Jonas, page 22
“Of course.” She shot him a smile.
“It was just one woman, but there was this other one…”
Nixon looked at him. “The tall one, with the brown hair.”
“Yeah. Her name is Sibba, and…I sort of ran into her again.”
A beat.
“Oh my gosh—you like her,” Geena said.
He lifted a shoulder.
“Are you in love with this woman?” Nixon said. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“I…no. I mean, I only knew her for a few days—”
“Nix and I knew it was forever after the first date,” Geena said, and took his hand.
Nixon grinned at Jonas.
“Okay, I mean, yeah. She was amazing, and smart and brave—really brave. You have no idea. And…” He nodded and let himself smile. “Maybe I was in love with her a little.”
“Was?”
“Am—but it doesn’t matter. I was injured.” He pointed at his arm. “And while I was in the hospital, she left.”
A beat. Then, from Geena, “Left? Like…”
“Like I was unconscious, and she walked out of the hospital without saying goodbye.”
“Ouch.” Nixon.
“Yeah. And I get it. She’s…she…” He sighed. “The truth of it is that she disarms bombs for a living. And any minute, her life could go boom, and…that just sort of freaks her out.”
Nixon blinked at him. Looked at Geena. Back to Jonas.
Then he started to laugh. And beside him, Geena had put her hands over her face.
“What?”
“Dude. She might just be perfect for you,” Nixon said.
“What?”
“Don’t you see it?” Geena said. “Her life could go boom—and yeah, that might freak her out, but it doesn’t freak you out, right?”
“No. I mean, a little, sort of, but not enough for me to not want to be with her.”
“Because you’re not afraid of the storm, man. You see the danger and you say, Punch it, baby.”
“That sounded a little violent,” Jonas said.
“Sorry. I just meant—you’re the guy, Jonas.”
“The guy?”
“The guy who runs to the storm, not away. So why are you still here?”
“I’m…I wanted to say hi to Geena—”
“No, you idiot. Why didn’t you go after her in Slovenia? Why did you let her walk away?”
“Well, I was unconscious, for one—”
“Wow, he really needs us,” Geena said.
“No doubt.” Nixon nodded. “Okay, I’m going to speak in small words. Simple sentences. Leave. Find Girl. Live happily ever after.”
Jonas laughed. “What if she doesn’t want me?”
“Don’t be a wuss.”
Not they both laughed.
“C’mon. I’m hungry. Did you say you had a Smashburger waiting for me?” Geena wheeled away. “You can fill me in on your torrid romance while you book a flight to Slovenia.”
Nixon turned to him. “Better hurry. It looks like there’s a storm coming.” He gestured to the gray outside. “They say it’s gathering over the Rockies. It’s going to hit Montana, the Dakotas…might even shut down the airport.”
“Who’s the weatherman now?” He winked at Nixon and pulled out his phone. “Besides, I’m not afraid of a little storm.”
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” Sibba sat astride a bay named Marnee, in a western saddle, her hands on the pommel, staring across the vast horizon of the Benson Ranch in northcentral Montana. To her east rose the runnels and peaks of the Bears Paw Mountains, with Baldy Mountain peaking at the center, already tipped with snow.
Then the vast valley, still touched with patches of green, stretched as far as she could see, all the way to the far edge of Glacier National Park, where the Rockies rose brutal and glorious, rugged and snowcapped.
Stands of sturdy pine huddled here and there on hillsides, with rivers twining through the basin. It seemed a great sea of prairie land, the waves caught in mid drift, the yellow grasses swaying in the gathering winter breeze.
Here. Here was where they’d landed.
It felt like the land of milk and honey, and the breadth of it swept through her.
“Are you okay, Sibba?” Her uncle Marek sat on his own horse, having talked her into riding out with him to check on some cattle in a nearby pasture. He was a sturdy man, sandy blond hair, strong body, even in his fifties, and blue eyes that seemed to bear a twinkle. She imagined her father might have looked the same.
