Summer of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  The pilot walked off the rescue helicopter under his own power, a stocky kid with hair so blond and short that he looked as though he’d shaved his head. Several enlisted men and an officer tried to speak to him, but he brushed them aside on his way to the edge of the flight deck. Deering held his breath, for if the pilot intended to jump no one was near enough to stop him.

  Still dripping wet, the young aviator plucked gold wings from his uniform and flung them into the sea.

  Deering looked up and down the hall, thinking that there was something he should do before he left. Back in July, Clare had shown up in his room at the Lake Hospital by mistake, but their lives had been entwined since that moment. He wanted to find her and make sure that Devon was okay.

  His boots were loud on the tile floor as he headed toward the lounge and nurses’ station.

  He was just opposite a swinging door marked X-ray - No Admittance when someone pushed the portal wide and nearly collided with him.

  “Whoa … “

  “S’cuse me.”

  Steve Haywood, still dressed in dirty Nomex, leaned on a pair of aluminum crutches. The fluorescent lights hummed harshly, casting a pale wash over the windowless walls and Steve’s pain-lined face.

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Deering moved to go.

  “That was some decent flying you did today,” Steve said evenly. “Not to mention dragging my dead ass up that hill.”

  Deering stopped. “I didn’t think you believed I could pour piss out of a boot.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “So?”

  “Clare suggested that perhaps my view of you was colored by my … past experience with flying.”

  For the first time, Deering imagined what it must have been like for Steve to survive while his wife and baby lay mangled in the plane’s wreckage. How excruciating would it be if Deering never saw Georgia again?

  “I’ve been thinking about that day we went down in the lake,” Steve went on. “That whole business with the wind off the fire and trying to use the bucket to help those folks … well, who’s to say we didn’t both do the best that was humanly possible?”

  “Who is to say?” Deering asked carefully. “First Assurance?” Suzanne Ho was still out there, unwilling to authorize his claim until she talked to his passenger.

  Almost casually, Steve shrugged, “Insurance companies are a pain in the butt.” He flashed a small grudging grin. “Ya done good today.”

  The two men fell into step. The brighter light at the end of the hall silhouetted a small woman, her red-gold hair a halo.

  Deering inhaled sharply.

  From beside him, Steve said, “Is that …?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Georgia’s eyes looked enormous in her pale face. “Garrett Anderson called me at the hotel and said you were here. I drove up this morning.”

  Deering’s steps quickened. He buried his face in the side of her neck and wrapped her tight against him. She pressed close and slid her hands inside his filthy flight suit.

  Relief suffused him, as profound and complete as any he had ever known. Her touch said she’d forgiven him Clare, and if fortune smiled, their lives could go on.

  “Hon,” she said brokenly. “We’re going to have a baby.”

  Only a moment before, he’d been stupid with fatigue and, surely, he still was, but at the sound of her voice, he took off without benefit of wings. “A kid!”

  The surge of elation surprised him. He thought of Clare’s daughter, nearly grown, and yet she’d longed to find her mother when trouble struck at Old Faithful. Would he and Georgia be able to raise a loyal and loving child like that?

  Deering became aware that his wife was waiting with her breath held for him to express something other than surprise.

  How would he feel after the first shock subsided? He and Georgia weren’t young; he’d be nearly sixty when the kid started college …

  But Lord, what a chance to start again. His brother had grandchildren and whenever Deering held one of the tiny mites, it gave him the thrill of possibility. Thinking of life’s changes reminded him of his gift to Georgia, the one she’d waited for over twenty years.

  “That’s great about the baby.” He spread a hand over her warm tummy. “I’ll have lots of time to spend with him …”

  “Him?”

  “Or her. I’ll be home since I’m giving up flying.”

  “You’re what?” She looked at him with disbelief. “I’m going to retire.”

  Georgia pressed his hand to her stomach. “But this little one’s going to need college money.”

  “I’ll find something else.”

