“Thank you,” Jayden said. “I’ll do my best, but I’m very different from my sister.”
“That might be a good thing in some ways.” Novalene looped her arm through Jayden’s and pulled her toward the white van waiting a few feet away. “Not to say ill of someone who isn’t here, or your sister, for sure, but sometimes Skyler’s heart was too soft for this job.”
Skyler with a soft heart? These women didn’t know Jayden’s sister at all.
Chapter Three
Henry loaded all the luggage into an old van whose air-conditioning worked just fine. He drove north from the small airport for a few miles, then turned down a dirt road toward the mountains. “We’ll be home pretty soon. The camp is only a few miles from here. Mary’s done got dinner all planned out for y’all, and like always, we’ll go over the rule book. It’ll be a refresher course for you two,” he told Diana and Novalene, “but Jayden will need to know how we run things. We’ve got two girls with shoplifting problems and one who’s had three DUIs that I’m going to put in Daydream Cabin. Novalene, you’ll get the ones with drug issues, and Diana is going to take care of the girls who have struggled with physical violence this time around.”
Jayden had dealt with all the above in her counseling job, but she wasn’t arguing with Henry. If they wanted her to take on shoplifting and driving under the influence, she wouldn’t complain.
“Sounds fair to me,” Novalene said.
“Between y’all and us, we’re hoping to turn these girls’ lives around. Once a week Karen Daily will come in from town and have a one-on-one session with each of them. She’s our certified therapist, Jayden, and has done wonders with the girls in the past. She’ll be giving y’all guidance on how to handle your group sessions. You’ll have those with your girls an hour each day, as usual,” Mary said.
Skyler must have had contact with Karen if the woman visited with her girls every single week, so she should have remembered her last name, but then that was her sister—if it didn’t pertain to her, then it couldn’t be important.
Mary and Novalene chatted in the seat right behind Henry. Diana joined in from across the aisle. Elijah and Jayden each had a seat to themselves with the aisle separating them. He didn’t seem interested in talking, so she just kept silent and watched the van kick up a dust storm on the dirt road. Every now and then she chanced a sideways look at Elijah and wondered what his story was, how old he might be, and why he’d chosen to work in a camp like this.
The farther Henry drove, the more her heart dropped. She hadn’t known what to expect, but as they passed occasional trailer houses and adobe or stucco dwellings in the desolate beauty, she figured she wouldn’t be finding a cute little cabin with lace curtains in the windows at the end of the journey.
The whole place was so very different from the small farm her grandfather had, and even the landscape around Boyd, Texas, where she grew up. In those places the grass was green, and from spring until midsummer folks would be out mowing at least once a week. Here, she recognized several varieties of cacti putting on a show with their yellow and purple flowers. Yucca plants had huge white blooms standing straight and tall, and wild daisies dotted the flat countryside with spots of yellow. She wouldn’t want to give up her green grass, but this place was beautiful in its own right.
Henry drove through a gap between two mountains, and she noticed a slight change. There were more orange and red flowers that looked like they’d been stuck down in cactus plants to make the plants less ugly.
She saw a lone cactus towering above the others. It stands out in this country, kind of like I do in a crowd.
Henry made a left-hand turn, crossed a cattle guard with a sign above it that read PINEY WOOD ACADEMY, and headed down a long lane toward a cluster of buildings, most of which were the same color as the earth, speckled only by the brightly colored Adirondack chairs on the porches of a few. The front of each of the three cabins was covered with clapboard siding. The other three sides were stucco like everything else, other than a big red barn out in the distance. The cabins didn’t have lace curtains, but they did look a little more inviting than the other places around the compound.
“We’re home,” Henry announced as he parked the van. “We’ll unload y’all’s stuff after we have something to eat and visit a little.”
Elijah and Jayden were the last ones out of the van. Everyone else hurried inside, probably to get out of the heat, but Jayden took a moment to look around at all the various buildings. Each one had a sign hanging between two of its porch posts, and the noise of them swinging back and forth reminded her of the squeaky swing on the front porch of the house that Skyler sold.
DINING HALL was written on the stucco building where Elijah had headed. She squinted across the dusty yard at the three brightly colored cabins. She could just make out their names on the swinging signs. The first one read DAYDREAM CABIN and was painted a light green with pretty red chairs on the porch. The second, MOONBEAM CABIN, was pale blue with hot-pink chairs. The third one in the row was SUNSHINE CABIN, appropriately painted yellow with orange chairs. Each cabin had a flower bed full of petunias, lantana, and marigolds.
“You comin’ in or are you about to steal the van and go back home?” Elijah had a deep Texas drawl that, evidently, he hadn’t gotten away from in the air force.
“The jury is still out,” she told him. “But I am hungry, so I think I’ll eat before I decide.”
The aroma of something spicy wafted out to greet her when Elijah held the door open. “Mary’s cookin’ makes all the work worthwhile.”
“Something sure smells good. What else is on the agenda?” she asked.
“We’ll go over that in the briefing,” he answered.
“Is this the only one of these eight-week classes you have a year?” she asked as she entered the building. A buffet bar divided the room in half—kitchen to the left, dining area on the right. The walls were painted seafoam green. Three tables’ name cards were already arranged on them. A fourth table for six was set a few feet away.
“Nope,” Elijah answered. “We have four a year. One during each season, but the summer one is the only one when the girls don’t actually have school classes in addition to everything else. During the other three, they have to keep up with their schoolwork as well as get their lives back on track.”
“So, you do these thirty-two weeks out of the year?” She frowned.
Henry was standing right inside the door and evidently had heard her question. “Yes, there’s a camp in January and February, one in March and April, and then we close down in May. We reopen for one in June and July, and then close down in August and have one in September and October,” he explained. “We don’t have anything during November and December. There’s just too many holidays during that time. Mary and I are planning a couple of long cruises this year in November and December to celebrate our retirement, and then we’re going to settle down in one of those old folks’ villages.”
“What?” Novalene threw a hand over her heart. “You’re retiring? Are you going to close down the academy?”