“Yes.” She scanned the horizon again, the sky in the west turning to striations of amber and gold under a thickening layer of velvety magenta clouds. “It’s so…big. I have never seen so far in all my life.” She took a breath. “And it smells…”
“Like a ranch? Cow pies and grass and—”
“Perfect.” She looked at him. Her uncle. The fact that he’d opened his home to her and Dedi, despite how large it was, still seemed…
Then again, watching two grown men weep in each other’s arms, maybe it hadn’t been such a sacrifice.
His saddle squeaked as he readjusted. “Yes. It really is.” He looked at her. “Although, it’s not without its problems.” He nodded to the horizon. “There’s a storm coming. And judging by the cloud cover, it’ll be a doozy of a blizzard.”
Cloud cover. “Those look like nimbostratus clouds,” she said. “Low and thick.”
He glanced at her. “That’s right. I didn’t know you knew weather.”
“I know a weatherman. He taught me.”
Knew. Knew a weatherman. Over a week since she’d walked away from him, four days since arriving in Montana…someday, maybe, the burning in her chest would stop.
Maybe.
She’d worn a jacket, a scarf, gloves, and a hat, but her legs chilled under a stiff wind that stalked the prairie. It riffled the mane of her bay. But she watched a hawk ride the thermals, high above.
“I’ll bet there is some crazy paragliding around here.”
He turned in the saddle. “My son is a paraglider. That’s interesting.”
She hadn’t yet met her cousin Asher.
“There’s a number of places around the state—the closest to here is off Centennial Mountain, about 5,800 feet. But you’ll have to wait until summer.”
If she was here until then. She hadn’t exactly thought of sticking around permanently.
Although, the thought of returning to Slovenia had sort of put a noose around her neck. She didn’t know why.
Maybe because, out here, she saw it.
Today. Tomorrow, all the way out past the horizon.
“We should get back before the storm sets in.” He urged his horse into a walk.
“What about the cattle?” About fifty head milled around in a valley just below them.
“They’ll be okay. Beef cattle acclimate to the cold. They’ve already grown their winter coats. When it snows, the hair catches the snow, and it forms a layer over the cow that acts as an air pocket. That pocket is then warmed for extra insulation. They eat more in the winter, however, so we drive out every day with extra feed and fresh straw and make sure the water barrels are free of ice. And that’s why we leave stands of trees, cedar and pine and thickets. They go there for shelter.”
Her horse followed his. “But that’s why we have them in the closer field. If we need to, we can herd them into the barns.”
“This is a closer field?”
He laughed. She liked it.
“Darling, we have over a hundred thousand acres here. And four different sections to our operation. This is a very close field.”
Oh.
He clicked to his horse, and the gelding stepped up into a trot, then a canter. She kept up, enjoyed the familiar gait of the horse.
“Where did you learn to ride?” he said after they’d pulled up to walk, nearer the house.
“Dedi kept horses. I think his dad had them.”
“Yep. Small farm in Minnesota. But he had a couple horses.”
“You knew him?”
“My grandfather? Yes. He took me in when I came over from Slovenia—that was before you were born, before Luka was killed.” He stopped at a gate, dropped his reins and got off. Then he opened the gate, and the horse walked through. Waited.
She followed and turned as he closed the gate. Returned to the saddle.
“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed, but…then I got nervous that if I returned, the government might find out where he was.”
“They might have.”
The massive timber home sprawled on one level across the land, with wide front steps that led to a main area. The double doors opened to a stone entry, then an expansive great room with a two-story rock fireplace. The kitchen angled off it, its own room with a large round table for twelve in an alcove of windows that went from floor to ceiling.
She hadn’t seen beyond that—to the master bedroom suite, her uncle’s office, and probably her aunt’s office too. But she’d been impressed enough with the guest wing—four more bedrooms, each with their own ensuite and plush king-size beds.
So maybe she could stay awhile.
