Shadows on the Sand (22 page)

Harl smiled. Much as he couldn’t believe it, he had found that particular needle in the haystack. The odds had to be a million to one against, like walking down the street in New York City and bumping into your first grade teacher from San Francisco or like winning the one hundred million dollar lottery.

But she was here, and he’d found her.

A
ndi’s head felt too heavy for her shoulders, the result of a restless night filled with dreams of Michael, barbed wire, and snakes writhing at her feet, rattles shaking, her terrified cries for help eerily silent.

A shower helped clear the Wednesday morning fuzziness, but she still felt fragile, like an expensive vase, the kind pronounced with a short
a
, one that might shatter with any pressure. She put on a rose-colored Carrie’s Café shirt, thinking its soft reflection on her face might disguise her pallor and the cheery color might make her feel better.

“I’m coming to the café with you,” Clooney said as she came into the kitchen.

“You don’t have to.” He’d already done so much, risked so much for her. He could have gotten in lots of trouble with the law for harboring her—if someone had cared enough to find her and make an issue of things. He even homeschooled her so she wouldn’t have to face questions at the local school about who she was and where she came from. Oh, and so she could catch up on her education. The Pathway wasn’t big on teaching much besides Michael’s warped thinking.

Clooney held up a hand. “I’m coming. Not open to discussion.”

She knew she could manage without him—she’d managed without him before—but it would feel good to have him beside her. Nobody had cared for so long. Not that she had any hope of dissuading him. He was like some giant guard dog, a German shepherd maybe or a Doberman, ready to protect his “person” from all things unpleasant or dangerous.

He studied her drawn face. “What do you plan to tell Carrie?”

“That I got sick?” She couldn’t say she got scared and ran. Too humiliating. Too revealing.

“I suggest you just say you’re sorry and assure her it won’t happen again.”

If he doesn’t show up again.
Oh, God, please don’t let him show up again
.

She frowned. She was talking to God too much. It’s what came of listening to Carrie and Lindsay talk about Him as if He helped run the café. But someone had to help her, someone bigger than herself, bigger even than Clooney, and He seemed the sole possibility.

Clooney took her hand and squeezed. “I’ll hang around this morning just to be sure you’re okay.”

Andi felt tears and blinked against them as she gave him a quick hug. Clooney was her example of “love one another,” not Michael. Clooney let her see that he cared. He worried about her. Maybe he even loved her. He and she were their own little family, maybe a weird one, but one nonetheless.

Andi’s hands were shaking when she arrived at the café with Clooney in tow. Would Carrie and the others accept her apology without pushing too hard to learn the reason she took off? She didn’t want anyone to know she’d known Jase before she came to live here. She didn’t want anyone but Clooney to know about her connection to The Pathway. And she didn’t want them to know she feared
him
.

Her voice caught as she hesitated outside the back door. “Do you think Jase told Michael or someone that he saw me? Will they come after me?”

“Ah, Andi.” He pulled her into a comforting hug. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him, but his hug and his words were so soothing. She held on for a few minutes and felt temporarily safe.

Funny how he was the one people always considered a deadbeat because he refused to get a nine-to-five job, and here he was, rock solid at her side.

“He digs in the sand!” the aunts and uncles always said in scandalized voices at family gatherings—which he never attended.

“It was the war,” others said in quiet tones of pseudounderstanding. “Posttraumatic stress, you know.”

When she needed a place to stay, she figured he was enough counterculture, enough antiestablishment, that he wouldn’t feel compelled to either send her back or turn her over to the authorities. She’d figured right, and she loved him for his open arms.

She drew back from his embrace and made herself stand alone. After all, she’d been on her own for more than three years. The minute she, Becca, Mom, and Dad drove through the gate of The Pathway’s compound, her family ceased to exist. She and Becca were given bunks in a large dorm for the unmarried teenage girls, a mirror of the large dorm across the compound where the unmarried boys lived. Mom was sent to the large building that housed the women and preteen children. Dad was given his own room in the beautiful lodge where the married men lived.

It didn’t take Andi long to realize that Becca was the oldest in their dorm. And it didn’t take Michael long to arrange for her marriage.

“He’s trying to control you,” Andi told Becca when the news of the impending nuptials was announced. “Tie you to this place.”

“No, no, Andi. He’s thinking only of my happiness.”

“But you don’t even know the man he’s picked! You don’t love him. You can’t.”

“Michael has selected him for me.” Becca smiled sweetly. “I have no doubt I will be very happy.”

“But he already has a wife.”

“He has three,” said Jennie, the girl with the bunk next to Andi. “He’s been married to Abby for ten years, to Patricia for six, and to Irene for five.”

Andi grabbed her sister’s hand. “We’ll run away. You don’t have to do this.”

“But I want to,” Becca said. “Michael has said it, and it shall be so.”

Despair threatened to drown Andi. “I’ll never see you. You’ll be put in the house of the married women. I won’t have anyone.”

“Oh, Andi.” Becca frowned, but it was a gentle frown, a “poor you” frown. “Can’t you see that your attitude is selfish? We are a community. We have to trust our leader.”

But Andi did not, could not, would not trust Michael, especially when she realized that every bride spent the night before her marriage in Michael’s bed. The thought that she might someday be required to go to him brought bile up her throat in a rush. She’d rather die.

