Joe inched closer to the pump. He could see now that small flecks of ash were collecting on his windshield. All at once the frenzy penetrated his skin. He felt a clutch of panic in his gut. They’d never been evacuated this far west, but it looked as if this time it was actually going to happen. Joe started thinking about what he needed to take out of the house and where they were all going to go if an evacuation was called for. Allison had always taken care of emergency plans before. He didn’t even know where she kept the lockbox with all their important documents. He picked up his phone again. Had it already happened? Is that why she’d called? He pressed 1 and waited impatiently for the voice mail cues to finish. The first message was very weird—just his name and then nothing but the distant sound of the television in the background before she hung up. The second message made Joe both angry and fearful. Allison sounded like she’d lost her mind. Where the hell did she think she was going? She hadn’t even mentioned Diana or Zoë. Clearly, she was just leaving them there to fend for themselves. Joe was sick to death of her bullshit. Why had he let her get away with it all this time? And now they were in the middle of a crisis and he was going to have to deal with it all himself. He wouldn’t even have the luxury of bitching her out when he got home. Frantic to get out of this line and back to his house, Joe attempted to squeeze out of his space without getting his gas, but he was forced to wait. When he made it to the pump at last, his hands were shaking so badly he spilled gas all over them.
He was sweating and coughing by the time he finally pulled onto Fuller Court. The street looked awful, full of downed branches and leaves blowing around. It was going to be hell to clean up when this was all over. The sun was unable to break through the smoke, but it was hot and everything was suffused with a burnt orange glow. There were no signs of life on the street and that was, in its way, even more troubling than the scene at the gas station. Joe pulled into the garage and closed it behind him before he got out of his car.
The goddamn door from the garage into the house was locked and Joe spent several futile minutes trying to find the right key on his chain, which also held all the keys to the restaurant. He pounded on the door but nobody answered. Of course not. Frustrated to the point of mindlessness, Joe grabbed the closest thing he could find to a battering ram, a long-abandoned baseball bat, and ran it into the door at full speed until he splintered the cheap thing and it swung open. He’d successfully broken into his own house.
He could smell smoke and burnt coffee and could tell, without even going upstairs, that he was the only person in the house. Allison’s phone and keys were gone. Diana’s door was open and her room was empty so obviously she’d taken Zoë and abandoned the house as well. Joe looked behind him at the broken door and felt embarrassed. He’d done something to his shoulder with that stupid macho gesture and now it throbbed with pain. He pulled out his phone and dialed Allison’s number. It went straight to voice mail.
“You’d better call me, Allison,” he said into the phone. He didn’t add “or else,” but he hoped it was obvious enough from his tone. Then he dialed Diana’s cell phone, but it too went straight to voice mail. “Diana, it’s Joe. Call me when you get this.” He clicked off and stood there for a moment, suddenly overwhelmed by the complexity and weight of both his immediate and long-term situations. He needed a break.
He dialed his phone again. It rang only once before she picked up.
“Hey, Joe,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered. “Where are you?”
“I’m still here.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m coming back.”
chapter 12
“I don’t care how hysterical they are on the news,” Dick said. He was sitting at the dining room table, staring intently at his laptop. “I don’t see any reason to leave my house and go running around looking for some overpriced hotel room—even if we could find one at this point—and throw away a whole lot of money for nothing.”
“But they’re saying we’re in a mandatory evacuation zone,” Dorothy said. She stood in front of the television, watching as it cut back and forth across the county. There were too many images—it was all starting to blur into one big ball of flame. There were so many different fires in San Diego that the news couldn’t even begin to cover those burning in Los Angeles County, one of which was busy consuming some gazillion-dollar mansions in Malibu. Even the major networks and CNN were covering the story and had crews all over the place.
Dorothy was nervous and had been since yesterday evening when it had become too smoky to leave a window open for even a moment without everything getting covered with soot. But the fires still seemed far away, removed enough as to be unreal. She wondered if it would take seeing actual flames for her to feel a sense of real danger and decided that maybe she’d gotten so used to seeing catastrophes on a small television screen that they all seemed manageable and contained. All you had to do was turn off the television and everything stopped. Dorothy didn’t have any real-world experience with natural disasters; that was the problem.
But she knew very well what mandatory evacuation meant and she didn’t care if it was just a precaution. Mandatory meant officials were involved—maybe in person—and the very last thing Dorothy would allow was to get involved in any way with officials or police. She didn’t understand why Dick wanted to dig in his heels all of a sudden because it wasn’t as if he was the world’s most devoted homeowner. He mowed the backyard reluctantly, took no interest in gardening or landscaping, and cared nothing about interior design. Dick left all the details to Dorothy. However she wanted to decorate was fine with him as long as it was cheap. That was really at the heart of it, she thought. Dick was never going to be that guy who burned to death while trying to protect his house—he just wanted to save a few bucks.
“Dick,” she said again, “mandatory evacuation means you have to leave. It’s not optional.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Since when are you buying into all that crap? I’m looking at this blog right now that they’ve set up about the fires. Nobody out here is panicking. Anyway, Dorothy, do you want to go sleep at Qualcomm Stadium? Because that’s the only place where you can get a room right now.”
