Claire smiled. Of course He did.
For the first time in a long while, hope soared. Her and Max’s crazy dream just might work. If
real
guests—people she didn’t know—responded even to a small degree as her family did tonight, they were in good shape. The Hacienda Hideaway was in the business of providing a safe harbor—and great food.
Kevin’s absence left a large hole at the table. Still, it was so good to have her four kids together. They’d grown closer since the fire. At the moment Jenna, Danny, and Lexi were teasing Erik, giving him grief about his video camera on the floor beside him. In recent days it was always within arm’s reach. He refused to disclose what he was really doing. He’d say, “It’s a doc, you know.”
A documentary of family members eating dinner or walking outdoors? Who knew? At least he seemed to be enjoying his work.
Max leaned sideways, his arm against Claire’s, his lips at her ear. “This one.” He touched his fork to his plate, on a piece of lasagna. The vegetable version. “It tastes a little off.”
Her smile fell. Her stomach twisted. Heat crept up her neck. The large table and rustic dining room went out of focus. The chatty voices of ten other people around the table muted.
“Claire.” Max hunched forward now, making eye contact. “What did you hear me say?”
She saw the velvety black eyes, the ones that had resembled lava rock for most of their thirty-plus years of married life.
Just over a year ago she had left him.
Just nine months ago she’d struggled to trust him again.
Just two months ago he’d slipped into old work habits, helping his former partner through a rough time, taking a 24-7 stint at the office for six weeks, closing himself off from her. It was temporary and not quite like in their past, but still . . .
Just that morning she had prayed that in the chaos of opening the Hacienda Hideaway, she would not again lose her voice.
Max put his arm across the back of her chair and gently touched the nape of her neck.
Okay.
He was with her. She took a deep breath and let it out. Not wanting to draw the others’ attention, she whispered. “I heard you say that you don’t want to do this.”
He tilted his head. “Huh?”
“‘This.’ As in run the retreat center. You don’t like the lasagna, ergo you want to fire Skylar, ergo we can’t possibly function this weekend, ergo it’ll be a major flop, ergo we’ll close up shop by Monday.”
“That’s a lot of ‘ergos.’”
“It is.”
“You a little skittish about this venture?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to quit.”
He smiled. “I didn’t imply any of those things.”
“I know.” She grinned. “What you said simply implied that you wouldn’t know good vegetarian if a dump truck backed up and unloaded a ton of it on your head.”
He laughed.
She kissed the corner of his mouth. He really did have an awfully nice mouth.
“Eww!” The cry came from across the table, from Lexi, their youngest and Danny’s twin. “PDA!”
Erik half rose, whipping his camera to eye level, and pointed like a game show host to his cousin. Half Vietnamese, she was his uncle’s daughter who had showed up out of the blue only months before. “Tuyen, you’re on! PDA. Definition!”
The young woman, their orphaned niece whose mother had been Vietnamese, smiled. Erik had been her obvious favorite Beaumont since her arrival the previous spring.
“PDA. It mean—” She rolled her blue eyes, very Jenna-like. “It
means
—”
“It means,” Erik fairly shouted, “hallelujah, your English is improving every day!”
“No. It means—”
“I’d swear you’re from California.”
“Erik!” Tuyen gave him a stern look. “Sit down. You tease too much. No. PDA means ‘public demonstration of affection.’” She looked at Claire and Max. “And you not want—you do not want to PDA in front of guests. It is in bad taste.”
Laughter erupted around the table. The hint of joy impacted everyone. It erased the pain from Jenna’s face. It lightened Danny, who’d been in a funk all evening. Lexi did a little bit of her own PDA as she giggled into the shoulder of Nathan, the sweet reporter she’d been dating. Rosie, Erik’s policewoman girlfriend, lost her usual reserve in a loud belly laugh. Indio chuckled so hard tears ran down her cheeks.
Even Max’s father smiled. He couldn’t quite bring himself to fully welcome Tuyen—the illegitimate daughter of his older son BJ—into the family, but at least he wasn’t rude to her anymore. His blue eyes twinkling now in her direction gave hope of a softening attitude.
Claire breathed a prayer of thanks. It might work. It just might all work.
J
enna slipped away from the after-dinner chaos. Enjoyable as the evening was with her family, the walls had closed in on her.
