Storm on the Horizon

by Kathi Macias

  Chapter 11

  The house was still—and very, very quiet. Darkness had brought milder temperatures, and Kate had shut off the air conditioner, working up the courage to open the windows to let in the welcome evening air. Jason was spending the night at Mikey’s, leaving Kate alone. Sprawled out on the living room couch, she tried in vain to concentrate on the second book of the Civil War series she had bought in Mark’s bookstore.

  “Why can’t I keep my mind on the story?’ she fumed aloud, slamming the book shut and tossing it down on the couch beside her. She jumped up and strode purposefully into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stared at its contents. Nothing interested her. She closed it again and stepped over to the back door, peering disinterestedly out the window at the moon-bathed yard.

  Jason’s swing set stood motionless, abandoned with the setting sun, while the row of young pinion pines along the back fence reached yearningly for the star-studded Utah sky, giving the scene a poignant, almost melancholy aura.

  Like me, Kate thought. Except the trees at least know which direction they’re heading. And Jason’s swing set knows its function. I don’t know either. Now that I’ve quit my job, I don’t want to sit home doing nothing, but I don’t know what it is I want to do. I know I don’t want a future with Lyle, no matter how much he tries to convince me otherwise. And Mark… What is it about him that makes me so uncomfortable, and yet draws me to him, as if...as if someone were calling me home…?

  She jumped when the phone jangled beside her, the familiar fear crawling up her back and shoulders until her scalp tingled. Her heart pounding and her hand trembling, she reached slowly for the receiver.

  “Yes?”

  “Kate?”

  She sighed with relief when she heard Mark’s warm, familiar voice. “Mark, what a nice surprise. How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he answered. “But how are you? You sounded a little shaky when you answered the phone. Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” she assured him, hoping to hide her anxiety and discourage any further questions. “I was just...doing a little reading. You know, from the second book in the series.”

  She could almost hear the smile in his voice. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying the books,” he said. “When you finish that series, I have another author to recommend, although she deals with more contemporary issues—from a Christian perspective, of course.”

  “Of course,” Kate said. What else? she wondered silently. It seemed that everything Mark Thomas thought about, spoke of, or did was from a Christian perspective. It was if his faith was the very center of his life, around which everything else revolved. Kate found it very unnerving—and somewhat tiresome. At the same time, she had to admit that she envied Mark his rock-solid faith. Maybe if things hadn’t gone so wrong in her own life, maybe she too...

  “The reason I called,” Mark was saying, “was to check and see if you’d had time to think about my invitation to the Fourth of July barbecue. My parents will be arriving tomorrow, and I’d really like to be able to tell them that you and Jason will be coming. Have you made any other plans?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then will you join us? Please?”

  Her mind was racing, searching for a reasonable, logical excuse. But the tug at her heart overruled her mind, and she answered almost before she realized what she was saying. “Yes, we’ll come. We’d love to. In fact, Jason would probably never forgive me if I said no.”

  Mark laughed. “Good for Jason. Although I hope that’s not the only reason you’re coming.”

  “Of course not,” she answered, surprised at the truth of her words. “I’m looking forward to it, too. You’ll have to give me directions, though, since I don’t know where you live.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said. “A little before noon. We’ll make a day of it.”

  “All right,” she agreed. “But you have to let me bring something. How about potato salad?”

  “Great,” Mark exclaimed. “But I’d better warn you—potato salad is my weakness, so you’d better bring a lot.”

  Kate laughed. “I’ll make it in a fifty-gallon drum. How’s that?”

  By the time she’d hung up the phone and wandered back toward the living room, she was feeling a little better. It was nice to have something to look forward to, she thought, especially on a holiday. Fourth of July picnics had always been such special times when she was little…when her parents were still alive.

  Suddenly, she wanted more than anything to relive those memories. She turned toward her father’s office—a room she avoided as much as possible—went inside, and opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. It was empty.

  Impossible, she thought. We’ve always kept our family albums in that drawer. Even Jason knows that. We never, never put them anywhere else. They have to be here...somewhere.

  She pulled the other drawers open and rummaged through them quickly. Not only were the albums not there, but she was horrified to realize that someone else had already gone through the drawers. Files were out of order, papers misplaced—her father had always been meticulous about everything he kept in his desk drawers. How could this have happened?

  And then she remembered. After the break-in, when she and the police had searched the house to see if anything was missing, she had been the one to check her father’s desk. Since the drawers weren’t open like the other drawers in the rest of the house, she had only glanced quickly into the top drawers and, seeing the files still there, she hadn’t bothered to check to see if everything was in order. She hadn’t looked in the bottom drawers at all.

  But why would anyone want to take her family albums? It just didn’t make sense. And yet...

  The phone on the desk rang then, and she dropped the files she had been holding, clamping her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream. The vague, uneasy sense of fear that had plagued her for weeks was quickly turning to abject terror. Why was all this happening to her? Someone breaking into her home, stealing her picture albums, anonymous phone calls, the feeling that someone was following her...

  The phone rang again, and this time she snatched the receiver off the hook, her voice shrill and tense. “Hello?” she demanded. “Who is this?”

  Silence. She was about to hang up when she heard a tentative voice say, “Kathryn? Kathryn, is that you? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Lyle,” she cried, bursting into tears. “Thank God, it’s you! I thought...I thought...”

  “Kathryn, are you all right? Should I call the police?”

  “No,” she sobbed. “No, please, don’t call the police. There’s nothing they can do. It’s just that—”

  “I’m coming over. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Oh, no,” Kate protested. “You don’t have to do that. I didn’t mean—”

  But he had already hung up.

  Kate fell into her father’s chair and laid her head on her arms on top of the desk, as tears spilled down her cheeks. The phone receiver buzzed in her ear as she clutched it tightly to her, but she hardly noticed.

  The ringing doorbell, interspersed with the sounds of pounding and Lyle’s frantic voice calling her name, finally got through to her. Slowly, she dragged herself up and into the living room, her hands trembling as she fumbled with the lock and opened the door. As Lyle burst inside, looking tall and strong and very concerned, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake with her reaction to his call. All she had done was encourage his attentions, and that was the last thing she needed in her already confused world.