“It could put them in danger,” she whispered, sounding not much
like a general and more like a frightened child.
“I know. I had the vision. Send them in.” Lilia cut the call as
Eli came into view. She tried to keep him as far away from CIG as she could. A
smile played across her lips as the girls burst from the door, throwing
themselves at him. He was a wonderful father.
Lilia sighed. She looked down at her wedding ring once more. At
least one of them was a good parent. She repeated her own vision to herself.
Aeron had been close.
“A stringed girl and a bright star stand on a huge flat stretch.
The school hangs on the edge, its walls hide truth from prying eyes. Letters
make them hide and hands reach out, money thrust at them. It’s too bright, the
light, they cower from greedy hands. Broken lock, noble heart, and shield
understand with faith they can soar.”
She sighed. That was where Aeron’s attempt at the vision and her
own differed. “Three friends cannot hold behind masks and hurt, and these three
remain, faith, hope . . .”
Lilia sighed, rubbing her head. “One is left behind to face her
fear.” She tried not to shudder at the flash of one of them gasping for air.
She didn’t know which one but she knew it was either Aeron, Frei, or Renee. One
of them was in great danger.
As a mother she would stop the mission going ahead. As a mother
she would never risk it.
Once again she was placing CIG and her visions above what her
heart demanded. It was Aeron’s duty as much as hers now. She believed in them.
She believed in Aeron so much it made every part of her ache.
It made her a great leader. She watched the girls wrap themselves
around Eli and sighed. A great leader but a terrible mother.
Chapter 12
I’D MET FATHER James McLaughlin in Serenity Hills. Back then, I’d
been expecting him to treat me as everyone else had on account of my burdens
but he hadn’t. To me, meeting him had felt like a turning point in my life.
He’d told me all about the armor which I visualized to protect myself.
Now, he was sitting, munching on sandwiches outside the café in
the CIG base and it hit me how much and how little things had changed. I
weren’t inside no more. Technically I was a free woman. Only, I couldn’t leave
the base without an escort and I knew Renee, Frei, or my dear mother would be
hot on my heels if I tried it.
Freedom was relative.
Back in Serenity, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to him. He’d
told me that he was a Jesuit priest and he’d been one of the coolest people I’d
talked to.
Watching him sit there munching away, I realized that he was
probably in his thirties, maybe forties. He had wavy black hair and a bit of
fluff on his chin that made him look more like an artist than a priest. His
entire facial hair was a rusty color in complete contrast from his head and he
had twinkly green eyes.
“Hello, Aeron, you hungry?” He held out his sandwich box to which
I shook my head. I weren’t much into pickles. “I had a very strange urge to
come and find you. Care to explain?”
Didn’t that throw me? Some opening line. “An urge?”
He nodded, beaming at me like I was an old friend. “I can’t say
I’ve ever experienced that before but where the spirit takes you . . .”
“I kinda do . . . need your help, I mean . . .” I “umm-ed” and
“ah-ed,” trying to figure out how I was gonna explain it. “You know I’m kinda
freaky?”
He chomped on his pickle sandwich and grinned at me.
“Thing is . . . I tried to help somebody. I healed them . . .” I
sighed. He was gonna think I was crazy. “They didn’t ask me to and . . .”
He rolled up the packaging his sandwich was in and nodded. “Ah.”
“Ah?” What did that mean? Doctors made noises like that as if they
enjoyed making folks tense up or cling onto the nearest surface.
“What is the result of it?” He placed his trash in the recycling
and I realized he was wearing jeans. Sure, he had a dog collar on but jeans and
boots and a big coat too. Why I thought priests would be different, I didn’t
know but this guy looked . . . like everybody else.
“Nan said that they are taking it away until I learn to ground
myself and understand what it all means.” I shrugged. “I feel like I been set
free but Nan reckoned I needed you and she’s always right.”
He laughed. “She sounds like a wise lady.”
“Even more so now she’s on the . . .” How did I explain this one?
“Er . . . She’s more spiritual these days. Emphasis on the spirit.” I smiled.
Nan was something else. “I miss her.”
“And how does Nan think that you should be grounded?” He didn’t
seem to miss a beat that I was talking about somebody who’d passed on.
“She said you can help me with meditations or somethin’, that I
can build a solid foundation by doing that?” I hoped he knew what I was talking
about ’cause I didn’t have a clue.
“The nineteenth annotation no doubt.” He rubbed his hands
together. “It’s a retreat in daily living, but Aeron, it’s about you and God.
