Daybreak of Revelation Read online

  Home school was both worse than Helena had feared, and better than she could have guessed. The religious curriculum was dry and preachy, and assumed a knowledge of the Bible she didn’t have, but it kept her mind occupied as she tried to race through it to do the things she wanted to do. Looking over the Saxon math book with her mother was painful, as she simply couldn’t stand to listen to her mother sounding like a kind, concerned parent. Physics was the same. Christina allowed Helena to read the text and asked her some simple questions to work through the concepts but having to listen to her at all set Helena’s teeth on edge. Physics experiments were nerve wracking.

  “The last thing I have to do today is read my book for literature,” Helena smiled. She was proud that she had managed to save the best part of the day for last. “Then I can make dinner.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.” Peter smiled in relief. “I was a little worried that if you weren’t cooking for everyone you wouldn’t cook.”

  “I like good food too much to quit cooking,” Helena said. “Besides, if I just make enough food for us, I can make better food.”

  “I like the sound of that!” Peter grinned. “No mysterious ingredients, though, okay?”

  Helena was finishing stew made from canned beef when her father came to the door. She added some canned water chestnuts just for a mysterious ingredient to torment Peter. The smell that rose from the bowl as she stirred them in was rich and meaty.

  “We’re going hunting in the morning,” Mr. Harris told Peter and Helena. “So be ready to go at five and we’ll see what we can see.”

  “Are we going to have to do school work when we get done hunting?” Peter looked at his mother. Christina nodded. Peter frowned.

  “Helena just finished making dinner, would you like to stay for a bowl of stew, Joel?”

  “Well, do you have enough?” Mr. Harris looked hopeful.

  “We do,” Helena said. She had intended to eat leftovers for lunch the next day, but she would rather eat with her father and make a different lunch later.

  All of them sat around the small table eating stew and biscuits with roasted garlic butter. Helena remembered that when she had been small her mother had always stopped work and come to eat dinner when Maria put it on the table. They had eaten early in the day back then, so that Maria could do the dishes and go home before dark. She could picture Peter in his high chair and her father, younger with no gray hair, cutting up meat before slipping it onto Peter’s plate.

  “There is something crunchy in here,” Peter announced after his first bite.

  Helena shrugged and smiled.

  “Helena, that was delicious!” Mr. Harris said. The bowl his stew had been in was almost as clean as if it had been washed, because he had scraped up every morsel with his spoon. “I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  “I’m not going hunting,” Christina clarified. “I’ll make sure they are ready on time, though.”

  “You might have fun hunting,” Mr. Harris said. “I begged Tawna to go, but she won’t. She won’t let Ray go, she thinks he’s too young, and Lourdes won’t watch an animal die.”

  “So, it’s just us?” Helena perked up right away.

  “Just us.”

  Mr. Harris reached out and Helena was so relieved she let herself be hugged. For the first time, some of her anger toward her father for choosing to live with Tawna and her kids over Peter and herself receded.

  “If it wasn’t going to be cold and wet, and if nothing was going to die, hunting might be fun,” Christina commented after Mr. Harris left. “But it’ll be good for you to do something special with your dad.”

  “I hope something is going to die,” Peter said anxiously.

  “We’re all hoping for the best,” Helena said.

  Chapter 3

  September 1st, Sacramento, CA

  Joshua walked through the tiny rooms with all his breath sucked in. Who would believe that a family of three was supposed to exist in four hundred square feet and no balcony or outdoor space at all? Urban Relocation had given Joshua, his mother, and his youngest sister, Twilight, this apartment. Joshua knew Twilight was never coming to this dismal pit of despair, but Urban Relocation didn’t know that, so they had given Joshua and his mother this horrible box with the idea that they would share it with another person.

  “Thank you, Susan,” Danica, Joshua’s mother told the chubby dark-haired young woman who was showing them their new digs. Susan was Joshua’s sister-in-law who had caused their family no end of grief. “We can take it from here.”

