Castles in the Sand Read online

  “Hi.”

  The silence stretched, but Pepper vowed not to break it. She wasn’t the one who had called. She wasn’t the one who had banished her child from home.

  Now that was a crummy attitude. Evidently she was still a tad bit angry about things.

  “Um.” Susan Starr’s voice was barely a decibel above a breath. “I don’t know where to be—” A sob cut her off.

  Pepper sighed. “Kenzie is fine.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  Well, thank Him and her husband, Mick, and Aidan and herself. Why not throw in the other five kids too? They all helped. They all loved Kenzie as though she were family.

  “Is she there?”

  “No.” Pepper ran her fingers through her short hair. “But she’s fine.”

  “Do you know where she’s staying?”

  Duh. The woman was a fruitcake right out of the fifties. Where would the girl be staying except with the guy?

  Oh, Lord! Forgive that. “She’s living with Aidan.”

  There was a rustling noise, like paper being rubbed between a nose and the phone’s mouthpiece. “Um. May I have the phone number?”

  “Susan, look, I’m really sorry, but she asked me not to give it to you. She said she will call you when she’s ready. She’s just hurting right now.” For good reason.

  The silence lasted a long moment. “How is she? With the pregnancy?”

  “The morning sickness has subsided.” Pepper deliberately closed her mouth to prevent herself from revealing more. This was Kenzie’s battle.

  Except for an immature little stubborn streak, her semi-daughter-in-law was a beautiful girl, inside and out. Courageous. A go-getter. One week back in the country she had taken a job as waitress in a coffee shop—make that barista—and seen a doctor. And her voice! An angel’s. Pepper could not have chosen a better partner for her eldest son. God indeed had heard and answered her prayers. Well, not the pregnancy before marriage part, but then life never did fit into her version of perfect.

  Susan said, “Will you give her a message, please? Tell her I’m at the beach house this week. Alone. Till Friday. But there’s no phone here.”

  “Sure.” The Starrs had a beach house? La-di-da. How much did superchurch pastors make, anyway?

  “Mrs. Carlucci, may I ask you something?”

  The woman’s hesitant manner was getting on Pepper’s nerves. “Shoot.”

  “Are you okay with this?”

  “With what?” She knew with what, of course, but she was ornery enough to force Susan Starr to put it into words.

  “With…with…” Susan sighed. “With them not being married. With them living together.”

  She waited a beat, measuring her words. “I find it best to be okay with things I can’t possibly change. I sleep better at night.”

  There was another long silence. At last Susan spoke. “Can we meet? For tea? Or something? Just to talk a few minutes?”

  Pepper wrinkled her nose. She really didn’t want to get into it. If and when the Starrs made amends with their daughter, then she might consider a cordial relationship—for the baby’s sake.

  Susan was still speaking, rushing her words together. “The truth is, I’m not okay with this. I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating. I can’t think straight. I don’t know how to process the situation. Please. Tell me how you do it?”

  Pepper suppressed a sudden urge to giggle. Nah. No way, Lord. This one is totally Yours. I’d bite her head off and have fun doing it.

  Susan said, “I’m sorry. That was awfully presumptuous to ask. Will you just tell Kenzie that…that…I miss her and I’m here.”

  “Of course.” Why wasn’t the woman pounding on the Carluccis’ front door to find Kenzie instead of stammering over the telephone? Their address was in the book!

  “All right. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  If you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours; but if you do not forgive—

  Nuts. She really had to quit studying Matthew’s Gospel.

  “Susan, wait. Where are you? What beach?”

  Again a reply did not come immediately.

  Pepper gazed at her ceiling and noted cobwebs.

  “Mission Beach.”

  “Okay.” That was further than she wanted to drive, and she wasn’t ready to have her cobwebs scrutinized by the wife of the illustrious Reverend Drake Starr. She calculated a midway point, not too private. “We could meet at the Fashion Valley mall. At the Starbucks on the second level.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow? Say nine thirty?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Uh, we met once, but it was a long time ago. I don’t look like Kenzie. I have dark blond hair.”

