Just Breathe

by Susan Wiggs

  The season had been dry and tonight the wind was howling steadily. The adjacent ridge could go up, each pine tree flaring like a resin torch. It would be the Mount Vision Fire all over again—except that now the area was even more populated.

  “I need to get a hose to that tank,” he told Kyle. “It’ll barely reach. You need to get the hell away from here—twenty-five hundred feet away, minimum.” The risk of a BLEVE—boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion—was getting higher by the minute. If the tank blew, it would be like a bomb, spreading fire in every direction.

  Kyle balked. “I can stay and help.”

  “The hell you can,” Will barked. “Go.”

  Kyle must have heard something in his voice. He jogged down the road, following orders. In the absence of the crew, Will radioed the battalion chief that he was going to put an unmanned nozzle on the propane tank to prevent a BLEVE. He prayed he’d have enough pressure to make the stream reach. A fount of water erupted from the nozzle...and a moment later, the hose went limp in his hands.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. He grabbed his radio to check on the crew, but the tac channel appeared to be jammed. He keyed up several times, never getting a response. Damn.

  He tried the hose again and felt a telltale surge of pressure. Yes. He leaned forward with the hose tucked under him, hauling it closer to the tank. Smoke and flame and flying debris all but blinded him. For a few seconds, he couldn’t do anything but mutter his now-favorite word between coughs: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  In between spasms of coughing, he expected to be hit by flying objects at any moment. All around, he heard the sucking whoosh of resin igniting. He felt more pressure coming through the hose. “Come on, come on,” he urged it. He was rewarded with a small but well-aimed burst, scoring a direct hit on the flames licking at the propane tank. Then he had to close down the bale and wait for the pressure to build back up. The whistling sound intensified, screaming along his nerves. He had only seconds to plant the monitor nozzle.

  He was racing for safety, putting a few hundred yards between himself and the tank, when an ominous vibration thrummed and pulsed around him. A second later, a sound like nothing he’d ever heard before crashed over him. Every bit of heat and light and air was sucked away, and then the dragon roared.

  * * *

  Aurora sent her friend Edie a text message: What R U doing 2nite?

  Edie texted back: Busy. Sorry.

  Then Aurora texted her other best friend, Glynnis, but got no reply. That was a little strange, because Glynnis lived for text messages. And really, Aurora wasn’t heartbroken that her two friends were busy. She was just stalling for time as she tried to work up the nerve to do what she really wanted to do—run into Zane Parker.

  She took a deep breath, then went and got the dog’s leash. “I’m taking the dog for a walk,” she called to her grandmother.

  “Take a flashlight,” her grandmother called, “and your phone.”

  “You bet.” She stuck her head in the family room, where her grandmother was sitting, reading a book. With her legs tucked under her and her long hair falling over her face, Granny Shannon looked more like a girl than a grandmother. Aurora wondered how much Granny knew about the situation in Mexico. Probably everything. Aunt Birdie, too, since she had worked on the case. Aurora wondered if they felt guilty for keeping her in the dark, or if they thought they were protecting her from something.

  Granny looked up from her book. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure.” Aurora could lie just like everybody else around here. “I’ll be back in a while.” She felt like such a misfit in her family. In her whole life, come to think about it. She was a bad fit at school, too. Not belonging was the worst feeling in the world.

  As she walked up the front walk to the Parkers’ house, she rehearsed what she’d say. “Hey, Ethan. I forgot my geometry book. Do you mind if I borrow yours? And while you’re at it, would you mind if I borrowed your brother?”

  “Only if you promise to give him back when you’re through with him,” called a voice from the shadows beside the house.

  Zooey gave a woof of greeting, straining at the leash. Aurora was speechless with humiliation. Good Lord, could this day get any worse?

  Ethan Parker approached her, skateboard tucked under his arm. “You are so busted,” he said, with laughter in his voice.

  “Shut up.” Her face was on fire. “So what if I think he’s cute?”

