A Time to Gather (35 page)

The two foreheads furrowed.

“In a showcase of cad yellow lemon.”

Four eyes blinked.

Lexi knew the damage would linger. She would not be able to live in her apartment at least for a very long time, maybe never. She knew she would relive the terror and bear the image of
victim
over and over. She would distrust and despise men, most especially Nathan Warner.

She also understood that she would measure life in Before and
After categories again. Before The Fire. After The . . . What should she call this night’s episode? The Horror? The Thrashing of the Bad Guy?

But there was now another Before and After. The one that released, the one that healed, the one that left no space for permanent fear and rage and grief.

She smiled at her dad and Rosie. “I’m going to be all right.”

  
Sixty-Five

S
unday afternoon, when she should have been sleeping before her next shift, Rosie drove to the desert.

On the phone, Jillie Hennison had assured her Erik would be ready for a visit, even one that brought difficult family news. After briefly greeting her old friends, she went out to the backyard.

“Yard” was a loose term to describe the glorious desertscape. It stretched beneath cloudless blue until it disappeared in a distant shimmer. Vegetation was sparse, with the usual variety of cacti and mesquite. Patches of wildflowers sprouted between rocks.

Rosie walked past the pool to a covered patio, the only shady spot.

Erik rose, his arm in a sling. Shadows cast from the slatted patio cover danced across his face.

The hairs on Rosie’s arms tingled. She decided then and there she may as well quit denying to herself that she liked the guy.

In that way.

“Rosie, it’s good to see you.”

“Thanks.”

They looked at each other, and an awkward moment passed.

He held out his left arm. “Shaking hands doesn’t quite get it.”

Again with the tingles. She smiled and exchanged a quick hug with him.

“Have a seat,” he said. “Iced tea?”

“Thanks.” She sat across from him at the small resin table.

He poured, eyeing her above the pitcher. “Who are you and what have you done with Rosie Delgado?”

“Hm?”

“You seem a little short on words.”

She felt nervousness in her smile. “How are you?” She heard hesitancy in her voice and coughed. “You look great.”

“I feel . . .” He cocked his head to one side. “Like maybe I could feel great someday.”

“Progress, then?”

“Definite.” He nodded. “I’m all the way up to taking it one hour at a time. That’s as opposed to five minutes. By this time next year, we could be talking one day at a time.”

Despite his usual dry tone, there was a subdued air about him. His eyes were clear and a tan had lightly bronzed the indoor pasty skin. He wore shorts and a white polo shirt, clothes she had packed.

She said, “Are you—are you okay with me being here?”

“Greg asked me that very same thing. I have no doubt he would have told you not to come if I didn’t want to see you. They certainly don’t have a problem saying no, do they?”

She shook her head.

“I said”—He slapped a hand to his chest—“‘Ohmygosh! You mean
Maria
? Yes, of course I want to see her!’”

More tingles. She smiled.

“Do you bring glad tidings from the inhabited world?”

Her smile faded. “Not exactly glad, but there is an adequately okay ending to it.”

His eyes focused beyond her shoulder. After a second or two, he looked at her. “Okay, shoot.”

Shoot.
It was one of the first things he’d said to her. By the next evening she was praying for him. Within weeks she had indeed shot him. What an odd path.

“It’s about Lexi,” she said. “This will hurt, but we think you’ll want to hear it now rather than later.”

Rosie told the story as gently as possible, glossing over the ugliest of details like what Reid Fletcher had specifically said to Lexi.

Erik listened without comment. He lowered his head, an elbow on the table, and rubbed the back of his neck.

When she finished, he said softly, “It’s all my fault, taking her to that bar, getting her involved in my cesspool of a life. Why did that creep have to go after her? Of all people?”

“It’s over, Erik. She’s okay.”

“And Dad shows up late as usual. If he had gotten there sooner—”

“Erik.”

He looked up at her.

“She told me she’d made her peace with your dad before Fletcher showed up. The way she sees it, if Max had come sooner, the guy could have hurt both of them. She said also she would not have known what it was to—and I quote—gather her wits and thrash the jerk who dared mess with her.”