Andi soon realized every girl was married the Saturday after her sixteenth birthday. Becca had been an older bride because she arrived at the compound two months short of nineteen. Andi, on the other hand, would be expected to marry at the appropriate time and to gladly accept the man chosen for her.

Those who were raised here seemed to think such a situation was normal, except for Jennie, who had a secret boyfriend and wanted to marry him when it was time. She was as upset over Michael’s initiation process as Andi.

“But we should be able to marry who we want, when we want,” Andi said out loud before she learned the folly of being outspoken. “I want to live a bit before I marry. I want to go to college, have a job, make some money, be independent.”

Everyone frowned at her heresy. Even Jennie thought all those plans were ungodly because they were what Michael spoke against.

“For the sake of the community we need to marry and have children,” Jennie told her. “The Bible says to be fruitful and replenish the earth.”

“But at sixteen?”

She was called before Michael for her sacrilegious ideas and assigned to Marty, his chief wife, for training in “correct thinking.” The one thing she learned was to keep her mouth closed.

For almost three years she endured, hating every moment, planning, plotting, knowing she must escape before she became a zombie too. During that time her father took three brides, one each year, girls his daughters’ ages. The thought made her ill. How did her mother stand it? Yet every time she saw Mom, she looked peaceful. Paler, thinner, but peaceful. Or was the right word
lobotomized
?

The year she was fifteen, Andi looked with desperation and despair for any possible means to get away. The compound was twenty miles from the nearest town, out in a dry barren area where nothing but cacti, lizards, scorpions, and snakes lived. Chain-link fencing with barbed wire curling evilly at its top ringed the compound. Andi knew that no matter what Michael said, it wasn’t to keep thieves out; it was to keep people in.

When Stu and James appeared at the emergency room like a pair of scruffy angels the night of the rush to save the little kids, she bolted, knowing she’d never have a better opportunity. She’d been hiding with Clooney, convinced she was safe and secure here in Seaside. She’d even begun to relax and enjoy life. Until—

Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, she walked into the café. Carrie looked up from readying the cash register.

“Are you all right?” She walked right up to Andi and gave her a hug.

Andi had been steeling herself for anger or a lecture, and she had to blink back tears at Carrie’s warmth. “I’m sorry, Carrie. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Carrie looked at her, then at Clooney standing behind her. “I hope not, sweetie. I need to know I can depend on you.” She gave a little smile.

Even this lecture was kind. “You can, Carrie. You can.”

Carrie nodded. “Okay. Take the booths this morning. I’ll take the tables.”

Andi felt herself sag with relief. The booths were the busiest seating and meant more tips. In giving them to Andi, Carrie was showing she had forgiven her. Andi looked over her shoulder at Clooney and grinned.

He laid a weathered hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Good girl. I’m proud of you.” The words were so soft she almost didn’t hear them. She flushed with pleasure.

Lindsay and Ricky waved to her from the kitchen.

“Welcome back, kiddo.” Ricky blew her a kiss. “I’m glad you’re here. I was afraid they were going to make me wait tables.”

Everyone laughed at the absurdity, and just like that, life was back to normal. Or at least as normal as Andi’s life got these days.

I
watched Andi for the first half hour, but she seemed to be okay after whatever had set her off yesterday. Soon I was busy with my own tables, and I noticed the girl only peripherally. It was a busy morning, what with the glorious Indian summer weather drawing people to the shore for their last hurrah of the year. The chill that had come with last evening’s rain was burning off under the sun’s golden warmth, and while the ocean might have become a tad cold for most, the beach would be wonderful for walking and tossing a Frisbee and flying kites. I envied Clooney his metal detector and shovel and promised myself a walk in the sand after work.

Greg wandered in around nine thirty, a bit early for him, and I did my usual happy dance at the sight of him. I still couldn’t believe he’d kissed me last night, and I knew I must be smiling like an idiot.

His eyes sought me out as soon as he walked in, and he winked at me. I grinned back with all the maturity of a smitten puppy. The cloak of despair he’d worn for the past three years seemed to have disappeared, and it was because of me! I bit my lip to keep from bursting into song.

“Here, Greg.” Clooney stood. He’d hung around longer than I expected, I guessed to make certain Andi was fine. “I’ve been sitting on your stool. I’ve got to get going. There’s gold in them thar beaches, and it’s calling to me.”

“It’s a great day for digging.” Greg slid onto the vacated stool.

I waved good-bye to Clooney and hurried to give Greg his coffee. “The usual?”

Greg nodded. “Sure.”

I was turning to enter his order when he laid a hand on my arm.

“I’ve changed my mind. I’d like a bowl of cereal. You’ve got those little boxes, don’t you?”

“Frosted Flakes, cornflakes, Raisin Bran, and Froot Loops.” I had a terrible thought as I recited the choices. If he started eating cereal, he wouldn’t need the café. He could pour a bowl at home, and I wouldn’t see him every day.

“Frosted Flakes.” He nodded for emphasis. “It’s a milestone.”

“Okay.” A milestone? “Coming right up.”

Andi sailed past with breakfast for the twosome at booth three. “Uh, Carrie, your quartet at table five is ready to jump up and down to get your attention. Maybe you should hold hands after hours.” She grinned.