  Of course, they could. No one could get lost in four hundred square feet. The Hollisters thought all rural people were so stupid that they couldn’t do math well enough to know that they’d given up spacious homes for postage stamp inspired pieces of stale, recycled air. They would all be expected to pay homage to the Hollisters for giving up their own homes for these cheaply built piles of junk. Forever.

  “I knew you’d love it when you got here!” Susan said. She beamed at Danica and Joshua as she prepared to depart their new miniscule apartment. “It’s so close to everything, and your new neighbors are probably awesome!”

  Joshua had already hated Susan more than anything else in the universe. Danica hated Susan more than he did, Joshua knew it. All he had to do was wait for Susan to leave and then he and Danica could decompress their feelings. Maybe take a bath in bleach to feel clean. But there wasn’t a bathtub, so probably not.

  “You don’t owe me that much!” Susan called back at the door. “I do this all the time! I give people great new lives!”

  “She is a work of Satan if I ever saw one,” Danica spewed as Susan walked down the stairs.

  “I’m pretty sure Satan doesn’t hang out with her. She’s too gross for him. But we’ve done our part not letting her get to us.”

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Danica said. Every time she spoke to Susan it was a great strain not to tackle her to the floor and perform an exorcism. They had allowed her to move them, and they would follow the plans they had made. “Let’s get everything arranged and get on with this.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Susan had already sent for the tiny amount of furniture that would fit in the apartment to be delivered by the Hollister Youth Corps, but the minivan and Joshua’s Firebird were full of odds and ends that Danica couldn’t bear to leave in their house knowing that the Hollister Foundation would tear it down soon. Those same odds and ends would be out of place in the tiny apartment, but their life would be prolonged.

  Susan’s husband, Caleb—Joshua’s brother and Danica’s son—would stop over after he was done working for the day. Danica and Joshua wanted the apartment to look like they intended to live in it when he came, but they had no intention of staying there one second more than they had to.

  “Oh!” An explosion of Latino music blasted through the cheap walls. The music wouldn’t have been bad if it had been expected, but some framed photographs Danica had just put on a shelf shook from the vibrations caused by the music.

  “Don’t worry,” Joshua told his mother. She looked like the shock of the music was as bad as the shock of seeing her husband, Bud, shot in front of her two weeks ago. Joshua had seen his father cut down by a sniper bullet after Susan, his sister-in-law, had called a swat team to deal with him when he hadn’t given Susan information that she was demanding. Bud had picked up Susan and removed her from his house. In turn, she had called law enforcement, told them that Bud had assaulted her, and he had been shot and killed. Susan herself had pretended that Bud’s death was a big misunderstanding and had made herself out to be the injured party. As a result, Joshua and Danica had made plans to deal with the future without interference from her. Setting up the apartment was keeping Susan from being suspicious of other things.

  “Oh!” This time rap music bombarded them from the other side of the apartment. The low bass thumps really shook Danica’s knick-knacks. She started gulping deep breaths to stay calm, her blue eyes bulg
ing from the strain.

  Joshua had thought that the Latino music couldn’t get any louder than it already was, but he was wrong. Caught between the warring battle of the bands was going to drive them crazy.

  “You’re not going to be here that much!” Joshua shouted to Danica, whose eyes were huge with misery. “It’s going to be okay!”

  His subconscious prompted him to pat his pocket for the ivory box he kept there. A plan materialized instantly. Joshua plugged his guitar into the amplifier he had just brought up, and without adjusting anything else, turned the volume up all the way. Then he began to play. Not his own music, but a high screeching riff from an eighties heavy metal band. Danica’s face turned to sheer panic as the decibel level rose to heights that probably couldn’t have been measured with conventional equipment. Within ten seconds both other stereos instantly quieted. Joshua put down his guitar with a smile. His heart was racing, but he managed to pat his mother’s shoulder calmly.

  “See, we can handle this,” Joshua promised.

