Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [95]
Although it was pushing noon, she didn’t yet feel like eating.
“Maybe just a cup of tea,” she said, and shook her head.
“Pretty soon you’ll be answering yourself and then what?”
What indeed? She’d been putting off finding a lot of answers, even afraid to ask the questions. Surely, Deering had been curious about her showing up in West Yellowstone, waiting around with Karrabotsos, and then disappearing. Didn’t he even suspect she might have seen him with that Clare?
When she’d come home, she hadn’t even told Anna. As if not speaking of it could erase Deering pulling another woman against him in the familiar way she’d thought was reserved for her alone.
Moving woodenly to the pantry, Georgia reached for the canister of herbal tea that Deering had helped her make one day earlier this summer. When she popped the tin, the dank smell of chamomile, mixed with the almost sour essence of stale rose hips smote her. She gagged and lifted the trash lid, but it wasn’t enough to put it in the garbage.
Barefoot, she crossed the soft grass she’d hand watered during the drought. Beside the river, she dumped the tea, expecting the flakes to float away. Instead, the mixture landed in a clump beside a rock.
Georgia kicked at the pile. She lost her balance and almost fell into the stony streambed. “Damn you!” she cried, not sure if she meant Deering or that woman. To see the last trace of tea wash down the Portneuf, she knelt on the grassy bank and reached to stir the brew. The smell of tea mixed with tannic decaying leaves overwhelmed her.
She leaned over the bank and gagged. Bright morning receded, her world reduced to the space between her hanging hair and the Portneuf. When the storm had passed, Georgia curled up, shivering. She hoped Widow Barcus wouldn’t see her lying in her bathrobe on the lawn.
This crystal morning made her think how different it was where Deering worked, of the smoky hell above Yellowstone. Although she’d told herself she didn’t care to know what he was doing, she tuned in the news every evening like clockwork.
Last night, Connie Chung had opened, “Tragic news this evening from Yellowstone National Park.”
Georgia’s heart had begun to race.
“Private William Harrison Jakes, nineteen, of McCall, Idaho, died when a firestorm overtook him and his fellow firefighters. The other members of the group of twenty-three survived beneath Mylar fire shelters, which miraculously shielded them from the fury of the Hellroaring Fire.”
Hellroaring.
That was rich. It wasn’t enough that fire warriors challenge the gates of hell. No, they had to call the fire the Hellroaring, like kicking sand in the face of Beelzebub.
Georgia’s rage made her forget being chilled and sick. She sat up, wiping cold sweat from her face with her terry sleeve.
A faint ‘whop whop’ came to her.
Deering often came home by chopper, landing at the local heliport near the high school across the road.
She remained on the ground, feeling dew seep though her robe. The helipad was also used for medical emergencies and by other businesses.
The chopper’s sound grew louder.
Reluctantly, she pushed to her feet and walked around the side of the house. Once she got past the area where she’d watered, the dry grass felt sharp on her bare soles.
The helicopter came in low across the football field, olive drab with that same military look as the one in the newspaper photo. There was something else as well; some indefinable nuance in the approach angle that said her husband had come home.
Deering started shutting down. Karrabotsos had sounded surprised when he had radioed for permission to fly to Lava Hot Springs, but had let him go, muttering something about taking better care of that little red-haired gal.
That made no sense for Karrabotsos had never met Georgia.
How simple it had seemed when Clare challenged him. She’d managed to cut through all the bullshit. He did love his wife, had always loved her. No matter how he pretended nonchalance, crashing his helicopter had shaken him to the core. When Georgia hadn’t been there for him,