“Why don’t we call a few hotels?” Dorothy asked. “I can call if you want.”
“Go ahead,” Dick said, “you won’t find anything.”
Dorothy hesitated, thinking of another option. “We could go stay with your brother,” she said.
“In Arizona?” From her spot in front of the television, Dorothy couldn’t see Dick’s face, but she could picture his expression anyway—disbelief crossed with irritation. “What’s gotten into you, Dot?”
“I just think we should go if they’re telling us to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dick said, a harsh edge creeping into his voice. He cleared his throat. “That fire has to come all the way down the fifty-six and jump across all kinds of freeway before it gets here. It’s not going to happen. They’re not going to let it.”
“Dick …”
“Where’s Kevin?” Dick asked, shifting abruptly to the one topic guaranteed to get Dorothy off her quest to evacuate. “I haven’t seen him since … for hours.”
Instinctively, Dorothy turned her head toward the top of the staircase as if Kevin would appear on it at any second.
“Well?” The air around Dorothy seemed to get hotter and less oxygenated. “Dorothy?”
Dorothy focused on the flickering orange and yellow flames on the television. “He went out with his friends,” she said. “School’s going to be closed tomorrow—probably until next Monday. They’re … you know how kids are. They’re taking advantage. Like the snow days we—” Dorothy inhaled sharply, realizing her slip a split second too late. She felt the nerves and muscles in her neck and shoulders contract into a painful spasm.
“What friends?” Dick had missed it. She squeezed her eyes shut in relief.
“You know,” she said, trying to keep the trem
or out of her voice, “those guys he’s in … uh, Spanish class with … Jason, I think, and, um, Mike.”
“Spanish?” Dick was incredulous. “Since when does he take Spanish?”
“Since it’s a requirement to graduate.” Dick didn’t answer that one so Dorothy shifted her position so that she could see his face. He’d found something on the computer that had captured his attention and bent his head toward the screen. She saw the bluish light reflecting off his reading glasses and his lips a thin line of concentration half-buried under his mustache as he started typing.
He seemed to have bought her story completely. She was glad, but also surprisingly annoyed at his total lack of perceptiveness. She hadn’t done a very good job of lying and that was maybe accidentally-on-purpose she thought now, because certainly she was capable of much greater deceptions. It was a sort of test to see if he—what? Cared? Was paying attention to anything other than his own wants and needs? Dorothy didn’t know and didn’t really understand why she would want to test him in the first place. It wasn’t as if she could afford to risk another scene. They’d already called way too much attention to themselves as it was, getting all tangled up with the Montanas and Dick with his threats of legal action that she’d only barely managed to talk him out of. It was ridiculous anyway, insisting that Kevin and Diana remain apart—almost guaranteed to turn them into Romeo and Juliet and make them want to be together even more. Let them spend as much time together as they wanted, Dorothy thought, and they’d get sick of each other in no time. Kevin, a father! He couldn’t even keep his own room clean. And if that stupid, stupid girl was going to insist on keeping that baby she’d get tired of having some carless, penniless, totally dependent teenage boy hanging around her neck real quick.
But no, Dick had to get all macho about it and that only made it forbidden fruit, which, as Dorothy knew intimately, was the most tempting and sweetest of all.
She’d tried to tell Dick all of this, but she guessed she hadn’t been clear enough. Or, Dorothy thought now, maybe Dick just hadn’t listened to her. He was completely unreasonable about that girl, his intense dislike of her totally out of proportion. Although Dorothy was certainly no fan of Diana’s, she couldn’t muster up the kind of extreme emotion Dick seemed to feel. Dorothy didn’t understand it and it made her vaguely uneasy. As for Kevin, he was probably with Diana at this very moment. Although she didn’t see how they were managing any secret trysts. Joe and Allison had been just as clear as Dick about not wanting Kevin and Diana to see each other, so Kevin would have to be sneaking into their house and hiding out because there was no way they were hanging out anywhere else with that baby.
On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t with her at all. It had been hours since she’d seen him last, heading for the front door. She’d called to him from the living room where she’d been following the news updates on the fires.
“Kevin, wait a minute.”
“What?” He stood with his hand on the doorknob, so anxious to be gone that he didn’t even turn to look at her. He was wearing a grubby white T-shirt with a rash of what looked like pinholes at the hem, ultrabaggy jeans that slid halfway down his backside showing the green-striped top of his boxer shorts, and a maroon baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Not for the first time she wondered when he had become this angry inarticulate person and how she had managed to miss the transformation.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Just out.”
“Kevin …”
“I’m meeting a friend, okay? A guy I know from school. We’re gonna see a movie, okay? Now you know.”
“You know, everything’s being evacuated, Kevin. The theater might not even be open. We might have to leave. And are you going to walk over there? Because the air’s really bad.”
“That’s the last fucking thing I’m worried about,” he said and made his exit before she could chastise him for his terrible language, slamming the door behind him.
Would it have made a difference if she’d run after him? If she’d watched to see where he was headed? Would he have talked to her then?
