Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [94]
She searched his face. If she left now, they’d probably never see each other again. That wasn’t what she wanted, but the set of his jaw and the rising sound of rotors said it was time to go.
With the clothes on her back and her wallet that had survived the firestorm in her hip pocket, she turned and rushed across the living room. After a struggle with the turn bolt, she stepped into the yard and scanned the sky.
With typical brashness, Deering ignored Mammoth’s helicopter pad down the road. The Huey came in low over the picnic tables across the street and hovered above the old Fort Yellowstone parade ground. Deering’s sunglasses shielded his face, the rising sun reflecting on the windshield.
Clare looked back at Steve’s house. He stood on the porch watching her, his ire mixed with a look of longing that almost made her turn back.
The Huey set down. When she looked again, Steve was gone.
She ran, warmed by anger at both men. Wrestling open the chopper door, she stretched to get into the left seat.
As soon as she was in place and slammed the door, Deering lifted off. She fumbled for her harness and headphones, while the earth dropped away. Below, the highway from Mammoth to Tower Junction crossed Lava Creek on an impressive metal span, near its confluence with the Gardner.
Over the engine’s roar and the steady whopping of rotors, Deering said dryly, “Good morning.” Dark eyes shot a sideways look. “I trust you passed a pleasant night.”
“Fuck you,” Clare said. “Did you sleep with your wife?”
Deering cut power and the Huey started to lose altitude.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting her down.”
“What for?”
“So we can talk.”
“Talk all you want. I can’t hear you.” Clare tore off her headphones and dropped them.
They were coming down onto a broad meadow of dry golden grass. She remembered the drive last night when she and Steve had looked out at the high country of the Blacktail Deer Plateau.
Within a rising cloud of dust, the chopper hovered, then landed. A look out at the expanse of empty meadow made her reconsider getting out and walking away. Nothing was going to make her miss Devon’s plane.
The rotors wound down. Deering sat with both hands draped over the cyclic stick until it was quiet, save for the hum of wind around the door seals. He took off his headphones and put them between the seats.
She sat stiffly.
When she failed to look at him, he said, “Clare.”
She flicked her eyes to his. There was no cajoling, just an infinite sadness that reminded her of when he’d climbed out of the tent at the Mink Creek Camp.
“You’re right,” he said evenly. “I am married.”
“Then what . . .?”
“When I ditched, she said she hoped they never brought up my chopper. She doesn’t understand my flying, like you seem to. I was torn up, looking for a way to get back at her.”
Clare saw in him what felt like the first solid truth she’d seen. “You love her.”
“Yeah.”
Now that she knew . . . too late, that she cared for Steve and not Deering, it was easy to say, “Then, for God’s sake, what are you doing here?”
Georgia Deering swam through molasses-thick darkness toward the light. She kicked and pulled until the brightness became a flood of morning sun on the bed. Through the open window, framed by gently blowing lace curtains, she heard the chatter of the Portneuf as it wended its way downstream from Lava Hot Springs.
Gradually, Georgia came fully awake, realizing that she’d overslept for the third time in a week. Ten-thirty usually saw her breakfast of shredded wheat and strawberries finished, dishes on the drain board.
She ran a hairbrush through her unruly reddish curls and put on her favorite white terry robe, well washed and softened.
In the hallway, she paused to straighten the frame of the wedding ring quilt she’d made when she and Deering got married. It hung next to a shadow box of tiny porcelain dolls. When she got to the kitchen, she frowned, for she’d fallen asleep without putting away