  And, I bet, the expression of a woman watching a rattlesnake coiled at her feet. “I’ll recognize you.”

  Later that evening after dinner, Pepper enlisted Aidan’s help in the kitchen. As he washed dishes, she playfully bumped a shoulder against his. “So, you want to come with me tomorrow? Meet your semi-mother-in-law for coffee?”

  “Mom.” Aidan, hands deep in sudsy water, shook his head. “Where do you come up with these phrases?”

  “It’s a gift. You know you didn’t get your ability to write song lyrics from your dad.” She picked up a plate and towel-dried it. “I guess I could say ‘the mother of your live-in girlfriend who’s not exactly just a girlfriend because she is the mother of your child, now about twenty weeks old in womb age.’”

  “Yeah, right. How about ‘the witch who wouldn’t leave her dog outside on a rainy night but shoved her daughter through the door’?”

  Pepper grasped his bristly chin and turned him to face her. “Hush,” she whispered. “We all make mistakes, and she didn’t shove Kenzie.”

  He closed his eyes briefly.

  Nose to nose with him, she could have been looking at a photo of herself. He had the same narrow face as she, the same long nose, the same sapphire blue eyes set deep and close together under bushy brows. No laugh lines creased his twenty-five-year-old skin, though. No extra weight rounded out his neck. His dark hair was longer, thicker, and curlier than hers, and he stood shoulders and head taller. She let go of his chin.

  “Yeah, Mom, we all make mistakes.”

  “You remember my first reaction to your news.”

  He smiled. “You were ecstatic about being a grandma.”

  She picked up a handful of flatware with the dish towel. “All right. Go to the second and third reactions. I wanted to ground you for life.”

  “Thank you for not doing that.”

  “Like I could.” He no longer lived under her roof.

  The day of his announcement she had exhausted her anger outdoors so as not to alarm the younger children. Walking round and round the high school’s track, she fussed and fumed. How could her son have been so stupid? He knew not to play with fire. He knew.

  That night her husband held her tightly and they consoled each other. Their Aidan understood his choices made his future more difficult than it needed to be, but he was a good kid. Not perfect as in angelic. He was too much a chip off the old block to be anything but just plain human.

  Make that a chip off two old blocks. Pepper and Mick weren’t exactly sainthood material. Not even close.

  She laid the last fork in the drawer and closed it. “So what about coffee tomorrow?”

  “I think I’m busy.”

  “Chicken.” She hung the damp towel on the oven door’s handle. “I’m going to make sure the little ones aren’t terrorizing Kenzie. It’s way too quiet back there.”

  She walked through the modest house, sidestepped a laundry basket overflowing with clean towels, and wondered what Susan Starr’s five-bedroom home looked like. Kenzie had mentioned the size once and said the extra rooms weren’t used much for guests. Maybe Pepper could rent space and ship the younger girls over there. They’d love not having to share a bedroom.

  She found Kenzie in the middle of a twin bed, six-year-old Da
vita curled up on one side of her, three-year-old Mickey Junior on the other, both fast asleep. Kenzie’s lids were shut as well.

  Pepper paused in the doorway. A corner of her mind still wished to condemn the young woman as a blasphemous tramp who had ruined her son’s life. It was so much easier to blame someone else’s kid instead of one’s own flesh and blood.

  But that someone else’s kid now carried Pepper’s own flesh and blood.

  She walked to the bed, and Kenzie’s eyes fluttered open.

  The girl smiled and shut a storybook propped on her lap. “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself. How did you do this? Pj’s, no less.”

  “Your kids are so sweet.” She yawned.

  “Occasionally, but you bring it out in them.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “You are a natural with children.”

  “Nope. I’m just a PK.” Kenzie often referred to herself as a Preacher’s Kid. “I did not attend Sunday school. I always taught it. I think I was about a year old when I stood up in the nursery crib and exposited to the other kids about this dude named Moses telling the Red Sea to split.”

