Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [14]
Her mother shrugged. “Your Grandfather Cordon was a man of few words. He once said his mother Laura was the writer in the family, but I’ve never seen any of the journals she was supposed to have kept.”
Young and inspired, Clare had started a journal of her own that very afternoon, proudly opening a blank, lined notebook and inscribing her name in purple ink on the flyleaf. That was as far as her efforts had gone.
Over the years, she’d often wondered about her great-grandmother’s life on the frontier. Now that she was in the West, she hoped to dig up some family roots.
Dressed and in the hospital hall, Clare looked for a telephone. Although her wallet was damp, she extracted her long distance calling card and dialed Houston.
Devon should be home from her job guarding at the Springwood Community Pool. Taller than Clare, she’d turned out big and muscled like her father. Her blue eyes still resembled the ones Clare had smiled into during diaper changes, but in recent years, those eyes had turned defiant. One semester her grades were As and Bs, the next incompletes, with screaming matches and door slamming. Clare wondered how she’d managed to make it through until Devon had achieved a spring graduation from Houston’s Stratford High.
If Jay hadn’t left, things would be different. It had been damned sure her pittance from teaching P.E. and coaching girls’ basketball wasn’t going to cover the house payment, even with child support. The Houston Fire Department didn’t pay much more, but it was the most rewarding job she’d ever had. Each wreck she ran, every fire put out, made a difference in someone’s life. So far, she’d pulled in enough to keep her and Devon in their pleasant house on the west side of Houston, but that was going to change.
In October, when Devon turned eighteen, the monthly money from Jay was going to cut off like a pinched hose. Clare had not had the heart to tell her daughter she’d already talked to a Realtor.
The answering machine came on and Clare imagined her voice echoing in the empty house. She pictured the place in the fall, vacant, with silverfish in the sinks and a lockbox on the door. Even worse, with a new family’s indentions in the Karastan Clare and Jay had selected together.
Two hours after being brought to Lake Hospital, Chris Deering took a bite of mushy meatloaf and wished for the veal cordon bleu being served in the Lake Hotel, not two hundred feet from his bed. He swallowed and thought that with the Park Service paying him a thousand an hour he rated better chow.
Of course, the lion’s share of the money was for his pride and joy--the 206B Jetranger he’d bought new in 1981. Dark blue with gold stripes and her name, Georgia, painted on the fuselage. Of course, she wasn’t a thing like the real Georgia, who hated flying, so he secretly thought of her as Georgie. When he climbed into her cockpit and strapped on the pilot’s seat, everything was in its proper place. He’d always believed, like so many instinctive pilots, that it was he who truly flew, the machine an extension of him.
Now it had gone to hell.
He forced his fingers to release their clench on the hospital’s dull knife, and with an effort, decided not to play Monday morning quarterback. When a pilot flew that route, he wound up losing his nerve.
As soon as a warm bath had brought his body temperature to normal, Deering had called his insurance company. First Annoyance, as he called them, had said that someone would get back to him.
His fork clattered to the plate. He hadn’t given them this number so they would call his home. Shifting to find a more comfortable position for his tall frame, he set aside his dinner tray and pulled the phone to him.
He winced when the receiver contacted the cheek he had bruised landing on the Chinook’s deck. At home, Georgia would brighten at the sound of the phone and hope it was