by Marx, J. A.
Isaac stepped closer.
Her hand rose, shielding her face from his view. Withdrawing again.
Let me read you. His job had trained him to see panic, fear, fatigue and judge the level of responsiveness through a person’s eyes. His heart longed to see beyond the physical.
Fizzling waves licked at his feet, sinking the sand beneath his toes. The sand sank; it didn’t withdraw. It had no power to fight nature’s force.
Like Hope. Maybe she was sinking, not withdrawing, fading in her ability to stand under the straining circumstances.
Isaac stuffed his hands back in his pockets. “Sorry I came across so harshly.”
Her hand shield lowered. “And I know you’re not playing with my head. I also know that I am intruding on your vacation.”
“No.” He touched her shoulder. “We’re glad you’re here, in a … strange sort of way.” That sounded stupid.
Disbelief tinted her moonlit face.
“I mean, you’re not a burden to us at all.” Though he wanted to keep her talking, he lacked the words, for once. How could he get her back to the bungalow without resistance?
“What do you think is really going on? With me.” Her unexpected openness captured his breath.
Tilting forward, he tried to see her eyes. “You talking about the amnesia and flashbacks or the shaking and pain at the table?”
She pawed the sand with her foot and shrugged. “The latter, I guess.”
“So you admit it?”
Although he’d asked that with warmth, it made her scowl. “Why do you insist on making this so difficult?”
“Do you admit to hurting or not?”
Her scowl melted into a pout. “I was hurt—” She twisted around and stared toward the tree tunnel.
Refusing to encourage her paranoia, he kept his focus seaward. “I think you’re experiencing spiritual warfare.”
She zapped him with a look of offense. “Spiritual!”
“Yes.” Finally able to search her eyes, he spotted fear. “A war that human vision can’t see.”
“I don’t believe in spiritual stuff.”
“Bet you will before the week is up.”
Her minor disclosure satisfied him, so he didn’t press the subject. He knew she was fighting a losing battle, an emotional one that would eventually tire her out. Too much goading in one night might push her over the edge, and he didn’t know where that edge would lead.
“I’ll walk you back.” He elbowed her lightly, and she accepted the escort.
She’ll trust me. Eventually.
Lord Vétis tightened the link on the chain that held his scarab beetle, which Kiko had dutifully dug out of the sand and returned to him earlier that evening. According to the Asian, Isaac had buried the power source on the beach. Foolish mongrel.
Climbing onto the bungalow’s back porch, Vétis crouched behind the charcoal grill and spied through the glass door.
Riki was bundling the couch in bed linens … subdued by her lack of identity.
“Subdued.” Reveling in this gratuity of fate, he now needed merely to monitor the chosen one from a distance and await the elected hour.
He trusted that her training foundation would endure mongrel corruption. All the same, he prayed, “Let our efforts to keep her uncontaminated withstand this trial.”
If this sampling of worldly self-indulgence enfeebled Riki’s character, Vétis would burn the Americans alive. At the waterhole, he would have terminated the Christmas recital if he’d had a suitable weapon. Tonight, hiding in the tree tunnel and armed with a thin vine, he denied himself the pleasure of lynching Isaac.
Eliminating one mongrel would alert the others to his existence. “I desire a grander entrance.”
Ah, hindsight. He should have committed the act and blamed it on Riki, which wouldn’t be a first. Once Lux transportation arrived, the Americans would pay the penalty for all violations.
He took out his pouch. “Forces of the Air, deafen her ears to deception. Turn hospitality into rejection.”
After the chosen one turned off the lamp and drew the sheet over her head, he blew a palm full of foul powder at the glass door. “Confusion … Alienation …”
Initiating Riki into Phase II would eliminate the concerns of worldly infection.
“Two days left.” Vétis continued mining for flora to produce a tranquilizer.
Chapter 25
“Dynamite!
Hope raced toward the hatchway. People grabbed at her, tripped her. She groped the slippery deck, crawling … out of time. In a frenzy, she launched off the pillow. “Ahh!”
