“Did you look in the linen closet down here?” Lynda had waited until the last minute to finish her packing for camp despite Catherine’s two days of prodding. The only thing that had stopped Catherine from stepping in and taking over was the knowledge that it was more important for Lynda to be responsible for her decision to go to camp than it was for her to show up with every item on her list.
“I took the Superman one instead.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat next to Catherine at the kitchen table. Glancing at the newspaper that lay open in front of her mother, she looked closer and frowned. “You’re reading the want ads? How come?”
“I’ve been thinking about going back to work when you start school again.”
“Why?”
“Something to do.”
“What about the club? I thought you’d want to get back to work on the projects you had going there.”
Catherine got up to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee and glanced at the clock. She didn’t want to start something she couldn’t finish and send Lynda off for a week worried that there was a problem at home. They had an hour and a half before they were to meet the van in Rancho Cordova.
“That’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” Catherine said. “The club doesn’t seem all that important anymore. To either of us. Do you realize we haven’t used it once this summer?”
“I never did like going there. It’s just a bunch of women with nothing better to do than sit around and talk about whoever isn’t there. And don’t even get me started on the dirty old men who think they could have been golf pros if they’d just had a little more time to practice.”
Catherine looked at Lynda over the rim of her cup. “Dirty old men? Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“Didn’t you ever notice how they look at girls my age when we walk by? It’s disgusting.”
“Then you wouldn’t care if I sold our membership back to the club?” She tried to make it sound as if it were an option instead of a necessity.
“Like you said, we never use it anymore.” She finished her orange juice, filled the glass again, and grabbed a bagel to go with it. “So, what kind of job are you going to get?”
“Something in human resources probably. It’s the only thing I have any experience doing.”
“Why not go back to Husbey’s? You said you liked it there. And they gave you that big party when you quit, so it’s obvious they liked you, too.”
“They don’t have any openings.”
Lynda eyed her mother. “I thought you said you were just thinking about going back to work. But if you already checked on your old job, you must have already made up your mind. When were you going to tell me?”
How could she not have known Lynda would expect to be included in this kind of decision? They were at a stage in their mother-daughter relationship where Lynda felt entitled to know everything her mother did and felt, but was fiercely protective of her own privacy, impatient and stubborn when she thought she was being asked too many questions. Thankfully, Catherine remembered going through this same stage with her own mother and most of the time managed to handle Lynda’s lopsided demands with a tolerance she didn’t always feel.
“When you got home from camp. I figured we could work out our schedules together. I want to be home when you are so we can keep up with your massages.’”
“Maybe I should just stay home.”
“Getting cold feet?”
“A little,” she admitted unexpectedly. “The camp is only a couple of miles from Rainbow Lake.” She took her cap off and put it on the table, then ran her hand over her head. “I can’t stop thinking about going back there. I’m even dreaming about it. Awful dreams where Brian doesn’t catch me and I just keep running and running until my whole body is on fire. And then I wake up.”
“I didn’t know…” Catherine put her cup aside and leaned forward to touch Lynda’s hand. “Maybe you shouldn’t go. Maybe it’s too soon.”
“I talked to Rick about it and he said he would come and get me if I decided I didn’t want to stay.”
“I thought Rick was going to be there.” She hadn’t asked, she’d just assumed.
“He usually is. But when he thought I wasn’t going, he told a firefighter whose wife has cancer that he would work a couple of shifts for him.”
“When did you talk to Rick?” She tried to make the question seem casual.
“He called the other night when you were in the shower. I think he was hoping you’d answer, but when I asked if he wanted you to call him back, he said no.”
She couldn’t question Lynda without giving the call too much importance, so she let it drop. “Did you leave your dress out?” The flower girl at Jack and Adriana’s wedding had knocked over the punch bowl when she lunged for the bridal bouquet. Lynda and Brian had gotten the full force of the flow. “I’m going to the cleaners tomorrow.”
“I think it’s a lost cause, Mom.”
“Oh, I don’t know. We managed to get the stains out of your pressure garments.”
“I can’t see myself wearing that dress again anyway. It isn’t very comfortable.”
Catherine had purposely not asked Lynda about the wedding, hoping she would talk about it without prompting. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen. “Okay, so how was it?”
Lynda grinned. “I was wondering how long you could hold out.”
“Do you know I changed your diaper twice as often as any other mother I knew just so you’d never get a rash? And this is the thanks I get?”
“Funny, Mom.”
“Well?”
“Let’s see…where to start. I guess Adriana’s as good a place as any. She wore a Vera Wang knockoff, simple lines and no train.” She thought a second. “At least I think it was a knockoff, but maybe not. She’s always flying to New York. She could have picked it up there. Anyway, she didn’t have a veil, just some flowers in her hair that matched her bouquet. Dad got her a gold band. He said she doesn’t like diamonds.”
“Did Jack look happy?” Selfishly, she wanted this marriage to work. She believed that fulfilling his promise to be a better father to Lynda hinged on whether he and Adriana could build a stable home life with their own child.
