She did hold back with Max, but only because she wanted a balance they hadn’t enjoyed most of their married life. Was that being clingy? Was that stifling the newfound freedom between them, freedom to be real with each other?
“The thing is, Lord, I don’t want to be okay without him.” She paused. “Good grief. That sounds absolutely absurd. It is perfectly all right to be all right without him. It is all right to miss him but it’s also all right to stay up all night, eat junk food, make music, be fearful and lonely.”
She rocked for a few moments, listening to the night sounds of house and nature and anxious heartbeat.
“But I will be fine, right, Lord? I will be fine because You are here and You are with Max, Ben, and Tuyen. I will get through this a better person for the struggle. We will all benefit from the stretching time.” She sighed. “I just don’t understand why You have to make this life a nonstop journey the whole entire way.”
A
couple days after the send-off, after Max’s upbeat phone call from Vietnam—friendly, helpful people, beautiful scenery, great weather, on schedule—Claire drove her car along the highway, heading home after shopping in the city.
With a start she realized something was missing. What had she forgotten? Her mind raced through the list of supplies she’d purchased for the guests coming that weekend. She’d had inklings of feeling proficient in her role as manager of the Hideaway. Indio and practice were perfect teachers. What could it—
“Oh, good grief.”
She hadn’t forgotten a thing. The missing something was simply a feeling: the awful dread that Max was not at home.
The first thirty years of married life had felt like one long day that Max lived at the office, consumed with his business, away from her. It had been a wedge between them, one they’d been chipping at for almost a year. And now . . . well . . .
She smiled. “Thanks be to God. This is indeed progress.”
Okay. There it was. Further proof that she could weather Max’s absence.
With a laugh, she lowered the windows and turned off the radio. The wind blew her hair back. She imagined riding that tandem with Indio, watching her every move, mimicking, letting go of her own handlebars.
She drove Max’s car. Skylar had gone to town as well to help with errands. Claire smiled. The woman seemed to have settled down a bit after last week’s turmoil. She insisted on using Claire’s car, saying she dared not sit in Max’s “baby,” the old black Mercedes he pampered, let alone drive it.
As usual, there was no other traffic on the highway. The two-lane meandered east through rugged terrain and past a few scattered ranches. It wound its way up into a mountain pass and then straightened out on the desert floor beyond. Eventually it intersected with a major thoroughfare.
An odd sight came into view. Not too far in the distance, where the hacienda’s gravel drive met the highway, stood a man beside a parked car.
Claire slowed and double-checked the door locks.
She sighed. Fear had not been totally eradicated from her. The fire experience had created it. Now it was like leftovers in a container shoved to the back of the fridge, forgotten until some innocuous event knocked off its lid. Then the stench spewed forth.
Of course, having Rosie the policewoman around didn’t help matters. Despite the young woman’s faith, she saw far too much ugliness to be casual about certain situations. One of which was meeting a strange guy in a lonely place. And so Claire heard Rosie’s voice in her head, listing the precautions to take, the details to take note of.
She zipped the windows back shut but rejected the idea of driving past the man. He was near her home which was, after all, a retreat center, a place where strangers gathered.
As she made the left-hand turn onto the gravel drive, she braked with her left foot, keeping her right foot on the gas pedal, keeping the gear in drive. The unfamiliar car was white, small, nondescript like a rental. The man was thirtyish, lanky, tall, dressed in blue jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Medium brown hair, medium length. Dark glasses. A ready smile.
She lowered her window just enough to be able to talk through. “Hi. Do you need some help?”
“Hi. Thanks for stopping.” He did not approach her car. His voice carried a trace of an accent. “I’m looking for an address.” He rattled off the Hacienda Hideaway’s number.
Claire’s stomach muscles clenched. No one used the address. They had a Santa Reina post office box for mail. Directions to the place went by landmarks and mileage.
There was no mailbox or sign to indicate the retreat center or the house’s number. There was no welcome sign to the retreat center. Because they didn’t want looky-lous wandering up the drive, they’d placed it in the parking area, out of sight from this point on the main road.
Guests were scheduled to arrive tomorrow.
