Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [56]
Clare went down into the narrow valley of the Firehole, where low water slipped smoothly over rocks. Despite the coolness, she could already feel the promise of heat in the day. For a nickel, she’d play hooky and let Sergeant Ron Travis dig his own way around the front of the North Fork.
She gripped the bridge rail. Javier hadn’t meant to slip up and talk about Frank’s death, but it was too late. Now Travis’s generic sexist behavior had turned to a specific lack of trust.
She pushed aside thoughts of the little martinet and thought of her daughter back home. Lately, she’d had trouble in catching Devon at Jay’s house, but when she did, she got the expected listless boredom.
Last night had been different.
“Have you met any nice boys?”
“Boys!”
“Okay, young men, then.”
Devon was silent for a second too long. “I spend all my time at the pool. Where would I meet anybody?”
Clare’s intuition pricked. “How about at the pool?”
“Ma!” Devon had cried tightly, sounding near tears. “Get off my back!”
Clare could almost hear her own mother admonishing her to get to Houston on the next plane. Quickly, before Devon got in some kind of trouble.
Usually Clare brushed aside Constance’s anxieties, but today she wondered. Should she pack it in? Give up the most exhilarating experience of her life?
If Devon were younger, Clare would go home, might never have come at all. But one thing in her daughter’s constant and irritating refrain rang true. Devon was nearly eighteen, and many girls were wives and mothers by the time they reached that age. God knows Clare had not been much older when she’d married Jay and had Devon. She sighed at the thought of the minefields that lay ahead of her daughter.
Just across the Firehole, Clare spied a cow elk cropping grass. As she considered moving closer for a better look, her Motorola radio seemed to awaken with the day. “Good mornin’,” a deep male voice resounded. The elk swiveled its head.
“What’s this, a wake up call?” Clare came back at Garrett Anderson. “I’m not only up, I’m meeting Travis and his troops at Madison in half an hour.”
“Nope. The North Fork’s too edgy,” Garrett said. “I’ve called Travis and given the troops a day off. You too.”
Clare knew the vagaries of fire in confined structures or the training field, but Garrett had an uncanny talent for predicting how it would proceed in the open. Reading the flames like tea leaves, he told when and where the next advance would be with far greater accuracy than those entering vegetation, moisture, and terrain data into handheld computers.
From the beginning, Garrett had nailed the progress of the North Fork. Now over thirty thousand acres, it was a sneaky bastard that had a finger pointed at scenic Firehole Canyon Drive, not far from the Madison Campground. If Garrett thought the troops didn’t belong on the fire front today, she thought it just as well.
“Say.” He was jovial. “You may have a secret admirer.”
“What?” She wondered if Garrett might have run into Deering last night in West Yellowstone.
“I think Steve Haywood up on Washburn just named a fire after you.”
Clare laughed and signed off. Within seconds, her face settled into more somber lines.
She recalled that little hesitation in Steve before he’d asked her, ever so casually, to have dinner with him. She didn’t know what his love life was like, but at times, he acted as awkward as a teenager. Lord, if she’d known about his family, she’d have been more kind.
On the other hand, pity was the worst reason to take up with somebody.
Morning sun touched the highest peak of the inn. The day stretched before her, full of the promise that she would not have to wield a shovel or wind up blackened and coughing from smoke. The thought of clear air reminded her of Jackson Hole when she’d first arrived. She could drive