Outdoors, the wraparound porch offered solitude. Soft lights bathed the old wooden planks that had somehow survived the fire. The thunk of her footsteps resounded across the courtyard.
And reminded her of Kevin.
But then, everything reminded her of Kevin.
He liked to wear his cowboy boots at the hacienda. He liked to thump around the veranda and slap against the stone pathways and kick up the dust at the barn. He loved the Hideaway. He loved family meals in the
sala
.
He would love Tuyen and Rosie and Nathan. And Skylar now. He would like her too. He would love her raspberry crisp.
It hurt that he hadn’t even met any of them. They’d all arrived after he deployed. When he left, the reconstruction from the fire wasn’t near finished. There had been no farewell dinner for him in the sala. Their whole world had changed since he left.
“Jenna!”
At her father’s shout, she turned.
“Jen!” He stood in the sala doorway, waving his telephone. “It’s Kevin!”
Kevin!
She flew back down the porch, her heart racing. Her husband was calling from the other side of the world where it was already tomorrow!
Her dad met her halfway and handed her the cordless, smiling. He went back indoors as she sank onto a nearby bench.
“Kevin!”
“Hi, pretty lady.”
“Oh.” Tears welled and her throat constricted. She whispered, “Hi.”
“Hi.” There was a grin in his voice. “How was the big dinner?”
“You remembered.”
“Are you kidding? This is a major event in the Beaumont family.”
That was Kevin. Too much Beaumont togetherness provoked him at times. Not having grown up in a close-knit family, though, he appreciated being a member of hers.
She smiled. “Ready to change your name yet?”
His low rumble of a laugh tickled her. “Can I say hi to everyone when we’re done?”
“I’m sure that’s why you called here instead of home.”
“Could be.”
“I love you, Kevin.”
“I love you, Jenna. And I miss you more than I can say.”
A long silent moment passed. Precious time was lost, but it was unavoidable. It happened whenever they spoke. As if on cue, they hit a wordless space, its pain too deep for expression.
“Okay,” Kevin said. “Tell me all about tonight.”
And she did.
L
ater that evening, still aglow in the sweetness of hearing Kevin’s voice, Jenna rode with Danny in his pickup truck. As they traveled away from the house lights, an impenetrable blackness engulfed them.
She said, “Even Kevin’s phone call can’t take away the willies this road gives me at night.”
“I know what you mean.” Her younger brother drove confidently down the long, winding, private dirt-and-gravel road. It led from the recently blacktopped parking lot to the highway, a familiar route on which they’d both learned to drive. “You’d think it’d be in the daytime, when you can see the charred trees, but it’s the darkness that does it.”
“I can’t help but think about what they went through that night.” She felt a chill, as she always did, imagining her mother, sister, and grandparents trying to escape a wildfire in the middle of the night. They didn’t make it out, not until the next morning.
She said, “I don’t know how they can live out here.”
“It’s only by God’s healing grace.”
Jenna didn’t reply. She adored her brother. He was fun, intelligent, hardworking, and endearingly Tigger-like in his enthusiasm. But sometimes his pat answers drove her up the wall. He resembled Rosie, but his scarlet letter was less a
C
for Christian than a
G
for Got It All Figured Out.
They reached the highway. At last the headlamp beams picked up some tall leafy trees, evidence of the fire’s hopscotch pattern.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said. “I didn’t want to wait for Erik and Rosie. They were so wound up, they could be there half the night. Isn’t it great to see him sober?”
He grinned. “Yeah. He actually seems to enjoy hanging out with the fam now too.”
“Speaking of the fam, did you hear Skylar refer to us Beaumonts as the Cleavers from
Leave It to Beaver
?” Jenna had insisted Skylar join them for dessert. Her mom’s no-kitchen rule wasn’t going to fly. Guests would want to meet the chef.
She said, “The perfect TV family. Isn’t that wild? Just wait until she gets to know us.”
“It seems like we should get to know her first.” Disapproval laced Danny’s tone.
In the glow from the dashboard, Jenna saw his frown. She recalled his standoffish demeanor as they all ate Skylar’s luscious raspberry crisp. “You have a problem with her.”
He shrugged. “The circumstances are just too plain weird. There’s just something about her . . . It doesn’t quite add up.”
