by Gayle Roper
She nodded again. “We’ve been together since our freshman year.”
“In college?”
Brenna looked up, confused. “What?”
“Not freshman year in high school.”
“Oh. Right.” Brenna cleared her throat. “I met him the first day at orientation. He’s from Idaho and I’m from California, so there was no way we’d be able to know each other before, is there?”
“I guess not.” Cass waited. She didn’t have to wait long.
“We fell in love right off, just like in all the books.” She smiled at the memory. “He’s such a great guy.” Her smile faded, and great hurt filled her eyes. “Except he won’t go home with me.”
“Why not?”
“I think he’s afraid of what my dad will say.”
And so he should be, Cass thought. “Tell me about the running away before we get to the going home part, okay?”
“I love my mom,” Brenna said. “And I love my stepdad. Hank’s a wonderful man. He really is. He’s been wonderful to me. It was Tuck who gave me trouble.”
“Who’s Tuck?”
“My stepbrother, Hank’s son. He was seven when Hank married my mom. I was two.” Brenna fell silent, lost in her thoughts.
“Tell me more about him,” Cass prompted. “He’s the reason you ran away?” A nasty man or boy living in the same house could make life miserable, to say nothing of dangerous for a vulnerable younger stepsister.
“Tuck’s strange. He always has been as far as I know. Hank’s had him in therapy most of his life, though I don’t think it’s helped him. I know he resents me, and sometimes he scares me. He likes to hurt me, not so much physically as by hurting my things. He’ll steal something or damage it. Once he hurt my pet bird so badly I had to have him put to sleep.”
Cass shuddered. Living with someone like that could drive anyone to run away.
Brenna took a deep breath. “But I have to be honest. I chose to run away. I wish I could blame it on Tuck—he’s strange enough to scare anyone off—but I can’t. I can’t blame it on anyone but me.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I’m only twenty, Cass, and I’ve ruined my life forever.”
Seeing a good bout of self-pity just around Brenna’s corner, Cass said, “So you just decided to disappear? Poof. I’m gone?”
“That’s about it. See, I always felt like a useless, poor lit—” She broke off.
Cass waited.
“A poor, useless college girl.”
Yeah, right. What had she meant to say?
“But Mike made me feel special. He liked me for me, not for my—” Again that hesitation as she searched for a word to replace the one she decided not to use. “Um—my body. In fact, he didn’t even know I had any.” The last was an outburst, like she was defending Mike.
“He didn’t know you had a body?” Cass raised an eyebrow.
Brenna flushed as she realized how foolish her comment was, but she didn’t change it or clarify. “Mike and I planned it carefully. We made believe we were driving back to school from our homes after fall break our sophomore year. We left our cars in downtown L.A., walked to the bus station where we bought tickets separately so no one would remember a couple, paid cash, and took the bus to Saint Louis. From there we took the train to Philadelphia. I dyed my hair brown—I’m really blond—and Mike got his hair cut real short. We hitched rides across New Jersey to Long Beach Island and worked at the various shore towns, staying about two months at each place. We never stayed too long because we didn’t want anyone to get too close to us.”
“Just the two of you against the world.”
Brenna winced. “It sounded so cool when we thought of it.” She shrugged. “When we left L.A., all we took with us were a backpack each, our laptops, and several hundred dollars as a bankroll. We were going to live on love and odd jobs.” She turned a tragic face to Cass. “It’s not working, at least not any longer. And it’s all my fault.”
“Because you miss your family.”
“Yeah.” Brenna blew her nose again, “I’m so homesick I could die, and I’m worried about them, too. I’ve watched you with Jared and Jenn and seen how much you care. And they’re not even your kids. Yesterday you were so worried about Jenn when she took off. I got all too clear a picture of what my mom must have gone through.”
“Is still going through,” Cass said.
Brenna buried her face in her hands and wept. Cass watched, her heart breaking for the girl and for her mother.