  “We can deal with anything, but that doesn’t make it easy,” Danica said. She didn’t sound shaky or scared. The ivory box had a calming effect on her, but her voice was simply flat. Her blue eyes didn’t sparkle, and her cheeks seemed to sag since they no longer smiled. Once, she had been the loveliest mother at every ball game and track meet. On Sunday mornings, Danica Henderson had glowed when she sat her six children down for Mass. Somehow, the essence of Danica was gone, but the rest of her was still there. Functioning a bit like a worn-out pet who still does tricks, but with no bounce, no expectation of a treat.

  “Look, as soon as Caleb comes by, we’re outta here,” Joshua told her. In the last two weeks he had taken charge of every situation as it had come up. He had been the first family member to rush to Bud’s side when he’d been shot, and he was the family member who knew how best to pretend to give Susan what she wanted so their family had a chance of survival.

  “I wish we weren’t deceiving Caleb,” Danica fretted.

  “He’s the one who had to marry Susan. He brought it on himself.” Joshua didn’t like it either but being honest with Caleb would ruin everything he was about to do.

  Four years ago, Caleb had met Susan and given her the keys to his life. She had used her power to drive his family away. Susan had never been pleasant with the rest of the family, but everyone coped by keeping their distance from her. Two weeks ago, she’d had Bud killed in a fit of rage because she believed he’d broken his nephew, Brock, out of a Hollister-owned facility and wouldn’t tell her where the boy was. Bud had actually done what she accused him of, but she couldn’t prove it, and the whole extended family was playing a strange game of charades to keep Susan off their backs while they hid Brock and made plans for an unknown future.

  “I know.” Danica’s voice was small and brittle.

  A knock at the door saved Joshua from further discourse with his mother.

  “I’m Emilio, I just wanted to welcome you to the building.” A very slender young Hispanic man stood in the doorway. He was wearing crisp khaki pants and a sharp white shirt.

  “I’m Joshua. My mother Danica and my sister are just moving in.”

  Emilio perked up considerably when Joshua mentioned a sister. Joshua felt amused that Twilight was never going to enter the apartment.

  “Do you play the guitar like that very often?” Emilio asked with studied casualness.

  “How often do you play your music?” Joshua asked with a slight grin.

  “It’s just a game… between us and them…”

  “But we are between you both, and my mother just lost her husband and doesn’t have a lot of patience for games right now.”

  “Everyone here lost someone,” Emilio said softly. “You don’t end up here if everything is going really well.”

  “Probably not,” Joshua conceded. He didn’t want to get competitive with whatever level of loss Emilio might have had. Maybe both of Emilio’s parents were dead. It seemed like a bad idea to start discussing misery. “So, we should just be good neighbors then.”

  “Mostly we are,” Emilio promised. “But sometimes we do things to make each other laugh.”

  “I hope you can be kind to my mother,” Joshua said quietly, but with the power that calmness brings. “Mothers should come first.”

  “My mother is in heaven,” Emilio said softly. “She is the most beautiful angel of all.”

  Joshua warmed to the small man more than he ever meant to.

  “That woman, the woman who brought you here—”

  “Susan Henderson?”

  “Yes,” Emilio made a very sour face. “She is… not good.”

  “No.” Joshua agreed completely. “She is not good. Nice to meet you, man.” Joshua shook hands with Emilio again wholeheartedly.

  On that note of agreement, Emilio went back to his apartment and Joshua went back inside to see his mother arranging dishes in the cupboards.

  “How old is this place?” Joshua wondered. “The cupboards look like they’re sagging a little.”

  “They are sagging. If we had your father’s level we could see how much.”

  Even with the confidence the ivory box in his pocket brought to him, Joshua felt a little weird without any tools at the apartment. He had jumper cables and a few tools in his Firebird; the kind a person would need to make on-the-fly roadside repairs with. But his father’s tools were in the forest with his sister and cousin and a tiny Native American man named Ben. Joshua’s brother Michael had taken them there secretly. Joshua himself longed to be with his sister and cousin in the woods but knew that if he and his mother weren’t where Susan could keep an eye on them, there would be an all-out manhunt. A huge search effort would probably find them and then they would never have a chance to survive.

