Return To Us (Sand & Fog Series Book 6)

by Susan Ward

  Here the world seems simple and understandable.

  Every day temperate and sensually lazy.

  Slow-paced living bathed in quiet.

  Peace.

  The problems of the world seem held at a distance by the mountains and the oceans encircling this small saucer of land. Yet hope that the world and the people in it could be what they should resides here…well, at least that’s what Jack always believed.

  Happy memories roll one by one through my head. Mexican food family dinners on the patio. The laughter. The music. All of us together. My grandfather wandering the beach with his wife, Linda, at his side. Or Jack sitting alone on the cliffs above the ocean every dawn and sunset.

  I push against my lids with my fingers, feeling fresh tears. Jack won’t be there when I reach Hope Ranch. He’s gone, and nothing will ever be the same again.

  “Hey, come on, Eric,” Graham says, standing above me. “We need to get you home. Don’t let the empty tarmac fool you. We’ve still got quite a journey to get through before you’re with your family.”

  I don’t feel like talking so I don’t. But quite a journey? What the fuck does that mean? It’s a ten-minute drive at most from the airport to Hope Ranch. I’m not sure what Graham’s giving me the heads-up over. It’s after 9:00 p.m. The streets roll up at eight in Santa Barbara; it’s that kind of town.

  As I rise from my seat, the team is already in action: Brayden and Hank down the steps to the tarmac, and Graham Carson standing ramrod straight beside the cabin door. As I move toward him, I peek out the window. The SUV has moved right up to the base of the boarding stairs. It surprises me that there isn’t only one vehicle there, but a small caravan of three.

  Security traveling in front and behind me as I drive the narrow, sure to be vacant streets home, and I wonder what’s up with that. All that security for me. Dad probably being paranoid like always. It’s lame; I’d laugh if I had the energy to.

  Graham precedes me out and I wait in the opening, feeling the wind scented and softened by the Pacific brushing my cheeks. I inhale deeply the cleanness and pleasant fragrance of the air here, then rapidly trot down the steps and move through the open back seat door.

  The door’s slammed shut behind me, and the men talk rapidly back and forth. Then Graham’s beside me and we’re moving.

  Off the tarmac at the exit to the road, what I see beyond the windows sends my eyes wide. What the fuck? There was no press at the runway because there’s a line of police with a barricade so they couldn’t get near me.

  As we inch at a crawl onto the main surface street that goes from Santa Barbara through Goleta, I realize why there are police accompanying me. The streets are packed, there are cars everywhere, music blasting—I can’t breathe my throat’s too tight—my grandfather’s music, people holding signs and lit candles.

  I rapidly scan in both directions. We’re miles from Hope Ranch, still in the aged downtown of Goleta, surrounded by single-story buildings, last-century tract homes, orchards, and with each passing signal light the crowd enlarges.

  “This started yesterday,” Graham murmurs softly. “When news got out that your grandfather was ill. It’s all through the city, Eric. This demonstration of love for Jack.”

  The tears stream down my face unchecked. “He’d be blown away if he could see this.”

  Graham pats my thigh. “He can see it, Eric. And he can see you. And there’s nothing on this Earth that could please him more than seeing how well you are and knowing you’re home.”

  IT’S LESS THAN TWO miles from the high black metal arched Hope Ranch sign to Jack’s house atop the beach, but it takes us thirty minutes to get through the final leg home. Every inch of shoulder along the narrow, twisting tree-lined road is a memorial to Jack.

  Flowers. Notes for him and the family. Candles. People on foot, wandering around, crying and studying the display, holding each other, and looking to stare after me as I slowly pass by.

  I feel like I should stop. Say something. Thank them; I don’t know what. It’s leveling how many people love him. The quality of the life he lived is here, walking on this street, needing to grieve and say goodbye to him. I’ve never seen anything like it and I doubt I ever will again.

  Sometimes I snap pictures. I’ll send them to Willow while I talk to her tonight. Everything I’m feeling will feel more right if I share it with her.