The wind whistled in her ears as they headed toward the barn. Funny that he hadn’t taken her out in one of the four-wheelers that sat in the machine garage.
But maybe he preferred the quieter, simpler life.
Another way, maybe, that he was like the father she’d never known but only imagined.
“How did you manage it?” Uncle Marek asked now as he dismounted.
“Manage what?”
“Getting Pops…here. The pardon. I mean…I can’t believe it. It feels like a miracle. At least a long waited for answer to prayer.”
She dismounted too. Handed him the reins. “I didn’t, actually. It sort of happened because of my friend, Jonas, who knew the right people, but even that.” She turned, stared at the tumble of darkening clouds.
Heard Dedi’s soft voice. Into the middle of our darkness, God reaches out and saves us.
“I think actually…well, God did it.”
Uncle Marek just looked at her and smiled.
The snow came by the time they’d finished dinner—she and Dedi, and Uncle Chuck and Aunt Lyddie and their youngest daughter Henrietta, still at home. They called her Retti, and she had Grandmother’s smile.
She liked Retti. Sixteen, smart, long brown hair, brown eyes.
Uncle Marek built a fire in the hearth, and he and his father brought out a chess board and sat at the kitchen table.
“Finally, someone to play with me!” he said, looking at Sibba. He’d shaved since coming to America, and something about his demeanor had changed. For the first time, she saw in him a younger man, one that fit the story Ziggy had told her.
A medal winner, at least in her heart, if not in reality.
But a freed man, for sure. Funny how having his sentence lifted and his past reckoned with gave him a redeemed view of the future.
“C’mere,” Retti said, emerging from the kitchen. She hooked her arm through Sibba’s and brought her to the massive window in the great room. Flicked off the lights inside and then turned on the outside lights.
A thousand tiny snowflakes drifted through the light, sparkling before they fell to the earth. The wind began to howl, and they swirled with the breath.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Retti stood with her hands in her back pockets. “I like to just sit here sometimes and watch the storm. It’s so…big. And yet in here, it’s warm and safe and…romantic.”
Sibba raised an eyebrow.
“Do you have a great love?” Retti leaned against the back of the couch.
Sibba sighed. “I did. But…I was too afraid to…believe. And now it’s too late.”
Retti gave her a sad smile. “I believe it’s never too late for hope.”
Sibba nodded. Sweet girl. But even if she wanted to believe, her words when she left him were true.
She didn’t know how to hope. To believe. To trust.
“I’m going to get us a couple blankets so we can sit on the porch. The sound of a storm is so amazing.” Retti left her standing at the window.
Sibba stared out into the night, into the tempest of snowflakes. It’s never too late for hope.
And then, like a whisper, she heard Jonas in the softness of her heart. God is in the storm. Though the winds blow, and my life feels torn apart, if I can just trust Him, I’ll discover Him at the center.
She crossed her arms over herself.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
She turned, hearing Dedi’s voice, but he was still in the kitchen.
Turned back to the window.
What does that even mean?
It means all the things. Grace and hope and love and…safety.
Yes. Yes, please. Because suddenly it all swept over her.
Maybe hope was simply reaching out for the hand of Jesus to hold her up.
She pressed her hand against the cold window. Please forgive my unbelief. My anger. My pride.
Yes, it had been exactly that—pride that she could control her one-meter box. Except, she couldn’t even do that, could she?
Help me, God. Help me to have faith. To trust You.
To hope.
“Let’s go outside.”
She turned and spotted Retti standing in the entry, holding two massive quilts. “Outside?”
“Yes. To watch the storm. I promise, it’s more beautiful than you can imagine.”
Fourteen
So, this was probably a bad idea.
Because his GPS had quit on him in the storm, and his truck heaters were losing the battle against the howl of the wind, the ice that now formed around his windshield. He’d packed for the storm—warm boots, a parka, hat, scarf, gloves, along with an emergency kit that included candles and a sleeping bag. But he never thought he’d have to camp in the car.