They were all women.
Claire said, “This is that address.”
“Oh. This road here?”
“Yes.”
“I’m looking for someone, an old friend. Annie Wells. Last I heard from her, she said she’d recently gotten a job here. Said it was a wonderful place.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I’m down from Seattle. Thought I’d look her up while I was in the area.”
Everything but the name described Skylar Pierson. Was he talking about her?
It didn’t matter if he was or not. Claire did not like this guy.
Rosie said sometimes it was best to trust the sixth sense that communicated the abstract.
Claire said. “A job?”
“Yes. She’s a great cook.”
“That’s curious. This is our family home. Grandma and I cook.”
“You never hire outsiders for anything?”
“A professional cleaning service now and then.” She rolled her eyes, a gesture lost on him since she wore sunglasses, but it felt right as she improvised. “I haven’t been able to find just the right one yet. Perhaps your friend came with one of them and sort of embellished her story.”
“Perhaps. Which services have you used most recently?”
None of your business
, she thought, but wanting to play out the helpful role, she offered a half-truth. “Nina’s and the Housekeeping Experts.” She had tried both of them several months before she’d found another that fit her needs best. She shook her head. “It seems a lost cause.”
“Undocumented foreigners probably work best for you.”
She couldn’t help but smile at the innuendo she often heard. “I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Are you with the INS?”
He grinned. “No.”
“Well, good luck. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“Thanks anyway.” He gave a little wave.
Claire drove off.
About ten feet later, the shaking started.
With all the restraint she could muster, Claire resisted the urge to cannonball up the winding gravel road.
The guy at the bottom of the hill spooked her.
Reminding herself how Max drove his car, she slowed sensibly at curves. At an agonizing snail’s pace she drove past the charred tree stumps and new growth browning in the late summer heat, past the bend in the road where Indio, Ben, Lexi, and Tuyen’s homes were located. At long last she reached the parking area and stopped beside their discreet sign—Hacienda Hideaway ~ A Place of Retreat—and looked over her shoulder.
He had not followed.
Claire drove slowly to the other end of the blacktopped lot and followed the narrow gravel driveway to the back door. She parked, grabbed her purse and the nearest shopping bags, hurried inside the kitchen, and locked the door.
Skylar, also gone for the day, had helped her lock everything before they both left that morning. Although the construction people still worked some days, today wasn’t one of them, so she and Skylar had closed up more tightly than usual.
The hacienda was a conglomerate of doors. The kitchen, sala, and each bedroom had their own exterior doors that opened onto the U-shaped wraparound porch. All those had been locked as well as the huge front doors that closed off the entryway that was open ended to the courtyard.
At the back and sides of the yard there had been a perimeter wall, but it had been destroyed by the fire. Repairing it was at the bottom of a still-too-long list of projects.
The whole place suddenly felt too open for comfort.
Claire sank onto the rocker next to Indio’s wall of crosses, looked through the tall windows toward the parking lot, and struggled to catch her breath.
Max and Ben were half a world away.
Tuyen was with them, of course. Lexi and Indio were gone for the day at a garden show. Skylar was running some errands with her and then meeting Danny.
Claire picked up the phone from the lamp table and called Danny.
“Mom?”
Thank goodness he answered. “Hi, Danny.” Her voice warbled.
“What’s wrong?”
He shouldn’t have been her first choice. Erik would have steered the conversation until she regained control.
“Mom!”
“Yeah. Um, something odd just happened.” She told him about the incident with the stranger.
“Skylar.”
“I think so. He didn’t say ‘She’s the cook at the Hacienda Hideaway.’ He said she’s a ‘great cook.’ I got the idea that she didn’t actually talk to him.”
“I agree. If she wanted to see an old friend, she would have made arrangements to meet in town. She would have told you if he was coming to the house.”
“But then how did he find her?”
“I don’t know.” He was silent for a moment. “We shouldn’t tell her. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“She’ll freak out. She’ll . . . leave.”
Claire heard his undertone. “Danny, don’t go Messiah on us. You can’t save her. If she needs to leave, we can’t stop her.”