  “So you’re wasting your time. And trust me, he’s not that great.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t think so.” She sniffed and plunked herself down on the porch steps. “You’re a guy.”

  “And I’m pretty great, not that you asked.”

  One thing about Ethan. Whenever she was down, he had a way of making her smile. Just a little. Sometimes.

  “So is he here?” she asked.

  “Nope. Said he had something to do. So you’re stuck with me.”

  Zane was sixteen and drove his old Duster around everywhere. Aurora imagined driving around with him, on a date. Her dad said she wasn’t allowed to date yet, and she was totally forbidden to drive in a car with a guy. Now, in light of what she’d found out about her mother, she wondered if that was the reason her dad was so cautious. Did he think she was going to turn out like her mother?

  “Hey, Ethan?” she said. “What if you found something out that you’re not supposed to know? What would you do with the information?”

  “Put it on Facebook.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously, I’d probably quit with the cloak-and-dagger stuff, and tell someone. Simple.”

  “Simple for you, maybe,” she muttered. The urge to confess to him was strong, but he wasn’t the one who could help her make sense of this. Only her dad could do that, so she dropped the subject. She and Ethan sat together on the porch steps, throwing a ball for the dog. One thing about Ethan, she didn’t have to be any particular way with him. She just had to be, period.

  After a while, Zane came home, driving his old Duster with the stereo turned up loud. The headlights swung across the yard and then went dark. “Hey,” he said, getting out.

  “Hey, Zane.” Aurora could feel all the thoughts draining out of her brain. Yeah, he was so cute he gave her brain damage.

  Zooey danced and skittered around him, inviting him to play. “Cute dog,” he said.

  “That’s Zooey,” she said. “I raised him from a pup.”

  Zane looked at his brother. “Mom and Dad home?”

  “Nope.”

  Their parents owned a restaurant in Point Reyes Station, and most nights, they both worked.

  “Cool.” Zane took out a pack of cigarettes and, cool as anything, lit one up. “Want one?” he asked Aurora.

  “Of course she doesn’t want one, moron,” Ethan groused at his brother.

  Aurora shot him a grateful look.

  “Jeez, I can’t believe you’re smoking,” Ethan continued. “That’s so lame.”

  Zane shrugged. “I’ll quit one of these days.” He took a plastic lighter out of his pocket and flicked it off and on, off and on.

  A car swung over to the curb in front of the Parkers’ house. To Aurora’s surprise, it was her grandparents’ car. The window slid down and her Granny said, “Get in the car, Aurora.”

  “But—” Dangit. Zane had just arrived, and he was actually talking to her for once.

  “Now, Aurora. There’s been a fire.”

  * * *

  “Earth to Sarah,” Judy said, waving her hand in front of Sarah’s face. “Your move.”

  The two of them were spending the evening at Sarah’s house, playing Scrabble. Judy had just scored big with JUNKIE. Sarah had been staring at her letter tiles, her mind a million miles away. For the past hour, sirens had sounded i
n the distance, and hearing them always made her jumpy.

  “Sorry,” she said, frowning.

  Judy sat back in her chair. “For someone who just got her sex life back, you’re looking a little glum.”

  “It’s complicated.” She hooked RISK onto Judy’s word.

  Judy laughed. “Complicated is better than boring. See, my sex life is uncomplicated. Once-a-week-Wayne, that’s what I call him. He shows up, spends the night, then hits the road again. To be honest, it’s a little boring.” Her boyfriend, Wayne, was a security systems salesman who spent most of his time on the road. She helped herself to one of the brownies Viv had brought over earlier. “These brownies are better than my sex life.”

  Sarah grabbed one off the plate. “Viv’s brownies are better than everyone’s sex life.” Since high school, Vivian had turned herself into a world-class cook.

  When a fresh set of sirens sounded, though, Sarah instantly lost her appetite. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” she confessed.