Brenna gave a ghost of a smile. “In a way it’s nice that Mike won’t take me home. It proves he loves me.”
“Wait a minute.” Cass had to challenge that thought. All it proved to her was that Mike wanted to avoid conflict. “What about his family? Shouldn’t he let them know he’s all right? And don’t you think that if he truly loved you, he’d want to make you happy whenever it was within his power?” She thought of the brothers and the care they took of their wives, her father and his care for her mother and her. “Or does he think that if you go home, you’ll ditch him?”
“I’ll never ditch him. I love him,” she said simply. “And because I love him, how can I go home without him?”
“Hasn’t the boy ever heard the word visit?”
Brenna nodded. “I know. We talked about me visiting alone if he didn’t want to come. But I don’t want to go alone because, quite frankly, I’m scared. If I’m alone, I don’t know if I can make people understand why we did what we did.”
Cass thought there was a good chance nobody’d understand even if Mike was with her.
Brenna put a hand to her mouth to mask the deep sob that rose from her throat. “What if I have to choose between my family and Mike?”
Cass patted her hand. “I don’t think that will happen, sweetie. But even if it did, you’d be all right. You could go back to school, get your degree, get a job you liked. We can all live on our own if we have to, and we can live full lives. Look at me and SeaSong.”
Brenna looked and it was obvious she didn’t want for herself what she saw. She was just too polite to say so.
Cass sighed. Some days she didn’t want what she had either. “Granted, life is probably more fun when you have someone to share it with, but my point is that you can make it on your own if that’s the way things fall. God will help you.”
“God doesn’t even like me.”
“How can you say that? God loves you.”
“Yeah, maybe He loves me, but He doesn’t like me. How can He after what I’ve done?”
“Brenna, don’t you think that if God is really God, He can forgive anything? Don’t make the mistake of thinking of Him as if He were a regular person. He’s not. He’s God. He can forgive the worst sins because of Jesus’ death. If we don’t believe that, we’re saying that Jesus’ death was in vain. It wasn’t good enough because some sins were beyond His redeeming power.”
Brenna frowned. Clearly she’d never thought of forgiveness in that way.
“What you did to your mom and Hank was unkind—”
“Cruel. Selfish.” Brenna wasn’t going to be easy on herself.
Cass nodded. “Okay. But it wasn’t the worst thing the world has ever seen.”
“Well, no. It wasn’t the Holocaust or anything, but I did it. Me.” Despair filled her voice.
“But Christ did more.”
They were silent for a minute, considering the depths of Christ’s sacrifice.
“I think you need to make that visit, Brenna, honey, with or without Mike. Your mother needs to see you.” In the distance Cass heard the front door open and slam shut. The software people?
“Do you know that she cries when I call?” Brenna picked at the seam of her jeans. “Somehow she’s figured out it’s me, and she cries. She says my name over and over and begs me to come home.”
“There you are, sweetie. See, she loves you.”
“But Mike.”
“It’s only for a short time. You’re not leaving him. You’re just going home to visit wi
th the folks.”
Brenna nodded. “I told him that. But he thinks I’m in danger.”
Surprise rippled through Cass. “How are you in danger?”
“He thinks that the things that have happened to us the past couple of nights are aimed at me. Two smoke bombs at two disparate places.”
“Two smoke bombs?” This was news to Cass.
“There was one at our apartment building last night. No one was hurt, but a lot of people spent a lot of time in the driving rain.” She paused, then announced dramatically, “And I’m the common link between SeaSong and our apartment.”
“The attacks are aimed at you.” Cass mulled the idea over. “But why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought and thought, but I don’t know.”
As they sat in silence for a moment, thinking, the swinging door to the reception area swung open. Mike’s thin face appeared. Cass watched as he scanned the kitchen, then looked over to the sitting area.
“Brenna.” He stepped into the room and came over to her.
She looked up and began to cry in earnest. “Oh, Mike!” She threw herself into his arms.
