Because of Our Child

by Margot Early

But is your part, Max, so different from what Richard Grass’s was thirteen years ago?

  Yes.

  “And did you see John Jackson take the television camera from—” the investigator consulted his notes “—Bob Wright?”

  “Yes.” Though he hadn’t seen Jackson take the camera with him into his shelter, hadn’t understood Jackson’s intention to shelter up with the camera. It went against the grain to argue these facts now. Because if he’d seen it, what would he have done? Would he have insisted that Jackson leave the expensive piece of equipment outside his shelter?

  Max knew only that he himself wouldn’t have taken responsibility for the camera. The camera had belonged to Channel 4. His mandate had been to protect people at the helicopter base and to put out fire, not care for equipment belonging to civilians or to a television station.

  He’d assumed, he supposed, that Jackson would set down the camera somewhere it would be at least partially protected from flames, not within his fire shelter. But this was speculation on Max’s part; he actually couldn’t remember what had gone through his mind when he’d seen Jackson take the camera, beyond relief that one of the smoke jumpers had taken it. The camera was out of Bob Wright’s hands; Bob Wright was being made as safe as was possible. He, Max, would make sure that Jen opened her fire shelter, deployed it properly. He would look after both individuals. Those had been his thoughts. Once the camera was gone from Bob’s hands, Max hadn’t given it another thought.

  I didn’t believe Jackson would take it in his shelter with him.

  But was he remembering this correctly? The temptation to remember things in a way that made him look or feel better was tempting yet unspoken.

  “Now, I’ve learned something interesting. That you and Jennifer Delazzeri knew each other before this fire. That in fact you’d shared a shelter during a previous fire, in—” another glance at his notes “—Makal Canyon.”

  “Yes. We were Santa Inez Hotshots together. She was a rookie, and my understanding is that she left fire fighting after that fire.” My understanding. He knew damn well she hadn’t fought another fire. That he and Jen had ever shared the intimacy of lovers was none of the fire investigator’s business.

  “Do you think you might have been distracted by her presence?”

  “She’s an attractive woman. We were all distracted. I don’t think it interfered with my attention to my job, though.”

  “Yes, but you knew her. You greeted each other as old friends.”

  Max said nothing.

  “Do you think John Jackson might have been sufficiently distracted by the presence of Ms. Delazzeri to forget his training?”

  “I don’t think he forgot his training at all. I think he disregarded it, and I’m sure he’s told you the same thing.”

  The investigator neither confirmed nor denied this supposition. He had come to Leadville to meet with Max in the forest service offices. Following up, he said.

  The questions to which Max most wanted answers—whether or not mistakes made at Silver Jack would affect his career path in firefighting—couldn’t be answered. Nonetheless, he’d already arranged for time off in August to go to Makal Canyon. Bob Wright had agreed to come; Elena wanted to come. Jen didn’t want Elena accompanying him, and she didn’t want to go herself.

  Max had tried to persuade her to have dinner with him to talk it over, and her response still made him smile.

  Oh, that would go over well at this end. Elena thinks I didn’t tell you about her earlier because I’ve carried a torch for you all these years.

  She’d sounded indignant.

  He’d said, Well, I don’t think either of us was going to forget the other.

  No answer to that.

  He would call her again when the investigator was through with him.

  “NOTHING IS DIFFERENT from the last time you asked me,” she snapped impatiently.

  “Are you at work?” he asked.

  “No, I’m on my way to a class.”

  “Dance?”

  “No.”

  “Should I call when you’re not driving?”

  “I’m not driving. I’m walking at the moment. What do you want? Same old, same old?”

  “Yes. I want you and Elena to come back to Makal Canyon.”

  He heard her sigh. “Since I’ve introduced you and Elena, I’ve traded a reasonably levelheaded child for a moody adolescent who blames me for everything that’s gone wrong her whole life. And if that weren’t enough to convince me that going to California is a bad idea, there’s her likely reaction to the thought of you and me in bed together seconds after your fiancée died.”

