* * *
It was nearly dawn, before Leah fell asleep in Jay's arms. When she heard the carillon atop the nearby Methodist church announcing nine A.M. services, she stirred and opened one eye. Jay's waiting smile welcomed her to the new day. Moments before, she had dreamed fitfully, racing down dark, narrow alleys, searching for her lost children, only to find their bodies stuffed like trash in a filthy dumpster.
Under Jay's approving gaze, she was a princess again, awakened by the handsome knight whose life she had once despaired of ever sharing.
He cooed a soft "Good morning" and stroked her disheveled hair. "I'm glad you slept. I don't think I did."
"You did. Take my word for it." Leah almost laughed, but full recall of their dreary reality dawned like a drizzly morning. Her hands clutched at Jay's chest. Then, her fingers moved to the dark swelling near his eye. "Does it hurt much?"
"Not when you touch it."
"I had a nightmare," Leah recalled.
"Life is a nightmare right now."
"Will it ever end?" she said.
"The nightmare? Yes, soon."
"I wish I could be that sure." She didn't press him for reasons to support his optimism. His non-specific promise was sufficient to give her courage to face the uncertainties of the new week. If she forced him to admit the truth that their chances of survival were slim to none, she might not have the courage to do what had to be done.
"Jay," she said into his cheek, where morning whiskers bit her nose and lips, "I've got to tell the children something about what's happening . . . and about us."
He frowned. "I'm glad it's your job, not mine. What will you say?"
"I'll tell them the truth. That we're in love . . . that we want to be together as much as possible . . . until we can be married."
"Not live together?"
"I couldn't do that to them. I've tried to teach them to do what's right. One of those things is that people should be married before they live together. I don't want to confuse them. They're too young to make distinctions. Please understand." Leah looked into his honest eyes. She had always admired the integrity she found in them. It was there now.
"I hope we won't have to wait too long," he said and lay back on his pillow.
Suddenly, Leah bolted up in bed, letting the sheet fall away from her breasts.
"What is it?" He scanned the room for whatever danger threatened them.
"It's Sunday! Don't you have to go to church, or offer Mass or . . . something?"
When Jay laughed, Leah realized that the thought of him rushing from their night of lovemaking to an altar in some cold church to lead a sleepy congregation in ritual prayers seemed beyond strange. Hadn't her bed, with its long history of joy and ecstasy, been a sacred altar on which she and Jay had offered each other--and God--a precious gift? Could there be a more holy place for them in the world than where they were right now, in each other's arms?
Leah wished this conflict were their only complication. At this point, Jay's vocational decision seemed like a minor distraction, though she knew it was a major trauma for him.
"You're forgetting. I'm a target," he said, his voice flat but not without courage. "I might as well have red and blue circles and a yellow bull's-eye painted on my chest and back. God will understand and excuse my absence."
"Will He excuse this?" Leah slid her hand into the soft curls between Jay's legs and felt him respond to her touch.
He inhaled the fragrance of her hair and whispered, "If there is one thing Jesus understands, it's unconditional love."
* * *
Leah drove Jay downtown, where he rented a car. Their parting proved more difficult than either had anticipated. He promised to call her every day.
"Twice a day," she insisted, pressing her body against his and not wanting to let go.
He made her promise to be on the lookout for strangers and to call the local police if anything the least bit suspicious happened around the cabin. "Better to be a nuisance than dead."
"When will I see you?" She had to know. She had to believe it would happen.
"If I'm right about Angel's response to our strategy," Jay said, "he'll act swiftly, within the next day or two. I expect him to make contact when he catches up with me. He'll want to know what's going on. If he isn't satisfied I'm still in their camp, he'll try to kill me. I've got to outwit him. There has to be a way." He looked deep into her soul to see if she believed him. "If there is, by God I'll find it."
He looked so determined, Leah almost believed him.
26
From Union Square, Leah drove out to the Avenues to pick up Teddy and Monica. Explaining her sudden change of plan to the children was easier than making it acceptable to Sandy, who was alarmed by all the spooky maneuvering.
