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the pain from Jenna’s face. It lightened Danny, who’d been in a funk all evening. Lexi did a little bit of her own PDA as she giggled into the shoulder of Nathan, the sweet reporter she’d been dating. Rosie, Erik’s policewoman girlfriend, lost her usual reserve in a loud belly laugh. Indio chuckled so hard tears ran down her cheeks.
    Even Max’s father smiled. He couldn’t quite bring himself to fully welcome Tuyen—the illegitimate daughter of his older son BJ—into the family, but at least he wasn’t rude to her anymore. His blue eyes twinkling now in her direction gave hope of a softening attitude.
    Claire breathed a prayer of thanks. It might work. It just might all work.

Eight
    J enna slipped away from the after-dinner chaos. Enjoyable as the evening was with her family, the walls had closed in on her.
    Outdoors, the wraparound porch offered solitude. Soft lights bathed the old wooden planks that had somehow survived the fire. The thunk of her footsteps resounded across the courtyard.
    And reminded her of Kevin.
    But then, everything reminded her of Kevin.
    He liked to wear his cowboy boots at the hacienda. He liked to thump around the veranda and slap against the stone pathways and kick up the dust at the barn. He loved the Hideaway. He loved family meals in the sala .
    He would love Tuyen and Rosie and Nathan. And Skylar now. He would like her too. He would love her raspberry crisp.
    It hurt that he hadn’t even met any of them. They’d all arrived after he deployed. When he left, the reconstruction from the fire wasn’t near finished. There had been no farewell dinner for him in the sala. Their whole world had changed since he left.
    “Jenna!”
    At her father’s shout, she turned.
    “Jen!” He stood in the sala doorway, waving his telephone. “It’s Kevin!”
    Kevin!
    She flew back down the porch, her heart racing. Her husband was calling from the other side of the world where it was already tomorrow!
    Her dad met her halfway and handed her the cordless, smiling. He went back indoors as she sank onto a nearby bench.
    “Kevin!”
    “Hi, pretty lady.”
    “Oh.” Tears welled and her throat constricted. She whispered, “Hi.”
    “Hi.” There was a grin in his voice. “How was the big dinner?”
    “You remembered.”
    “Are you kidding? This is a major event in the Beaumont family.”
    That was Kevin. Too much Beaumont togetherness provoked him at times. Not having grown up in a close-knit family, though, he appreciated being a member of hers.
    She smiled. “Ready to change your name yet?”
    His low rumble of a laugh tickled her. “Can I say hi to everyone when we’re done?”
    “I’m sure that’s why you called here instead of home.”
    “Could be.”
    “I love you, Kevin.”
    “I love you, Jenna. And I miss you more than I can say.”
    A long silent moment passed. Precious time was lost, but it was unavoidable. It happened whenever they spoke. As if on cue, they hit a wordless space, its pain too deep for expression.
    “Okay,” Kevin said. “Tell me all about tonight.”
    And she did.
    L ater that evening, still aglow in the sweetness of hearing Kevin’s voice, Jenna rode with Danny in his pickup truck. As they traveled away from the house lights, an impenetrable blackness engulfed them.
    She said, “Even Kevin’s phone call can’t take away the willies this road gives me at night.”
    “I know what you mean.” Her younger brother drove confidently down the long, winding, private dirt-and-gravel road. It led from the recently blacktopped parking lot to the highway, a familiar route on which they’d both learned to drive. “You’d think it’d be in the daytime, when you can see the charred trees, but it’s the darkness that does it.”
    “I can’t help but think about what they went through that night.” She felt a chill, as she always did, imagining her mother, sister, and grandparents trying to escape a wildfire in the middle of the night. They didn’t make