“But we can protect her. For now. You and Dad always talk about the Hideaway being a safe harbor. Isn’t this what a safe harbor is all about?”
Oh Lord, this child is trying.
“That’s an emotional thing, Danny! Not this—this unknown threat.”
“Of course you’re feeling physically vulnerable. Just call the sheriff, Mom. Ask him to patrol the area. I’ll call Rosie. Erik and I will spend the night up there. Maybe Rosie can too.”
“How do we explain that to Skylar?”
“You’re lonesome and I’m—” He paused. “I’m crazy about her.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
His silence was all the reply she needed.
Claire closed her eyes, overcome with a stab of a mother’s anxiety. The thought of Danny losing his head and heart over a troubled soul was worse than knowing there was a weirdo at the bottom of her hill.
S
kylar studied Danny’s back from a distance.
What, what,
what
was she doing?
If he turns around, I’ll stay.
“That’s totally juvenile.”
But . . . she waited there on the boardwalk, probably fifty yards from where he sat on the seawall facing the ocean. It was a crowded place, people walking and jogging and biking between them.
“It’s also totally asinine,” she murmured.
Behind her was the parking lot. They’d agreed to meet there because she could not remember how to find his place. He said it was complicated. The area was a maze of beach houses, condos, apartment buildings, shops, bars.
Danny wore a cap, white T-shirt, dark green cargo-type shorts. His physique did not personify “hunk.” No, it was more “Southern California—So-Cal—surfer dude.” Comfortable in his skin. Confidence born from riding the curl of a wave.
And he was just cute. Okay,
adorable
. If she had a mother who baked apple pie and grasped the significance of a flesh-and-blood Wally Cleaver, this guy would be at the top of her short list for son-in-law.
“Sky.”
What was she doing? Did she—
“Sky.” Danny appeared, stepping around from behind her, grinning. “Hey.”
She glanced back and forth between him and the figure on the wall. Yep, the real Danny was standing in front of her. No cap. Blue jeans, not shorts. T-shirt was the same. “Where did you come from?”
“Other side of the parking lot. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
The subtle lift of his brows unnerved her.
“I thought that was you over there.” She pointed.
He looked. “Hmm. Close resemblance. Bunch of clones at this beach. I don’t know how they all got my genetic info.” The brows drew together. “Why didn’t you go over to him?”
“I was on my way.”
“You’ve been standing here a good five minutes.”
“And how do you know that?”
The forehead smoothed, the mouth corners indented, the eyes crinkled. “Been standing back there for five minutes watching you.”
Unnerved
could not begin to describe the state she leapt into now.
He said, “And I was thinking really idiotic, moony things like ‘If she likes me, she’ll sense I’m here and turn around.’”
“You are such a Wally.” Her heart was not in the quip.
Too far gone
, she thought. She was just too far gone. Not good. Not good. “I didn’t turn around.”
“But you wanted to.” Danny extended his arm, palm up. “Are we to the hand-holding stage yet?”
Until that moment, Skylar had no idea sweetness thick as honey could fill the empty corners of a heart.
She put her hand in his, went up on tiptoe, and kissed his cheek.
He squeezed her hand. “Hello-kiss stage too?”
She nodded.
“I’ll buy that.” He smiled. “Want to walk?”
Again she nodded.
There really were no words to say.
S
kylar found plenty of words to say as she and Danny walked barefoot at the ocean’s edge. That honey-thick sweetness she’d felt earlier seemed now to coat them, glazing her spoken thoughts with a depth and truth long missing from her conversations.
Truth as in the big picture. Neither she nor Danny mentioned their life’s laundry lists. Topics like names, dates, and places were not exactly ignored. Instead the focus of their dialogue transcended the particulars of parents, siblings, schools, jobs, travels, and friends. They talked about the war, music, God, what lay on the other side of the waves that lapped at their feet.
Skylar kept Scarlett O’Hara firmly in the driver’s seat. Tomorrow she would think about all the junk, all those particulars, that if spoken aloud would send Danny hightailing it on down the beach. He’d hide himself quicker than the little sand crabs burrowing themselves lickety-split into the sand before them.