“Easy, baby. Easy.” He held her tightly with one arm while he patted her on the back with the other.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice muffled by his wet coat.
“It’s my lunch hour, and I needed to talk to you.” He took her by the shoulders and set her away. “I wanted to say that I’ve been thinking some more, and you’re right.”
“Yeah?” She blinked eyes heavy with tears. “About what?”
“Going home. You should go home.”
“Just me?” She looked panicked. “Alone?”
He shook his head. “I should never have put you in the position where you have to choose between your mom and me. You need us both.”
“Oh, Mike!” Brenna’s teary smile radiated as she lunged for him again.
He returned her hug. “I still think you’re in danger, but that’s here in Seaside for some reason. And if I’m with you, maybe I can keep you safe in L.A.”
“Hello? Anyone here?” a voice called even as the bell on the registration desk jingled.
Cass stood. Software Solutions had arrived.
Thirty-Three
OKAY, GUYS,” CASS SAID, grabbing her raincoat and her Indiana Jones hat. “Time to help the new guys move in.” She pushed through the swinging door to the registration area just as Dan came jogging downstairs, slicker in hand.
“Hi,” she said to the skinny, bedraggled man dripping all over the entry hall. He wore a bright blue plastic parka that read Software Solutions across the back in bright yellow, a light bulb dotting the i in Solutions. The hood was pushed back from his disordered hair, and from the looks of him, the parka hadn’t been particularly effective. But then Rodney was no ordinary rainstorm. A category one hurricane carried winds up to ninety-five miles per hour.
The man must have read her mind because he looked down at his parka and said, “They seemed like a good idea when the ad man visited. Neither he nor we counted on a hurricane to test them out.” He smiled wryly.
“You’re lucky it wasn’t blown completely off,” Cass grinned back at him. She liked his attitude. “Welcome to SeaSong.”
“I’m Connor McKee, by the way. VP at SS.” He stuck out a wet hand and shook first Cass’s hand, then Dan’s. “Whew! Are we glad we made it. I didn’t think driving would be this bad, but keeping that van on the road was murder. I think we’re one of the last cars across the bridge. The police were about to close it.”
“Really?” Cass was surprised. The Thirty-fourth Street Bridge arched far above the bay, unlike the causeway which was flat except for the section of bridge that could be raised for boats to pass.
“Yeah, the wind blowing up there makes it almost impossible for you to have any control. And you can feel the bridge shudder.” He shuddered. “And the street just this side of the bridge is barely passable. The car throws up fountains, you know?” He made broad wave motions with each hand to illustrate. “Doesn’t matter how slow you’re going. It’s like the wind’s blowing the entire bay ashore.” He looked around the dry comfort of SeaSong. “We’re not moving until this thing is over!”
Cass understood completely. She’d been so relieved when she and Dan got home, and the wind seemed to have picked up in just these last few minutes. “Now let’s get you all in and up to your rooms so you can get dry. Lunch is almost ready.”
As she and Dan followed Connor McKee out the door, Brenna and Mike came from the kitchen to offer their assistance in getting the new guests settled. Brenna’s eyes were still red, but she was smiling as she and Mike clasped hands. She looked at Cass and made a discreet circle with the thumb and forefinger of her free hand. Cass nodded and winked.
The wind slammed into Cass at her first step onto the porch, and she did a quick two-step to the side to catch her balance. Both Connor and Dan reached for her, but she had righted herself before they grabbed her. She put up a hand. “Thanks. I’m all right.” She tied the scarf she’d looped over her hat even tighter.
They stepped down into the deluge, the rain slashing Cass across the face, the wind tugging at her hat. She pulled it down almost to her ears, trying to snug it enough that it stayed where it belonged. She tightened the scarf again. Already a stream of water poured from the brim.