  On the counter was a huge basket of produce that Danica had picked from her garden before leaving it forever. The last harvest. Tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, small red potatoes, and several ears of corn peeked out of the basket. Michael had taken a larger basket to Twilight in the woods when he’d taken the tools, and BJ, their cousin, had taken a huge basket to his mother in Blythe. The garden had been in the Henderson family one hundred years before Joshua had been born, and the vegetables on the counter were the very last of it. Joshua knew the local deer and rabbits would gorge themselves that night. Danica had left the gate open for them.

  Knock, knock. Who’s there? Joshua wanted to call out, but he decided not to trade extra words with Caleb. Joshua had expected him to come early, trying to make up for his wife’s involvement in their father’s death. Joshua would have loved to sit down with a pipe full of really good weed and let Caleb know what actually happened the day Bud died, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Susan had Caleb completely bewitched, and Caleb would believe Susan over Joshua any day.

  “Come on in,” Joshua called.

  “Seriously, consider locking the door around here,” Caleb let himself into the tiny apartment. Danica put down the carrot she was dicing and went to hug Caleb.

  “That’s probably a good habit to start,” Danica said. “This place doesn’t seem dangerous, just really seedy.”

  Caleb bristled a bit. Caleb and Susan had a fabulous home on three acres with a pool, but Urban Relocation people were expected to live in what amounted to anthills, with extreme gratitude. Calling the anthills seedy was evidently annoying to Caleb.

  “It’s just temporary,” Caleb explained, even though he must have known that Susan had told them the same thing. “Next year work really starts on putting the new developments together.”

  The new developments were supposed to be solar and wind powered with community centers, swimming pools, large community gardens, and a great style of living for everyone. Joshua and Danica both knew that wasn’t going to happen, so they didn’t waste time discussing it with Caleb.

  “I thought I would take you out to dinner,” Caleb said. “My treat!”

  Technically, Danica had
plenty of money at the moment. Urban Relocation had paid top dollar for her home when Bud died, and she had already sold Bud’s semi-truck and Silverado. Bud was still covered by life insurance paid for by Macdonald Road Materials as part of his severance package when he was shot, so there was more abundance available to Danica than she had ever known. Most of it was already moved and hidden, but Caleb didn’t know that. Danica smiled for Caleb and acted as if she were grateful for the offer.

  “Sure honey, let’s go.” Danica said. “Just give me a minute to change.”

  “You look great,” Caleb protested, but Danica was already in the bathroom since it was only two steps away from anywhere in the apartment.

  Joshua thought he would rather eat worms covered with spaghetti sauce for dinner than sit with his brother and pretend the situation was the way Caleb believed it to be, but he couldn’t leave his mother alone with him. Without Joshua and the presence of the ivory box, she might crack and tell Caleb the truth about everything. And no matter that Caleb was their blood, he was bound to Susan more deeply than to them, and he would tell Susan everything revealed to him. In theory, Danica knew where Caleb’s real loyalties lay, but her mother’s heart didn’t want to accept that Caleb was Susan’s now.

  “Where’s Twilight?” Caleb just now seemed to notice that his sister was missing. When he had come to the house two weeks before to see his family after Bud was killed, he hadn’t even noticed that she was missing or asked to see her.

  “She’s staying with a friend for a few days before school starts,” Danica said lightly.

  That was true enough, even though Caleb probably thought the friends were Twilight’s own age and female. Any lie that is mostly the truth is always the easiest to stick to, Joshua considered. There had been so much lying since Brock was taken away and the family had taken him back that it seemed like the truth might be lost completely. Joshua missed the truth a great deal. It was like losing a favorite possession and he was keeping a place open for it, should it be found.