Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [77]
“She saw them together.”
Alarms went off, but Clare stuck to her guns. “You’ll have to be a parent for a change.”
“Sorry, but Tuesday afternoon Elyssa and I leave for Greece. Our tour doesn’t end until September twentieth.”
Clare had always asked Jay to take her places and he’d told her he was happy watching TV. “So change your plans.”
The woman who’d been listening leaned across. When she grinned, it accentuated that her lipstick had bled into little lines around her mouth. “Give him hell, honey.”
“Have you a paper and pen?” Jay asked in the smooth voice reserved for clients and wheedling.
“What for?”
“For flight information. Monday morning I’m putting Devon on a plane to Wyoming.”
Everything in Clare seized up. “You can’t send her here. Postpone your trip.”
“You know better than that.”
Clare’s mind raced for an alternative.
“It’s Delta into Jackson Hole,” Jay went on relentlessly. “Monday at two.”
Today was Saturday.
Before she could reply, he hung up.
She dialed back and got the answering machine. Elyssa’s syrupy greeting went on while Clare gritted her teeth. At the beep, “Damn you, Jay, pick up.”
Of course, he was sitting there watching football and laughing at her.
She banged out of Fire Command and told herself that she crossed Yellowstone Avenue quickly to avoid being run down by an Army Humvee. It was no use, as her boots struck the pavement with hard clacks. Her breath came fast and she wanted to break Jay Chance’s neck. Not to mention Devon’s.
Jesus, what if Devon was pregnant?
If there was somebody in her life, maybe it would be good to get her away from Houston, but West Yellowstone, Canyon Village, and Silver Gate were under siege and Clare was needed more than ever.
A young woman and her pig-tailed little girl sidestepped on the sidewalk to evade Clare’s headlong rush. Kids were cute when they were small.
She turned in at her destination. The ice cream store window sported a painting of a five-foot long boat bearing mammoth scoops of ice cream foundering beneath chocolate syrup, crushed strawberries and pineapple. Comfort food, just what she needed to help her forget about Jay and Devon.
She smiled at the young man behind the freezer case. “Banana split.”
She’d gotten to know Alonso Mansales, who lived in the forest with the other migrants.
He dipped ice cream, dropped the stainless steel scoop into a container of water, and began to mound toppings. Watching him work, Clare was glad she’d urged Sergeant Travis against reporting the woodland camp to the Forest Service.
Alonso’s dark eyes went to the plate glass window. Outside, the sky looked as though it portended rain, but only ashes fell.
Impossibly, the North Fork now threatened to burn through West Yellowstone. If Clare had imagined the Mink Creek as a sharp-toothed carnivore, then the North Fork had become an octopus of the Jules Verne variety.
“We had to move our camp west.” Alonso handed over her banana split.
She took a bite from the chocolate end. It didn’t taste as good as she’d hoped.
The parade of people outside grew larger, folks on their way to a Town Hall meeting, where they would be met with more platitudes and predictions. Clare was glad she didn’t have to get up before the crowd like Garrett would.
Alonso’s look was grave. “The fire?”
Words of reassurance rose to her lips, but she stopped short of speaking them. All the predictions had been wrong. “I don’t know,” she told him. “I just don’t know.”
Throwing away the ruins of her confection, she stepped into the darkening day and joined the crowd. Nearly everyone walking toward the meeting seemed prepared to evacuate.
“I’ve got our clothes packed,” an elderly man said, “but we can’t afford homeowners insurance. If our place burns, we lose everything.”
“They’re hosing down roofs out our way,” said a woman with a chiffon scarf across her face. She raised her eyes to the falling ash.
The atmosphere of uncertainty, with people talking about losing