Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [21]
“Are you staying at the hotel?” Her daughter’s voice was bright and Clare’s heart gave a little mother’s lift. Maybe Devon actually missed her.
“I’ve got a cabin.” A smacking sound came through the line. “Are you eating?”
“Pizza. Jay and Elyssa are going out.”
Clare considered how poorly Devon received her balanced diet lecture, and really, it was Elyssa’s fault for letting her eat like that. She tried another tack. “Did you work at the pool today?”
“Yeah.” Devon sighed and Clare imagined her flipping back her blond hair with a desultory hand. The turned up nose would be down and the china doll eyes vacant.
“If work is so boring why don’t you reconsider applying to A & M?” It was a long shot with Devon’s grades, but both Jay’s dad and Elyssa’s influential father were alumni.
“Don’t start. I’m not going to school anymore.”
Clare’s face warmed. “Try and find a real job with your high school diploma.” It was no use, but she couldn’t stop. “Flipping burgers for minimum wage is all that’s out there.”
“I’ll look for something in the fall since I’ll need a place of my own.”
Clare closed her eyes. “This is the first I’ve heard of you wanting to move.” She’d married Jay when she was too young, to get out from under her mother, and was dead set against Devon making the same mistake.
“I know you’re selling the house.” Devon laid down her winning hand. “That Realtor left a message on our answering machine.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Is that all you can say? You’re selling our house and didn’t bother to tell me.”
The tight feeling that she’d seldom been without since Frank died intensified. “Darling, I thought it would upset you.”
“You thought I wouldn’t find out? I’m old enough to know what’s going on.” Devon’s voice went squeaky. “Are you moving to Yellowstone?”
“Of course not. When you turn eighteen, the support from your father cuts off.” Always now, Jay was Devon’s ‘father,’ a way of pretending she’d never known the man. “I can’t afford the house on what I make.”
Saying it stung more than she’d imagined.
Devon chomped pizza and swallowed loudly. “Speaking of our house, I’m going home. I don’t want to stay here with Elyssa.”
Might as well waste her breath. “No.”
“I stay alone when you’re at the fire station.”
“That’s three minutes away.” Clare felt her control over Devon slip further. “You usually go to your father’s.”
“In October when I’m eighteen . . .” An echo of Clare’s own youthful voice telling her mother that. “I can go anywhere and do anything I like.”
“You aren’t there yet.”
She didn’t know if Devon heard her last or not, for the dial tone sounded loud in her ear. She leaned against the log wall while guilt warred with her resolve not to rush back to Houston.
She’d come to Yellowstone to break the cycle of feeling she couldn’t go on. She owed it to herself and the department to come back stronger. Today, she’d made a commitment and Garrett Anderson was counting on her.
As she replaced the receiver, she caught a whiff of the woodsy scent she’d put on. It wasn’t something she’d wear to the fire station, but this evening she’d pulled out a frosted bottle of Wind Song and splashed it over her, relishing the cold tightening of her skin. The summer ritual was an old habit she had only recently reacquainted herself with.
Clare had grown up in the well-ordered suburbs of Bellaire, Texas, back when Houston’s great anastomosing arms had not yet embraced the satellite town. Her friend, Annie McGrath on Elm Street, had shown off the assortment of perfume her mother Jewel kept on a mirrored tray in their turquoise tiled bath. One day Jewel had caught Clare and Annie sampling and joined them, sitting on the edge of the tub and reaching for a cobalt bottle of Evening in Paris.
“Your father used to buy this for me during the war.” Jewel smoothed back her daughter’s curling red hair and touched the stopper to the fair skin beneath Annie’s dainty ears.
When she was thirteen, Clare’s first