A hand covered her mouth, and she seized the person’s arm.
“It’s me. Isaac,” he whispered.
Tightening her grip, she studied the shadowy figure through moonbeams, making sure he wasn’t the haunting silhouette.
Sitting opposite her in boxers and a T-shirt, Isaac detached his arm from her clutches. “You were hyperventilating.”
Another nightmare. Her hands trembled. “What time is it?”
“Around two.”
She drew up the sheet to shut out the shivers and scanned the room. They were alone. “Did I wake you?”
“I was getting water.” A half-empty glass on the coffee table vouched for him. “You looked like you were about to scream.”
And your hand was a well-timed plug. The last thing she needed was the kindness squad crowding her, questioning the petrified shrieks, again. Easing back onto the pillow, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Have a bad dream?” Isaac took the glass from the table.
“Horrible. I couldn’t wake up.”
He guzzled the last of the water then wiped his chin with his shirt. “Wanna talk about it?”
If she didn’t get it off her mind she’d stew over it until morning. “I was in a candlelit room decorated for a birthday party. Guests were in robes, singing around a three-tiered cake. The kind you jump out of.”
His head tilted. “Jump out of?”
“You know. Big.” She elevated herself to her elbows. “Anyway, this guy stuck a figurine on top of it of a monster carrying a girl.”
He nodded. “A twisted version of the kind they put on wedding cakes?”
“Sure.” That interpretation nearly made her gag. “Anyway, I kept telling him to take the thing off the cake. Then this woman brought in candles. Only they were sticks of dynamite.” Already feeling lighter, she sat up and hooked the fallen pajama sleeve back over her shoulder. "You woke me before they exploded.”
Isaac smiled, motioned her on.
“You woke me before they exploded.” Feeling lighter, she sat up and hooked the fallen pajama sleeve back over her shoulder.
“That is a crazy dream.” Isaac’s wavy blond hair, usually strewn every which way, had been plastered to his head by a pillow.
The sight of him amused her. “Thanks for listening. You’re …”
He returned the glass to the table. “I’m so what?”
Don’t trust him.
But he hadn’t given her any reason not to trust him.
You’ll regret it.
The room’s pale glow abruptly dimmed. She looked out at the clouds intercepting the moon and—
Isaac’s hand soared into the air like a whip seeking its target.
Gasping, Hope zipped an arm up to block. Nothing struck her. She peeked out from under her elbow.
Moving slowly, Isaac turned on the lamp behind her head, shedding light on his harmless intentions.
The room echoed with her shame. Labeling herself the idiot, Hope pulled the sheet up to her chin and covered one burning cheek with her fist.
He nudged her hand away from her face. “Did you think I was going to hit you?”
His gentleness stunned her out of a response. Expecting to be teased, she hid both cheeks behind her fists, trembling.
Without a sound, the safetyman rose and turned.
Don’t leave. She whispered quickly, “I don’t
understand you.”
A somber pause. He sat back down. “What don’t you understand?”
Telling her secrets meant she’d have to swim naked in the moat, unsure of the water’s depth. She scooted into the corner of the couch, keeping her knees tight against her chest. “Promise not to laugh?”
His gaze tuned in as if she were the only person on the planet. “I promise.”
A strange melodrama kindled inside her, unpredictable and combustive. Was it her memory trying to come back?
She bunched up the sheet in both hands. “I guess I’ll understand where these impressions come from when my memory comes back. If it does.”
“It will.” Moving to the floor, he granted her unspoken request for personal space.
“It’s the way you guys treat—” Keep breathing, Hope. She lifted the cover to her eyebrows. “This is sounding stupid already.”
“It doesn’t to me.” He held her foot, the only exposed part of her, and gave it a squeeze.
Don’t make excuses. Just talk. She lowered the sheet a bit. “Yesterday, when you told me the bathroom door had no lock, I was sure one of you would intrude and hurt me. But you didn’t. Then I came to and saw the sheet. Covering me.”