Sandy stood on the sidewalk outside her home, wearing a parka and a worried expression. "This is more serious than you're letting on."
Her throat tight from fighting back tears, Leah managed only a nod. Sandy hugged her boss tightly. Neither wanted to let go, unsure they would ever see each other again. Finally, Leah broke away and hustled her kids into the station wagon, which Jay had helped her pack. He had been adamant that she not return home after dropping him at the car rental agency.
"I'll keep in touch," Leah promised as she started the engine. "Have a good Thanksgiving."
"You too." Sandy's response was sober, wistful. She drew close to kiss Leah one more time. "You sure I can't call the cops?"
"That wouldn't help right now. Believe me."
* * *
"I don't have my ski clothes!" Teddy screamed, when he realized they had started out for the mountains without going home first.
"I've got everything," Leah assured him. "Do you think, with all this stuff in here, there could be anything I didn't bring?"
The four-hour drive eastward across the Bay Bridge and up Interstate 80, along the Carquinez Straits into the Sacramento Valley, gave her the feeling of being enclosed in a time capsule. Without logic, she felt in jeopardy at her starting point and at her mountain destination, but not on the road between. The rational side of her brain told her she had every reason to be terrified. It ticked off the perils that had ripped their placid lives apart over the course of this weekend. A whole other part of her lingered in wonder at the magical, terrifying night she had just spent with Jay. It didn't make sense, but her body felt like a twisted cable and languorous at the same time.
It had been years, since Leah had allowed herself to satisfy her great need to be cared for, caressed--pleasured. Before Jay reentered her life, the only man who could meet those needs--the only one she would ever allow to satisfy them--was in his grave. She buried her sexual self with him.
Teddy and Monica spent the first half of the journey playing license plate games, spotting out-of-staters and personalized plates. A single point for every "foreign" plate, five to the first person to decipher a coded one. Personalized and out-of-state merited ten points.
Although the competition got boisterous at times, Leah didn't interfere. She was glad the kids had found a way to occupy themselves. She used this vacuum to rest her accelerating mind and enjoy the semi-rural scenery in the Delta Region farmlands west of Sacramento.
They passed through the state capital and picked up Highway 50, heading into the frosty Sierra foothills. With the Gold Rush town of Placerville behind them, Leah decided it was time to confide to Teddy and Monica something of their shared peril. "We need to talk."
"I know what about," Teddy said, cockily. "We need to get our story straight, why we're gonna be absent from school the next few days, so they won't know we're ditchin'."
"We're not ditchin'!" Monica piped from the back seat. We're going away with our mother. There's a difference. Ditchin's when you skip school, and your mom don't even know it."
"'Doesn't,'" Leah corrected. An automatic parental response.
"'Doesn't' what?" Teddy asked.
"Stop! Both of you."
Leah's patience was on a short fuse. "Just be quiet for a minute and let me do the talking." Having gotten their attention, she continued in response to Teddy's statement. "You're wrong. We're not getting our story straight. I'll take care of that. You won't have to do anything about it, except show up for school next Monday." Not the whole truth, but she wasn't up to moral hair-splitting. "There are two things I have to tell you. They're separate, but connected. They're also kind of complicated, so pay attention."
Teddy slumped back in his seat. "You gonna give us a quiz when you're done?"
A smile shoved Leah's anger aside. Teddy had his father's ability to make her laugh, just when things were getting hot between them. "I just might, wise guy. First of all, Jay de Córdova."
"Father Javier?" Monica said.
"Yes."
"Sandy told us Catholic priests don't ever get married. Is that true?" Teddy's question carried a note of triumph.
"Well, yes. That's true. Unless they stop being priests?"
"How do they stop?" Monica wanted to know.
It had never occurred to Leah to ask Jay how one went about leaving the priesthood. Do you just walk out? Is there a formal drumming-out-of-the-corps ceremony? Pink slip? Walking papers? "Good question. I don't know how. It happens, though. Take my word for it. A long time ago, before your father and I were married, Jay and I knew each other. We were friends. Close friends."