  “Like what?” She pulled back with hands on hips, his much-loved little harridan. “I know you’ve crashed twice, but look at the good you’ve done.” She didn’t stamp her foot, although he felt like she had. “That Smokejumper you saved … and Garrett said how you got those people off the mountain today when Karrabotsos was burned.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Georgia, you’ve been on my ass to stop flying ever since I can remember. Can’t you just be happy you finally won?”

  She smiled. “I thought I’d never hear you say it.” On tiptoe, she brushed a kiss across his cheek. “It was my fondest dream, but,” her whisper made it real, “promise me you won’t decide today.”

  There would be time to think later. For him and Georgia to try and find their way through the briary mess this summer had become. For now, he held her, just held her.

  “Babe,” he whispered. “Let’s go home.”

  Clare sat in the waiting room and cupped warm Styrofoam. The coffee was the same bitter machine brew she’d sipped at the Lake Hospital back in July. Today in West Yellowstone, she waited to find out whether Devon’s wrist was fractured or merely sprained.

  Trying not to think about the frightful blank look on her daughter’s face when she’d collapsed on the tarmac, Clare wondered where Steve was. When Deering had driven them down in his truck behind the ambulance, Steve had been taken away in a wheelchair.

  This morning at the airport, she’d never expected him to fly. Even if he had promised she would not be alone, she had not imagined him getting onto a helicopter with her.

  She slouched against the uncomfortable straight-backed chair. Steve had stood by her, but on the mountain, she’d let him down. She’d stood on the safety of rock while Deering leaped to his rescue. Although she could plead the excuse of Devon’s weight hanging on her, she did not believe that would suffice. Ahead of her still lay the interrogation surrounding the death of Private William Harrison Jakes.

  Clare sighed and looked around the empty room. An abandoned jacket lay in a chair and a blanket and pillow marked where someone had passed the night waiting for news of a loved one. A television high in the corner played the evening news with footage of the fires behind Peter Jennings’s shoulder. The usual firefighters on the march, the obligatory chopper picking up a load of water, the flying tanker dropping colorful retardant. This was where she’d come in, seeing romance and adventure in a line of sweaty firefighters trudging up a forest road.

  As much as she longed to explore where she and Steve might have gone, it was time to take Devon home to Houston. Her heart ached, but when it came to blood, a mother’s choice must be for her child. Somehow, she had to convince Devon that she was too young to try and make it on her own.

  As to firefighting, she had yet to decide. At Old Faithful, Steve had said Frank would want her to battle the North Fork.

  But Frank had been a war-scarred veteran with over twenty years in the department. He’d told her that his grown son was proud of his old man, not scared like Devon had been. If Clare’s work brought continued pain to her daughter, she’d have to cash it in and dust off her teaching certificate.

  Clare opened her eyes to find Steve leaning on crutches in Devon’s hospital room doorway. He wore his jeans and western shirt.

  “How long have you been there?” She straightened the recli
ner beside the bed where Devon slept and stretched to release the kink in her back.

  A slow smile spread over his face. “Not long. You must have felt me looking at you.”

  Clare wished she believed in telepathy with this man. She rose and gestured Steve toward the brown vinyl chair she’d slept in. He remained on his feet.

  Outside the window, all was dark except for pole lights in the parking lot. Clare’s watch said it was nearly midnight. “Is Karrabotsos all right?” she asked.

  “Doing well, considering. This time around he’ll be looking at more skin grafts.” He looked at Devon, who lay with blond lashes sweeping her cheek, her arm in a cast. “How is she?”

  Clare reached to smooth back Devon’s hair. The singed section had been trimmed, leaving her with a lopsided haircut that made her look very young. “No concussion from the crash. Just the burn and a crack in the radius above her wrist.”

  Steve advanced into the room with the awkward swinging gate of a person on crutches. “I know you well enough to figure you’re tearing yourself up over what happened with her.”

