The flowers and colors of our garden were too small to carry to this distance, but I recognized the clear geometric shape of their plot. On one side was the river; tall grasses tucked here and there against its curves, and in the far distance the glittering ocean. Was it the Persian Gulf? A mirage? On the other side, a band of lavender clouds gathered again on the horizon with their hint of could. Could it rain again tonight?
Without warning I heard a rumble and then the sound of tearing sky. Not in the distance but nearby and coming nearer, something was ripping the great blue sheet of cloudless sky, booming and coming closer. I felt the warmth of Adam’s body standing just at my side when two jets sped into view, turning and twisting their contrails together like DNA. They flew much higher than the lone jet that had passed over our luncheon on the grassy plain, but still the double power and speed of the twining two was terrifying—the sound of their unbridled engines, the shriek of their silver massiveness.
Suddenly something orange, packagelike, shot out from one of them, lengthened, and began unfurling, while the two planes narrowed with astonishing rapidity the blue division of sky between them. As we gasped, the planes collided and exploded in a single fireball that continued the momentum of their motion, then plummeted, exploding again in a shatter of fire.
“Wait here,” Adam said, and began to run down the path.
Before the question could leave my throat to ask, What is it? he answered over his shoulder. “Parachute!”
Mesmerized, I stared at the almost vacant sky while he hurried down the path. Yes, an orange parachute hung in the blue, and a blob of human almost too tiny to see dangled below the carapace. Halfway across the sky where the planes had converged, only a cloud of smoke smudged the air. I looked closely at the terrain where the parachute was descending, and I recognized a familiar landmark. When my own Piper Cub had lost power, while it was still gliding, I had noticed a grove of redwood trees. They had risen above the greenery of all the other trees to an amazing height, like many spires of a super cathedral, like Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. And there they were again, with the billow of orange fabric hovering above their tall green points.
I wondered if Adam had noted the redwoods as a marker.
Of course he had. This was his hideaway, his stronghold, his private place. He was keenly observant. He would have seen the redwoods. He would have admired them as I had.
Had he instructed me to wait? Of course I would not wait. He would need help. Perhaps they would need help. But I would not run. I knew I was not yet strong enough for running. Quickly I looked for the store of fruit and nuts we had transported to the shelter. I draped my ears with bunches of the long-stemmed cherries the way Adam had done when he first brought me fruit to eat. In each hand, I held an apple. Then, following Adam, I started as rapidly as I could down the rocky path.
ARIELLE
I’M HERE, PAPA,” she said.
Pierre Saad shivered and then sprang from his chair to embrace his daughter. He shivered because, ever since her puberty, his daughter’s voice had assumed exactly the same timbre as his wife’s.
More than a decade had passed since that day when the similarity had taken him utterly by surprise. Arielle had been thirteen. She had come back to Jean-de-Luc from boarding school in Paris. Electrified by surprise and joy—“I’m here,” her voice had rung out—he had thought his wife, Violette, had returned from the dead. His body believed. His ears rang with the miracle. When his eyes fell upon his little girl—taller, her hair caught up in a more sophisticated way—he had had to press his breastbone. The pain of false recognition exploded in his heart, as though he had been shot.
Thoroughly alarmed at his expression of pain, the sudden movement of his hand to his breast, she had run to him.
“I’m all right,” he had stammered in French. “It’s all right. You’ve grown. In just these months you’ve changed so much.”
“I have a secret,” she said, the dimple in one cheek showing. Now she looked like a little girl again.
“You’ve become very beautiful,” he said. “Is that your secret? You scared me.”
“Poor Papa,” she said. “It’s just me. I’m not Princess Charming.”
He kissed