Sands Rising

by H M Wilhelmborn

  “Mike,” Sheila said, “has a habit of jumping into things and only thinking about the consequences after. It’ll be his downfall.”

  I wanted to deny it, but I was too tired, and I was thinking about Mauru. I checked again for a response from him.

  I inadvertently nodded at Sheila.

  “Word to the wise, Janet. Anton and Greta are furious because you’re not one of us. As Jeremiah’s other Second, Greta has none of Anton’s restraint, and she’s already been purging people inside the organization now that we’ve been elected. As of this morning, Mike’s being punished, so you won’t see him for seven months. He’s confined to our headquarters in Menlo Park. No press interviews, no public outings. Nothing.

  “He’s in a holding cell on our campus. He’ll also be demoted shortly to elementary Scrimmage teacher, which means he’ll only work with recruits for the duration of his punishment so that he can learn our rules from scratch as he teaches them. If he weren’t Mike Iet, he’d be expelled from the organization. No benefits. Nothing. He’d go back to Stockton without even his uniform, with no wife, and no—what do you call us, ‘Hoviaks,’ right? No ‘Hoviaks’ would be ever allowed to talk to him. He’d be shunned. We are everything you could ever want when you play nice with our rules, Janet, but we are nothing without our rules, so we live and die by them.”

  My mind was probably playing tricks with me because I could have sworn that I heard my twins cry, but they were nowhere near me, so I put it down to the excessive drinking the night before and the exhaustion that followed.

  “What do you think of Mike?” Sheila asked.

  “I really love my husband,” I said. “His name is Mauru Whitaker Virdis. He’s my best friend. We have four kids. Their names are Jonathan Whitaker Virdis, Nathan Whitaker Virdis, Nathalie Whitaker Virdis, and Nathaniel Whitaker Virdis. My name is Janet Whitaker Virdis.”

  “Not my question, Janet.”

  “I don’t confess my sins, Sheila.”

  “You already have.” Sheila looked at me like a prosecutor who knew that she had amassed all the evidence she needed, including a confession. Now she would either proceed to a plea or to trial.

  “Do you want to tell me who you are, Janet, or do you want me to tell you?”

  I turned away from her.

  “Who would you be if you weren’t afraid, worried, or trapped by what others expect from you, Janet? I guess you found out last night with the help of some tequila.”

  I walked out of her office.

  No one talked to me like that.

  I called Elizabeth Browning’s office, organized for housekeeping to go to Larry’s home, booked a room for him at the Coronado Imperial, called Michelle, and went to check on Larry.

  Larry told me he’d feel what he needed to feel when it was all over, but for now he just needed to power through it. His sons were taking the news badly, and he was going to be out for the rest of the day; I was to reschedule all remaining client appointments but keep the 8 p.m. appointment with Michelle.

  Mauru called.

  He was downstairs in the car park. He’d dropped the kids off at my parents’ home.

  I went to Mauru’s car, opened the door, and sat down.

  He didn’t look at me.

  “When I was a kid,” Mauru said, “my mom spent the nights awake wondering where my dad was. I remember Dad came home one night, Elisa ran up to him, and he had all of these leaves and twigs in his hair because he’d fallen in a ditch someplace; he’d gotten wasted again. He couldn’t even see how worried we were, how Elisa needed her dad to be sober, how I needed him to be sober—we all did—because he was so selfish, so fucking selfish, that he only thought of the bottle.”

  He sniffled.

  “Mom?” Mauru continued. “Don’t even get me talking about Mom and how she enabled him! She gave him money when he was fired for missing work. Then she’d plead with him, beg him to be more responsible this time with the money she gave him, which meant that he’d be gone for days again, and she’d be up at all hours in the living room, waiting for him to come home. Sometimes we’d find him the next morning on the front porch; he’d spent the night sleeping there. Then we were the ones who had to go to the shrinks, to the twelve-step groups. We were the ones whose only friends were our books because people knew that we weren’t quite like them, and they wouldn’t hang out with us.

  “I promised myself—and you know this, Jan—that I’d never marry an alcoholic. You can sip alcohol, you can enjoy it—I do—but I will never put myself or my kids through alcoholism. Last night, you came home wasted. Totally wasted. It took me back to that place with my dad, which I never ever want to go back to again. You’ve never done this before. If you have a drinking problem, you take care of it now, on your own, because if you walk through the door of that condo tonight, you never ever again come into my home where my kids live, drunk. This is non-negotiable, Jan. Just non-negotiable.”

  I nodded.

