Leah’s eyes had fixed on his; her pupils were large, black circles in her rich brown irises, dilated with fear. The rest of her face looked ashen, soft with vulnerability, but as they watched, it twisted into a grimace of pain. “This is why!” she sobbed as her hands flew to hide the nakedness of her emotion. “This is why I was right not to let anyone else in. Even if he doesn’t hurt me on purpose, what if something happens to him?”
Excruciatingly conscious of Leah’s mortification of letting her guard down, no one moved for a moment, afraid to respond in any way that would make it worse. Then Jenny waved the others away and draped one arm over her friend’s shoulders. “Oh shit, girl,” she said in an almost humorous voice, “the rest of us love and lose and get kicked and get back up again. Why should you get to go through life all safe and numb and stupid?”
“It’s not stupid to protect yourself!” Leah insisted as she looked up at Jenny through her fingers.
“Yeah, it is stupid. What are you going to do? Lock yourself in a padded cell and watch old Brady Bunch episodes, where everything comes out fine, until your brain molds? Or come on out into the real world? And fuck, yeah, you might get hurt. In fact, we both know I’d be lying if I didn’t say that you will hurt sometimes. But you can’t hurt unless you care, and when you care, you love, and when you love, you get to be alive.” Jenny’s voice had dropped to a hoarse, imploring whisper, and she knew somehow that she was fighting for her friend’s life. “Please, Leah, I’m begging you. Take a chance. Don’t seal up again and shut yourself off. Nobody blames you for doing it once, but if something has happened to Weston—and we don’t know that yet—” she added quickly, “but if it did, you’ll hurt, yes, but you’ll get through it, and you’ll open yourself up again next time. Because, girl, that’s all we’ve got. Everything in life is temporary! Everything. So instead of being afraid of losing it, you can choose to be grateful for having it. Whatever it is, a pretty day, a lover, a house, anything. Am I making any sense?”
Leah looked almost catatonically introspective. Jenny sighed with frustration and went back in for a second round. “Listen. Sometimes—I believe—the world, the universe, God, whatever you call it, puts things or people or experiences in our path and it’s up to us to decide what to do about it. We can either embrace it and make it—or them—a part of our lives and see what happens, or we pass by it and then, well . . . we never know. And to me, that would be the saddest thing. It’s killing me to watch you close yourself off. It’s like you’re encased in glass and I want to grab a hammer and smash it.”
Leah was staring at Jenny with her mouth open now. She looked absolutely horrified, and for just a moment, Jenny thought that she had pushed her too far. But then, Leah smacked both her hands to her face and said, “I’ve been so stupid! Oh my God, Jenny.” She grabbed her friend’s shoulders and shook her, almost violently, a bizarrely radiant smile dawning on her face. “I’ve been so stupid!” She released Jenny and spun on her heels. “Oh God, you’ve got to help me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Leah was already halfway across the industrial kitchen when she turned back and raised an imperious hand as though issuing a royal decree. She threw her head back and shouted, “Get me a lawyer!”
Chapter 62
Throughout the afternoon, they had waited anxiously for news about the fate and identity of those in the helicopter, but the authorities had remained adamant: No details would be released to the public until families had been notified and the facts were clear. Sterling was able to corner one fire captain into telling him that so far there were no reports of fatalities, but they were expecting the official report to include injuries. He would not say how serious.
Leah thought about Weston frequently and hoped with all her heart that he, and everyone else, would be all right, but she was mercifully distracted by her new purpose. With a paralegal friend’s help, she had located a family lawyer and, after explaining the urgency of the situation to the older woman, had spent three hours in the Glendale law office filling out paperwork and having the complicated legal system explained to her. Leah was painfully aware that even with all her best intentions her move was a gamble and would take time, and the outcome was uncertain.
She returned to the school at about seven, looking exhausted and exasperated, but determined.
Jenny met her with a questioning look. “Well?” she demanded.
