Free A Time to Gather by Sally John

day long they gripe about whose fault it is they didn’t do their homework. Anyway, the reason I asked about Erik is I’m wondering: how did he respond to Dad?”
    “I’d rather you talked to your dad than hear my secondhand rendition.”
    “The thing is, was he upset? I mean, I was upset. It’s just so emotional, you know? Erik doesn’t do emotion. Lexi doesn’t do emotion. Danny expresses it and probably handled Dad’s whammo better than I did.”
    Claire nodded again. Jenna’s opinion of her siblings mirrored Max’s report. Lexi and Erik had blown him off. Danny emoted, quickly offering forgiveness to the dad he’d nearly idolized since childhood.
    Jenna said, “My guess is Erik is upset and that’s why he did this tonight. He’s working it out. And if what he said about Felicia is true, there’s a double whammo.”
    “Do you think she would?”
    “Cheat on him? In a heartbeat. She’s a— Well, never mind. So what are we going to do, Mom? Besides pray and cry?”
    “Love on him.”
    “How do we do that?”
    Claire looked around the room. The kitchen was large. She sat on a couch at one end of it, near a fireplace, dining table, and television. One wall was part of the original chapel in the more than one-hundred-year-old adobe building. It still displayed her mother-in-law’s collection of crosses, a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness.
    She thought of the hacienda, of how it had suffused her with warmth and hope the first time Max took her there to meet his parents. She didn’t have words for it until many years later. The place had been her safe harbor. People who came for retreats found it so. In recent weeks she could see how, at last, it was becoming the same for Max. It had been for her children as well, especially when they were little. Could it offer safety to them now?
    “Jen, one of the guest rooms is almost finished. In another week or so, a second one should be done. Maybe . . .” Oh Lord, please? “Maybe it’s time for a family retreat here. A weekend thing. Everyone would have a place to sleep. What do you think?”
    “I think I’d be the only one who’d come.”
    Claire grabbed another tissue. What happened to the good old days when they all pretended life was just fine?

   Twelve
    L exi entered the television studio not long after Danny. Via cell phone, he directed her to the producer’s office and told her to ignore the closed door.
    Still, she knocked.
    None of the voices she overheard called out, “Come in.”
    She hesitated. What was she doing there? She would do anything for Danny, which was why she’d said yes to him without question and raced downtown. It didn’t matter that it was after eleven p.m. or that she had to quit painting, her most important activity relegated to precious few hours a week, a thing she would not interrupt for anyone else.
    But this was really all about Erik. Why would she stay for him?
    Because he was her brother.
    She figured the sibling thing was innate, reinforced by Nana’s stories. According to her grandmother, Max and his brother BJ were always at odds unless somebody threatened the other one. Even in Lexi’s lifetime her dad had gone to Washington to urge congressmen to insist Vietnam hand over MIA information.
    Funny. He’d missed her eighteenth birthday because he was in D.C. defending, in a sense, his brother, most likely long dead.
    Lexi shook her head and opened the producer’s door. Danny’s loud voice covered the noise of her shutting it behind her.
    He stood in front
of a desk, red faced and hands on hips. “You can’t do this!”
    Beside him, Erik sprawled in a chair, arm over its back, his legs crossed. His smirk was typical laissez-faire , as if the whole scene bored him.
    Lexi assumed the man behind the desk was the producer. He shrugged and said, “Yes, we can do this. I defer to our legal counsel. Jackie?”
    A woman seated next to him flipped through a stack of papers. She wore blue jeans, a