  He’d been her constant cheerleader, telling her to never back down and she was getting sick and tired of it. “I should never have come here,” she said. “Devon would be safe at home if I hadn’t.”

  “That’s enough!” He straightened and put more weight on his legs.

  Devon sighed and turned her head. She was on Percodan, a strong painkiller that would help her sleep.

  In a softer voice, Steve went on, “If you hadn’t come, I would never have met you. You saved my life more than once this summer, and I couldn’t believe it when you pulled Karrabotsos out of that fire.”

  She shrugged. “Training and reflex.”

  Steve rearranged a crutch and grabbed her hand. He turned the palm up and looked at its calluses, scrapes, and half healed burns. “I was there when your friend Javier from Houston said you had the best hands in the business.”

  “All right, I’m fucking good at what I do,” she threw at him. “But I’m a mother, too, and from now on Devon won’t have to be afraid of me getting hurt or killed. I’m taking her home and quitting this business.” Saying it out loud cemented the decision she’d made in the waiting room.

  “I’m not going to listen to that.” Steve propped his crutches against the wall and pointed a finger at her. “You think you can control your life by crawling into a hole. That you can protect Devon from what the world is going to throw at her by smothering her. Well, I’ve got news for you, Clare.” His mouth twisted. “Shit happens. If you don’t believe that, just ask a guy who’s been there.”

  “Susan,” she said flatly.

  “Susan,” he agreed “and Christa.” He looked at Devon. “You can try and run her life, but ultimately, she’s got to figure things out for herself, like we all do. Don’t make any quick decisions you’ll regret.”

  Clare sighed. Who wouldn’t want to exert some control after watching the fires burn unchecked for months? After a summer in which two men had died on her watch?

  A flicker of pain crossed Steve’s face. She touched his arm.

  “You need to sit.”

  “I need a lot of things.” His eyes lit with an awareness of last night’s stolen hours, and he lifted a hand to stroke the serrate haircut the fire had left her with. When he touched her neck, it made her aware that comfort wasn’t all she wanted from him.

  Here come the tears, she thought, yet oddly enough, she didn’t feel a thing like crying. She thought he might kiss her, but she wasn’t ready for Devon to open her eyes to that. She fingered the front of his red shirt with western snaps. “You must have gone to the hotel.”

  “Deering gave me a lift.”

  “Is he still here?” She hoped Steve wouldn’t get the wrong idea again, but she needed to know that Deering was okay. “His wife came to take him home.”

  “I hope they work it out this time.”

  “They seemed pretty happy to see each other.” He spoke easily of the man he’d once wanted to fight. “Before he left he asked me to tell you goodbye … and thanks.”

  Deering had found his home and life again, but what lay ahead for her? After she sold the house in Houston, what then? Although a job waited for her at the station with Javier and the others, she felt she’d moved beyond it.

  Steve’s hand moved over her hair. With a ragged limp, he moved closer.

  “I should have asked how’re you doing.” She gestured toward his knees.

  He dropped his hand to his side. “They X-rayed me and said another round of scraping and washing the joints out might help if I want to do it this fall.” He lifted a shoulder. “Some things I’ve been living with a long time.”

  Suddenly she couldn’t stand his steadfast grieving for Susan any longer. If he hadn’t been hurting, she might have shoved his chest. “You tell me how to live my life … you with your shrine in your bedroom. If we hadn’t been in a motel, last night would never have happened.”

  “That’s not fair.” Gray eyes bored into hers.

  “You don’t play fair telling me to buck up. Every time your knee hurts you think about the bum rap life served you.” Her breath came fast. “The doctor said Devon could leave in the morning. I need to make arrangements for our flight.”

  “No.” Steve’s throat moved with his swallow. “Come here.”

  If she let him hold her, how much harder it would be to leave. The worst part of going back to Houston would surely be the memory of last night.

  “Please,” Steve said hoarsely.

