Summer of Fire (46 page)

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 good-bye, 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 Command 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.

Steve rummaged in the closet and came out with a stack of pillows and a comforter. “I’ll take these out to the living room so I don’t have to bother you later.”

“Who’s that?” Devon blurted, pointing at the picture.

“She was my wife,” Steve said evenly. “Susan’s passion was music . . . and Christa, our little girl. That was taken at the hospital when she was born.”

“Where are they?”

Clare bit her lip to keep from chiding Devon. After the way she’d yelled at Steve in the hospital about not being over his wife . . .

“They were killed in a plane crash four years ago.” He looked from Devon to Clare and said softly, “I wasn’t.”

The memory of how good it had felt in Steve’s arms when he’d asked her home came back to warm Clare.

Devon made it to the bed and sagged onto it.

Steve headed for the door. “I’m gonna take a walk around and see what’s going on. You make yourselves at home.”

That word again. His body brushed Clare’s in the doorway even though there was plenty of room to pass. She watched him limp down the hall and out of sight toward the kitchen.

When she turned back, Devon was studying her.

“Are you sure you don’t want another Percodan?” Clare offered the pill because it was something she could do. Steve would call it keeping control.

“Okay.” Devon got into bed.

Clare brought the pill and water and smoothed the rumpled covers. That done, she touched her daughter’s cheek. Her little girl, once as clear as rain, had become so dark and deep she didn’t know how to reach her.

Cornflower eyes brimmed. Clare leaned and plucked some tissues from a box on the nightstand. Her hand passed in front of Susan.

Devon fiddled with the cast on her forearm while her tears flowed. Clare put her arms around her; an awkward fit, and felt her own eyes grow wet. “Mom.” A gasp. “I’m sorry for knocking you down, for being so stupid.”

“I forgave you a long time ago.” Clare patted Devon’s back and felt her twitch. “I’m sorry I accused you of something Elyssa was spreading. I should have asked before jumping to conclusions.”

“I wish I had somebody, but I don’t.” Devon sniffed. The guys I like best go for other girls, and older guys are a little scary. Except for Harry.”

“Harry?” Clare tensed.

“Annalise MacIntyre’s big brother. He’s like my brother too. He gave me a ride home the other week and Elyssa saw us. When she went ballistic, I let her think whatever she wanted.”

Clare smiled through her tears.

“Steve is okay.” Devon disentangled herself and pulled back.

“When did you change your mind about him?”

“I heard you two talking in the hospital. I was awake.” Devon looked down and picked at the bedspread. “Yeah, I know, why’d I ask who was in the picture if I knew?”

“Maybe you wanted to hear his answer.”

Devon nodded. “Steve said I needed to figure things out for myself. Well, I have been thinking.”

She would never have thought any good could come of Devon’s night on a dark and lonely mountain. “Thinking about what’s next?”

Devon sniffed again and swiped her uninjured arm across her nose. “I was thinking of getting a place with Annalise. She can’t stand living with her folks anymore and she didn’t want to go it alone. But just before I left Houston, she said she was going to go to A & M in January.”

“College?” Casual, just the right note.

“Dad always said he’d pay,” Devon ventured.

“You said you were finished with school.” If she were just going to party with her friends, it would never work out. “Are you going just to be with Annalise?”

Devon lifted the tissue Clare had given her and blew her nose. “You say there’s nothing out there ‘cept flipping burgers unless I go to school, or train for something . . . like bein’ a firefighter.” Her voice was a little slurred as the Percodan began to take effect.

“Not that, hon . . .”

“Yeah. You were talking to Steve about giving it up . . . but, Mom,” her voice grew fainter. “you’re a pyro.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s right for you.”

Devon smiled sleepily and snuggled down in the covers.

Clare tucked her in and sat beside her until she slept. Relief at knowing there was no man in her daughter’s life made her feel absurdly happy. With her contacts at the fire school, and Jay and the Hendrons, perhaps Devon might yet have the college days Clare had missed out on.

When she came out of the bedroom, it was dim and quiet in Steve’s living room. She checked her watch and found it half past four, too early for it to be so dark.

She switched on a lamp. Polished ebony glowed, but when she smoothed the piano’s top her finger came away dusty. A closer examination made her suspect the dust contained some soot.

After brushing off the piano bench, she sat and poised her hands, the way Miss Bryan had taught her when she was nine. She played, the perfect ivory making it possible to find the way without stumbling. She hadn’t known she remembered, but as she progressed from a soft opening to a more confident tone, she recalled that it was one of Chopin’s Preludes. Music poured into her from the keys, rather than from her mind down a system of nerves. Heedless of Devon’s sleeping, she made her way toward the end of the work, a triumphant crescendo.

The final notes lingered like a subtle mix of fine spices. When the last vibrations died, Clare dropped her head and leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the music rack.

One way or another, Devon had said she’d be moving from under Clare’s roof. She wasn’t yet comfortable with that, but Steve had tried to tell her that Devon had to make her own way. Ranger Butler Meyers had made it clear that even a seventeen and eleven-twelfths runaway wouldn’t be tracked down by law enforcement.

Clare recalled her own youth. A faded shadow of her eighteen-year-old self faced her mother with Jay’s arm around her. “I’m old enough to do what I want.” Constance had folded her hand even as she would have to. She could only hope that college would work out, rather than a job in fast food. Or getting some man to pay the bills, the insult that had made Devon knock her on the floor.

The yearning ache that had centered in her chest wasn’t unpleasant, but she wanted Steve to come back.

The faint vibration of an approaching vehicle resolved into the guttural growl of a diesel coming into Mammoth from the east. Clare got to the kitchen in time to see a red ladder unit pass behind the house. Wind tossed the treetops and moaned around the ancient wooden window frames, driving the smell of char inside.