“I’d say he looked more accepting than happy. He smiled a lot but he wasn’t bouncing all around the room talking to everybody the way he usually is at parties.”
“He’s trying,” Catherine said. “I think he really wants it to work this time.”
“Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“His getting married again when it didn’t work out between you and Tom?”
“That’s a complicated question,” she answered honestly. “All I know for sure is that I would have answered it differently a couple of months ago. Then I might have cared. I don’t think I do now.”
“You don’t think you do, but you’re not sure?”
“No, I’m sure. I just don’t know whether I’m neutral or I sincerely wish him well. I’d like to think it’s the latter.”
“Pretty heavy stuff for nine o’clock in the morning,” Lynda said.
“Is it nine already?” She folded the newspaper and added it to the stack she’d already read. “We should get going.”
A moment of uncertainty flashed through Lynda’s eyes.
“There’s still time to change your mind.” Only at that moment did Catherine realize she wanted Lynda to change her mind. She was as nervous about having her leave as Lynda was about going.
“I told Rick I would give it a couple of days. If I don’t go, he’ll be disappointed in me.”
Catherine came around the table and put her arm across Lynda’s shoulders. “I used to think I knew what bravery was all about, but I was wrong. There are times, like now, when I’m so proud of you I want to shout it from the rooftop.”
Lynda hugged her back. “I love you, too, Mom.”
For an indulgent minute Rick let the hot water run across
the shoulder he’d strained in the fire that afternoon, and then squeezed a circle of shampoo in his hand and spread it in his hair. Using his fingers to scrub his scalp hard, he worked the lather until he was sure the soot and ash and smell of smoke were gone. Just as he stuck his head under the shower spray he heard the alarm sound.
“Damn,” he said aloud, although no one was around to hear. His crew took their showers in the dorm while he enjoyed one of the few privileges of rank in the fire department, at least at his firehouse: a private bathroom.
He shut off the water, grabbed a towel, and hurriedly dried off, missing more than he hit. Tossing the towel over the shower door, he grabbed the clean blue T-shirt and Jockey shorts he’d taken from his locker, put them on, and stepped into his still-wet turnout pants and boots. Not only were the pants and boots still wet from the fire, they still smelled. Even with his nostrils coated with smoke he could detect the acrid stench on the heavy, once-yellow canvas.
Glancing at the address as he pulled the report from the computer, he let out a groan. A patient down at the Haversmorning Care Facility. Their shift responded to the care home an average of once a month, and the calls invariably left the entire crew depressed and determined to do anything not to wind up in a care facility at the end of their lives. If he’d heard one firefighter tell another that they’d rather be shot than go to a place like Haversmorning, he’d heard a hundred.
“Where to?” Paul asked.
“Haversmorning,” Rick answered.
Even Paul knew enough to swear.
“I knew it had to be bad,” Janet said, standing beside the button to close the apparatus room door. “This is number thirteen.”
Rick looked at Steve across the front seat of the fire engine. “Thirteen? We’ve rolled thirteen times today? It’s only four o’clock.”
Three of the calls had been false alarms, some smart-ass kid pulling boxes at the local grammar school. The cops caught him on the last one, which came in just as they sat down to eat lunch. Before they made it back to the house they were dispatched to a fire at Capital Nursery. Now Haversmorning.
Shit.
“Should have grabbed some bananas for the ride home,” Steve said. “I’m starving.”
“We’ll stop for something on the way back,” Rick promised. “There’s that sub shop on the corner we all liked last time. My treat.”
After the call, for the first time since arriving at their firehouse, Paul was quiet on the ride back. When they were in the kitchen getting drinks and chips to go with their sandwiches, Rick overheard him talking to Janet.
“I hope when I’m that old there’s someone who loves me enough to shoot me before they allow me to be put in a place like that.”
Janet reached for the glasses. “Cats—you just officially joined the ranks of every firefighter in this department. There’s not a one of us who doesn’t think the same thing when we go to a place like Haversmorning.’”
Rick took a bag of Ruffles out of the cupboard, poured them in a bowl, and put the bowl on the table. The dog-tired camaraderie of the earlier fire had disappeared into a depression at the futility of a call they knew would be repeated.
A man put in a wheelchair in the morning and ignored while he quietly died, his lunch untouched, his personal needs neglected, his dignity forgotten, was not something any of them would ever get used to, no matter how many times they went out on the call.
Rick looked across the table at Steve and saw that he, too, was lost somewhere in thought. It wasn’t hard to imagine where. Rick picked up his sandwich and took a bite, chewed and swallowed and did the same thing all over again, forcing the food down, aware that with a full moon that night, he might not get another chance to eat.
The captain’s phone rang. Rick got up to answer, taking a handful of chips with him.
“Captain Sawyer,” he said.
“Rick—it’s Catherine. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”
He leaned his shoulder into the doorframe, the dragon of depression chased from the castle by the mere sound of her voice. “No, it’s a good time.”