  “People react that way to death all the time.” Wondering if it would behoove him to act as if their frantic couplings had been more than that, he said, “Not that it was that simple.”

  “Wasn’t it?” She sounded bored, distant.

  “Look, if she hadn’t been injured, it wouldn’t have happened. Not then anyhow.” Not ever, because he would have married Salma and been the father of her child instead of the father of Elena.

  He didn’t wish that had been the case—not exactly. Elena was there, and she was his daughter, and now that he’d met her there was no going back.

  “Don’t you think Elena’s likely to find out eventually that Salma and I were engaged?”

  “How?” Jen demanded. “Are you planning to tell her? She’ll turn on you next.”

  Clearly, Jen resented her daughter’s wavering allegiance.

  “I’ll tell her to be more respectful to you.”

  “She’s spent her whole life, until now, being respectful to me!” Jen exclaimed, and then fell silent.

  “Really?” he asked.

  A slight pause. “Most of the time.” As she hurried down the sidewalk toward the Lodo martial arts center where she practiced, studied and taught fighting arts, she wondered, not for the first time, at Max’s motivation for involving her in the Makal Canyon project. She wondered about the real reasons behind his wanting to do the project at all. Could asking again hurt? “Max, why are you doing this? Really? The documentary.”

  “To help future firefighters not make—or agree to—the mistakes that were made that day.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ve always struck me as being realistic. And to me it seems unrealistic to think that anyone is really going to pay attention to the lessons of that fire. What fire lessons haven’t been taught before?”

  “First of all, no one pays attention to where that subdivision was built. Nobody really talks about that, about assessing a building site for wildfire before the threat materializes.”

  “The fire never touched the subdivision,” Jen said, knowing that wasn’t the point and knowing that her saying so would simply annoy him. Annoying him didn’t bother her; she herself was annoyed. Possibly annoyed that she, a thirty-two-year-old professional woman, a television newscaster, should still in some way not be good enough for Max Rickman.

  That was a judgment, of course—she had no way of knowing if she wasn’t “good enough” for him. In his eyes, that is. In her own eyes, at least, she ought to be good enough.

  Ought to. There was the rub. He rejected you, and while your heart has recovered, your pride will never forget.

  So maybe her daughter’s accusations weren’t that far off the mark.

  “Suppose,” she said, “that I say I’ll do it. I have to ask you again what you think Elena’s reaction will be to finding out that we were lovers so soon after your fiancée’s death.”

  “I think she’ll surprise you.”

  “How?”

  “By showing you more maturity than you expect. Either that, or she simply won’t care.”

  Did Jen want her to care?

  “I’m sure,” Max added, “that she is going to do as little thinking about you and me together in bed as possible, because she probably finds the whole idea revolting.”

  “You’d pay me?
” she finally said. “Some kind of stipend?”

  “Ten grand, plus expenses.”

  That was a lot of money for a month’s work, if that was all the time the film turned out to take, which seemed doubtful.

  “All right. I’ll do it.” If only to prove to Max, to Elena, and most of all to herself, that her pride had recovered from the blow Max Rickman had dealt it—and her—thirteen years before.

  TERESA’S VOICE DID NOT SOUND quite normal to Jen. Her sister greeted her when she arrived home from class. As Jen dropped her tote bag in her room in the two-storey brick house the family shared, Teresa stood in the doorway fidgeting.

  People never thought that she and Teresa were sisters. While Jen was dark-haired and brown-eyed, Teresa was blond and blue-eyed, like their mother. In college, her hair had been a mop of loose curls, her smile disarming. Since then, however, she’d gained weight and cut her hair very short.

  And of course, there were the side effects of her meds.

  Jen reminded herself that mental illness ran in families and that it existed in hers. It was too easy to want to shout, Look what that stupid fire did to my sister!

  Max would argue that he was simply trying to determine who was to blame for the disaster.