Eyes clouding, she slogged through nameless emotions that bubbled up. Her defenses failed her. Tears spilled out. Weakness unmasked.
“You don’t have to go on.”
I’ve come this far. She mopped her face with the sheet. “The way you guys speak to me. The way you watch after me, even how you look at me. It’s all so different. So full of …” She lacked a description for their conduct.
“Respect?”
“Affirmative. And at the waterhole, not one of you threatened me or manipulated me like I thought you would.” She rubbed one blurry eye. “And doubly strange is how I feel when I’m around you guys. It’s this sense of …” She hunted again for vocabulary.
“Protection?”
The word made her mind whirl. He understood her. “Yes. And this feels like the first time in my life that no one is going to”—Hope identified this word too easily— “hurt me.”
Confiding in the safetyman might widen the noxious flask enough for her to squeeze out.
Isaac hadn’t anticipated so much openness from the girl behind the emotional stone shutters.
Glistening in the lamplight, Hope’s tear-stained cheeks plundered his heart. Her confession supported her actions and validated the lack of trust—including the recent cowering episode. He could finally brand her as a genuine human with a soul.
“You guys act as if our interactions are normal.” Tears saturated the edge of the sheet. “It feels so alien being around you and being treated like this that I don’t want to remember my past.”
He squeezed her foot. “Afraid you won’t like what you find?”
A quick nod and her face went into hiding.
Rising to his knees, Isaac put one arm around her curled frame. “Thanks for trusting me.”
Hope stiffened against his chest. “Not understanding what’s going on inside my head is killing me, Isaac.”
Desperate to take away her pain, he wrapped his other arm around her. “You’re going to make it.”
Her sniffling turned into sobbing, loosing tears that sounded far overdue. Something told him the doors of healing had opened. Healing from what, he could only imagine.
Frightening flashbacks. Hypervigilance. Traumatic dreams. Irritability. Outbursts of anger. His EMT evaluation suggested Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He had encountered PTSD through work and had learned details from his father, a counseling psychologist. If this was Hope’s problem, he prayed she had a minor case because his safe cradling did not soften her stiffness—a sign of the depth of her pain.
After a few minutes, her sobs quieted.
Heal the spirit and everything else will fall in line. Mustering his faith, Isaac stepped out to test his father’s philosophy. “Can I pray for you?”
“Yyyyes.” Her muffled consent smelled of doubt.
Keeping his embrace loose, he let his heart speak. “Lord, lift off the stress, and bring Hope peace of mind.” He took her moaning as a favorable reaction. “God created you. That alone makes you worthy of being treated with respect.”
Bearing a fresh wave of convulsive weeping, he held steady. He’d let her dictate when this closeness should end.
Didn’t take her long to wiggle free.
“Sit tight.” He stepped away to get facial tissue.
On his way back, he did a double take at the sliding glass door but passed off the transient image as a distortion of his own reflection. He handed Hope the tissue.
She dabbed her face. “What makes you guys act the way you do around me?”
Etiquette Academy shouldn’t have felt this foreign to anybody. The isolation-theory buzzed through his mind. “It’s not just you. We’re called to love all people. Not use or abuse them. God created us as equals, but it’s man’s job to protect women. Any guy that mistreats a girl is evil.”
He hadn’t realized how passionately he embraced this principle until he verbalized it. His dad had started instilling relational values before Isaac was able to zip his own jeans.
Hope’s finger poked through the tissue and pointed at him. “You see us as equals?”
“Yep. Do you want more truth?”
She nodded with an air of hunger. Or starvation. Receptive and trusting, she captivated him.
He settled on the other end of the couch. “It really is sweet hanging with you. But, like all guys, we think inappropriate thoughts. We’re imperfect.”
Could have been his imagination, but her eyes blinked as if shocked by that last statement.