  Pepper chuckled as much at Kenzie’s humor as at her delightful face. Whenever she poked fun at herself, her chin rose slightly so the tip of her nose appeared conspicuous. Its upward tilt made Pepper think that God had lifted His paintbrush just a millisecond too soon. But of course He didn’t make mistakes. The nose fit just so.

  And the baby fit just so as well.

  “Kenzie, you are going to be an excellent mother.” She patted her leg. “Now I want to ask this one more time. Are you sure you want me to meet your mom tomorrow without you?”

  She nodded. Her eyes sparkled with tears. “I’m not ready. Please, just tell her I miss her.”

  Pepper blinked at her own tears and felt again squeezed in the middle of someone else’s life. Her son owed her for this one. He owed her big time.

  Four

  Natalie Starr blew out an exasperated sigh. “Rex,” she addressed her husband across the dining room table. “Why do you have to be such a man about this whole thing?”

  His brows rose a notch as he sipped his after-dinner coffee. “You’re emoting enough angst over Susan for the two of us.”

  “She’s all alone down there!”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s stronger than she looks. Or sounds.”

  “Oh! I have to tell someone else besides you!”

  Rex set down his cup. “Nat.”

  She made a growling noise. “Don’t talk lawyer to me.”

  “What’d I say?”

  “You don’t have to say a thing. It’s your tone. All business and practical and full of reasonable argument designed to win over a jury. You’re going to tell me to butt out. I don’t want to hear it.”

  He smiled.

  And she almost gave in. She loved his analytical mind. It usually complemented her own thinking. Their greatest joy was creating solutions to problems, whether big, small, irrelevant, personal, or business. World affairs were settled over morning coffee and their sons’ adolescent woes over dinner decaf.

  But now they were talking about Drake and Susan. Natalie’s feminine side was riled up, a side she usually relegated to the back burner. Except when it came to Drake and Susan.

  In spite of Rex’s less than empathetic attitude, she felt nothing if not gratitude for his solid character. He did not resemble his older brother in the least. Instead of being tall with dark hair and light eyes, he was stocky in build with caramel brown eyes and blondish hair worn in a crew cut. The siblings’ appearances provoked snide comments about a milkman’s genes. Personality-wise, they were even more dissimilar, a fact that always triggered a jet stream of thankfulness in her.

  “Rex, what happened to him?”

  “It’s what didn’t happen to him.”

  The exchange was an old rerun. Natalie agreed that as young men in their early thirties, both brothers were smart, goal-oriented, hard chargers with a magnetism that drew people to them. They were both headed toward what she considered greatness: Rex in law, Drake in the church. Their goals centered around helping people. The irony was that the more they succeeded in helping others, the less time they devoted to their roles as husbands and fathers.

  Seven years ago, life-threatening injuries from a ski accident changed Rex forever. As soon as his casts were removed, he went down on his knees. Seven years later he still did so on a daily basis. And it showed loud and clear in his compassionate ways.

  Meanwhile, Drake spent the years feeding his public persona and distancing himself further and further from his family.

  “I want to strangle him, Rex.”

  “I know, but it wouldn’t help. And going against his wishes and telling people about Kenzie will not budge him. Only prayer will.”

  “But we’ve been praying that for months and Susan is hurting so badly.”

  “She has to make her own choices. And keep in mind, she is not like you. You never would have taken his nonsense sitting down. All we can do is pray her quiet demeanor wins him over.”

  “And that Kenzie is not lost in the process.”

  “Yes.”

  “We need more people praying.”

  “This is not for the gossip chain. Not without Drake’s knowledge.”

  “I’m calling the Prayer Warrior.”

  Rex opened his mouth as if to protest more.

  “I won’t tell her details.”

  His lips relaxed back into another smile. “Mildred Murray. All right, totally different story from the gossip…I mean, prayer chain. Where would we be without those special older women who really know how to pray?”