"Was he your boyfriend?" Monica rested her chin against the back of the driver's seat.
"Priests don't have girlfriends. We worked together and liked each other. Maybe if he hadn't been a priest already when we met, we'd have become boyfriend and girlfriend."
Teddy grunted and turned his head away to look out the window. Leah sensed his growing discomfort.
"Would you have gotten married?" his sister probed.
"My, you're full of questions. Well," Leah reflected, "I think so. We liked each other that much. But we didn't get married. I came back to California, started going with your father again, and we got married."
"Did you like Dad more than that other guy?" Teddy said, still not looking at his mother.
"I fell in love with your father and never regretted it for one minute. He gave me a good life and two beautiful children."
"One beautiful child," Monica said, "and one ugly one."
"Yeah, and you're the ugly one!" Teddy countered.
"Cut it out!" Leah didn't want to lose their attention. "Now, things are changed. Your dad's gone. Jay's come back."
"For good?" Teddy poorly concealed his wish for a negative answer.
"Maybe." It was best to be indefinite. "Anyhow, we still like each other . . . a lot . . . a whole lot."
"Are you in love with him?" Monica said.
"Yes." This reverse parent-child session amused Leah. This was exactly how it had been, when she told her parents she wanted to marry Walter Barton. Only in this case, Teddy and Monica played the parental roles.
"Do you want to marry him?" Monica was more articulate in matters of the heart than her brother.
"I do, Sweetie."
"He's a priest!" Leah heard Walt's voice in her son's objection. The tone was familiar. The inflection identical.
"He's quitting!" Leah explained. "He won't be a priest any more."
"What's he going to be?"
Monica's question was perfectly logical. What would Jay do with his life outside the priesthood? Things had happened so fast the last twenty-four hours that they hadn't covered basic life-after-priesthood ground. "I guess he'll be just plain ol' ordinary Jay. And that's pretty good, as far as I'm concerned."
"Will our name be de Córdova?" Again, Teddy's contrary vote was clear and decisive.
"Maybe mine will. I might keep Barton. I don't know." Her kids were way ahead of her. "You two'll keep your daddy's name."
Teddy remained sullen through all this talk of his mother's remarrying, "Will we move to that island he lives on?"
"Not at all! We're staying right here."
It was Monica's turn again. "Is he going to live with us?"
"When we get married." Leah felt more in control of the discussion. "Any more questions? Teddy?"
He shook his head.
"Monica?"
Her daughter's eyes shone with innocent clarity. She, too, had no further questions, at least none she was willing to formulate.
"Then on to my second point. Why we're going to the mountains early." Leah heaved a deep sigh and uttered a prayer for words that would say enough, but not too much. She didn't need two terrified kids on her hands for the next week. "Usually, my job isn't dangerous." When that opening evoked no adverse reaction, she continued. "The people POCI tries to help, people who are put in jail without committing a crime--innocent people--are often kept in prison by bad leaders who don't treat their citizens the way Americans are used to being treated." She added it was her job to tell everyone about what these governments did to their people.
"Blow the whistle on 'em, hey, Ma?" Teddy said.
"Something like that. Well, most of the time, in fact all the time so far, those leaders don't pay much attention to people like me. They pretend we don't exist. Sometimes, we're able to help get people out of prison. More often we're not. For the first time ever, as far as I know, one of those leaders has gotten so upset with us he's decided to scare us off by . . . well, by making certain threats. I think he's bluffing. Blowing hot air. But, we might as well get out of town for while. Just in case there's something to it. We'll be safe at our cabin, and we'll have a good time." She took her eyes off the road long enough to engage each one. "Won't we?"
Teddy and Monica nodded. Neither commented or questioned her further, for which she was grateful.
"Last of all, I might have to be a little tighter on the rules than usual. I don't want any guff about it. End of speech." In the leaden silence that followed, Leah knew her announcement hadn't played well to the younger set.
Finally, Teddy ventured, "What kind of rules?"
Leah kept the restrictions from sounding punitive. "Simple things, like we'll all stay close to the house. Everyone will be in the house before dark. When we go skiing or to the store, we all go together. No stay-at-homers."