Lost in unfamiliar country, and he hadn’t a clue if Sibba would open the door to him.
Nixon’s words sat in his brain, however, like an ember. Find Girl. Live happily ever after.
Easier said than done when she’d practically disappeared off the planet.
He’d been packing, his flight to Slovenia booked, when Fraser came into the room with a strange update.
I got a call from Ham. Who got a call from Logan. Who had sent a woman named Ziggy to Sibba’s house.
Yeah, he remembered Ziggy. So that got Jonas’s attention. But he’d stood there, holding a pair of socks, when Fraser dropped the bomb.
Sibba is in America.
Or at least, that’s what Ziggy thought, because she’d left Sibba and her grandfather in Slovenia. But according to Logan, her passport had been used at Dulles International Airport, in D.C., only two days ago.
So, then, where was she?
Jonas had dropped the socks, set the half-packed bag on a chair, and headed down to Fraser’s security lair in Dad’s former office.
Started to scan through all their conversations in his mind and landed on the one that made the most sense.
More than anything, I want Dedi to see his son again, my uncle Marek.
So, he started his search there, with the name he’d seen on Henry’s jacket. Benson.
Not a lot of Marek Bensons in America. He found a doctor at Harvard, in his thirties, and a director of athletics at a community college in Alabama, but with his darker skin, he didn’t seem like a child of Henry Benson, of Danish and Slovenian descent.
And then he hit on the Benson Ranch, near the Bears Paw Mountains, east of Big Sandy, in Montana.
Found a picture of the family—four kids, most of them grown, one nearly Sibba’s age. Marek might be a younger version of Henry.
“I’m going to Montana,” he’d said to Fraser and got on his phone.
Except, the storm. It hadn’t hit the Rockies, and sat there, pummeling the northland with snow and ice, and the airports across Montana had closed in anticipation of the blizzard.
He headed upstairs, packed his bag, and asked Fraser to borrow his truck.
“To drive to Montana?” Fraser had given him a you’re crazy look.
“I’ll get a rental—”
“You won’t beat the storm.”
“I can drive through the storm.”
Fraser gave him a look. Then, “No. I’m not letting you take a tin can rental through the blizzard.” And he tossed him the keys.
“Don’t worry,” Jonas said as he caught them.
Cocky words now as he crossed over the border from North Dakota and spotted the low hanging nimbostratus clouds hovering over the bleak northern prairie.
The rain came first, then turned to ice. When he headed north on 94, the snow hit. Gray blotted out the sky, the snow accumulating on the road, over the ice, turning it lethal.
He slowed but kept his headlights on low because the high beams only made the snow come at him at light speed. Instead, his low beams carved out a path through the darkness, this snow whipping across the blacktop to reveal, now and again, the edges of the highway.
The truck shuddered in the high winds, and a couple times, threatened to slide off the road. He slowed to a crawl, the heat on high, his arms cradling the wheel, hunched over to see through the layer of ice that was closing in around his windshield.
He passed Harlem and Chinhook, and debated stopping in Havre, at a hotel near Montana State University, but…
He wanted to see her. To tell her that she’d healed him, in a way. Being with her made him remember who’d he’d been. Who he wanted to be.
The storm chaser.
He cut south onto 87, drove past the lonely, snow-covered Havre City-County Airport, the bright lights still illuminating a frosty tarmac, a few planes covered in thick drifts of snow.
Then it was back to the darkness, the snow swirling against his windshield, the wind trying to smack him off the road.
He’d memorized the map to the Benson ranch. Big place, but the main house was just southwest of Big Sandy, on Judy Lane, then west on Merrick Road, and south again on Country Road 37, all the way to Benson Drive, which cut east to the house, about a mile farther.
At least, he hoped he’d gotten it right, because his GPS winked in and out, and by the time he made the turn onto Judy Lane, passing the Big Sandy Airport, he’d lost the signal completely.