  I see the stucco wall and tall iron gate leading into Grandpa’s property. It makes me smile. Jack hated that, as there never was a security wall between him and the world before my mom married Alan. I’m pretty sure he just let it be built to shut my dad up, but I can’t deny its usefulness with what I’m seeing on the street.

  The gates slowly open and we roll through, stopping in the circle driveway in front the house. There are men from Black Star Security positioned every five feet or so along the perimeter. My grandfather’s home is not a very opulent place for such a grand man to have lived in his entire life. But it’s one of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever known. A single-story Spanish hacienda, with white stucco walls and a red tile roof. The landscaping out front is basic. Grass and vegetation natural to the area. Above the roofline you can see the century-old tall eucalyptus trees out back that edge the property all the way to the cliffs.

  No one owns the land, EJ. We’re just the caregivers, Jack used to say. If you want to tap into the good of this earth you have to live as simply on the land as you can. That’s when you find the best man you can be and become him.

  Staring at the house, I wonder what made me remember that. My thoughts conflate with my days in Capitol Hill, bringing a symmetry to my life I hadn’t realized before. Making me aware of a symmetry to who I am and who Jack was that I hadn’t realized we’d shared.

  Maybe I’m not just like my dad. Maybe there’s some Jack in me after all. It feels good to believe that even if I’m not certain of it yet.

  “Everyone is inside waiting for you,” says Graham as I climb out of the SUV.

  I shake his hand, feeling the need for some kind of gesture. “Thanks, Graham, for everything you’ve done today.”

  He smiles, his steely gray eyes softening a bit. “I’m here for the long haul if you need me.”

  I jut my chin at Hank standing discreetly before the front of the vehicle with Brayden. I’ve been in such a fog since Seattle, I haven’t so much as acknowledged him yet, but I want him to know we’re cool even if he’s got a lot of explaining left to do.

  It’s only about twenty feet from the driveway into the house. In the darkness and with how I’m feeling it looks so far. I’m anxious to be with my family and Hana and simultaneously overwhelmed knowing I’m going to be.

  Willow’s voice floats through my head. Even when the things that happen in your life are good things, they’re hard and scary. Yeah, baby, you’re right. Good things can be hard and scary. She wasn’t just talking about her apartment and giving up her job at Mel’s. She was talking about us, too. Only I missed it, dumb Eric again, and the chance to tell her that’s how you know it’s something worth doing.

  The front door is flung open.

  A face peeks out, one that makes my heart jackhammer faster. Golden blond hair and bright blue eyes, a little cherub dressed in a puffy floral pink sundress.

  “Daddy!” Hana screams, running toward me.

  My heart swells until it feels like it extends to the tips of my limbs, and in a second my daughter’s in my arms and I’m crying.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Eric

  CLOSING MY EYES, I ROCK Hana gently. “I missed you, Hana.”

  “I missed you, too,” she sputters through sobs. Her enormous azure eyes fix on me. “You’re staying, right, Daddy?”

  Her question rends my heart. I’ve heard that out of her mouth more times than I can count, but it’s never hit me like it has now. Fuck, I’m not even through the door and she’s asking me if I’m staying.

  I sniff b
ack tears, fighting against the tight pucker of my lips and managing a smile for her. “Never leaving again, banana. I’m home.”

  I know it’s the truth even before she wraps her arms tightly around my neck and I kiss her vigorously across her hair. She’s like holding sunshine in a bottle; my biceps quiver from the emotion coursing through me.

  A shadow falls across the porch light above us and I sense someone close behind me. “Eric, you should get her inside,” Graham Carson murmurs, and everything forgotten from the sight of my daughter comes sharply into focus in my head. The people beyond the gates watching. The fucking press.

  My legs feel like rubber, but I somehow stand with her in my arms and step inside the house. I wander to the end of the foyer as the front door is closed behind me and I turn at the edge of the single step for the sunken living room.

  They’re all there. My entire family.

  “EJ,” my mom shrieks, racing toward me like a tiny cyclone, not waiting for me to set down Hana before she surrounds me with her arms.