Are you open to that?”
“I ain’t even sure what I think apart from good being better than
the opposite.” Nan had faith. I guess I believed in stuff but my preconception
of what religious folks were like didn’t enamor me to their cause. Still, twice
now when I’d needed it, scripture had come into its own so what was the harm in
trying?
“You sure about that?” There was no judgment in his voice, just
simple curiosity.
“Well, the armor worked. When I was in St. Jude’s—and yeah, the
name weren’t lost on me—Nan helped me out with another passage.” I bit my lip,
shoving my hands in my pockets. “I guess it feels like a new discovery at the
moment, you know?”
“The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good
heart.” He smiled at me.
“Seed?” I could picture that, and there was the noble heart again.
“So how do I do this?”
“I’m not just going to shove you in the deep end. Why don’t we
take a walk, sit for a while, and see how you feel?” He was a spritely kinda
guy and even without abilities I could feel the energy pulsing off him. A calm
energy. An energy of somebody who understood a lot more about everything than I
did or at least acted like it.
I SPENT THE afternoon with James as he made me call him. I hadn’t
ever felt quite as relaxed and peaceful before. As I walked back to my quarters
down the main drag, I was in the kind of mood that I wanted to whistle. The
mood where you bounce along, seeing the world in a happy light. I was one of
those folks with a happy disposition anyhow but meditating felt good. I could
work with it. Yeah.
“Lorelei, I need you to come up here.”
I turned at the sound of Frei’s voice. It weren’t like her to
holler from the window. “Sure thing.”
When I strutted into the reception, Miss Bitter-boots was present
and scowling.
“Is she in?” I asked as gentle as I could. I hated the fact that
the woman had lost so much. How could I help her? In a fleeting thought, I
wished I could have my gifts back and at least take away some of the pain she
was in.
“You got an appointment?” Bitter, hurt, and venomous.
“Does her yelling that she wanted to see me from her window
count?” I curtailed my wish to flash her a smile. It had riled her up good and
proper the last time.
“No.” She folded her arms and glared at me.
“You know. My great-aunt Mrs. Stein is kinda sour faced too. She
walks around like she’s sucking on a lemon.” I nodded at the scowl shot my way.
“You know what happened to her?”
“Do I care?” Snarky but through barrier one.
“Yup, seeming as you’re heading her way an’ all.” If that didn’t
reel her in, I would need a bigger rod.
“What happened?” She was quieter now, worry wrinkled her brow.
“Nothin’. She ain’t ever moved on, ain’t ever let go, she just got
more bitter.” I leaned on the desk. “Suffering, however it hits you, rips your
life apart.”
“What would you know about it?” Now she was on the defensive.
She’d suffered. How could I ever hurt like she had? How would I know her pain?
Pain and guilt, they were nearly as bad as fear.
“Nothin’ much. I mean I spent most of my life in a mental
institution for a crime I didn’t commit, lost my best buddy when he got hit by
a train, saw a load of young girls killed . . . you want me to keep going?” We
could do this all day.
Her eyes widened and then she sighed. “How can I smile when I feel
so guilty?”
“You know, I’m working on that myself. What I figure is that guilt
is like lifting weights. At some point you got to stop adding on or it’ll crush
you.”
Renee would have been able to give her some coping mechanism or
maybe a plan to help her let it go. I wasn’t an expert just a fellow sufferer.
“You don’t know me or nothin’ but somebody wise once told me that
talking ’bout it can help. It don’t cure, but I guess it helps you get it
straight in your head.”
“Talking about it doesn’t change that it happened.” She stared
down at her fingernails.
“No, nothing will, but I’m willing to listen if you need to rant
or anything. I’m no shrink, so I’ll just do that, listen.”
Her eyes met mine like she was gonna hurl a load of abuse at me
for being a busybody but I guess she saw I meant it. “I won’t but it’s nice to
know you offered.”
“It’s an ongoing one.”
“Aeron?” Renee stood in the doorway, her eyes filled with
affection, her voice soft like she was trying to hug me with it. “We need you
upstairs.”
I nodded to the receptionist, then turned. “I never asked your
name.”
She smiled at me and went back to her computer. “And I’ve never
told you.”
For some reason that made me chuckle. In a place where everybody
knew everyone’s name, she weren’t playing. I liked that.
I followed Renee through the doorway. She closed it, stopped, and
pulled me into a bear hug. Then she took my hand and led me up the stairs. “I’ve
seen you do some amazing things, but somehow you always surprise me.”