“We’re not perfect.” He had to repeat it. “But it would violate the spirit of our faith to ever, and I mean ever, purposely mistreat you. You’re safe with us, Hope.”
She stared, though not at anything in particular, and her exhausted gaze suggested mental processing. Enough for tonight.
“Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” He’d let her turn off the lamp.
Crossing the threshold into the bunkroom, Isaac added a new dimension to his role as the Cay’s safetyman.
Hope fluffed her pillow and shook out the damp sheet. Thanks to Isaac, her burdens had magically lifted. When he’d asked if he could pray, she thought he was going to bring her something to eat. What he did instead was inexplicable.
Believing only good could come from their humane rapport—like the one she had developing with Jase—she vowed not to ruin it.
She switched off the lamp and smoothed away the lingering goose bumps generated by the alpha dog’s passionate speech. What he’d said about inappropriate thoughts didn’t make sense, and it was too late for regarding the Foursome as anything but sorely perfect. Amnesia or not, however, she knew she’d never heard his version of how life should be.
Yearning to fill the void inside her, Hope drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 26
Monday, May 28
Lying face up, spread-eagle on his bunk, Isaac awoke with an incurable intensity. To live, not just exist. Before he could coordinate his thoughts, his bunkmate spiked the air with scent-de-latrine.
Isaac covered his face with his pillow and bounced Jase’s bunk with his feet. “Help. Gas mask. Help.”
He heard Sabio hop off the far top bunk and unzip a bag.
Seconds later, a smooth, soap-like block glided over Isaac’s upper body. He lifted his pillow. “Hey.”
Sabio screwed the cap back on his deodorant tube. “You haven’t showered in two days.”
“More important stuff took priority.” Isaac launched off the mattress. “I’m updating our Etiquette Academy strategy.” His roommates gave him their attention while they dressed. “Honor Hope like she’s your best friend’s wife. Go above and beyond.”
“Even if she doesn’t deserve it?” Akiko sidled toward the door, buttoning his corduroy shorts.
Don’
t make me kick your butt. “I’m serious.”
“Just call us saints.” Jase, in a purple tie-dye, left the room with Akiko.
They don’t get it. Isaac semi made his bunk before pulling his duffle out from under.
Rattling his stash of bottles, Sabio gathered a handful of herbals. “Don’t burn yourself out at the safetyman stuff, Ize. You’ll pay for it. We’ll all pay for it.”
How could anyone burn out on doing what he loved? Isaac located his trunks. “I didn’t ask for the extra body to guard. God shipped her to us.”
“Exactly.” Sabio extracted his journal from under the mattress and opened it. “I copied this down last night. Here’s what God told this guy who was facing major troubles. ‘I am all you need. My power works best in weak people.’”
Weak people having power? Hardly realistic. Isaac dropped his stinky boxers in the laundry side of his duffle before putting on his trunks. “Are you dissing my strength?”
“You’re too humanly strong. It’s getting in the way.” Sabio thumped his chest with his fist, a Foursome gesture of bonded hearts. He would wound Isaac only out of kindness. “Admit your weaknesses and trade them in for God’s power.”
There’s power in the Name, boys … The frustrating phrase had tattooed itself on his psyche like fine print on a contract presenting restrictions and qualifications.
Imperfection was the only match for weakness Isaac’s brain could supply or agree to. “Thanks for denting my pride.”
Leaving the bunkroom, he stopped by the bathroom and washed his face. The lonely lipstick tube rolled into the sink. Makeup was camouflage. Isaac favored truth.
Hope is a sponge for truth. Eager to check on his patient, he wedged the neglected item behind the faucet, and hurried to breakfast.
The amnesiac, industriously sketching on a piece of paper at the kitchen counter, looked healthy enough for a rematch of yesterday’s hurdle race. She placed her penciled drawing of the United States flag on the round table as a centerpiece. She knew Memorial Day.
Isaac gladly left the Hope-oddities list in his pocket as they gathered to eat.