  “I will file for divorce and for custody of my kids if that happens again,” he said. “No one is going to do to my kids what was done to me. No one. If it means me moving out, getting a second job, moving in with my parents in Sacramento or with my sister in Boston, I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my kids. You get that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m so sorry, babe,” I said. “Hannah and I were drinking after the event last night. I wasn’t at work when you called. I was at Hannah’s place, chatting. It was stupid, selfish. Lots of tequila. I promise it won’t ever happen again. I’m so sorry for lying to you. I love you, babe.”

  Mauru was crying again.

  “I just can’t go back there,” he said. “I can’t. It was hell. I thought I’d . . .”

  I held him.

  “I love you,” I said. “With all my heart, I really love you.”

  I kissed him on the forehead.

  “I’m going to pick the kids up,” he said. “I’ll see you at home.”

  I spent the next three weeks avoiding Sheila and the Hoviaks. At home, things seemed OK, but I kept forgetting to do things: my day to take care of the twins in the morning, and my evening to watch over Jon and Nate as they washed up and put on their pajamas. I forgot to dust, to vacuum, and so many other things.

  Mauru asked if everything was really OK. He’d forgiven me for the tequila, and he was learning to trust me again. We were a unit, and we needed to move beyond this for us and for the kids.

  He grew particularly concerned when I inadvertently placed one of the twins’ dirty diapers in the freezer. Nathalie was crying as I made dinner, so I went to change her diaper. After changing her diaper, I wasn’t really paying attention, so I held on to her dirty diaper as I opened the freezer with one hand, put the diaper down in the freezer with the other, reached for a bag of flour, which we kept in the freezer for freshness, and then closed the freezer door.

  Mauru opened the freezer a few days later and saw the dirty diaper.

  “What’s up with you!” he said. “This is disgusting, Jan!”

  “I’m just human, I guess,” I said.

  “Just forget that tequila stuff, and let’s move on. Now we have to throw out everything in the freezer and defrost and disinfect it! What’s going on with you?”

  Mauru thought that it was because he had been harsh with me for coming home wasted, so he planned date nights. We left the kids with my parents and went bowling, line dancing, and to the movies.

  Mom approached me as we walked along the beach one day.

  “Whatever it is that’s going on with you,” she said, “take care of it. You will not ruin this marriage because you’re feeling claustrophobic with four kids. That man, my son-in-law, is a good man, and if you break his heart, Janet, I swear, I will never forgive you for that. So, whatever it is that’s going on with you, pray and put it to bed.”

  A day later, I walked to Sheila’s office and apologized for abruptly walking out of her office the last time we talked.

  “
I’ve always been in control,” I told her. “When Mauru asked me to marry him, I decided how long we’d wait before we got married. I still decide what he wears and what he doesn’t. I decide what we eat. I’m an only child, so I decided whether my parents would have grandkids. When my parents wanted me to do something ‘respectable’ with my undergrad degree, I decided that they were trying to take my power away from me, so I became a secretary.

  “I actually like my job. Secretaries are the spine of the office even though people look down on us like we have nothing to say, like we have no opinion, and like we’re uneducated. Your organization wanted me to be one of you, and I decided not to join you because you want me to give up my power. When I first saw Mike, well, it’s one of the only times I felt terrified because I wasn’t in control of how I felt. I just wasn’t—”

  “We noticed,” Sheila retorted. “Do you know how often you and Mike gawked at each other when you thought no one was looking? Probably not. It’s a little embarrassing. Let me tell you what it is about Mike you’ve been gawking at: Mike’s a bit of mess when it comes to his personal life, and you’re a lot more organized than he is in that area. Polar opposites. Hence the attraction.”

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “he shouldn’t be punished because of me.”

  “No.” Sheila shook her head as if she were correcting a stubborn child. “Mike’s getting punished because of him. He knew better. He knew what would happen. Mike’s only lucky it wasn’t much worse. Anton and Greta wanted to destroy him, and Jeremiah had to step in.”

  “This, this whole thing is so messed up,” I said. “What, what would it even mean for me to be his, his ‘Second’?”

  “Well, you negotiate that with Mike, and he’ll negotiate with Greta, who’s way too mad right now to negotiate with anyone. There are no secrets when it comes to these things, Janet. Secrets mean people get hurt and mad, and then they want revenge, which goes against the Right Path. Hannah sensed this, which is probably why she negotiated that contract with Mike and Greta at the very beginning. She knew to protect herself.”

  Sheila smiled. It was the smile of someone who had all the power and the smile of someone who wanted to be begged for mercy.

  “Are you asking me to ‘convert’? Is that what you call it?”

  “You chose the consequences when you chose the act, Janet.”

  “I don’t even know Mike. I don’t know anything about him. My husband. Mauru. How do I even begin to tell him this?”