At least it was now.
“I was wondering if you’d heard from Lynda. She hasn’t phoned in a couple of days and I don’t know if it’s because she’s having such a good time or she’s miserable and doesn’t want to let me know.”
“I called up there yesterday to see how things were going and Carol told me that Lynda’s doing great. Seems she’s really good with the crafts stuff, so they’ve put her to work helping the little kids paint bird feeders.”
“She’s always loved that kind of thing,” she said, relief in her voice. “And speaking of bird feeders, I had my first hummingbird this morning.”
“Lynda was pretty proud of herself for coming up with that idea.”
“I know. She told me.” Catherine paused in such a way that it was plain she had something else she wanted to say. “Did you get my note about the wine?”
“Not yet. But then I haven’t been home for a couple of days. I worked a shift for a friend yesterday.”
“I know,” she said. “Lynda told me about that, too.”
They were like a courting couple with a chaper-one, stilted and awkward, careful with everything they said. Only they weren’t a couple and they weren’t courting. “I hope it was all right. The wine, I mean.”
“Perfect. All I need is someone to share it with.”
Was that a comment or an invitation? He wasn’t sure how to respond. “It holds pretty well if you’re thinking about having a glass tonight. Up to a couple of days if you get the cork in nice and tight.”
“Oh—I’ll be sure to remember that.”
The disappointment in her voice told him he’d guessed wrong. Damn. Why was he always a step off with her? “Of course, if you’re looking for someone to share—” The alarm sounded. “I’m really sorry, Catherine. I have to go.”
“Thanks for telling me about Lynda.”
“Anytime.” He hung up, his depression gone, frustration slipping into its place.
26
CATHERINE SPOTTED BRIAN FROM ACROSS THE HOS-pital’s parking garage as she pulled up the ramp. He waited until she found an empty spot and then came over. The first thing she noticed when he was close enough for her to get a good look was a thin line of moisture on his eyelashes.
“What’s wrong?” She’d promised Lynda she would stop by to visit Ray while her daughter was at camp and wanted to give her a report when she called that night. “Has something happened to Ray?”
“She won’t let him stay with us.”
“Who?”
“Ray’s aunt. She said he has to live in Kansas with her. I tried talking to her, and so did Ray, but she won’t listen. She says she owes it to her sister to take care of Ray, but I don’t believe that’s the reason.”
“Ray knows that you wanted him to stay here with you? Lynda said you weren’t going to tell him until your father had everything worked out.”
“He got everything worked out—everything but Ray’s aunt. She’s been a real witch about it. There’s no way he wants to go with her. He doesn’t even know her. You should have seen how he reacted when I told him my mom and dad said he could stay with us. It was the happiest I’ve ever seen him.”
“Then I don’t understand why she—”
“My dad said it’s because she thinks Ray has money coming that no one has told her about and that we’re trying to steal it from him.”
Catherine’s heart sank. She’d known people like Ray’s aunt, and the more you tried to convince them that no one wanted their money, the more convinced they became that they had something worth stealing. “Money from where? Did she say?”
“She was rattling off a whole bunch of stuff. Life insurance, fire insurance on the house, she even said something about a story she heard that crime victims could collect money if they caught the person who hurt them.”
“Is she here now?”
“Yeah—she’s in Ray�
��s room packing his stuff. They’re flying out in a couple of hours.”
So soon. Lynda would be devastated she hadn’t been here to say good-bye. Catherine felt the shoulder strap on her purse start to slip and impatiently hiked it back in place. “Do you think it would do any good if I talked to her?”
“I don’t know how it could get any worse.” He stopped to take a deep breath. “Ray begged me to help him…” He looked at Catherine. There were fresh tears in his eyes. “I never should have started this. I only made things worse.”
She opened her arms and he moved into them. Catherine held him until they heard a car coming up the ramp and he released her to wipe his eyes.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Probably nothing if she’s as intractable with me as she was with you, but it’s worth a try.”
“Would you mind letting me tell Lynda about this?” he asked. “She doesn’t even know Ray’s leaving.”
“She’s supposed to call me tonight around dinner. I’ll tell her that I met you at the hospital and that you’re anxious to talk to her. But you have to promise me you’ll have her call me back before she goes to bed. I want to know that she’s all right.”
“Thanks—I appreciate you letting me do this.”
She thought about his thanking her for something so easy to give, and about everything he’d done for Lynda, and how if she told him thank you every day for the rest of her life she would never be able to say it enough. “You’re welcome, Brian.”
They said good-bye and Catherine left the relative comfort of the shaded garage to walk the short distance to the hospital in the intense, ugly sunlight. Some of their summer days were blessed with a crisp blue sky that boasted an occasional cloud. The majority were like this, as if the sky had been washed in a cheap bleach, not blue, but not white, either. And hot. Breath-stealing, dizzy, mirage-on-the-pavement hot.
Disguised Blessing Page 21