“Lexi said that?”

“Yes. She also said her dad was there just in time for the most important part: the hug.”

Erik smiled, even as tears seeped from his eyes.

She waited as he cried quietly for a few minutes.

He wiped his face with napkins. “Greg and Jillie must spend a fortune on paper products.” He sniffed and blew his nose. “Tissues or suitable substitutes everywhere you look.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Rosie.” He made eye contact. “Thank you for bringing me here. I think.”

“You’re welcome. I guess.”

“It is the hardest thing . . . and the most amazing.”

She nodded.

“The other day . . .” Tears welled in his eyes again. “I get extra credit for turning into a crybaby.” After a moment he cleared his throat. “The other day we were talking. Which we do a lot of. Anyway, I remembered an incident when I was twelve. Dad had coached my Little League team for years. One day he quit. More precisely, he abandoned the team mid-season. He just didn’t show up for a game one night. Didn’t even give the assistants a heads-up. I don’t think he even came to watch a game after that. It was Beaumont Staffing. That was when it took off big-time. And that was when things got broken inside of me.”

He pressed his lips together and didn’t speak for a moment. “The team was in first place when he left. We ended up fifth. The guys blamed him.” He jutted his chin and struck a teasing pose. “I admitted I’ve been a little annoyed over the incident for several years.” He paused and flicked his eyes in her direction. “Maria, I swear you are the only person on earth I can say this to.”

Already her heart sang. She resisted the urge to jump up and shout hallelujah. She knew what was coming.

“Greg prayed. I prayed. I asked God to fix the broken part. I imagined stuffing all the pain and hurts into a ball bag.” He raised his good arm. “Then I handed the bag to Him.” He lowered it. “I didn’t see or hear anything, but I
knew
. Somewhere deep inside I knew it was done. I’d forgiven my dad.”

She grinned.

Erik shook his forefinger at her. “And you knew that was going to happen.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I did.”

T
hey meandered through the desert, the descending sun warm on their backs.

Erik said, “Don’t tell Lexi, but I’m doing paint-by-numbers.” He chuckled. “Actually, don’t tell anybody. It sounds so pathetic.”

“I won’t be sharing this visit with others.”
Rosie glanced at him. “And it’s not pathetic. Consider the process like you would surgery. A huge tumor was just cut out of you. You still feel pain from the incision. You need to rest. You do that by engaging your energies in simple activity.”

“Like paint-by-numbers.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll give you one to stick on your fridge.”

They walked in comfortable silence for a while. A turkey vulture flew overhead, looping gracefully through the air.

Erik stopped. “Speaking of the family.”

She shaded her eyes with a hand and looked up at him.

“My parents are doing this thing in a few weeks, on the third. A wedding blessing.”

“Lexi told me about it.”

“When I first arrived here, I thought,
What a great excuse this will
be. I can skip it.
But now.” He shrugged. “Now I don’t want to skip it. I want to embrace this hugely important event. I told Greg it’ll probably kill me, but he says I’ll survive and then I can come back here.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

“I thought about inviting Maria to join me. But instead I’d like to ask Rosie.”

She squinted. “What’s the difference?”

“Maria is my savior, so to speak. Small
s.
Rosie is my good friend. I hope.”

Tingles. “She is.”

“So, will you go with me?”

“I, uh . . .” Go with him? Tingle overload.

“You have a boyfriend. Some big guy. Another cop. Forget I asked.”

“No. No, it’s not that. It’s, well, I have some other news. Glad tidings.”

“Glad tidings? You’re withholding glad tidings?”

“Not exactly withholding. I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.” She bit her tongue. She really did not want to get to it. She could have spent the entire visit not getting to it. “Felicia missed her court date Friday.”

“What court date?”

“The one in which a judge makes the temporary restraining order against you permanent.”

“Which means what?”

“You’re off the hook.”

“Really? The order is no more?”

“Yes.”

“Great. But what does that have to do with my inviting you to this wedding thing?”