  With a glance at Devon, who still appeared to be sleeping, Clare went into his arms. It was as good as she remembered, better, for Devon was safe. She pressed her cheek against Steve’s chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart.

  If this was goodbye, then she was going to be a crybaby about it. The tears she’d not shed waited behind a dam about to break. She burrowed her head and tightened her grip on him. How unjust a world where something as beautiful as this was to her was merely a summer interlude for him. “Steve,” she whispered, “I …”

  He shushed her by pressing two fingers to her lips. “Shhh.”

  She gave up, for there was nothing left to say. They would promise to call and write and visit at Thanksgiving, but by then their separate worlds would have re-absorbed them.

  “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things,” he said.

  She’d been thinking, as well. Too much. This sweet ache had no place when the best thing that had happened to her would end when her plane took off.

  Steve bent and pressed his lips to hers, setting her tears free.

  “Devon’s not ready to travel,” he murmured at her ear. “Why don’t you both come home with me?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  September 9

  Clare sat between Steve and Devon as he shifted gears on the long grade up from Yellowstone’s northern gateway to Mammoth Hot Springs. They’d driven the long way around from West Yellowstone through Bozeman, rather than the shorter route through the park.

  The rushing Gardner River ran between steep cliffs where, on Steve’s advice, Clare kept an eye out for bighorn sheep. The higher mountains were barely visible through a yellowish haze.

  “I don’t like the look of this smoke,” Steve said.

  Clare pressed a hand on his arm, warning him not to disturb Devon.

  He fell silent.

  Talk of evacuation had been on the air in the Pic and Save Market in the park’s northern gateway town of Gardiner, Montana, when they had stopped for groceries. She had not reported it to Devon, who had waited for them in the truck. When the tiny village of Mammoth appeared, Clare could only see a few buildings, the rest obscured by drifting cottony tendrils.

  By the stone barn housing the Mammoth Fire Cache, there were at least twenty fire engines. She swore under her breath at the long arms of the North Fork that now stretched from one side of the park to the other. They should have checked conditions at Fire Comma
nd before striking out, but she had so wanted to bring Devon to a safe refuge.

  There was Steve’s place in the old stockade. He shut off the engine and limped around the rear to pull the passenger door open for Devon.

  “I can do it.” Devon swung around and stepped out. Steve steadied her.

  Clare scrambled down behind her. “Do you need another pain pill?”

  “No.” She shrugged off Steve’s hand. “I can walk.” Clare suppressed a smile at her daughter’s pride.

  Steve’s crutches lay in the truck bed. “Damned things are more trouble than they’re worth.” He snagged a bag of groceries and stumped toward his back porch. Clare plucked a second sack, aware that Devon followed slowly.

  Steve’s porch was full of man stuff. Shelves lined with open toolboxes, cans of lubricant spray, and coils of rope covered one wall. Inside, the kitchen was as immaculate as when Clare had run out on Steve drinking coffee the other morning. Devon came in looking curious.

  Clare helped Steve put away the groceries, passing canned goods to the pantry and items into the fridge. She and Jay used to do these simple domestic chores together. As she picked up a jar of basil and accurately opened the cabinet that housed the spices, Devon accused, “You’ve been here before.”

  “I have,” Clare turned to her, “but it happens that was a lucky guess.”

  Devon looked skeptical.

  “Are you okay or would you like to lie down?” Please, don’t let Devon think she was trying to get rid of her.

  “Down,” Devon agreed, although her eyes were clear, the last pain pill having evidently worn off.

  Steve closed the fridge. “You gals take my room.” His eyes flicked to Clare’s, the barest glance that was swiftly gone.

  In the living room, Devon trailed a finger across the shining surface of the grand piano. When they reached Steve’s room, she stopped halfway to the bed and stared at the picture of Susan at the same piano. Clare watched her give an appraising glance at shining golden hair and black velvet, and then look at her mother with butchered hair, rough yellow and olive fire clothes, and thick boots.