“Danny, that’s not like you. You’re the one with a faith as big as Nana’s, which to most people sounds just too plain weird. Honestly, when we were little kids, I knew this. I’d even ask you to pray for me before recitals. Remember? You’d grab my hand and start right in. ‘O Lord! Have mercy on my big sister. She didn’t practice her piano enough!’” She chuckled. “You were so cute, but I never dared tell my friends what you did.”
“I still pray for you. And Kevin.”
“I know. Thanks.” She didn’t want to go down that road. “About Skylar. She reminds me of kids who stay out on the fringe of things. They sort of sit back and observe, not sure how to fit in.”
“As Erik and Kevin would say, you are a princess. You’re beautiful, smart, and always wear the right clothes. Those kids on the fringe don’t
want
to fit in. For whatever reason, they’re anti-everything. Skylar was mocking us, Jen. The Cleavers were hopelessly unreal, television fluff.”
“I don’t agree. She told me she doesn’t have a family. She never knew her dad. Her mom OD’d on prescription drugs and died when Skylar was eighteen. She couldn’t afford college. I think Skylar knows we’re not perfect, but we have each other, just like the Cleavers.”
“Princess.”
“Boy Scout.”
They rode in silence for a while. The city lay below them now, a vast sea of sparkles. Beyond them, blackness swallowed the ocean.
Danny lived near the ocean and surfed daily, whatever the season. Despite his scarlet
G
, he got along with everyone there from beach bum to tourists who paid for surfing lessons through the shop he owned with his roommate. His main business was software design, which meant he got along with straitlaced business-type clients too.
“Danny, I don’t get you sometimes. You were the first one to accept Tuyen and her crazy story about Uncle BJ living in Vietnam for years after being declared MIA. I still catch myself holding back with her.”
“Only because you’re afraid that Keven might repeat our uncle’s history—go overseas to fight a war and be declared MIA, only to discover years later that he fell in love with someone else over there and had a child with her.”
Jenna flipped her hand, dismissing his ridiculous opinion. “Whatever. And speaking of Kevin, you welcomed him from the start too. He was basically without a family since they all lived so far away in Indiana.”
“Kevin, for some inexplicable reason, adored you. We had to welcome him into the family. You were such a pain as an unmarried princess.”
“Ha-ha. What’s with the Skylar problem? She and Tuyen are both orphans, in need of a home, which in a sense is exactly what Mom and Dad say they want to provide.”
“Tuyen’s country disowned her, and she’s a Beaumont. We really don’t know Skylar’s background. She waltzes in with her long hair and sixteen holes pierced in each ear and hippie clothes—”
“Ohmygosh! You just described your old friends, Faith Simmons and Gunther Walker, from college.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Yeah, yeah,
yeah
. You think Skylar is just like them.”
“I don’t think so. I know she is.”
“She told you she’s an anti-everything weirdo?”
“She doesn’t have to. Her attitude screams it loud and clear.”
“And you think
I’m
judgmental, you snob. Whatever happened to Faith and Gunther?”
“No clue.”
“You three were best friends from, like, kindergarten until college, right? I always imagined you and Faith would end up together. Didn’t she change her name? What was it? Something cheery.”
“Farah Sunshine.”
“Yes. Well, anyway, Mom and Nana think Skylar is wonderful, so maybe you want to stop comparing her to Farah Sunshine and give her a break.”
He didn’t reply for a long moment. “Maybe you can walk from here.”
Jenna looked at him. “And maybe Boy Scouts sometimes make mistakes.”
“Nah. Princesses do, but not Boy Scouts.”
“Oh, stuff it.”
Honestly! He truly drove her up the wall.
She settled back in the seat, crushed by an onslaught of loneliness. It snuffed out her earlier glow. The frustration she felt with Danny was a joy compared to going home to an empty apartment.
S
kylar expected Max would deliver part two of his third degree. She had only hoped he’d at least wait until after her first cup of coffee. But he didn’t. Midmorning the day after the big hoo-ha dinner, he launched into it.
“Skylar,” he said, “we need to talk about your salary and job description. Do you have time now?”
She waited a beat, her eyes on the gurgling coffeemaker. She felt like a carafe full of hot emotions. Max had just added more water inside of her and turned up the heat. Things were starting to spit and hiss.