Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [89]
“What happened to it?” she asked, still aware of how good it had felt to be snugged against him in the truck.
“It burned.”
They passed four two-story duplexes with tall brick chimneys. “Park service employees live here now instead of Fort Yellowstone’s officers,” Steve said. The next low frame building they passed was fronted by a porch holding an armada of bicycles. “This place used to be park headquarters at the turn of the century. Moru Mzima, a naturalist from Zimbabwe, and his wife, Nyeri, live there now.”
Clare looked across the lawn. “And kids.”
“Three.” Steve smiled. “I sit for them sometimes.” He pointed to a smaller building at the end of the row. “My place is next.”
“What did the Army do with it?”
“It was the first building in Fort Yellowstone. A guard house to hold ten prisoners.” The innocuous one-story building, its wide porch a dark perimeter, did not look like a jail.
Clare stared. “What were the prisoners in for? Picking flowers? Collecting minerals?”
“Poaching. Selling alcohol to the soldiers.”
Silence fell.
“So what’s it like, living in the stockade?” Clare tried.
Steve cleared his throat. After a little while he said, “Walt Leighton says I treat my home as a prison, especially when I have a bout of . . . bad times.”
Deering’s words about Steve’s wife and child hung between them. A pink tricycle lay abandoned on the lawn. “You have kids?” he asked.
Clare sighed. “Actually, I’m picking my daughter up at the Jackson airport tomorrow. At least I’m supposed to.”
“I can try and requisition another truck and drive you . . . but it may not be easy.”
“Or I can hitch a ride to Old Faithful for my rental car.” Despite the peaceful atmosphere, the night seemed to be at a distance. Because she’d felt safe in the curve of Steve’s arm, she went on, “Devon thinks she’s coming on vacation, while you and I are watching people die.”
He slowed his steps. “What will you do with a little girl here?”
She stopped. “Devon is seventeen.”
“No way.” Steve whistled softly. “You got pregnant when you were twelve?”
“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. My ex thinks she’s seeing an older man and won’t deal with it. He and wife number two have plane tickets to Greece.”
“That’s tough.” Steve stepped onto the porch. “I often wonder what would have happened to us if Susan and Christa had lived.”
As Steve reached for his keys, Clare watched the patterned silver light that shined through the porch lattice from the streetlamps and a quarter moon. The stench of death was still in her head. Based on experience, it would be there for days, but she sniffed and tried to replace it with the scent of fresh-cut grass and summer flowerbeds.
She needed this sense of normality tonight.
Steve opened his door and flicked a switch that spilled a pool of brighter light.
Moving past him to the focus of the crowded room, she slid a hand onto the black-lacquered finish of a grand piano. Beneath a layer of dust, it felt smooth as silk. She raised the cover and picked out a chord with her right thumb on middle C.
Her fingers protested when she flexed them and she became more aware of her burns. “Do you have any aloe?”
“I could use some myself.” He went down the side hall.
Clare played random chords until Steve came back barefoot in khaki shorts and a tourist T-shirt with a moose on it. He offered bottles of green gel and hydrogen peroxide.
She urged him toward the worn, brown leather couch that clashed with the ornate piano. “Let me look at your burn first.” When she unwrapped the layers of gauze, blistered skin made her wince.
That wasn’t like her. As a teacher and mom, she knew how to minimize life’s little hurts. When she worked wrecks, fires, or medical emergencies, she called on a calm façade that sometimes kept victims from going into shock. This evening she was so fragile that this reminder of Steve’s vulnerability made her eyes sting.
Keeping her head down, she cleaned the seeping wound and applied a fresh bandage. “Okay.