“Well, I started the triathlon of paperwork, and I have to wait to be approved, but if I get permission from the family, it could go ahead immediately.” Though her words were positive, Jenny could read her friend’s uncertainty in the anxious, repetitious tucking of her hair behind one ear.
“Well, you’ve done what you can do for now, and—” Jenny broke off and squinted over Leah’s shoulder.
Following Jenny’s look, Leah turned slowly and searched the faces of a group of firefighters who had just come in from their shift, and there was no mistaking him. Weston, tall, handsome, face smeared with dirt and sweat, had spotted her and was crossing to them with a wide, white smile.
As though she were an abandoned accordion, Leah crumpled forward with one huge, exhaled sob of relief. “Oh my God. He’s all right, thank God.” She covered her face with her hands and spun quickly back toward Jenny, afraid that Weston might have seen her unguarded response. “I’ve got to get ahold of myself. What’s he going to think?” she asked Jenny, wiping her tears away with quick, angry swipes.
But Jenny smiled, and like a child’s turn at a pin˜ata, she took Leah by the shoulders and spun her back to face Weston, who was only a few steps away. She leaned down and spoke quietly into Leah’s ear. “He’s going to think you care about him. Now go.” With a not-so-gentle push, she launched Leah forward.
Greer was emptying a large trash bag, but a flicker of light in the corner of her eye caused her to look up. She watched as Weston stopped in front of Leah, took her hands down from her face, wiped away a tear, and then folded her into his arms. The light returned, stronger and brighter. There were wings over Weston, but not the black, terrifying wings that she had seen over Jenny’s image. These were made of gold, shining and joyful to see. As Greer watched, the wings opened magnificently and then folded down, wrapping forward around Leah and Weston, and as they did, Greer heard Joshua gasp beside her.
She spun toward him. “Did you see it?” she asked him.
“I saw her,” Joshua said, confused.
“Who?”
“It’s Tyler’s little sister. She died when she was very little, abuse I think, but she’s there with . . . Weston and Leah.” His head moved from side to side as he scanned the room for Tyler, and sure enough, he saw him, but he was sitting at a table on the far side of the cafeteria. “But why is she with them?” he mused slowly.
With all the courage she had left, Leah looked up into Weston’s smiling eyes and said, “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so worried all day.”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t get a message to you, but with only four helicopters up we were flying more frantically than usual.”
“Are they all right?” Leah asked.
“Yes, one of the guys dislocated a shoulder, and two of the others were pretty badly bruised, but everybody’s going be all right. The pilot was Harrison Grafton. He’s good under pressure, flew in Desert Storm, and this wasn’t his first emergency landing. So they all basically walked away.” He let go of her with one arm and touched her face again. “This sure is a nice welcome home. How’d you spend your day?”
“Well,” Leah said, taking in a huge, bracing breath, “I’ll tell you, but first, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. Or, I should say, meet again.” Leah took Weston’s huge hand in her own small one and led him to where Tyler sat with his temporary family, staring at an untouched plate of food. “Tyler?” she called out softly.
He turned and looked up, way up, at Weston. Slowly a look of recognition dawned across his face. “You’re the gu
y who picked up me and Grampa,” he said slowly, as though testing out the words to see if they would work all right.
“Hey there.” Weston immediately sat down on the bench across from Tyler, to minimize the height disparity between them. “How’s your grandfather doing?” he asked softly.
Tyler shrugged and his mouth tightened. “Not so good. I have to stay with, I mean . . .” He darted a look at the frazzled mother to see if she had caught the impoliteness, but she was busy with a two-year-old who was throwing spaghetti on the floor and she wasn’t listening, though she threw a harried hello to Weston when Leah introduced her as Debbie. “I mean, I can’t go home until he gets out of the hospital, and they told me that might be a long time.”
Weston exchanged a glance with Leah, who shook her head helplessly; she had been unable to get any information about Sheldon from anyone.
