Just Breathe

by Susan Wiggs

  This was why she was a watcher and not a doer. Less chance of humiliating herself. Yet now, thanks to Jack, she had discovered that there were worse things than humiliation.

  Seven

  Flames leapt at the face of Will’s daughter. Each individual golden tongue seemed to illuminate a different facet of her pale skin and shiny black hair. The overfed charcoal fire roared at her, seeming to lick her eyelashes.

  “Jesus, Aurora,” he said, running to the patio to clap the lid on the barbecue grill. “You know better than that.”

  For a moment, his stepdaughter merely stared at him. Since coming into his life eight years before, she’d owned his heart, but when she did things like this, he wanted to shake her.

  “I was firing up the barbecue,” she said. “Did you pick up the stuff for the Truesdale Specials?”

  “Yes. But I don’t recall saying it was okay for you to start the grill.”

  “You took too long at the store. I was sick and tired of waiting.”

  “You’re supposed to be doing homework.”

  “I finished.” Her eyes, lavishly surrounded by dark lashes, regarded him with reproof. “I was only trying to help.”

  “Aw, honey.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I’m not mad. But I figured you knew better than to start a fire. Think of the headline in the Beacon if anything happens—Fire Captain’s Daughter Goes Up In Smoke!”

  She giggled. “Sorry, Dad.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Can we still make Truesdales?”

  The burgers were their special meal, and theirs alone—mainly because no one else would touch them. They were made of SPAM, Velveeta and onion forced through a meat grinder, then grilled and served with a sauce of tomato soup. Heaven on a bun. Aurora was the only person Will had ever known who would eat them with him.

  He lifted the black dome of the lid. “No sense letting a perfectly good fire go to waste.”

  Over the years, of necessity, he had learned to cook. Round-the-clock shifts at the firehouse gave him plenty of time to learn the craft. He was famous for his fluffy pancakes, and his savory beef stew had once won a fire district prize. For someone who’d once expected to be drafted by a pro baseball team, firefighting was an unusual career choice. And for a single stepfather, it was risky, but for Will, it wasn’t even a choice. It was a calling. Years ago, he had discovered that rescuing people was what he did best, and risking himself was simply part of the job. And when it came to keeping himself safe, Aurora—his heart—was more powerful than body armor. Failing to come home to her was not an option.

  With the burgers sizzling on the grill, he and Aurora worked side by side, putting together a macaroni salad. She chattered about school with the kind of breathless urgency only a seventh grade girl could convey. Each day was packed with drama, rife with intrigue, romance, betrayal, heroism, mystery. According to Aurora, it all happened in the course of a typical day.

  Will tried to follow the convoluted saga of someone’s text message sent to the wrong phone, but he was preoccupied. He kept mulling over the barn fire, trying to figure out why it had been set, and who had done it.

  “Dad. Dad.”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t even listening. Geez.”

  She was getting too good at catching him. When she was little, she didn’t notice him zoning out. Now that she was older, she had a well-developed sense of when she was being ignored.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Thinking about a fire today. That’s why I nearly missed picking you up at the bus this afternoon.”

  She quickly turned, took a jar of mustard from the refrigerator and set it on the table. “What fire?”

  “A barn up on one of the branch roads. Deliberately set.”

  She carefully folded a pair of napkins, her small hands working with brisk efficiency. “By who?”

  “Good question.”

  “So are you, like, totally clueless?”

  “Hardly. There are tons of clues.”

  “Like what?”

  “Footprints. A gas can. And some other stuff I can’t talk about until the arson investigator finishes his report.”

  “You can tell me, Dad.”

  “Nope.”

  “What, don’t you trust me?”

  “I trust you completely.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “No,” he said again. “This is my job, honey. I take it a hundred percent seriously. You heard anything?” He glanced at her. Kids at school talked. Arsonists were proud of the work they did, and typically enjoyed a sense of notoriety. They could never keep quiet about anything for long.

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “What do you mean, of course not?” He slid two SPAM burgers onto grilled buns and brought them to the table.

  “I mean, you’re assuming someone at school would actually talk to me.” She spoke flippantly, almost jokingly, but Will sensed real pain beneath the remark.

  “People talk to you,” he said.

  She neatly tiled her burger with a layer of pickle slices. “And you would know.”

  “What about Edie and Glynnis?” he asked, naming her two best friends. “You talk to them all the time.”

  “Edie’s busy with her church group and Glynnis is all freaked out lately because her mom’s dating Gloria.”

  “Why is she freaked out?”

  “Come on, Dad. I mean, when it’s your own mom...” She wrinkled her nose. “Kids don’t like their parents dating anyone.”

  He glowered at her. “Present company included, I assume.”

  “Hey, if you want to go out with some woman—or some guy, even—don’t let me stop you.”

  “Right.” Will knew she had a million tricks up her sleeve for keeping him from dating. Given the roughness of her early years, her clinginess was understandable. No big deal for the time being, though. He wasn’t seeing anyone.

  “Maybe I set the fire,” she suggested. “Out of boredom.”

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “My life’s a joke. And I am bored. Edie and Glynnis live too far away. I don’t have a single friend right here in Glenmuir.”