  Judy tallied up the score, then looked down at her hands. As always, there were tiny burns on her fingers, from her metal sculpture work. “Did I ever tell you about the time I caught my studio on fire? Will Bonner was fit to be tied, because I’d left some packing foam too close to my work area. He was in training back then, working long hours—”

  “What was his wife like?” Sarah asked, blurting out the question. “I mean, he’s told me about her, but what did you think of her?”

  Judy finished her brownie. “I didn’t really know Marisol, except to say hi. She worked for Mrs. Dundee as a housekeeper.”

  “Will took it hard when she left,” Sarah said. “See, that’s what’s so crazy about us, about Will and me getting involved. We’ve both been so burned by our marriages.”

  “And you’re both a lot smarter now. Quit being afraid of screwing up.”

  She stared at the Scrabble board, trying to see layers of meaning in the words there. Risk, junkie, rhyme, mayhem, all hooked together.

  The phone rang, startling them both. Sarah got up to answer, seeing Kyle’s number on the caller ID. It was her sister-in-law, LaNelle. “You’d better come,” she said in a tight voice. “A storage shed at the oyster farm caught fire.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  There was a hesitation. Just a beat, as brief as a single indrawn breath. “I haven’t heard. There were some explosions.”

  “I’m on my way.” Sarah’s knees wobbled as she swung around to Judy. “Can you stay with the boys?”

  * * *

  The stars were beautiful, spinning gently overhead as though Will was lost at sea, lying faceup on the deck of a moving ship. It was said you could navigate by the stars, using their arrangement as a map into the unknown. In ancient times, mapmakers designated the places they didn’t know with the ominous warning “Here Be Dragons.”

  A long time had passed since he’d gone where the dragons dwelled, into the vast unknown of dangerous wonders. Fire held no peril for him because he understood it so completely. For him, true risk was a matter of the heart. He had grown accustomed to the safety of the known world populated by friends and family. Now, he reflected as he studied the glimmering stars, a dangerous wonder had come into his life—Sarah Moon. For a long time he’d held off, keeping himself from discovering what life with her could be, forbidding himself to want it. All in vain. He wanted to be with her like he wanted the next breath of air. But damn. He could plunge into a burning building without hesitation. Yet with Sarah, he’d made himself wait, and for what? Because Aurora had a problem with him dating? Was he supposed to wait until his daughter grew up and left home? No way. Putting things off was not an option when you had a job like this.

  He wasn’t sure how long he lay in darkness, sounds muffled by a deafness he prayed was temporary. The wind had been knocked out of him, and maybe he lost consciousness or was dreaming or something. His chest was on fire, but he was alive. All his limbs seemed to work, nothing broken. Maybe a couple of ribs. He didn’t sense that he was burned.

  Gloria, he thought. The crew. Why hadn’t anyone found him? He struggled to get up, willed his arms to work. He managed to brace his hands behind him, pushing himself to a sitting position.

  At some point, he saw the swing of a Q-beam through the woods. Good, they were searching. Pike poles reached through the night, plucking engulfed branches down to earth. Burning things showered from the sky—embers, pieces of the building and its contents, bits of the surrounding trees and bushes. Water, too. Not rain, but spray from hoses putting out hot spots.

  He staggered up, feeling a host of bruises. He felt a stab of pain as his lungs, emptied out by the fall, reinflated. The explosion had thrown him far from his original location. Putting one foot in front of the other, he started walking, lifting his legs high over vegetation and debris. Burning pieces landed all around him, but he ignored them and walked doggedly on.

  He’d gone maybe twenty paces before stepping back into himself, into the Will Bonner he knew. “Ah, God,” he said, “my crew.” Then he ran, his lungs feeling torn but working hard.

  The engine crew had the blaze under control. Through a haze of smoke, he spotted Gloria. He tried to call out, but his voice was gone.

  * * *

  Aurora leaped out of her grandparents’ car and raced toward the ambulance parked on the gravel road. She barely remembered the ride to Moon Bay. She’d left her dog with Ethan, who said he’d keep Zooey for as long as she needed. Dad was okay, he’d called while they were driving to the fire. Even though he’d assured everyone he only had scratches and bruises, Aurora was terrified that he’d hurt something in the fire that couldn’t be fixed.

