Fire and Rain (35 page)

He pressed his lips to her temple and she closed her eyes. She wouldn’t ask him about his wife. Not now. Not ever. He was with her now. Nothing else mattered.

CARMEN PRUNED THE LEGGY
rosebushes, then rested on her heels and looked at her watch. In another hour she would have to leave, and she dreaded what lay ahead of her. Craig Morrow had called before she’d even gotten out of bed that morning to tell her about the accident. A school bus—one of the small ones that carried handicapped kids to their summer program—had skidded off the road above the reservoir and tumbled into the canyon, killing the driver and three children. Craig wanted her to meet him at the scene of the accident at ten o’clock, when a crane was scheduled to lift the bus out of the canyon. Then she was to talk with some of the families and put together the human interest side of the tragedy.

It felt like a test, one she wasn’t certain she could pass. For the first time since returning to work, she thought she had reached her limit. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t look at the scorched earth where the children had died, couldn’t talk to three families whose grief was still fresh and alive. But she’d agreed to meet Craig, forcing the words calmly out of her mouth in the hope that, once the initial terror wore off, she would be able to carry through on her promise. She’d thought the roses might calm her, but every movement she made was greeted by a new wave of nausea.

The sun seemed hotter than usual. It stung her cheeks as she clipped the branches. She raised one hand to tilt her wide-brimmed hat lower on her forehead and as she did so noticed Jeff walking toward her. He was crossing the barren stretch of Sugarbush between his cottage and the garden, his stride long but unhurried. She self-consciously rolled down her sleeves and was buttoning them at the wrists when he reached her.

He sat down on one of the boulders and seemed to be assessing the garden.

“You’ve done a good job with the roses,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to grow them under the conditions you’ve had here.”

She studied him skeptically. In the distance behind him, the sky was red from a new fire burning on Mount Palomar, and with that as his background, Jeff looked as if he’d been plucked from some surrealistic painting.

“Thank you,” she said.

He picked up the pruning shears and leaned forward to snip a branch she had missed. Then he sat back again, squinting against the sun as he looked at her.

“I met Dustin yesterday,” he said.

Involuntarily, her hand flew to her throat. “You… what do you mean?”

“I had to go into San Diego for something, and Chris invited me to ride along with him. We stopped at the Children’s Home and spent some time with your son.”

Her cheeks burned. She lowered her head. No one ever referred to Dustin as her son. No one other than Chris ever mentioned him to her at all.

“I see.” She smoothed her gloved hand across the dusty earth around one of the rose bushes. “Did Chris tell you why he’s the way he is?”

“Yes.”

She let out her breath, feeling betrayed by Chris’s sudden candor. “The man has no shame.”

Jeff shaded his eyes. “He’s full of shame,” he said.

She shot Jeff a look from under the brim of her hat. “He shouldn’t have told you anything. My life is absolutely none of your business.”

“And mine is public property, right?”

She sighed, feeling the barest hint of a smile cross her lips. “Touche.”

He leaned toward her. “You know, they may have told you Dustin would die, but he didn’t. And frankly, he doesn’t look like he will anytime soon.”

She held up her hands to ward him off. “Look, Jeff, I cannot deal with this right now. In less than an hour, I’m supposed to exploit a few devastated families, and I can’t think about anything else, so please pick some other time to deliver your lecture on motherhood.”

Jeff stared at her, a look of disbelief forming in his eyes. “Are you talking about the bus accident?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to badger those parents who lost their kids just a few hours ago?” His voice rose.

“I don’t have any goddamned choice!” She sucked in a quick breath, stunned by how close she was to snapping, to simply losing it. Steadying herself, she spoke more calmly. “It’s the last thing I feel like doing, I can assure you of that. I feel sick when I think about it.” She felt the crack in her voice and hoped he hadn’t noticed.

But he had.

“Then don’t do it,” he said softly.

She pulled off her gloves. “They’ll can me.” She looked him in the eye, leveling with him. “’She’s gone soft,’ they’ll say. I’ll lose everything again.”

“Make up an excuse. Tell them you’re sick.”