  “Mom.” My insides are quaking, little jerks to my esophagus making saying more impossible. I’ve never seen Chrissie like this, clinging tightly to me, weeping into me and Hana like she’s never going to let us go. I find my voice. “I’m here, Mom.”

  She nods against my chest. “I need all you kids here with me now. The family together. That’s how we get through this. We’re each other’s strength.”

  Having Hana in my arms, I get that in a way I’ve never understood before. “We’re all here for you, Mom. Always.”

  My dad steps forward. Alan’s crying, though he’s wiping his eyes maybe hoping I don’t notice. “You look good, son.”

  “I am good, Dad.”

  Chrissie steps back and he surrounds me with his arms, mindful of Hana filling my left side, and embraces me the way he would Ethan when that’s something that’s never been us.

  His hold tightens. “I’m here,” I repeat mindlessly. “I’m good, Dad. It’s just taken me a hell of a long time to get that way. I love you both so much. I’m sorry I wasn’t here…when Grandpa…I’m sorry for everything, but I’m home. For good.”

  “Bobby, take Hana. I need to hug my brother.”

  I look up and there’s Kaley. Wide black eyes and beautiful at thirty-nine, tears streaming down her face. I laugh because Hana won’t go from my arms to her Uncle Bobby’s, so I wrap one arm around my sister and hold her hard against my chest.

  “Good to see you, brat,” she says, loud and her voice full of emotions. Oh, big sisters…they never change. She’s still gruff with us siblings, fast with the nicknames she gave us all, and I’m loving it.

  “Missed you, sis.”

  She steps back and my other two sisters barrel toward me, and I’m in a tight knit of Khloe and Krystal’s arms.

  “We missed you so much, Eric,” Krystal sputters through tears. “When we couldn’t reach you this morning…” She can’t finish and I’m relieved because I don’t want to think about not being here when it happened.

  It takes a while to get through the herd, as my dad calls us—my three sisters, my two brothers-in-law, Bobby and Jake, Ethan and Avery, all my nieces and nephews, my mom’s sister, Madison—their welcome and hugs, and the raw emotion in the room from being surrounded by them is a shock to my system, more than I’m used to.

  But this is us.

  It’s everything.

  Family always.

  I get it now, Mom and Dad.

  Having Hana curled on my chest drives it all home.

  They’re all talking at me at once and I’m trying to keep up when I realize Linda’s not here.

  I glance at Madison and frown. “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s sitting in the chair next to the bed like she has every day since Dad got sick.”

  How she says that rips at my heart. Jack and Linda. If it’s hard for me to think of one without the other, I can’t imagine how fucking hard it is for Linda.

  “Do you think it’d bother her if I went in to see her?”

  Madison lifts her tear-stained face—surprised, as I’m pretty sure that request…well, out of me…is unexpected—and gives me a sad smile. “No. I think she’d like that.”

  I bury my face in Hana’s hair, inhale her sweet kid scent, then set her on my dad’s lap. “You stay with Grandpa. I’ll be right back, OK?”

  “Fast,” she says, hoarse and husky.

  I kiss her forehead. “Like the Flash. I promise.”

  Hana sniffles and nods, and as my gaze falls on my dad’s, his black eyes are bright with approval and so much more.

  It’s a humbling thing to see his generosity of emotion after all the shit I’ve put them through. I’m the prodigal son, I always have been, only I don’t see it in how my family looks at me. Maybe it was never there. Maybe this is how my dad always looked at me. Maybe it was something I only imagined because, fuck, I felt I deserved. I don’t know. Whatever the right answer, it doesn’t matter tonight. It might not ever.

  I go down the hallway to the end and knock on the closed bedroom door. “It’s Eric. Can I come in?”

  “Only if you promise not to cry all over me the way Chrissie does,” she warns, making me smile. Always a wisecrack from Linda. She doesn’t have me fooled. I can hear the rawness in her voice.

  I slowly inch open the door and she raises her beautiful face, stunning even in her seventies, and I can see it’s splotchy red like everyone else’s.

  “Hi,” I whisper.

  “Hi,” she shoots back, shoving her tissue into her pocket.

  “You want company?”

  “Are you going to come kiss this old lady or just stare at me?”