  She spotted him leaning on the tailgate of the boxy ambulance. He was smudged with charcoal black everywhere. He held an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. But his eyes, surrounded by goggle-shaped pale skin, were smiling.

  Sarah was already there, Aurora saw, clinging to him as though she’d saved him herself. Aurora didn’t like it that Sarah had arrived already.

  This was the Moon family’s place, Aurora reminded herself. Sarah didn’t seem too concerned about the property, though. She was all over Dad.

  Aurora called his name. At least Sarah had the decency to back off.

  Aurora couldn’t help herself. She flung her arms around him, knowing she was getting covered in soot. He winced and she jumped back. “You’re hurt!”

  “I might’ve bruised some ribs,” he said, and hugged her gingerly.

  Although he smelled of heat and smoke, he felt so strong and good she nearly cried, which was stupid, because he was obviously all right. He said her name in her ear, he said “Aurora-Dora” the way he always had, and she breathed hard and fast to keep in the tears.

  “You’re all dirty,” she said. “You’ve got cuts all over.”

  “Once I get cleaned up, I’ll be good as new,” he assured her.

  This time, she thought. What about next time? Did he know, did anyone comprehend what it was like to have only one parent, and to know that one parent could be blown away every time he went to work? Did he even care how that made her feel?

  It was then that Aurora realized how completely ticked off she was about this whole situation. And now that she knew he was fine, she was dying to talk to him about the box of secrets under the bed. And the ring. Geez. Had he already given it to her? She glanced at Sarah’s hand. No ring, phew.

  “Listen, I need to go take care of some things,” Dad was saying. “You wait here with Sarah, all right?”

  No, it wasn’t all right, but Aurora knew it would make her seem like a baby if she put up a fuss. She nodded and let go of him. She hadn’t realized she was still holding his hand as hard as she could.

  Dad had to go dictate his incident report into a digital tape recorder. Aurora stood behind the
yellow-and-black Caution tape and watched a plume of smoke climb into the sky, blue-gray against the black. It was beautiful, in a weird way, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. Her fascination shifted to memory, or maybe something she thought was a memory. Staccato shouts in Spanish. Swearing and praying. Heat and smoke. A furtive figure in a red dress, darting in the opposite direction and moving too fast for Aurora to follow.

  Mama.

  “Hey, girlie.” Gloria handed her a bottle of water. “Thirsty?”

  Startled, Aurora took the water and thanked her. “Are you all right, too?”

  “Yep, no thanks to whoever started this fire. Gotta go.” Gloria touched her shoulder and headed over to the cluster of guys in their turnout gear. The fire had consumed a storage building, and the process of extinguishing it had left a wreckage of broken jars, an old-fashioned white produce scale, moldering rope and cultivation tubes. On the ground was a blackened enameled sign which had hung above the doorway: Moon Bay Oyster Company. Est. 1924.

  She moved it with her foot. Underneath lay a half-melted piece of yellow plastic. She jabbed at it with her toe, then bent and picked it up.

  A chill rippled through her as awareness teased at her mind. This felt like her memories of Mexico, something she knew but didn’t know, a place her mind didn’t want to go. What had Ethan said earlier? Something about ending the cloak-and-dagger stuff and just being honest. What a concept. “The truth will set you free” was something people liked to say, but that was garbage. The truth could get her so deep in trouble there would be no way out. And look at her dad, hiding so much from her. He obviously believed telling the truth was a bad idea sometimes.

  “I’m so relieved your father’s all right,” Sarah said, coming to stand beside her. She wore rubber rain boots and a pink woven shawl over jeans and a hoodie. Wrapped up against the autumn chill, she looked pale and scared, even though the danger was over. Well, of course she was scared. She’d been planning a future with a guy who almost died tonight.