Page 100 of Heart of the Sun

“We’re going to find peace here,” Layne said, squeezing my hand.

“Yes,” I said, mustering a smile. But I feared that I’d never find peace again.

chapterforty-one

Tuck

Day Nineteen

The San Fernando Valley was a wasteland. Everywhere I looked were flattened piles of ash, whole neighborhoods burned to the ground. I drove slowly past what had once been a strip mall and was now nothing more than a heap of blackened bricks. Fear trembled in the back of my throat, and I braced as I rounded the corner of the street the Swansons lived on. A breath I hadn’t realized I’d held gusted from my mouth, a wave of cool relief washing over me when their house came into view.

It’s still standing.

Thank God. Thank God.

I turned off the car I’d located in the back of an auto body shop in Mission Viejo and hot-wired. It’d been a risk to drive through the outskirts of the city, but my risk assessment had changed since I’d said goodbye to Emily. I’d half expected to be blockaded or fired upon,but I’d gotten lucky, and the car had saved me a day of walking. I sat there for a moment, gathering myself. The Swansons’ house was still there, but that didn’t mean they were okay. In fact, now that I looked around, I was spotting clues that something bad had happened here. Bullet holes riddled the side of the burned-out car sitting across from where I was, and what I thought might be old blood was smeared across the street like a profusely bleeding body had been dragged.

I got out of the car and walked slowly across the street. A hawk’s screech echoed through the stillness, and I looked up to see the bird gliding across the clear blue sky. A lizard darted from behind a rock, momentarily startling me before zipping away.

“Tuck?”

I spun around to find a man, outlined by the sun and holding a rifle, causing my heart to jolt. I put my hands up and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the bright light. “Mr. Swanson?”

“Oh, thank the good Lord. Itisyou. Jena said it was, but I thought she must be mistaken.” He approached quickly and wrapped me in a bear hug. “Damn, it’s good to see you. Are you okay? You look okay.”

“Tuck!” Mrs. Swanson came running out of the house, obviously having been watching from a window while Mr. Swanson exited from the back and came around behind me.

Mrs. Swanson let out a cry and gathered me in a hug. “Oh, Tuck. You’re here. Where’s Emily?” Her eyes flared with fear, obviously afraid to ask.

“She’s okay,” I said. “She’s fine. She wrote you a note.” I took it from my pocket and handed it to Mrs. Swanson.

“Oh, thank you, God, thank you,” Emily’s mother said, looking over at her husband who gave her a nod, tears in his eyes. She opened the note and scanned it quickly, bringing two fingers to her lips as she read. When she was finished, she handed it to her husband.“Our girl is fine. She’s good. I told you Tuck would take care of her,” she said. She looked at me, smiling as tears shimmered in her eyes as well. “I told Phil there’s no one better to be with Emily. No one.” She hooked her arm through mine. “Come inside. I want to hear every detail about how you made it home.”

* * *

The Swansons’ exterior was riddled with bullet holes too, and a couple of the windows were boarded up. But the inside was undamaged and looked about the same as it had the last time I’d been there, what now felt like a hundred years ago. The Christmas tree that Mrs. Swanson had just been putting up when I’d been here last was still standing. My God, what day was it? The calendar had ceased having any meaning. Christmas had come and gone, and we hadn’t even noticed.

I told the Swansons about our plane crash, and the journey home from there, not able to relay every detail lest it take four hours to tell, and also, because some of those details belonged to Emily and me alone. My heart twisted when I thought of the moments that would only ever be ours and I missed her with a ferocity that nearly brought me to my knees.

Their expressions shifted through several obvious emotions as I described what we’d gone through and what we’d seen: horror, shock, sadness, relief. “The entire country,” Mrs. Swanson murmured. “It’s what we heard but didn’t think we could believe.” Mr. Swanson took her hand in his.

“What happened here?” I asked. “There were obviously lots of fires just like in other places. But the bullets? The blood?”

“The homes left standing were attacked, including ours. We joined forces with the neighbors still here and fought back. There aren’t many, but there are enough.” She glanced at her husband again, something unspoken moving between them. “We had to. There was no other choice.”

“Of course there wasn’t,” I said. “They obviously meant you harm.”

“Whatever they wanted, they didn’t get it,” Mr. Swanson said. “We’ve since set up lookouts and have eyes on anyone coming or going. It’s how I knew you were here.”

“You did well.”

“We did what we had to do,” he said.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

He let out a long, slow breath, letting go of his wife’s hand and running his fingers over his jaw. “We’ll clear, and we’ll rebuild. Several of the citrus trees made it through the fires and we’ll begin grafting in the spring. If you have time, I’d love to go over the particulars to ensure I’m not overlooking anything. There’s no room for error right now and almost all of the others who live here moved in after the citrus business began to die.”

“Yeah, of course. I’d be happy to.” I looked between them. “It’s going to be a lot of work.”

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