“But,” Tyler looked up at Leah hopefully, “I might get to go and stay with Leah if he says it’s all right.”
Weston’s smile changed from friendly to perceptive as his eyes moved to Leah, and he watched her face color before returning his attention to the boy. “Really?” he asked. “And would you like that?”
Tyler’s eyes darted to Debbie, who was now cursing softly as she tried to wipe the objecting toddler’s face with a dry, thin paper napkin. “I think so,” he said, almost inaudibly.
Weston watched the boy’s sloped shoulders and hopeless expression. “I’d like to come and visit you there,” he said. “Maybe we could play some ball. You like baseball?”
The subject seemed to perk up the small boy. His head came up and there was a light in his eye. “Yeah. I don’t get to play too much ’cause Grampa has to work all the time, so I’m not very good.”
“Looks like you got a good throwing arm to me.” Weston appeared to be appraising Tyler’s thin arm and finding it impressive. “I could show you a few things. I used to pitch on a team, you know.”
Shyly, Tyler nodded, and then in a hesitating voice, untrusting of the possibility, he said, “I’d like that very much, sir.”
“Tell you what. You finish eating your dinner. I’ve got to go get cleaned up and eat something myself: then, if it’s still light out and Debbie says it’s okay, we can throw a ball in the parking lot.” Tyler nodded his assent with cautious excitement. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”
When Leah and Weston were far enough away to be out of earshot, Weston spoke. “All right. I’ll find out what’s happening with the grandfather, but I have to ask you something.” He stopped and brought her up short, peering with blue intensity down at her. Leah looked back up at him. “Do you really want to do this? Or is it just a moment of temporary insanity?”
The laugh escaped Leah from deep inside of her. “Both!” she told him, and then she sobered and looked over to where Tyler was now eating and watching them surreptitiously. “I don’t know why, but I just know that I’m supposed to help him. I remember you saying that sometimes we have to get over ourselves and be of service, and that really intimidated me. I mean, I thought ‘being of service’ meant feeding all the hungry people in the world, or helping cure a disease, or supporting an entire hospital or a community, or something else that seemed so dauntingly impossible, but now I think . . .” She paused to sort through her thoughts. “I think,” she resumed carefully, “that sometimes being of service can mean helping just one other person. Maybe that won’t make much difference in the scope of things, but it’s what I can do—what I want to do—now. I want to make that little boy safe. He needs somebody, and . . .” Leah’s throat tightened, and she had to consciously relax it before she could speak. “And I do too.” She had meant that she needed to help Tyler, but when she met Weston’s eyes, she realized that her confession had been far more encompassing.
Very softly he said, “I’m so glad to hear you say that. I was starting to think I was the only one.” And then, right there in front of God and everybody, he kissed her.
Chapter 63
Sterling followed Greer home. He knew that she, like him, was watching the sky eagerly, scanning it to differentiate the smoke from the actual clouds that had been forming all day. It was very hard to tell, especially in the failing light, which of the two were holding sway, or if the clouds themselves were dark enough to promise rain. Sterling listened hopefully to the news station. The brief, unsatisfactory weather report predicted a forty percent chance of rain over the upcoming weekend, but forecast only “partly cloudy in the Los Angeles area with a twenty percent chance of isolated showers, especially in the beach communities for tonight and tomorrow, with temperatures cooling slightly to the low nineties.” With a disgusted grimace he punched off the radio and scanned the narrow range of sky above him between the canyons. Twenty percent—not much, but still, a chance.
As they pulled off the paved road onto the rutted dirt track that snaked around the canyon shoulder to the small group of houses where Greer’s stood out from the other four nearby by virtue of its larger size and grander mission style, he reflected how lucky she had been that the fire had turned away from this portion of the national forest. “It’s so random,” he muttered to himself before he remembered that they hadn’t been random at all until they took on a life of their own, but were in fact completely planned and premeditated.