“W-well, you can ask her. She was probably planning on going before, right? She must be a family friend since you two were together when—”

Erik burst out laughing. “Are you nuts?”

She bristled. “You called her from Santa Reina that night!”

“I called her to break the restraining order so the sheriff would have a reason to come and get me and then I would have a reason to call you. I already told you that.”

“You’re the one who’s nuts.”

“That makes two of us. The perfect couple.”

Rosie raised her arms and dropped them at her sides, at a complete loss for words. She turned her back to him, put her hands on her hips, and kicked a rock.
Lord? I don’t want to care for him in
that
way. He has more major issues than there are grains of sand in this
desert! On top of which he is unemployed and too handsome for his own
good—and talk about baggage! It would take—

“Was it the word ‘couple’?” he said. “Look, I know I don’t have anything to offer except a really bad track record. It’s just that you’re probably the only true friend I’ve had in years, and I don’t want to face that wedding without a good friend there to prop me up. That would be you. You know, I liked you better when you talked a lot.”

“Rats.” He was under her skin and he’d been there a long time. She spun back around. “I will not be your rebound girl.”

His jaw dropped.

“You got that, Beaumont?”

A slow smile spread. His eyes crinkled. “Got it.”

“You’re not even my type.”

“You think you’re mine?”

“I just wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

“I won’t. We go as friends.”

“As friends.”

“So, I take it you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“That is none of your business.”

He smiled again, warmly, his eyes intent on hers.

An easy silence unfolded between them again. She wondered if he read in her eyes what he conveyed with his own.

Tingles.

Big-time.

  
Sixty-Six

A
s Max left the room, Claire watched Lexi and Tuyen. Instantly they both tensed. If they’d been rabbits in a garden, their jaws would have stopped munching the lettuces. Ears and noses would be twitching.

Since Lexi’s arrival at the hacienda Friday night and Tuyen’s return on Saturday, Claire had noticed that same reaction time and again.

She set her paint roller in its pan. “Girls, let’s take a break.”

As one they nodded, laid down their paintbrushes, and joined her cross-legged on the drop cloth.

The four of them were painting one of the guest rooms. Now that it appeared their daughter and niece would be living with them at least for the time being, Max had declared the contractor’s schedule null and void. They needed more refurbished space
yesterday
. Typical Max reaction.

At least it was a positive version of his inability to delegate tasks. They all jumped in to help. Besides getting walls painted, the project kept them all too busy to dwell on the past week’s events.

But continuing to ignore the obvious might not be such a good thing.

She sighed. “He just went to the bathroom. He’ll be right back.”

“Who?” Lexi said.

Claire caught the twinkle in her eye, a hopeful sign that the horror of the attack had receded a tiny bit more.

For hours on end Friday night and most of Saturday, they had cried and hugged. Refusing to leave her father’s side, Lexi accompanied them to bring Tuyen home from the hospital. That night, both girls camped out in the sala on mattresses while Max slept on the couch.

“Mom, Tuyen and I are making up for lost time.” Lexi reached over and patted her cousin’s hand above its bandage. “Right, Tutu?” She used Erik’s nickname. “We finally got a daddy. We are not letting him out of our sight.”

Claire shut her eyes. Maybe she was the only one ignoring the obvious.

“Aunt Claire.”

She looked at the blue eyes that always took her by surprise with their decidedly Asian lids.

“We be okay.”

Lexi nodded. “Just not today.”

Claire did not know where to begin with her thanks to God.

The girls were safe.

Lexi exhibited a new compassion for Tuyen, who responded with happy smiles and was talking more than ever.

Max was committed to pampering them with his presence rather than with gifts like he would have in bygone days.

A woman with the gentlest of voices called from the desert to say Erik was making progress.

Jenna and Danny were coming for dinner.

Indio was her old self, spry and full of praises, doting like—in Max’s words—like a grandmother from the sappiest of flowery Hallmark cards.

And Ben was . . . Well, Ben had not gotten into the truck with his loaded rifle and driven down to the jail to shoot that man.

“Hey.” Max appeared at the open doorway. “Who said it’s break time?”