I was still kinda stunned from the hug. What I do? “I don’t get
you.”
She nudged into me. “Which is what makes it all the more
wonderful.” She squeezed my hand and strode through some glass doors at the
top. Inside looked like a classroom. A load of tables and chairs all facing a
board. Frei perched on the edge of one, sipping her coffee. She didn’t look at
all mad that I’d made her wait.
“Lilia, Aeron has just come in.” Frei raised her voice like she
was calling to her across the room. I looked around, wondering if she’d gone
loopy in the stifling heat. What was with the heating?
“I hear you’re doing wonderfully,” my mother said.
“Congratulations on passing your test.”
What did I say to that? I knew kids in high school had been bought
cars and given gifts for passing their tests. It was a big thing. A little
portion . . . okay, most of me . . . felt pretty happy that my mother was
pleased and proud.
“Thanks.” It came out as a grunt. The one teenagers do in the
periods where speech becomes too much effort.
“And you saw something?”
I looked at Frei who had the greatest poker face, period.
Helpful.
“I just . . . It just came out.”
Renee smiled at me, nodding encouragement, but that was it. I had
just said a load of stuff.
“Ursula has pinpointed some locations for you. Look at the map and
see what you—”
“Caprock,” I blurted out, then frowned. Had Frei told me that?
How’d I remembered that? Huh?
Frei’s lips twitched in a smile while I turned around on the spot,
wondering how and where that had come from. I didn’t have burdens, they took
them away. How could I have known that?
“That’s the most plausible option,” Frei said in a bored voice.
“We’ll follow Lorelei.”
“Well done.” My mother sounded so proud. I didn’t know why, like
she’d ever helped me with anything. “Move ahead with it. Let me know if you
need me.”
Frei and Renee nodded to each other.
“Aeron,” my mother said. “Daddy and the girls send their love.
Mrs. Squirrel has him bringing home nuts for her latest litter.”
That brought the biggest, dumbest smile to my face. Mrs. Squirrel.
Man, I loved her feisty little butt. “Tell her to stop stealing the foam from
his car seat or he’ll cotton on that it’s her.”
I rubbed my head. This was crazy. I couldn’t know that stuff. I
wasn’t meant to know or see or feel nothing. Huh?
“Will do. Good luck, girls.”
My mother hung up as I stomped over to the window. Maybe Nan had
got the message mixed up or something. If not, it was the shortest taste of
freedom yet.
“Renee, you know what you need to do when you go in. You have the
files. If you need to confer, send the message the usual way.” Frei tapped the
files Renee had picked up off the desk.
“Will you be okay?” Renee squeezed my elbow as she passed. “I’ll
have to act like I don’t know you at all. I don’t want you to think it’s real.”
There was the Renee I knew and loved. I smiled down at her. She
was looking official in a fresh skirt suit. She looked cool. “I can’t say it’s
gonna be easy. You guys will have to help me, a lot.”
“I’ll keep you so busy, you won’t even realize you miss her,” Frei
said. She was in uniform too but in pants and a shirt. Both looked unfazed by
the heat. I was close to shoving open the window to cool off.
I knew they were both trying to make me feel better but Frei’s
comment just made me think that she’d be running me through drills the entire
time. Not fun.
“Don’t pull that face,” Frei said, her lips twitching like she
either wanted to smile or maybe had wind. “You’ll love it.”
I met Renee’s eyes, which twinkled, gray, clear, and full of
affection. “One thing about Ursula you need to know, it’s
never
dull.”
She turned but I grabbed Renee. Without thinking, I pulled her
into a hug. I hung on, not sure why, but I soaked up every ounce of comfort
from it I could. I was soft, I knew that, but it felt like I was just getting
to see her out of her shell and off we were going again. I’d missed her.
“Quit it, dimwit,” she whispered, squeezing me like she’d miss me
just as much.
“Least you’ll get some peace from me, right?” I let her go,
knowing Frei had probably rolled her eyes and muttered to herself.
“If you think that, you don’t know me very well.” She squeezed my
hand, kissed me on the cheek, and headed to the door. She stopped and glanced a
sheepish smile at Frei before looking at me. “Just don’t ride in the rain . .
.” She held up her finger. “Or ice . . . or wind . . . or dusty conditions.”
She leaned against the doorjamb. “And let Urs know where you are . . .” She bit
her lip. “And make sure you eat, regularly . . .” She glanced at Frei and
sighed. “I know, moving.”