“I’d have to be on my deathbed before that would work,” she scoffed. “This is the hot story right now.”

She smoothed the gloves, one on top of the other, as a few seconds of silence stretched between them. Jeff looked out toward the canyon. Behind his head, the fiery red of the sky had softened.

Finally, he spoke again. “You’re not a bitch, you know it?” he said. “You’re still human, but you’ve beaten down your ability to feel compassion for another person until it’s practically nonexistent.”

Carmen shook her head. “No one—least of all a woman—gets very far in this business by being compassionate. I’ve only done what I had to do to get the job done.”

“Mmm.” Jeff ran his hand over the sunlit boulder. “But at what cost?”

Carmen’s throat tightened. She couldn’t handle this now. “Please leave me alone,” she said.

He pursed his lips, nodding. “Right.” Getting to his feet, he looked down at her. “Try putting yourself in those parents’ shoes when you conduct your interviews,” he said.

He started to turn away, but Carmen found she couldn’t let him go. “Do you hate me?” she asked.

Jeff put his hands on his hips. “Hate’s the wrong word, Carmen. I’m
afraid
of you, of what you can do to me. You hold all the cards. Are you planning to give me some warning before you show your hand?”

“How can I answer that?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how things will unfold.”

He gave her one of his half smiles, this one tinged with the bitter disdain she was accustomed to receiving from him. “Just doing your job, right?” He started striding toward his cottage, but suddenly turned on his heel and walked back to her.

She put the last of the clippings in a plastic bag and stood up as he neared the garden again.

“Rick and I are going to be moving some of the equipment onto the roof of the warehouse this morning,” he said. “It’s the next step in preparing to drench Valle Rosa. I think you should be there, don’t you?”

It took her a moment to catch on. She couldn’t cover both the bus crash and the events at the warehouse; she would have to pick between the stories.

“Yes,” she said, and she couldn’t stop her smile. “I think I’d better.”

She went into the house after finishing up in the garden. For some reason, she walked upstairs and opened the door to the old nursery. She hadn’t been inside that room in years, and she wouldn’t have recognized it. There was no furniture, of course; the crib and dresser had long ago been put in storage. And although Chris had told her he’d taken down the wallpaper, she was still unprepared for the echoing emptiness in the room and for the bland expanse of the flat white walls.

Stepping inside, she circled the room, her tennis shoes squeaking on the wooden floor. She stopped at the double windows, from which she had a sweeping view of Sugarbush. The rose garden was a distant patch of reddish-orange against the pale earth.

The children on the bus had been killed instantly, she thought. They were far too young to die, yes, but at least those parents would be able to take some comfort in knowing that it had been quick. Their children hadn’t suffered. Not like her child. Not like Dustin.

Carmen rested her forehead against the warm pane of glass in the window. Dustin should have died. That night in his room, when he cried and stiffened and stopped breathing in her trembling arms—that night should have been his last. If only she had never learned CPR. If only she hadn’t had the presence of mind to breathe for her baby. If only the ambulance hadn’t arrived so quickly.

Oh, Dusty
.

He cries a lot
, Chris had said.

Carmen pressed her fist to her mouth and backed away from the window and out of the room. Once in the hallway, she took in a deep breath, straightened her spine, and swept her hair back from her face with her hands.

She glanced at her watch as she walked toward the bedroom. She would have to call Craig to tell him she wouldn’t be covering the accident. Then she would head out to the warehouse.

She had a job to do.

MIA WAS LEAVING THE
cottage to go to the office when she came face to face with Laura. Her sister stood on the bottom step of the porch, and Mia reflexively started to back into the cottage again, as if she’d opened her door to find a growling dog waiting for her.

“Wait, Mimi! Don’t slam the door on me. Please.”

Mia stepped onto the porch, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back against the wall. “How did you find me?” she asked.

“It wasn’t hard. The number you gave me was a Valle Rosa exchange. Glen said that when he called you there, you answered the phone ‘mayor’s office.’ So, I asked around town. A waitress at that catfish restaurant knew you lived out here. She even knew which cottage was yours.” Laura began to cry. “Oh, Mimi,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so terrible.”

