote?”
“A man. He sneak people into the country. Everyone at home and my auntie in San Diego give me money to pay him. I live with Auntie and I get a job and I pay them all back.” She straightened and spoke in a normal tone. “My job is at the Casa de Vida.”
“The Casa!”
“Yes! I am cleaning lady for Olivia’s father. She is young girl. Funny and smart. Tall. So tall.”
“How did you get a job?”
“Mr. McAlister, he not check identification, but I think he know.” She shrugged. “He is desperate for a cleaning lady. And then…” She paused, a smile lighting up her face. “One day I take a walk on the pier and I meet Louis Templeton. Oh! Such a handsome navy man.”
“Love at first sight?”
“Si. Love at first sight. I speak no inglés. His español—ay!” She laughed. “But it is enough. The problem, how can a navy man marry an immigrant with no papers? I go home so we can love each other in Mexico too. We marry in church with the padre. Then I am legal. I come back Mrs. Louis Templeton.”
It was like a fairy tale. “And you lived happily ever after.”
Inez shook her head and smiled. “We live life. A wonderful life all over the world with United States Navy and mis cuatro ninos. But happy, sad, easy, hard, fun, scary. Like you.”
Jasmyn nodded. “I seem to be stuck in the sad, hard, scary part. That’s never happened before. I could always see the silver lining.”
“A tornado never happen before. This bump in the road is most worst for you.”
Inez’s words rang true. Yet why hadn’t her mother’s death been the worst bump for Jasmyn? Or even the years spent nursing her through cancer?
Or what about the lifelong shame heaped on her because she’d been born out of wedlock to a teenager and never knew her father’s name?
“Querida.” Inez looped her arm through Jasmyn’s and leaned against her. “Louis and I grow old. The house, the yard, too much work. It is our most worst bump, but we move to la Casa and we are happy. Y
ou move into la Casa and you be happy too. Everyone take care of you. Si?”
An attack of warm fuzzies burst through her. Jasmyn melted inside. For one brief amazing moment the shadowy corners of sad, hard, and scary were ablaze in light.
But…
“I’m on vacation.”
Inez shrugged. “So? Go get your things. Vacation over.”
Go get your things. Those would be her new car and a jacket. But seriously. Move to California? Away from her hometown, the only place she’d ever known, and her job, and—
“Look at this.” Inez pointed at the crowd and sighed. “My boys come. Chad, I see nowhere. Am I surprised?” She looked at Jasmyn. “This is why I put van keys in my pocketbook. If he no show, you drive but first you call Keagan because we don’t know the way home.”
They didn’t? Uh-oh.
“When we women need rescue, he always there for us. He is our knight.”
A knight. That was a new one. Her first impression of Keagan had been all about sheriff vibes. Sam’s nickname for him was Mr. Kung Fu Dude because he had some sort of belt and apparently could break a stack of two-by-fours with his bare hands. Now Inez added shining armor and a white horse to the guy’s intimidating reputation.
Between a knight, a mama, a grandmother, kind people, and unbelievable peace and beauty, the place had everything.
Still, though, no matter how attractive it was, no matter how much it had given her, Casa de Vida was not her home. The thought of permanently leaving Valley Oaks was off-the-chart ridiculous and certainly not the solution to getting herself over the worst bump in the road.
No, she would return home as planned on Saturday, where she belonged, and just live her life, bumps and all.
Nineteen
If Liv had married what’s-his-name decades ago, before he shipped out to Vietnam, she might have a daughter now around Jasmyn’s age.
“Foolish thoughts, Olivia.” She spoke aloud to herself. “Foolish thoughts that do you no good whatsoever.”