  He pictured her at the big glass-and-brick school, a long bus ride into alien territory. Only a handful of kids lived in Glenmuir, but naively he had hoped she would make other friends and head into high school with a bigger peer group. “Hey, I grew up here, too. I know it can be hard.”

  “Sure, Dad.” The look she gave him spoke volumes. She poured warm tomato soup over the burger, then centered the top bun on it. She took a large bite and slowly chewed. Despite her delicate beauty, her fingernails were lined with dirt.

  Will knew instinctively that now would be a bad time to make her wash her hands. Lately, he wasn’t so hot at reading her mercurial moods, but he knew that much. He had practically made a career out of reading parenting books, even though they all seemed to give conflicting advice. One thing they agreed on was that rebellion stemmed from a need to escape parental control, running up against a need for boundaries and limits. Not that it made dealing with a thirteen-year-old any easier.

  “What, you think I had it made?” he asked.

  “Hello? Granny and Grandpa told me pretty much your life story. Including the fact that you were this big basketball and baseball star, and a straight-A student.”

  He grinned. “In their totally objective opinion. Did they tell you I used to bike to school instead of taking the bus because I was scared of being picked on?”

  “Like that’s supposed to make me feel better?” She ate methodically, without a single wasted movement.

  He was grateful to see her eating. According to the reading he’d done, Aurora was definitely at risk for an eating disorder. She fit the profile perfectl
y—beautiful, intelligent, driven to succeed...and a loner with self-esteem issues. Abandonment issues, too, given her history.

  “How about we discuss things you can do to be happier at school?” he suggested.

  “Sure, Dad,” she said, stabbing her fork into the macaroni salad. “I could try out for the cheerleading squad or the chess club.”

  “Either one would be lucky to get you,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, lucky them.”

  “Damn, Aurora. Why do you have to be so negative?”

  She didn’t answer right away, but took a long drink of milk, then set her glass on the table. A pale mustache arched over her lip, and Will was struck by a jolt of sentiment. He suddenly saw her as the silent child who had come, uninvited, into his life eight years before, clinging to the hand of a woman who had wreaked havoc on both of them and left a raft of emotional wreckage in her wake.

  Then, as now, Aurora’s looks had been striking, wide brown eyes and glossy black hair, creamy olive-toned skin and an expression of bewilderment at a world that had treated her harshly. From the first moment he saw her, Will had made it his mission to atone for the sins committed against this child. He had given up his dreams and plans for the future in order to protect her.

  And not once, not for a single second, did he regret any of the sacrifices he made.

  Or so he told himself.

  She wiped her mouth with her napkin and suddenly she was thirteen-year-old Aurora again, half-grown, her appearance turning womanly in a way Will found intimidating.

  “She’s Salma Hayek,” Birdie had remarked last summer after taking Aurora shopping for swimsuits.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Latina actress who looks like a goddess. Aurora is absolutely gorgeous, Will. You should be proud of her.”

  “What, like I had one damn thing to do with the way she looks?”

  Birdie had conceded his point. “What I mean is that she’s growing into her looks. She’s going to get a lot of attention because of it.”

  “And getting attention for looks is a good thing.”

  “It was for you, little brother,” Birdie had teased. “You were the prettiest thing the high school ever saw.”

  The memories made him wince. He had been so full of himself, he was probably swollen like a tick with unearned pride.

  Then Aurora had come into his life, helpless as an abandoned kitten, and everything else had ceased to matter. Will had dedicated himself to keeping her safe, helping her grow, giving her a good life. In turn, she had transformed him from a self-centered punk into a man with serious responsibilities.

  “Why do I have to be so negative?” Aurora mused, finishing every crumb on her plate. “Gee whiz, Dad. Where do you want me to start?”

  “With the truth. Tell me from your heart what’s so intolerable about your life.”

  “Try everything.”

  “Try being a little more specific.”

  She stared at him, mutiny in her eyes. Then she pushed back from the table and went to get something from her backpack—a crumpled flyer printed on pale pink paper. “Is that specific enough for you?”

  “Parents’ night at your school.” He knew exactly why that upset her, but decided to play dumb as he checked the date. “I can make it. I’m not on duty that night.”

  “I know you can make it. It’s just that I hate it when they expect parents to show up.”

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  She plunked herself back down in her chair. “How about I have no mother. No idea who my father is.”

  “He’s me,” Will said, fighting now to keep anger down. “And I’ve got the adoption papers to prove it.”

  Thanks to Birdie, the family’s legal eagle, he had a father’s rights. Those had never been challenged—except by Aurora, who sometimes dreamed her “real” father was a noble political prisoner pining away for her in some Third World prison.

  “Whatever,” she said, her inflection infuriating.

  “Lots of kids have single parents,” he pointed out. “Is it really that bad here?” He gestured around the room, indicating their house. The wood-frame house, built in the 1930s, was nothing fancy, but it sat a block from the beach and had everything they needed—their own private bedrooms and bathrooms, a good stereo system and satellite TV.

  “All right,” she said. “You win. Everything is just super.”

  “Is this some new class you’re taking in seventh grade?” he asked. “Sarcasm 101?”