Mia steeled herself against Laura’s tears. “Why are you here?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“
Everything’s
wrong.” Laura began crying in earnest, and Mia couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for her sister. They had never been the closest of friends, but they hadn’t always been enemies. “Please, can I come in?”

She didn’t want Laura in her cottage. Closing the door behind her, she sat down on the porch step. Laura dusted the step off with her hand before sitting next to her. She wiped her eyes with a tissue she had wadded in her fist.

“What’s going on?” Mia asked, more gently now.

“Well, to start with, he ditched me.”

“Who? Glen?”

Laura nodded, a fresh stream of tears slipping down her cheeks. “Oh, Mimi, how can you ever forgive me? He ditched me for some little slut who works at the Lesser Gallery.”

“Oh.” She remembered the woman in the tight black dress she had seen Glen talking to at the gallery.

“The bastard!” Laura pounded a fist into the wooden step. “He said it was mostly physical, that there never really was much depth to our relationship.”

Mia sighed. “There isn’t much depth to
Glen
, Laura,” she said.

“He ditched me on my thirtieth birthday.” She shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. “But somehow it snapped some sense into me. I suddenly realized what I’d done to you.” Laura shifted on the step to face her, taking her hand. “I’m so sorry for everything I did, Mia. I thought it was real between Glen and me. I thought it was fated and that justified hurting you. Can you ever forgive me?”

Mia smiled. “You saved me from him,” she said. “I guess I owe you for that.”

Laura clutched Mia’s hand harder. “Let me stay with you a day or two, Mia, please? Let me try to make up to you for what a shit I’ve been.”

Mia looked out toward the canyon. So much of her energy had gone into escaping from her sister. It had been a close call, but she’d gotten out in time. Now Laura was here, at Sugarbush, in the little corner of the world Mia had carved out for herself.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I’m ready to spend time with you.”

“Please, Mimi?”

Mia glanced at her watch. She needed to let Chris know she was going to be late. “Let me call my office,” she said. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She walked across Sugarbush to the adobe, feeling only slightly guilty for making Laura wait on her porch instead of in the cottage. She extracted the key from under the potted lemon tree on Carmen’s patio, let herself into the house and dialed Chris’s office on the kitchen phone.

Chris was in a good mood. When she told him her sister had shown up on her doorstep, he suggested she take the day off. She didn’t bother to tell him she would rather work than spend the day with Laura.

Then she called Jeff at the warehouse.

“My sister’s here,” she said.

It took a moment for her words to register. “Laura?” he asked.

“Yes. She appeared on my doorstep a half hour ago, crying her eyes out because Glen broke up with her.”

There was another beat of silence from Jeff’s end of the line. “Wow,” he said. “What happened? Did she get a zit or something and he couldn’t handle it?”

Mia laughed in spite of her poor humor. “She wants to stay with me for a couple of days. She said she wants to make up to me for what she did. I actually feel sorry for her. She’s being sweet. I think she’s sincere, but she’s
not
staying in my house.”

“Let her stay, Mia,” Jeff said.

She was surprised. She’d expected his support in telling Laura to leave. “Why?”

Jeff sighed. “I know what she did was pretty unforgivable, but everybody screws up once or twice in their lives. Why don’t you give her a chance to redeem herself? Family’s important. Maybe you’ll get some resolution out of her visit.”

“But I want to see
you
tonight.”

“And you can. Invite me over for dinner.”

Mia looked at the beamed ceiling of the adobe. She didn’t want Laura to meet Jeff. And she knew by the sudden, frantic beating of her heart that she was afraid to have Jeff meet the always-beautiful, always-alluring Laura. The image of Laura in the green chemise Jeff had given her slipped into her mind. Laura would fill it out easily. She would look lovely in it.

“All right,” she said, refusing to give in to her insecurity. “She can stay for one night. If she hasn’t redeemed herself by morning, she’s lost her chance.”

Jeff laughed. “Atta girl.”

Laura looked small and helpless where she sat on the porch step as Mia approached her cottage again. “All I have is a lumpy sofa,” Mia said, “but it’s yours for tonight if you want it.”