He was so lost in his contemplation that it took him quite by surprise to see that the porch of Greer’s house, which encircled the raised ground floor, was occupied by quite a few people. He saw Dario, Jenny, Leah, Whitney and her husband, Luke, Joy, and Joshua. Greer had parked and was greeting everyone.
“I didn’t know you were having a party,” Sterling remonstrated her when he got to the top of the porch steps. “You know the paramedic said that you need to rest tonight. You already spent the day helping out. Don’t you think maybe you could let me fix you some dinner and get a good night’s sleep?” Then he turned to Jenny. “And what about you?”
“Oh, I’m much more hardheaded than she is,” Jenny quipped, straight-faced. “Plus, I went to the doctor and he said we’re both absolutely fine.”
“I asked everyone here because I need a favor,” Greer said by way of explanation. Everyone turned to her as though they had expected something but had no idea what.
As Greer looked around at all their friendly, open faces, she gained the courage to say out loud what she had never thought she could.
“There is another aspect to the gift that I was born with. It’s a gift that’s been in one woman in every generation for as long as anyone can remember. It’s true that Joshua seems to have inherited a different version of the sight, because there are no other women in the line. I was an only child and so is he, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Greer felt a trembling in her chest, and she cast around in her mind for a way to continue. She ran her tongue over her ample lips; her mouth had gone suddenly dry. “Basically, it comes to this.” Greer took a deep breath, and what she knew might be a last look at friends who thought her sane, and dove in. “I believe I can effect changes in the natural world, subtle usually, and I’ve never tried anything like what I want to do tonight. I know I can’t do it alone, but if anyone wants to help me, I’m willing to try.”
There was a hushed, uncertain intake of breath around the circle of friends.
Finally it was Luke who spoke. “Are you saying you can do magic?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. It’s more like tuning in to energies that are already out there and turning up their volume, but for lack of a better word . . . yes,” Greer said, and the word had a finality to it, like the sound of a sealing casket.
“And what is it you want to do?” Whitney asked, looking nonplussed and fearless as usual.
“I want to try to bring the rain,” Greer said.
Another energized hush ensued, this one so long that Greer thought she should go in her house and close the door and lock herself in a closet where she belonged.
Then, after a long, slow intake of
breath and a dramatic nod, Luke said in his firm, rumbling voice, “I like it.”
Greer’s head shot up in surprise. “What?”
“I think it’s a fucking stellar idea,” Dario added. “What do we have to lose? Nothing.”
“Wait.” Luke held up a hand and narrowed his eyes at Greer. “Were you afraid to tell us this? You were, weren’t you?”
Greer nodded shyly.
“Damn, woman,” Luke said with a laugh and a shake of his head. “We’re Indians. Our people have been working with the elements since way before that Middle Eastern guy got nailed to a cross for doing pretty much the same thing.”
Jenny was on her feet. “I’m in. What do we do?”
There was only one face that was twisted in concerned distraction. Joshua was watching his mother suspiciously. “What are you doing?” he asked very quietly.
She knew why he was asking. If it would rain, it would give the brave people who were risking their lives a chance to beat this holocaust of a fire. And it wasn’t only the people and the property that Greer knew she had to try to help—it was the animals, the habitat, the very land itself. But Joshua knew that using her gift this way would cost her.
“It’s all right,” she said to him. “I understand how much strength this might take. That’s why I’m asking for help, so that it won’t all come from just me.” She kept her eyes fixed reassuringly on his until he looked away, resigned.
“Okay, I’ll help you,” he muttered.
“Thank you.”
“Let’s get going,” Leah said. “I would like to say, for the record, that this is probably the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done.”
Joshua looked at the banker for a moment, and then turning to the rest of the assembled, he asked, “Did anyone here not know that?”
Their part, apparently, was to sit around her in a circle.
“Everyone take hands,” Greer said, “and see if you can hum this same note that I’m making.”
Speak of the Devil Page 36