"I thought it was your job to free prisoners," Monica said and, with great drama, pulled a small travel blanket over her head.
"I said we're going to have fun. And we are. We're just going to have fun . . . together." How long would it take for this melodrama to play itself out on the stage of their lives? How long would they have to pretend to be a normal family getting a head start on their Thanksgiving holiday? Jay had predicted a day or two, three at the most.
If he's right, Leah thought, we'll know by Wednesday, if we'll have anything to be thankful for. She welcomed the deadline, only because it promised resolution. In every other respect, she dreaded the inevitable showdown.
* * *
The last half-hour of their trip brought them down from the Highway 50 summit and into the always breathtaking Tahoe Basin, with its silver-lined vista of the lake, circled by jagged granite teeth. Leah turned off 50 at the Heavenly Valley sign. She headed up the steep mountain road toward their cabin a few blocks from the resort's main parking lot, which bustled with activity. People packed four-wheel-drive vehicles and vans for the trip back home. Trams moved a steady flow of late-afternoon skiers up the mountain. Fresh snow clung to pine branches and blanketed roofs and ground, giving the whole scene a fairyland feeling.
She pulled into the asphalt driveway in front of their house and breathed a sigh of relief that the snow plow had cleared the way. She had memories of Walt and her shoveling their way from the street to their front door in freezing darkness, carrying two bawling toddlers and a wet Golden Retriever puppy in their backpacks.
"Wait here," she ordered, shutting down the engine. "I want to take a look inside."
"I'm going with you," Teddy objected. "You said we'd do everything together."
; "Right now, I need you to stay with your sister," Leah said in a way that satisfied her son's need to feel the protector, not the one being protected.
"I'm cold," Monica said. "I don't want to stay with Teddy."
"Zip up your jacket!" Leah snapped. "Besides, it's freezing inside too. Sit here, until I give the all-clear."
The kids responded with sullen looks, perfected over centuries of adolescent evolution. As Leah walked up the driveway, she added a sense of parental failure to the host of other negative feelings weighing down her spirit. She wanted to keep Teddy and Monica happy. For her efforts, she had started off this phase of her plan with two unhappy campers.
Although it wasn't quite dusk, the sun had already descended behind the nine-thousand-foot granite walls that rimmed the Tahoe area and contained the lake like a bottomless dam. The cabin sat seventy-five feet back from the road in a stand of graceful, snow-laden pines that offered welcome shade in summer and deep, not so welcome, shadows on this November Sunday.
Leah climbed the cedar steps to the main landing and turned to toss a reassuring smile at the children. She gave a thumbs-up sign and inserted her key in the dead-bolt, a task made more difficult by thick wool gloves. The lock hadn't been disturbed. She used the same key in the doorknob lock, which stuck for a moment, then yielded to increased pressure.
Inside, the house had all the hospitality of a cold storage locker. She flicked on her flashlight, letting the beam wash across the interior. Leaving the door open to facilitate a quick exit, she moved deliberately through the living room, whose open, broad-beamed expanse also served as a dining area. All the while, she kept her antennae tuned for the slightest sound that would betray another presence in the house. At the door to the kitchen, a floorboard creaked. She pivoted, flashing the light toward the steps that led to the upstairs bedrooms. Nothing. Then, why the cold shiver that tensed the muscles in the back of her neck? Why the stabbing pain in her chest?
Since everything seemed in order in the kitchen, she proceeded into the service porch that led to a covered rear deck that protected the main electrical panel. The door to the bathroom off the service porch was closed. Generally, she left it open. She edged the door open with her toe and flashed the beam inside. Nothing out of the ordinary. The plastic curtain was drawn across the opening to the narrow shower stall. Following her instinct, she peeked into the stall. The scary task sent shivers to her toes. She fumbled with her keys before finding the one to the small padlock on the fuse box. The back door was bolted, just as she had left it after the Labor Day weekend. She undid the sliding bolts, turned the doorknob, and stepped onto the deck.