  Jen wanted to forget the damned fire.

  Of course, she never would. And Teresa definitely never would.

  “Max called.”

  Jen tensed, hearing these words spoken in Teresa’s slurred speech.

  “I guess,” Teresa continued, her voice showing more strain, rising in pitch, “he’s pretty glad to know Elena now. That must make you happy.”

  “Yes,” Jen said. Then she added, “He ought to be glad. He’s lucky to know her.”

  “He says…” again that strained, unnatural note “…you’re going back to Makal Canyon to work on a documentary together. He invited me to come.”

  Jen swore silently. Max had invited Teresa, and it was already having a negative effect on her sister.

  “I said I can’t afford it,” Teresa said, “and he offered to pay my way and put me up there. Do you think it would be wrong for me to accept?”

  Her sister was so scrupulous. While Jen focused on not turning into her mother, Teresa fretted over etiquette.

  “No,” Jen said flatly. “He wants your help with the film, and he should damn well pay for it.”

  “He said he might find work for me.”

  Jen wished that Max Rickman was within the reach of her hands right now.

  “You and Elena and I could all room together,” Teresa continued. “That wouldn’t mean accepting so much from him.”

  “Teresa Delazzeri, I have single-handedly raised his child for the past twelve years. I’m telling you, take anything he offers.”

  “You sound like Mom.”

  “I do not!”

  “That’s just what she used to tell us to do with Dad. She always said he didn’t pay enough child support.”

  “He didn’t,” interjected a new voice.

  Their mother had joined them. Robin Delazzeri was still a beautiful woman. She wore her white hair in a braid and dressed in elegant, flowing clothing. After retiring from nursing, she’d begun volunteering at a physical therapy center. She kept in shape with weights, yoga, daily walks, hiking in the summer and downhill skiing in the winter.

  Robin turned to her younger daughter. “Teresa says that she talked to Max and you’re all going out to California. You and Elena and Max, that is, and Teresa if she wants to go.”

  “Will you be all right?” Jen asked.

  “Why don’t I come with you?”

  Because you’re not invited. But Jen didn’t say that, she just knew an inner exasperation—and a feeling of sympathy for her father.

  “I don’t have to stay with you. I could see friends in Monterey.”

  “Why would you want to come?” Jen asked.

  “Because I’m your mother. I like to keep my nest together.”

  I’ve left the damned nest. We live in the same house, and I pay half the mortgage. Jen wished that her mother would find someone to date. Whenever she did, it distracted her from trying to control the other people in her life. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. The last time her mother had violated them left and right was when Teresa had briefly dated someone. Before that, it was Jen’s most recent lover.

  She sounds narcissistic, a therapist had told Jen. And histrionic.

  So this trip, if she decided to go, would involve another power struggle with Robin. The prospect exhausted Jen.

  Should Teresa come to California? Leaving her sister behind would take up some of her mother’s energy, at least. Anyhow, what would it do to Teresa, revisiting the scene of the fire that had changed her life and ended the life of her best friend?

  It’s not my decision, Jen told herself. Teresa’s an adult.

  “Well,” said Robin, in a petulant voice that Jen knew well, “I’m off to yoga. Elena’s in her room. She has some news for you, I think.”

  What news could Elena have that she hadn’t rushed out to share with her mother? Jen wondered.

  She headed down the hallway and knocked on the door of her daughter’s room.

  “Come in, Mom.”

  Jen opened the door. Elena’s room was white and decorated with modern furniture. Instead of posters of rock stars—or even famous ballerinas—on her walls, she’d hung some small, minimalist art pieces, most of which she’d talked Robin into buying for her.

  Elena stood in the middle of her room in a pair of black jazz pants and crop top, still dressed from her dance class that afternoon. “Guess what?”

  Jen lifted her eyebrows, waiting.

  “Michelle is choreographing a performance piece for the arts council banquet, and she has asked me to do a solo, to promote the school and the company.”

