How did you do it?” Jenna gazed at Beth Russell. She’d been watching her all afternoon. She could not look away from such an enigma.
They sat alone outdoors, in wicker chairs tucked between a low boulder and a young sycamore tree at one end of the courtyard. A black streak marred half the trunk from the ground up, but wide leaves rustled and their odd scent wafted in the afternoon breeze.
“How did I do it?” Beth’s smile eclipsed the fact that they had met only a few hours ago. The heart connection between the two women was ages old. “You mean, how did I get out of bed every day while the love of my life lived in a war zone the other side of the world?”
“And not lose your mind?”
Beth reached over and placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, dear heart.”
On any other day, Jenna would not be conversing with the likes of a woman who said “dear heart” and reeked of such utter compassion—most especially one her grandmother practically demanded she meet because of one of her visceral conclusions.
But today was not any other day. Today was the day she’d awoken from a vivid, explicit dream of lovemaking with Cade Edmunds.
Jenna said, “I’ve heard the pat spiritual answers.”
“Indio.”
“Yes. They don’t seem . . . available to me.”
“Your grandmother lives in the mystery.” Again the gentle smile, the eyes so sparkly they were of no particular color. “God is real, Jenna. He is our only hope for sanity.”
“But how?”
“Talk to Him. I talked to Him nonstop after BJ left. I determined to expect Him to show up in the everyday.”
“But what did that look like in the everyday?”
Beth giggled. “You are your father’s daughter, and I mean that as a compliment. Max was always pushing for answers. He kept me and BJ on our toes.” She paused. “It looked like friends offering to be with me. It looked like opportunities to grow in my studies and work. It looked like camaraderie with other military girlfriends and wives.”
Jenna thought of Amber and her invitations to dinner and movies and gatherings with other Pendleton wives. She thought of the list of names tucked in a drawer, names of local women whose husbands were in Kevin’s squad.
Beth said, “I remember I stopped watching the news and reading the paper. I still cried at least once a day, but the images of war grew less immediate. I stopped saying ‘God, keep him safe’ with every other breath. I prayed instead, ‘Thank You for being with him.’”
“And when you heard . . . ?” Fear, thick as the grossest of phlegm in her throat, strangled her voice.
“When I heard . . . That’s when I entered hell.” She squeezed Jenna’s arm. “There is no escaping the pain. It becomes the focus of your life the moment he enlists. Right?”
Jenna nodded.
Beth looked at the sycamore near them. Fine lines appeared around her eyes, giving her a look of weariness. “I’m like this tree. My black streak from a long-ago fire is still obvious, but so is new growth.” She turned back to Jenna. “You’re in the fire now. You can’t escape it or make any sense of it whatsoever. It’s scorching through you, leaving its mark. The question is, will you let it consume you . . . or will you let God bring about new growth through it?”
Now Jenna tore her gaze away from the woman, unable to view such a raw display of brokenness.
Midweek, early in the morning, Jenna trekked again up into the hills to the Hacienda Hideaway. She would miss half a day of school. Cade hired a sub for her, no questions asked.
She had one giant of a question.
Parking between Danny’s truck and Erik’s Mustang, she pondered it. Greeting the entire family in the courtyard, she pondered it. Hiking the steep trail behind the barn, she pondered it.
Why in the world had she come?
A subdued bunch trudged along the path with her—her parents and grandparents, Erik, Danny, Lexi, Tuyen, Beth Russell, and Skylar Pierson. The whole gang was there in honor of September 9, Uncle BJ’s birthday. They made their way to the wilderness area her grandparents had dedicated to their eldest son.
It was an odd sort of commemoration for him. But then, what exactly was a family to do with a member’s birthday when they didn’t know if that person was alive or dead? No address for mailing cards and gifts. No grave marker for placing flowers.
What would she do if Kevin didn’t come home and yet didn’t get killed?
They reached the spot. Scrub vegetation. Dirt. Rocks. A boulder. On its face toward the rising sun was a crude carving of a cross. Beneath it, in neatly grooved letters and numbers, was his name, Benjamin Charles Beaumont Jr., and his birth date.
The ritual began. Papa, almost formal in his collared shirt and bolo tie, laid a small wooden figurine he’d carved on the ground. Nana set down a bunch of sunflowers picked from her garden. Max placed a small stone in a pile. They all sat on blankets in the dried grasses. Claire prompted Nana to tell about the day BJ was born. Nana spoke, her face aglow with sweet memories.
Once more Jenna wondered why she had come. She hadn’t been since childhood. Usually only her parents came with Nana and Papa. Why the pull on her heart to come this year?
She looked over at Beth Russell, who sat close to Tuyen, an arm around her fiancée’s daughter.
And then she knew the answer.
She had come to see the impossible: proof that God was real in the midst of unspeakable pain.
Hey, Princess!” Beth’s youthful voice rang out across the hacienda’s front yard. “Wait up!”
Jenna turned, car key in hand, fifth-hour American lit in mind.
Beth reached her, grinning broadly and catching her breath.
Jenna groaned. “‘Princess’?”
“Danny referenced you that way. And then the Lord gave me a word for you.”
Try as she might, Jenna did not shut her eyelids quick enough to conceal their flutter.
Beth laughed. “I know. I am weirder than your grandma. Hear me out?”
“I need to get to—”
“I know. I’ll be brief.”
It was impossible to say no to the woman.
Beth wiped a sleeve across her perspiring forehead. “Here goes. They’ve been calling you ‘princess’ forever, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Nicknames get imprinted in our hearts. We totally buy into them. Deep down, we believe that’s who we are.”
“I know I’m spoiled, fairly close to rotten.” With anyone else, Jenna would not have cringed at the huff in her tone as she did now.
“Exactly. I mean you’ve been taught the negative side of ‘princess’ and that’s how you see yourself—spoiled rotten, selfish, snooty.”
A hot stab of pain shot through her chest.
“Jenna, I want to challenge you. Try this ‘princess’ on for size: you are royalty. You are the King’s daughter. As His child, you are indeed privileged and adored and gifted to serve others. That’s what He wants you to grow into. And that, dear heart, is how you do it, how you live through this season.” Her eyes shone, two stars unbearably bright. “Okay?”
Even if she could form a coherent thought, she could not have expressed it. All she could do was lean into Beth’s embrace and notice in the shimmering distance a row of trees with their charred trunks . . . and branches heavy with green leaves.