The bright blue van at the curb sported the yellow words Software Solutions and the light bulb logo of the company just like Connor’s rain parka. The vehicle’s windows were so steamed on the inside that Cass couldn’t see the passengers, but as she and the others approached, the doors popped open. Five men and one woman climbed out, all sporting identical blue parkas. Immediately the wind blew them up around everyone’s ears, then tore the hoods free.
The woman grabbed the van handle to keep her balance, laughing as she did.
“This is so cool!” yelled one man who looked about sixteen but whom Cass assumed must be at least twenty-two and a college graduate. His glasses were so rain coated that his eyes shimmied behind them. He held his hands wide and turned his face to the sky. He opened his mouth and tried to catch the rain.
“They didn’t drive,” a disgruntled Connor shouted over the roar of the maelstrom. “They still have all their nine lives.”
“New computer game,” yelled another man. “Weather calamities. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Tidal waves.”
“Earthquakes,” yelled another.
“Avalanches!”
“Cyclones!”
“How are cyclones different from tornadoes?”
“One goes one way and the other the other.”
“Yeah?”
“Mighty Max and Midge!”
“Fighting against huge hailstones!”
“In a plane or a boat or on skis.”
“Up in a balloon!”
“A flood from a dam break!”
“Like Johnstown!”
An aluminum chair sailed past, lethal in its force. The SS crew, holding on to the car or each other, watched it rocket toward the beach, bouncing off cars as it went.
“Cool,” yelled one.
“Way cool,” yelled another.
All this wild conversation flew as the back of the van was opened and everyone’s luggage was pulled out. Every time Cass reached for a piece, someone snatched it first. Brenna was still empty handed too. Laughing, they lunged forward for the two remaining pieces just as Cass heard a loud crack!
“A gun?” said Connor McKee.
“Mighty Max and Midge holding off the world terrorists,” one of the SS men shouted.
“In a hurricane.”
“A cyclone.”
“An avalanche.”
But Cass ignored them as she heard Brenna cry in pain and felt the girl slump against her.
Tuck couldn’t believe his luck, though he thought it was about time something went right. He’d looked out the window again, risking disease from the filthy curtains, just to see ho
w violent the storm was in order to judge whether his father and Patsi could get through, and there was Kevin climbing out of his car and running into SeaSong.
Well, well. Where Kevin was, Sherri couldn’t be far behind.
Tuck smiled, got down on his hands and knees, and pulled his rifle from under the bed. A hutchful of dust bunnies came along, and he had to dust the gun before he could attach the scope. His movements broke open some of the scabbing on his hands, and they ached worse than any toothache he’d ever had. Their swelling made his movements awkward and clumsy.
He opened the window a smidgen, just far enough that he could slip the barrel of the gun through. He ignored the rain that blew in the opening. For once, cold drafts were of no concern.
Which door should he watch? He thought a minute and settled on both, though he favored the front. That’s where Kevin’s car was. He thought Sherri would at least come out to wave him on his way. That’s what Patsi always did when his father left, and personally Tuck thought it was pathetic. It was like saying here I am; don’t forget me; don’t look at someone else; come home to me, please.
As he knelt, nerves jumping in anticipation, eyes focused on the front of SeaSong, a bright blue van pulled up. He squinted, trying to read through the rain. Software Solutions. He frowned. A van of computer geeks. Now there was a party waiting to happen.
One guy jumped out of the driver’s seat and raced inside the house. Tuck wondered idly if they were looking for a place to stay or if they had reservations. Not that it mattered. His eyes narrowed. What mattered was that they had gotten onto the island in spite of the flooding streets. If they could do it, so could Hank and Patsi.
His eye twitched. Time was running out.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Tuck swung to the door of his room and there stood the old man, a fleck of his morning egg still caught at the corner of his mouth.
Tuck ground his teeth in frustration. He had forgotten to shut the door when he came back from his shower. Dumb, dumb! Now he had to avert another catastrophe.
He lowered his rifle and turned to the old man. One punch ought to do it for now. Or a push down the rickety stairs.