  His question was rhetorical. He referred not only to seventy-seven-year-old Mildred Murray, but to Faith Fontaine, the deceased owner of the beach house. When Faith learned that he lay near death in the hospital, she went to him and prayed. The doctors called it a miracle. So did Natalie.

  She said, “Mildred is discreet. She will only tell the Father. Gwyn Fairchild knows discreet too.”

  “Natalie.” His tone was back to let’s just hold on here a minute. “Gwyn too?”

  “I won’t tell her details, either. Gwyn is the only woman who doesn’t intimidate Susan to the point of speechlessness.”

  “Not like you.”

  She harrumphed. “No, not like me. That’s why I have to tell Gwyn. She knows how to love Susan in a gentle way. I only harangue my poor sister-in-law. I don’t know why she even talks to me.”

  “Harangue isn’t the word. You simply suggest solutions. Like she needs time away. Aw, Nat. You’re crying.” He backed his chair from the table and held out his arms. “Come here.”

  Fighting back tears, she walked around the table and slid onto his lap.

  “I promise you Susan will be fine.”

  “It hurts so bad seeing them like this.”

  “I know.” He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into him. “It’s too easy to imagine us in the same situation. Me being so consumed with my image that I would shut you and the boys out. But for the grace of God, there go I.”

  She put her face against his crisp white shirt. It worked pretty well as a handkerchief.

  Five

  On Tuesday, her first morning at the beach house, Susan awoke at four. Despite the early hour, she followed her usual routine: She showered, ate two soft-boiled eggs and lightly buttered toast, drank a cup of tea, engaged in a quiet time—at least a feeble attempt at it; the open Bible laid in her lap for a few minutes—and walked the dog.

  Going through the motions was easier than worrying about what the day held in store for her. The routine was probably a close cousin to her chimp chatter.

  Now she sipped another cup of tea in the big armchair by the front window and cuddled with Pugsy. The long beach walk in the brisk predawn hour had worn him out. Wouldn’t Drake have a conniption if he knew she was outdoors at that time of day?

  But he wasn’t there to explain her lapse in good judgment.
/>   She watched the tide make its way inland. Big waves had already enticed surfers into the deep. Though they were only specks on the horizon, she could see them because the house sat high enough to afford a view over the seawall straight to the ocean.

  Julian surfed. Perhaps he was one of them. The previous day he showed her where he hid a door key on his patio. She was welcome to use it and his telephone anytime day or night, whether or not he was home. Julian was a nice man. Very compassionate.

  Should she call Drake and tell him of her uneventful evening and the morning beach walk?

  Best to spare him.

  Should she tell him of her phone conversation with Pepper Carlucci? Of their meeting scheduled to take place in three hours?

  Better to wait. Why borrow worry for him over something that had not yet happened?

  Lord.

  The prayer stopped.

  She remembered how her mind had shut down the night Kenzie left. Nearly three months later, it hadn’t fully restarted. It was like a dirty CD that got stuck on a smudge and played one word over and over and over.

  She couldn’t get past His name. Lord.

  She couldn’t pray.

  The most she could do was go through the motions of everyday tasks and count the minutes until she met Aidan Carlucci’s mother.

  The closest link to Kenzie.

  Closest? She was the only link.

  Standing in a warm sunny space outside the coffee shop, Susan twisted the strap of her handbag around her fingers. She was fifteen minutes early.

  Except for classical music pouring from loudspeakers hidden in flowerbeds, the second level of the open-air mall was quiet under a brilliant blue sky. A group of seniors clothed in cozy jogging suits sat at one of the food court tables. Occasional shoppers walked by. None resembled what she remembered of Aidan’s mother.

  They had met two years ago when Kenzie joined Aidan’s band, Glory Traxxx. Drake deplored their rock style and thought it not true worship music, but he admitted it seemed to connect with teenagers. So he allowed them to perform at the church for a special youth group rally. Mr. and Mrs. Carlucci had attended along with parents of the ten or so other band members.