  It feels out of place, but I laugh anyway. Old isn’t a word one instantly associates with Linda. “Probably both.”

  “Then come in.”

  I plant a quick kiss on her soft cheek. Linda’s never been a touchy-feely woman, and then she surprises me by clutching me tight. “You look good, kid.”

  “I am good. Why are you all alone in here?”

  She arches a brow. “You’ve been out there. Tell me, where would you be?”

  I sink down on the bed, facing her. “I’d be here.”

  “You’re more like Jack than you know.” She pats my cheek, then settles back against her chair. “It’s good to see you, EJ. You were the light of Jack’s eye this past year, in case you don’t know it. He lived your life vicariously through every text and email. He loved what you were doing. I’m sure he thought it was very sixties. Taking to the streets. Learning the real things in life and finally taking time to figure out yourself. Nothing could light him up faster than a text from you and hearing your stories. And he was so…proud of you.”

  I’m choked up again. I wipe her new onslaught of tears away with my fingers. “I wish I’d been here. Got the chance to tell him how much I loved him and how much he’d done for me.”

  “Didn’t have to. He knew—” She sobs.

  I take her in my arms, not caring if she’s not a hugger because I am now, and hold her close to me. “Hush, Linda. I didn’t want to make you cry again.”

  “Can’t be helped, EJ. I look at you and I see him.”

  THERE’S A LARGE HEAVY cherrywood table next to the wall of glass overlooking the Pacific, and I surveil the content lying atop it, then gesture with my hand. “What’s all this, Linda?”

  “Oh.” She dabs at her nose with a tissue. “I was waiting for you to get home before I gave them out. Or maybe I should wait until after the funeral. I haven’t decided.”

  My brow crinkles as I study the sealed envelopes. One for each member of the family, our names boldly printed on the face. “It looks like Grandpa’s writing.”

  “It is.” I watch her rise from the chair and come to me. “I found them there the morning he died, and I knew it meant he was leaving. See that list there? It’s his funeral instructions. I’m sure he wanted to m
ake it clear, since your mother and I can’t agree on anything. I don’t even know how he did it or got them all neatly set out on the table. You know how Jack was. If he had something to say, he had to say it.”

  I do a fast read of his burial instructions. Details for a celebration of life. He never wanted a funeral, any remembrance, but given the state I’d found my mom in I’m sure he changed his mind, a gift from him to Chrissie—to us— via the act of burying him. It’s too much to take in. This night has all been too much to take in.

  “Mine probably says”—I mimic Jack’s voice—“EJ, you can be a man or a fuckup.”

  “No one can make you a fuckup unless you’re willing. Don’t be a fuckup,” Linda finishes, poking me in the ribs, and we both laugh through our tears.

  IT’S AFTER 2:00 a.m. before I get Hana to go to sleep in her bed. I wasn’t with Linda long, but how my daughter latched onto me when I returned warned me that there’s a lot going on with her I’ve gotta work through.

  I stare down at her in her bed, wondering if I should stretch out beside her, sleep here so she sees me first thing when she wakes, or go to the room my mom assigned to me. It’s quiet in here with her, and being with Hana softens the edges of the things roiling through me after being back in the thick of my entire family.

  After switching off her light, I head to the hallway. From the stillness of the house, I know I’m the only one still up. I debate going to my bedroom, then head for the French door in the kitchen and out across the lawn.

  I sink down on the spot, my grandfather’s place, on the edge of the cliffs. He sat always in this exact spot. Never an inch to the right or left, here, where I’m sure he set that lone small bolder on the grass so he’d never be off.

  Behind me are two chaise lounges. Sometimes Jack passed time there with Linda, but never at dawn or dusk. None of us kids know why this is his spot. What drew him here. But for as long as I can remember, Jack on the cliffs was a constant in my world.

  It occurs to me that it’s surprisingly metaphorical. Peacefulness on the edge of a plunging fall and certain death. The beach is far below, and beyond it the vast expanse of the ocean. But here the grass is soft, the wind sweeps upward from the water, pushing you back not forward, and the sky seems closer.