  “Wow. That’s great. Where is it going to be?”

  The details flowed forth and in the midst of her recitation Elena reached for her cell phone. “I forgot to tell Max. I want him to come.”

  Elena hadn’t yet begun calling him Dad. Jen wondered if she ever would. “What’s the date?”

  “September fourth. It’s ringing.” She began jumping up and down.

  “But if we go to Makal Canyon with Max, you won’t be able to do it. You won’t be here for rehearsals.”

  Elena heard. Gaped, half listening to a recorded message on the phone. “It’s Elena. Call me. I have something to tell you.” She snapped shut her phone. “We’re going? You’re going?”

  “Don’t you want me to?” A fear came to Jen—that Elena would prefer to spend the time alone with Max. Of course, it was natural that she’d want to spend some time alone with him. He’d already mentioned the possibility of a father-daughter backpacking trip in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness or in one of Colorado’s other federal wilderness areas.

  If that happened, Jen would be amazed. Elena did not like camping. She was a city girl and happy to stay that way.

  Their cat walked into the room. She was butterscotch-and-white, long-haired, with fur that seemed to stick out at strange angles, giving her a rakish look. During much of her childhood, Elena had begged for a variety of pets, nearly all of them impractical. For instance, she’d wanted a dog—but not just any dog. She’d wanted a Rhodesian Ridgeback that she could show in the ring—a hobby about which Jen knew practically nothing—and breed.

  Then, it was one of those potbellied pigs.

  An Arctic fox.

  A miniature horse.

  Then, a variety of exotic cats. Jen had briefly considered that, until she’d realized that those which her daughter wanted had to be kept in steel cages and shouldn’t be handled by anyone who wasn’t wearing leather gloves and a face guard.

  For a time, Elena had actually owned a Bearded Dragon, but it had died earlier in this season of fire—from smoke in the air.

  Now, Elena turned away and went to sit at her desk. “So, if we go to California—when are you going t
o do it?”

  “August, as I understand it. Maybe the end of July.”

  “Could I stay here part of the time, and fly out to be with you guys when I don’t have to rehearse? Then Grandma wouldn’t be so lonely, anyway.”

  And Robin would stay in Denver.

  Nonetheless, Jen couldn’t afford the plane tickets, not since she’d just quit her job. One round trip ticket, yes. More—no.

  “We’ll talk about it.”

  “But you’re definitely going?” Elena’s eyes veiled her emotions, whatever they were.

  “Yes,” Jen said. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAX KNEW he should prepare his father for the reality of Elena, but by the end of July he still hadn’t told anyone in his family that he had a daughter. On the twenty-fifth, he picked up Bob Wright, Jen and Teresa and headed for the airport. Elena would fly out later, for three four-day visits at his expense.

  Max sat beside Jen on the flight to Santa Barbara. The computer animation tech for their project would pick them up and drive them to the house they would share in Canyon Wind Estates—the subdivision that had been saved from the fire in which Salma had been fatally burned.

  Max insisted that Jen take the window seat, and as she gazed out the window he watched the curve of her jaw beneath the hair she’d braided into an elegant and artful twist high on her head. Today, she wore purple again, some pants that clung to her body, emphasizing the muscles she obviously took care to maintain, and a purple camisole, with a blue hooded cardigan.

  She seemed so remote—more than she had on Silver Jack Ridge, before he’d known about Elena. Yet now her inner self was hidden, perhaps so that he couldn’t reject it again.

  That rejection haunted him. He couldn’t forget the things she claimed he’d said. Things that sounded like something he could have said. That their sexual experience was only about sex. That it had happened because of the fire. That he did not love her.

  He couldn’t imagine saying the last to a woman now. He had slept with women he didn’t quite love, but he certainly didn’t announce the fact that he didn’t. Why had he needed to say such a thing to Jen?

  Because what they’d done was too much like love—and Salma had only just died.