  “It’s just a gift.”

  “Congratulations.” He clinked his beer can against her milk glass. During his duty cycle, there was no drinking, of course, but on his first night off, he always had one beer. Just one, no more. Heavy drinking meant nothing but trouble. Last time he’d really tied one on, he had wound up married, with a stepdaughter. A guy couldn’t afford to do that more than once in a lifetime.

  “So spill,” he said. “What’ll make you happy, and how can I give it to you?”

  “Why does everything have to be so black-and-white with you, Dad?” she asked in annoyance.

  “Maybe I’m color-blind. You should help me pick out a shirt for parents’ night.”

  “Don’t you get it? I don’t want you to go,” she wailed.

  He didn’t let on that her attitude was an arrow to his heart. There was never a good time for a child to be left by her mother, but Will figured Marisol had picked the worst possible age. When Marisol took off, Aurora had been too young to see her mother for what she was, yet old enough to hold on to memories, like a drowning victim clinging to a life raft. Over the years, Aurora had gilded those memories with a child’s idealism. There was no way a flesh-and-blood stepfather could measure up to a mother who braided hair, served pancakes for dinner and knew all the words to The Lion King.

  He’d never stop trying, though. “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m going,” he told her.

  Aurora burst into tears. This, lately, had become her specialty. As if cued by some signal he couldn’t see, she leaped up and took off. In a moment, he’d hear a thud as she flung herself on the bed.

  Will thought about having another beer, but decided against it. Sometimes he felt so alone in this situation, he had the sensation of drifting out to sea. He went over to the slate message board by the door. He and Aurora used it for reminders and grocery lists. Picking up the chalk, he wrote, “Parents’ night—Thurs.” so he wouldn’t forget to attend. Upstairs, Aurora landed on her bed with an angry thump.

  Eight

  As she drove away from town, Sarah told herself not to dwell on Jack and the things he’d said. Instead, her mind worried the conversation as though seeking hidden meaning in every syllable and inflection: You’re not ready to acknowledge your part in this yet.

  Of all the things he had said, that was surely the most absurd. What was she guilty of? Trading the gas-guzzling GTO for a Mini?

  Please come home, Jack had urged her.

  I am home.

  She didn’t feel it yet. She had never been comfortable in her own skin, no matter where she lived. Now she realized something else. Her heart had no home. Although she’d grown up here, she had always looked elsewhere—outward—for a place to belong. She’d never quite found that. Maybe she would discover that it was a place she’d left behind. A place like this.

  It was a land of lush abundance and mysterious wilderness, demarcated by flat-topped cypress trees sculpted by the wind, gnarled California oaks furred with moss and lichen, forget-me-nots growing wild in hilly meadows and ospreys nesting atop the light poles.

  Her father lived in the house his father had built. The Moons were an old local family, their ancestors among the town’s first settlers, along with the Shafters, the Pierces, the Moltzens and Mendozas. There was a salt marsh behind the
home and a commanding view of the bay known locally as Moon Bay, even though no printed map ever designated it as such. At the end of the gravel road was the Moon Bay Oyster Company, housed in a long, barn-red building that projected partially onto a dock. The enterprise had been started by Sarah’s grandfather after he came home wounded from World War II. He had been shot in the leg by a German in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and he walked with a permanent limp. He had a good head for business and a deep love of the sea. He chose to grow oysters because they flourished in the naturally clean waters here and were prized by shops and restaurants in the Bay Area.

  His widow, June Garrett, whose married name—Moon—made her sound like a Dr. Seuss character, was Sarah’s grandmother. She still lived in what the family called the “new” house simply because it was built twenty years after the original one. It was a whitewashed bungalow with a picket fence at the end of the lane, a hundred yards from the main house. After Grandpa had died, Gran’s sister, May, had moved in with her. The two sisters lived together, happy in their retirement.

  Sarah decided to stop in at Gran’s before heading to the main house. She had arrived in a whirlwind of fury and grief, and hadn’t seen Gran and Aunt May yet. Now that she’d consulted a lawyer and rebuffed Jack’s attempt to change her mind about the divorce, she felt more in control. She turned down the lane toward her grandmother’s house, the tires of the Mini crunching over the oyster shell gravel of the driveway.

  The sounds and smells of the bay and tidal flats caused the years to peel away. With no effort at all, she regarded this place through the filter of memory. For a child, this was a magical realm, filled with dreams and fairy tales. With the sturdy, handsome house by the bay as her home base, and her grandmother’s cottage a short walk away, she’d been surrounded by security. She had explored the marshes and estuaries; she’d raced the tide and tossed homemade kites to the wind. She’d lain in the soft grass of the yard and imagined the clouds coming to life. In her mind’s eye, she’d turned the clouds into three-dimensional speech bubbles filled with words she was too shy to say aloud. This had been her dreamworld, scented with flowers and alive with blowing grass and the buzz of insects. As a child, she’d been a great reader, finding the ultimate escape within the pages of a story. She learned that opening a book was like opening a set of double doors—the next step would take her inside to Neverland or Nod, Sunnybrook Farm or Mulberry Street.