Dorothy’s neck tensed up again. She could feel a headache crouching at the bottom of her skull, ready to burst out. She needed relief. Instantly, her mind’s eye focused on that spot buried deep in the bathroom where she knew she could find it. She’d been getting so many bad headaches lately and that doctor hadn’t given her nearly as many pills as she needed and no refill either, and so she was running dangerously low. She was going to have to be careful and conserve or else … Dorothy clamped down hard on the thought that had started to wind its way into her brain. No, she told herself. No, no, no.
“Dick,” she said, “I’m going upstairs to put a few things together. In case we need to leave. I just think it’s a good idea to be prepared.”
“Okay,” he said without looking up. He was deep into whatever he was reading on the computer and she could tell he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
Dorothy headed to her special place in the bathroom, fished out a pill, and swallowed it without water. She was about to put the bottle back when it occurred to her that she really might need to pack some essentials in case she could change Dick’s mind and get him to leave. She should keep some pills handy. She opened the bottle and poured a few into her hand. Of course, if they did leave, she’d have to find Kevin as well. He probably wouldn’t answer his cell phone, but she’d send him a text message—she knew he looked at those—and find out where to pick him up. In fact, she thought, she should probably do that now. It was getting late. Dorothy slid her hand inside her top and emptied the pills into her bra, trying to visualize where she’d left her cell phone. She was halfway back down the stairs and headed to the living room when she stopped herself short—her hand involuntarily moving to her heart. She’d put the pills in her bra. Without even thinking about it. It had been more than twenty years since she’d done that. Dorothy bit the inside of her lip. Something was happening, she thought. Something bad. As if on cue, the doorbell rang at that very moment and her blood jumped with the surge of adrenaline.
“Dorothy!” Dick called. “Can you get that?”
Dorothy wanted to shout down that she couldn’t, that she was busy, but nothing came out of her mouth. The bell sounded again.
“Dorothy!”
Finally, she moved. Down the stairs and over to the front door. Dick, still seated at the table with his head in the computer, didn’t even look at her as she walked by him. With great reluctance, she unlocked their front door and pulled it open. Sam stood under the awning, one arm reaching out to ring the doorbell a third time and the other holding a bundled-up baby close to her chest. Dorothy’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Sam?”
“Hi, Dorothy. Can I come in please? I don’t want the baby to breathe in this air.”
“Sure, of course.”
Sam walked in and Dorothy closed the door behind her. Dorothy could hear the baby now, muffled little noises coming from under layers of blankets. Sam’s eyebrows were drawn together in worry and her whole body seemed tense and rigid. “I’m glad you’re still here,” Sam said. “I thought maybe you’d be gone already. You are evacuating, right?”
“Well, we—” Dorothy began, but suddenly Dick was next to her and interrupting.
“What’s going on?” he said.
Sam gave Dick as cutting a look as Dorothy had ever seen, yet the words that came out of her mouth were polite, even beseeching. “I’m sorry to drop in like this,” she said. “I would have called, but I can’t seem to find my Watch list and I figured you’re so close.”
“Whose baby is that?” Dorothy asked, although she already knew.
“It’s Diana’s baby. Zoë.” She wrapped both arms around the baby and started rocking. “That’s why I came over. I’m wondering if you know where Diana is. She left the baby—”
“Why would we know where she is?” Dick barked.
<
br /> “I know she’s … She’s friends with Kevin, isn’t she? I just thought maybe she was here. With Kevin.”
“Kevin’s not even home.”
“Well, do you know where he is?” Sam asked. She held her ground, her tone strong, her expression stony. She wasn’t intimidated by Dick in the least, Dorothy thought, feeling a passing twinge of envy. “Maybe Diana is with him. I need to find her. We have to evacuate and if I can’t find her, I’m going to have to take the baby with me. There’s nobody home at the Montanas. I think they’ve left. I don’t know where they are.” Sam frowned. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here, Dick.” Dorothy shifted her gaze from Sam to Dick. His face looked folded up, closed and angry.
“So do you know where he is?” Sam asked. “Please.”
“He’s not here,” Dick said again.
“Are you sure?”
Dick flushed. “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
“No,” Sam said calmly, “I’m just asking if you’re sure.”
Dick turned abruptly and almost ran up the stairs. A few seconds later she could hear him rattling Kevin’s door.
“I don’t understand why you have the baby,” Dorothy said. “Did Diana leave her with you? Are you babysitting?”
“No,” Sam said. “That’s why I came over here. I went over there hours ago—to Joe and Allison’s. I wanted to see if they needed any help.” Sam paused for a second, her jaw working. “I wanted to see if Diana needed any help. But when I got there—”
“Kevin’s asleep in his room,” Dick said, coming down the stairs, “so I guess he is here after all.” He walked over to Dorothy and stood next to her, placing one hand on her shoulder. She looked at him—studied his face—and realized he was telling the truth. “But he’s by himself. Sorry Sam, can’t help you. That girl isn’t here.”
Dorothy’s brain scrambled for an explanation. How could she have missed Kevin coming in? She was sure—
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