  “I’ll tell you this much,” Sheila said. “If you don’t join us, willingly, of course, you’ll have to leave WS&X because there’s no way Greta or Anton will accept having you here any longer. They mustn’t accept you here because you’re in violation of Scrimmage. They will come for you because they must. Greta alone can drive you out of the state. She can also make life so difficult for Mauru at Saint Martin de Porres, for you here, for your mom at work, for your in-laws in Sacramento, your dad. You can call her ‘Granite’ all you want, but she has all the power and resources she needs to ensure that those who work for us and with us are not in violation of Scrimmage, especially when they know better. You knew better, Janet.”

  “But I’m not one of you.”

  “You work for us, and you knew Mike was married. You’ve even met Mike’s wife, were disrespectful to her in your home, and you’ve heard and seen Scrimmage recited so many times. You also knew that Mike was dating your friend, Hannah, and you knew that she’d signed an agreement with us about exactly this kind of matter. You’re not innocent, Janet. You’re no neophyte in these things to believe that you can walk into something like this and not end up with a bloody nose and some mud all over your shoes and hands. You chose the consequences when you chose the act; the Right Path.”

  “You’ll have me destroy my marriage to Mauru to make your point? I will never ever leave my husband and my kids, Sheila. Not for you, not for Trehoviak, or Mike, or Anton, or Granite. No one will take my family away from me. No one.”

  Sheila smiled at me and offered me some tissues.

  She pulled a folder out of her drawer with Mauru’s full name on it. The folder was thick with documents of various colors, and the cover had the seal of the state of California on it. She kept the folder closed and placed both her hands on top.

  “You know what’s funny, Janet? Even those we love most have a past filled with undisclosed secrets. Nothing you do will save you from the decision you must make. You chose the consequences when you chose the act. The California Water Party needs your advice and help. Please join us.”

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful for the support of some truly wonderful friends and family members. It makes such a difference to have delightful, loving, and inspiring people in one’s life. I’m especially grateful to GR, MF, CD, TH, DH, & LG for believing in me.

  I would also like to acknowledge the following sources, which I have quoted. I cite President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863), President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961), Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875), Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), particularly Sonnet VI, “Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand,” the King James Bible (1611), François Villon’s “Ballade des dames du temps jadis” (1460-61), and Augustine of Hippo’s Letters Against Petilian (c. 400), all of which are in the public domain. I have also cited propaganda from the 1930s and 1940s, which is also in the public domain.

  I would not have been able to write Sands Rising without the example of VLGEMP and am in awe of his example. I also refer to President Nixon (1913-1994), President Taft (1857-1930), President Jackson (1767-1845), Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana (1840-1898), Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), Benjamin Franklin (1706-1770), Martín de Porres Velázquez (1579-1639), Vasco da Gama (1460/1469-1524), Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), Isidro Labrador (c. 1070–c. 1150), and to Sappho (c. 630-570 BC).

  I have had the pleasure of working with some wonderful professionals on this project. Luke Gerwe’s insight allowed me to believe in the project and fully embrace the joys of revision.

  Many thanks, reader, for purchasing this book. If you enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review, even a very short one, as it will help other readers. For updates regarding upcoming releases and other information, please visit hmwilhelmborn.com

  HMW.

  Afer sum.

  Note: Sands Rising includes references to mental health issues. If you are struggling with hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, crises, or other events that destabilize you and make life less safe, there is help.

  Please reach out to someone.

  Hope is on the way.

  If you’re in the United States, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 800 273 8255. For other countries, please find a list here: https://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by H. M. Wilhelmborn. All rights reserved. Thank you for purchasing this book. Except for review purposes, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of H. M. Wilhelmborn. Thank you for supporting the author’s copyright.

  Please sign up for updates at hmwilhelmborn.com

  Edited by Luke Gerwe.

  Cover and proofreading by Ebook Launch.

  Book design by Vellum.

  Published by Wilhelmborn LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Control Number:2019913044

  Ebook ISBN:9781951396008

  Paperback ISBN:9781951396015

  Audiobook ISBN:9781951396022

  Synopsis

  A
s she awaits public execution in San Diego, California, Janet Whitaker Virdis tries to make sense of the many reversals she has suffered and how ostensibly innocuous choices upended the happy life she once enjoyed.

  She was a New York State transplant to San Diego at the very beginning of the longest drought in California’s history. Years later, she was happily married with four children and a very well-paid job at an elite San Diego law firm. Her work granted her unparalleled access to the rise of the firm’s most powerful client: an extremely wealthy political party with its own beliefs, uniforms, and hierarchy that was determined to lead California and the nation in a moment of crisis.

  As the drought worsened and dust storms became the norm in San Diego, Janet insisted on remaining in Southern California. Across the world, species went extinct, people were forced across borders in unprecedented numbers, and entire regions became uninhabitable. A mysterious disease associated with increased desertification, which only killed teenage boys, made its entrance, and no cure was available. Janet was the mother of three boys.